The mill of silence

by Bernard Capes

On I staggered, knowing only for my comfort that the pursued must needs labor against no less resistance than the pursuer. Inch by inch I fought my way, taking advantage of every buttress and coign of shelter that presented itself; leaping aside with thump-heart from the crash of falling tiles or dropping swing of branches, as the wind flung them right and left in its passing; now stumbling and regaining my feet, shoulder to the storm, now driven back a pace by some gust—a giant among its fellows—inch by inch I drove on till the mill yard was reached; and all the way I gained never a foot upon him I strove to run down.

Then, rushing along the yard, where comparative shelter was, I found a thrill of fear, in the midmost confusion of my thoughts, for the safety of the building itself. For the voice of the mill-tail smote the roar of the elements and seemed to silence it, and the foam of its fury sprung and danced above the high-walled channel and flung itself against the parapet of the bridge in gusts of frosty whiteness. And in the little lulls came the whistle of sliding tiles from the roof or snap of them breaking from the walls; so that it seemed before long nothing but a skeleton of ancient timbers like the ribs and spars of the phantom death-ship would stand for the blast to scream through.

Then I came panting to the mill, my soul so whelmed in the roar of all things that room scarcely was for thought of those two stark sleepers lying quiet above and deaf forevermore to the hateful tumults of life—came to the mill, and on the instant abandoned hope. For so it appeared that in rushing from the door none had thought to shut it, and the tempest had caught and, near battering it from its hinges, had dashed it, wrenched and splintered, against the wall of the passage beyond, and in such way that no immediate human power might close it. And there lay the way into the building; open to all who listed, and if Jason had run thither, as I bade him——

These thoughts were in passing. I never stayed my progress for them, but without pause leaped into the inclosed darkness, and only then I stood still.

Instantly with my plunge into that pit of blackness the hosts of the storm without seemed to break and scatter before the wind, shaken with low spasms of thunder as they fled; but under my feet the racing waters took up great chords of sound, so that the whole building trembled and vibrated with their awful music.

Overstrung to a pitch of madness, I felt my way to the foot of the stairs, and, stumbling, mounted in the darkness, and reached the first landing.

All was still as death. Perhaps it was death come in a new shape, and stealthily lying somewhere to trip up my feet in a ghastly game of clowns. I dared not go further; dared hardly to breathe.

As I stood, a rat began gnawing at the skirting. The jar of his teeth was like the turning of a rusty lock. The old superstition about falling houses passed through my mind. What if the close night about me were to be suddenly rent with the explosive splintering of great beams—with the raining thunder of roof and chimney-stack pouring downward in one vast ruin, of which I should be the mangled palpitating core?

My body burst into a cold sweat. Perhaps above all the fear in me was that death should find me with my mission unaccomplished; that I should have striven and waited in vain.

Shrinking, I would not push further to the upper rooms, but felt my way down the stairs once more. It was, at least, hardly probable that Jason would have rushed for asylum to the very death chambers above. More likely was I to find him crouching unnerved, if still alive, in some dark corner of one of the lower rooms.