“Do nothing till we return,” said the priest to Aleph. “We will find you a light, or something better.”
Then he whispered to Rachel, “There is but one thing to be done. Seat the woman on this bench and come. We must do without her. She might shriek or fall among the men at any moment. Safer without her.”
The woman sank on the bench like a rag. Seti took down the lantern, drew Rachel’s arm again within his own, and softly made his way up a flight of steps to the door of the mess room. He listened a moment. Nothing was audible but the dull hard breathing of the men within.
He gently pressed the door open. The room was full of lights of all sorts—as if the ruffians had been afraid of darkness and meant to have as little of it as possible. And all around—on benches, on the floor, under the great table, hanging limp over the backs of chairs—were the men in a state of swinish intoxication. Broken and upset cups lay about everywhere. Pools of wine and vomit were on the table and on the floor. The foul air was almost intolerable.
Seti took up a sword that lay on the floor, and held out the lantern to Rachel.
“No, grandfather,” she whispered, “this work is for me. I can tread among them more lightly than you can; and now I can see the key at the belt of yonder man,” and she pointed to a man who sat at the head of the table, his arms spread out upon it, and his head resting on his arms.
He expostulated, “Perhaps the woman neglected to drug the wine as she neglected her own cordial.”
Without replying, the maiden gathered her robes tightly about her, and stepped in among the dangerous brutes. Her feet fell as fall the snow-flakes. Around one man, over the arm or leg of another, narrowly missing the nodding head of a third—on she went through those swine possessed with devils like some celestial vision, with eye and foot steady and sure, till she reached the farther end of the room and the side of the symposiarch. She saw the key. Oh for a knife to sever it from the belt! She could see nowhere any sharp cutting tool. The man was snoring heavily; the snores got into a tangle, trembled, stopped. He groaned and moved. She stood breathlessly over him with steady, flaming eyes till his breathing became regular again; then, seizing a small sconce from the table, she held it under the string that fastened the key to the belt. In a moment the two parted company. With lamp in one hand, and the key with her draperies in the other, she made her way back to the door and Seti as carefully as she went.
They passed out. Seti noiselessly closed the door, drew up between it and an angle in the wall a stout bench, and descended to the dungeon. Rachel put her hand with the narrow lamp in it through the grate, and whispered in an unsteady voice, “We have the key. Take the light, and, if you have displaced the door somewhat, replace it. Else the key may not work.”
He took it, made a few movements with his bar, then said, “Now try the key.” Seti inserted it and tried to turn—alas, the bolt would not move.