Fate gave no answer and the moment passed.
She gave a little sob and, still holding him, staggered to her feet.
"It is the stiffness, and the long hours bound. And the anxiety—for—for you!" she murmured. "I am unhurt, indeed I am unhurt. I have scarcely so much as a bruise upon me. And my chatelaine? That is still at my waist. I have—have matches, if the sea water has spared them!"
Light! Could they pierce this wall of darkness; could they actually hope to see how and where they were caged? He scarcely dared to breathe as he heard her silver chain of trinkets tinkle, and heard the rasp of the match-head on the box. The red spark sputtered against the blackness and then flared into yellow being as the wax took flame. They looked about them with more than curiosity. With awe.
High above their head was an arch of masonry, massively mortised, curving from a wall to a row of squat, solid pillars; and these last flanked a pile of heaped rubble and stone. They were in a passage some twenty feet long, closed at each end as the unwalled side was closed by the wreck of the house above. It was a cloister. And the open courtyard which it had rimmed was now a stupendous rubbish heap, massed high above their heads with ruin.
They looked down. They still stood in the boat, and at Aylmer's feet the child was huddled in unconsciousness, the blood still welling slowly from the cut on his brow. Beyond them something indefinite and unrecognizable lay in a dark heap upon the flags.
Aylmer stepped forward and bent over it.
It was the body of a man, clothed in the dark, red-striped uniform of the Carbineers. His lips were grim and set. His right hand still clutched the breach of a rifle. And at his belt was a lantern—the glass broken, but the tin intact. Aylmer's hands trembled as they fell upon this prize.
He wheeled back to his companion and touched the flame against the wick. There was a moment's suspense, and then they sighed in chorus. For the oil was unspilt. For a time, at least, darkness was not to be among the terrors which menaced them.
Claire knelt and pulled the child upon her knee. She stanched the blood; she dropped her handkerchief into the little pool of sea water which was fast draining through the wrenched seams of the boat, and gently laved the unconscious face. Little John stirred drowsily, opened his eyes reluctantly, and looked up with wonder into her face.