“No, I am going down to the valley to look at those hot springs. This earthquake has rather unnerved me, and I wish to see for myself if there is any probability of an eruption. Crispin, will you come with me?”
“If you desire it; but, to tell you the truth, I also am rather tired.”
“Pshaw!” said the man of iron, with good-humored scorn; “you have no stamina, Crispin. If you had been through all that Maurice has undergone, you might talk. However, take your sleep for an hour or so.”
Crispin really was very delicately constituted, and could not do without that sleep which Justinian despised, but, in order to be ready for any emergency, he curled himself up on a divan in the court, and rested there without removing his clothes. Maurice, on the contrary, completely worn out with fatigue and anxiety, to say nothing of his scalp wound, went straight to bed, and slept soundly most of the day, while Helena, tenderly solicitous of his comfort, watched beside him the whole time, with her little hand lying in his warm grasp.
Meanwhile, Justinian, who, in spite of his age, scarcely seemed to feel the effect of the previous night’s vigil, took a cold bath to freshen himself up, and then started on a journey of inspection round the island. Like a careful general, his first visit was to the outposts at the western pass, where he found everything in an extremely satisfactory condition. Part of the men were sleeping, while the others kept guard, waiting to take their turn of rest when their comrades awoke. Notwithstanding the hard fighting, all those who had been engaged in the defence of the tunnel seemed in a wonderfully good condition, while Dick and his nine sailors, hardened by a seafaring life, seemed to feel no fatigue whatsoever, in spite of constant watchfulness and anxiety.
With a view to seeing the position of the enemy, Justinian climbed up a small path which led to the hills from the inner side of the outward palisade, and, using his field-glass, soon discovered that Alcibiades was concentrating his forces below in order to storm the pass. Boat after boat filled with desperadoes came sweeping round the breakwater into the smooth sea of the harbor, and tents were being erected on the beach by the besiegers. Evidently they had discovered that there was no chance of entering by the tunnel, which was completely blocked up by the fallen rocks, so were determined to effect an entrance by the western pass, where at least they would have the advantage of fighting in daylight. Carefully surveying the disorderly host, Justinian calculated that there still remained about two hundred men, against which he could only bring ninety-five or thereabouts. Still, intrenched behind his barricades, and having the pass swept by two cannon, he thought the invaders would find it somewhat difficult to dislodge him from such a strong position, the more so as they lacked discipline, and their leaders were quite ignorant of military tactics.
Having ascertained all this, Justinian descended into the gorge again, where he gave Dick his final instructions, which were simply to keep a sharp lookout on the enemy, and, in the event of seeing any movement uphill towards the mouth of the pass, to at once send off Temistocles to the Acropolis with the information.
Dick having promised faithfully to obey these instructions, the Demarch, escorted by a couple of his men, went along the mulberry avenue, in order to survey the tunnel, which he had not entered since driven from thence by the earthquake some hours previous. The electric light was turned off, as the Demarch, now that the danger lay more in the west than the east, judged it advisable to reserve all the power of the dynamo for the one light which swept the western pass, and therefore, bidding his men take torches, went downward into the darkness of the tunnel with such illumination only.
Passing down to the ruins of the palisade, where so fierce a fight had taken place, he crossed that boundary, and, turning the angle of the staircase, came in sight of the landslip caused by the earthquake. The red flare of the torches but feebly showed the amount of damage done, but Justinian saw sufficient to assure him that there was no chance of the tunnel being made use of again for at least some months. Extending from the cliff entrance to some considerable distance back, the whole roof had collapsed, and tons of débris piled upward from floor to vault completely sealed up the mouth of the passage. It would take a goodly amount of dynamite and blasting powder to remove those massive blocks; and, now that he knew Maurice was safe, the Demarch had time to grieve over the damage done to his beloved tunnel. Justinian, however, was too practical a man to waste time in useless lamentation, and promptly decided that, as soon as Alcibiades was beaten back,—an event which he was assured would come off without much difficulty,—he would set gangs of men to clear away the obstruction, and restore, with as little delay as possible, the tunnel to its pristine excellence. The burning of the palisade also had taught him a lesson, and, to obviate the chances of such defence being destroyed by fire, he decided to build a kind of stone bastion in the same place, with loopholes for guns, and also to fortify it with two field-pieces, which would simply mow down an enemy advancing up the staircase like ripe corn.
The inspection of the tunnel being concluded, Justinian returned upward to the light of day, and descended the grand staircase in order to pay a visit to the springs. He looked upon these as a kind of thermometer, useful in warning him of seismic disturbances, for, in spite of the long silence of the volcano, Justinian knew that the subterranean forces were still at work under the crust which covered the crater; and with the remembrance of the great eruption of Vesuvius, in the year 79, constantly in his mind, was not without certain fears that this long-slumbering monster might reawaken from the sleep of centuries. The volcanic forces, however, having a vent in the adjacent island of Santorin, he had hitherto calculated that Melnos would remain quiescent, but the terrible earthquake which had so unexpectedly occurred inspired him with great uneasiness, and he was in deadly fear lest it should prelude the renewed activity of the mountain.