He lifted it with a gesture of relief; he tore the strip of tin from off it and held it up.
"That is our blade!" he cried. "We have only to pare down splinters till they will pass through the pipe, and the thing is done."
He picked up a piece of planking as he spoke, worked the metal into the grain till a split began to gape, and then, wrapping a piece of tarpaulin round each end of his impromptu blade, worked it to and fro and downwards. A thin sliver of wood was the result—one about eighteen inches long.
He repeated the operation, slowly and carefully. As each lath was split and pared, he passed it to his companion and she spliced the ends with strips of gray cloth. And these? Aylmer took them from the dead body at the end of the cloister. Miller, in death, was helping to repair some of the injuries for which his life was responsible.
They worked methodically, without haste, but with every care. Two hours later they had a twelve-foot staff laid out at their feet. To the top they attached a little flag, also of gray. They divided it into halves, thrust the upper half into the pipe, attached the lower one to it, and then pushed the whole upwards to the full extent of Aylmer's reach. Claire peered anxiously into the hole. She gave a great cry of relief; her eyes filled with sudden tears.
"The flag is outside!" she cried. "There is no doubt of that; it is a certainty. While it was wrapped round the head of the staff inside the tube, it hid all light from me. And now light has come again—dim, but there still. It slips down between the staff and the sides. The flag is out in the air—the air!"
He nodded.
"All that remains, then, is to keep it moving—to show that human beings are holding its other end. We must work ceaselessly."
He looked round at her as he spoke. Her eyes were bent on him earnestly, meditatively. And there was something in her gaze for which he had no clue.
She spoke, and so supplied it herself.