CHAPTER XXVI
DAWN COMES
Out of the darkness of insensibility consciousness came slowly into being in Aylmer's brain, but memory lagged to join it. He was bound—that he realized, and his teeth were immovable upon a gag. The darkness was absolute and so, for the first few minutes through which his senses woke, was the silence. He could feel rough slabs of wood which cased his body in. He shifted uneasily and beat his temple upon a plank. The sweat of terror broke out upon his brow. He was buried alive! God help him! The worst that could happen to a living soul was his sentence from the lips of Fate!
Something whimpered in the darkness; something stirred beside his feet.
In a flash came remembrance. The awful moment of disaster through which he had been carried, blind, speechless, and bound, became a picture in his brain—a picture the more vivid in that actuality had been hidden from him and imagination had supplied details beyond the compass of the real. He stirred afresh, he writhed, his bound wrists beat out upon the air.
The whimpers ceased and words followed—words in a child's voice shaken by fear. A trembling hand found Aylmer's sleeve, crept up it to his cheek, and halted there in miserable hesitation.
"It's me—it's me!" whispered the voice. "Can't you speak? Oh, can't you speak to me?"
And then the wandering fingers found the linen band which bound the gag into place and was fastened behind Aylmer's head.
"Is that why?" said the child in eager discovery. "Is that why?"