“Merciful Heavens!” gasped he. “That fire--those skeletons--this black cell--what can they mean?” He found no answer in his bewildered brain. Once more he called, “Beatrice! Beatrice!” but only the close echo of the prison replied.
He listened, holding his breath in sickening fear. Was there, in truth, some waiting, yawning chasm in the cell, and had she, thrust rudely forward, been hurled down it? At the thought he set his jaws with terrible menace and swore, to the last drop of his blood, vengeance on these inhuman captors.
But as he listened, standing there with bound hands in the thick gloom, he seemed to catch a slow and sighing sound, as of troubled breathing. Again he called. No answer. Then he understood the truth. And, unable to grope with his hands, he swung one foot slowly, gently, in the partial circumference of a circle.
At first he found nothing save the smooth and slippery stone of the floor, but, having shifted his position very cautiously and tried again, he experienced the great joy of feeling his sandaled foot come in contact with the girl's prostrate body.
Beside her on the floor he knelt. He could not free his hands, but he could call to her and kiss her face. And presently, even while the joy of this discovery was keen upon him, obscuring the hot rage he felt, she moved, she spoke a few vague words, and reached her hands up to him; she clasped him in her arms.
And there in the close, fetid dark, imprisoned, helpless, doomed, they kissed again, and once more--though no word was spoken--plighted their love and deep fidelity until the end.
“Hurt? Are you hurt?” he panted eagerly, as she sat up on the hard floor and with her hands smoothed back the hair from his hot, aching head.
“I feel so weak and dizzy,” she answered. “And I'm afraid--oh, Allan, I'm afraid! But, no, I'm not hurt.”
“Thank God for that!” he breathed fervently. “Can you untie these infernal knots? They're almost cutting my hands off!”
“Here, let me try!”
And presently the girl set to work; but even though she labored till her fingers ached, she could not start the tight and water-soaked ligatures.
“Hold on, wait a minute,” directed he. “Feel in my right-hand pocket. Maybe they forgot to take my knife.”
She obeyed.
“They've got it,” she announced. “Even if they don't know the meaning of revolvers, they understand knives all right. It's gone.”
“Pest!” he ejaculated hotly. Then for a moment he sat thinking, while the girl again tried vainly to loosen the hard-drawn knots.
“Can you find the iron door they shoved us through?” asked he at length.
“I'll see!”
He heard her creeping cautiously along the walls of stone, feeling as she went.
“Look out!” he warned. “Keep testing the floor as you go. There may be a crevice or pit or something of that kind.”
All at once she cried: “Here it is! I've found it!”
“Good! Now, then, feel it all over and see if there's any rough place on it. Any sharp edge of a plate, or anything of that kind, that I could rub the cords on.”
Another silence. Then the girl spoke.
“Nothing of that kind here,” she answered depairingly. “The door's as smooth as if it had been filed and polished. There's not even a lock of any kind. It must be fastened from the outside in some way.”
“By Heaven, this is certainly a hard proposition!” exclaimed the engineer, groaning despite himself. “What the deuce are we going to do now?”
For a moment he remained sunk in a kind of dull and apathetic respair.
But suddenly he gave a cry of joy.
“I've got it!” he exclaimed. “Your revolver, quick! Aim at the opposite wall, there, and fire!”
“Shoot, in here?” she queried, astonished. “Why--what for?”
“Never mind! Shoot!”
Amazed, she did his bidding. The crash of the report almost deafened them in that narrow room. By the stabbing flare of the discharge they glimpsed the black and shining walls, a deadly circle all about them.
“Again?” asked she.
“No. That's enough. Now, find the bullet. It's somewhere on the floor. There's no pit; it's all solid. The bullet--find the bullet!”
Questioning no more, yet still not understanding, she groped on hands and knees in the impenetrable blackness. The search lasted more than five minutes before her hand fell on the jagged bit of metal.
“Ah!” cried she. “Here it is!”
“Good! Tell me, is the steel jacket burst in any such way as to make a jagged edge?”
A moment's silence, while her deft fingers examined the metal. Then said she:
“I think so. It's a terribly small bit to saw with, but--”
“To work, then! I can't stand this much longer.”
With splendid energy the girl attacked the tough and water-soaked bonds. She worked half an hour before the first one, thread by thread yielding, gave way. The second followed soon after; and now, with torn and bleeding fingers, she released the final bond.
“Thank Heaven!” he breathed as she began chafing his numb wrists and arms to bring the circulation back again; and presently, when he had regained some use of his own hands, he also rubbed his arms.
“No great damage done, after all,” he judged, “so far as this is concerned. But, by the Almighty, we're in one frightful fix every other way! Hark! Hear those demons outside there? God knows what they're up to now!”
Both prisoners listened.
Even through the massive walls of the circular dungeon they could hear a dull and gruesome chant that rose, fell, died, and then resumed, seemingly in unison with the variant roaring of the flame.
Thereto, also, an irregular metallic sound, as of blows struck on iron, and now and then a shrill, high-pitched cry. The effect of these strange sounds, rendered vague and unreal by the density of the walls, and faintly penetrating the dreadful darkness, surpassed all efforts of the imagination.
Beatrice and Stern, bold as they were, hardened to rough adventurings, felt their hearts sink with bodings, and for a while they spoke no word. They sat there together on the floor of polished stone--perceptibly warm to the touch and greasy with a peculiarly repellent substance--and thought long thoughts which neither one dared voice.
But at length the engineer, now much recovered from his pain and from the oppression of the lungs caused by the compressed air, reached for the girl's hand in the dark.
“Without you where should I be?” he exclaimed. “My good angel now, as always!”
She made no answer, but returned the pressure of his hand. And for a while silence fell between them there--silence broken only by their troubled breathing and the cadenced roaring of the huge gas-well flame outside the prison wall.
At last Stern spoke.
“Let's get some better idea of this place,” said he. “Maybe if we know just what we're up against we'll understand better what to do.”
And slowly, cautiously, with every sense alert, he began exploring the dungeon. Floor and walls he felt of, with minute care, reaching as high as he could and eagerly seeking some possible crevice, some promise--no matter how remote--of ultimate escape.
But the examination ended only in discouragement. Smooth almost as glass the walls were, and the floor as well, perhaps worn down by countless prisoners.
The iron door, cleverly let into the wall, lay flush with it, and offered not the slightest irregularity to the touch. So nicely was it fitted that not even Stern's finger-nail could penetrate the joint.
“Nothing doing in the escape line,” he passed judgment unwillingly. “Barbarians these people certainly are, in some ways, but they've got the arts of stone and iron working down fine. I, as an engineer, have to appreciate that, and give the remote descendants of our race credit for it, even if it works our ruin. Gad, but they're clever, though!”