Came now a long, a seemingly interminable wait. The door remained fast-barred. Oppression, heat, thirst, hunger tortured them, but relief there was none.
And at length the merciful sleep of stupefaction overcame them; and all their pain, their anguish and forebodings were numbed into a welcome oblivion.
They were awakened by a confused noise--the sound of cries and shouts, dulled by the thick walls, yet evidently many-voiced--harsh commands, yells, and even some few sharp blows upon the prison stones.
The engineer started up, wide-eyed and all alert now in the gloom.
Gone were his lassitude, his weakness and his sense of pain. Every sense acute, he waited, hand clutching the pistol-butt, finger on trigger.
“Ready there, Beatrice!” cried he. “Something's started at last! Maybe it's our turn now. Here, get behind me--but be ready to shoot when I tell you! Steady now, steady for the attack!”
Tense as coiled springs they waited. And all at once a bar slid, creaking. Around the edge of the metal door a thin blue line of light appeared.
“Stand back, you!” yelled Stern. “The first man through that door's a dead one!”
The line of light remained a moment narrow, then suddenly it broadened. From without a pandemonium of sound burst in--howls, shrieks, imprecations, cries of pain.
Even in that perilous moment a quick wonder darted through Stern's brain, what the meaning of this infernal tumult might be, and just what ghastly fate was to be theirs--what torments and indignities they might still have to face before the end.