In one of the horrible dungeons deep down in the foundations of the fortress, under the waters of the Neva, they were shown a massive gold plate riveted on to the rough, damp, stone wall. Its surface was kept brightly polished, and it looked strangely incongruous with the gloom and squalor of the cell. On it stood an inscription in platinum letters let into the gold:
“In this cell Israel di Murska, afterwards known as Natas, the Master of the Terror, was imprisoned in the year 1881, previous to his exile to Siberia by order of Alexander Romanoff the last of the Tyrants of Russia.”
With feelings wide asunder as love and hate, or gratitude and revenge, the descendant of Natas and the daughter of the Romanoffs stood in front of this memorial plate, and read the simple and yet pregnant words. Alan and Alexis both bent their heads as if in reverence for a moment, but Olga and Serge gazed at it with heads erect and eyes glowing with the fires of anger, in a silence that was broken by Alan saying—
“Liberty surely never had a stranger temple than this, and yet this dungeon is to us what the Tomb of the Prophet is to the Moslems. I wonder what the Last of the Tsars would have thought if he could have foreseen even a little part of all that sprang from the tragedy that was begun in this dismal cell?”
“He would have killed him,” said Olga, carried away for the moment by an irrepressible burst of passion, “and then there would have been no Natas, no Terror, and no Terrorist air-fleet, and Alexander Romanoff would have died master of the world instead of a chained felon in Siberia! Your ancestor, Richard Arnold, would have starved in his garret, or killed himself in despair, as many other geniuses did before him, and”—
“And the world would have remained the slave-market of tyrants and the shambles of murderous men. Let us thank God that Natas lived to do his work!” said Alan in a tone of solemn reverence, wondering not a little at Olga’s strange outburst, and yet not having the remotest idea of its true cause.
Neither Olga nor Serge could reply to this speech. They would have bitten their tongues through rather than say “Amen” to it, and anything else they dare not have said. After a moment more of somewhat constrained silence, Olga turned towards the door and said—
“Come! Let us go, the air of this place poisons me!”
When they got on the ice after lunch, Olga was not a little astonished to find that, perfect as she and Serge were in skating, the two Aerians were little inferior to them, despite the fact that they had just left their tropical home for the first time.