I tore down the bar and gazed upon the glorious face of heaven. My feet were upon the free ground! I returned hastily to the cell and told Jubal the glad tidings, but he heard me not. To abandon him there was to give him up to inevitable death, either by the swords of the guard or by the less merciful infliction of famine. I carried him on my shoulders to the entrance. A roar of ridicule broke on me at the threshold. The guard stood drawn up in front of the dilapidated door; and the sight of the prisoner entrapped in the very crisis of escape was the true food for ruffian mirth. Staggering under my burden, I yet burst forward, but was received in a circle of leveled spears. Resistance was now desperate; yet even when sunk upon the ground under my burden, I attempted to resist or gather their points in my bosom and perish. But my feeble efforts only raised new scoffing. I was unworthy of Roman steel, and the guard, after amusing themselves with my impotent rage, dragged me within the passage, placed Jubal, who neither spoke nor moved, beside me, blocked up the door, and wished me “better success the next time.”
I spent the remainder of that night in fierce agitation. The apathy, the protecting scorn of external things, that I had nurtured, as other men would nurture happiness, was gone. The glimpse of the sky haunted me; a hundred times in the night I thought that I was treading on the grass; that I felt its refreshing moisture; that the air was breathing balm on my cheek; that the shepherd’s song was still echoing in my ears, and that I saw him pointing to a new way of escape from my inextricable dungeon.
The Labyrinth
In one of those half-dreams I flung the crowbar from my hand. A sound followed, like the fall of stones into water. The sound continued. Still stranger echoes followed, which my bewildered fancy turned into all similitudes of earth and ocean—the march of troops, the distant roar of thunder, the dashing of billows, the clamor of battle, boisterous mirth, and the groaning and heaving of masts and rigging in storm. The dungeon was as dark as death, and I felt my way toward the sound. To my surprise, the accidental blow of the bar had loosened a part of the wall and made an orifice large enough to admit the human body. The pale light of morning showed a cavern beyond, narrow and rugged. It branched into a variety of passages, some of them fit for nothing but the fox’s burrow. I returned to the lair of my unhappy companion, and prevailed on him to follow only by the declaration that if he refused I must perish by his side. My scanty provisions were gathered up. I led the way, and, determined never to return to the place of my misery, we set forward to tempt in utter darkness the last chances of famine—pilgrims of the tomb.
We wandered through a fearful labyrinth for a period which utterly exhausted us. Of night and day we had no knowledge. I was sinking, when a low groan struck my ear. I listened pantingly; it came again. It was evidently from some object close beside me. I put forth my hand and pushed in the door of a large cavern; a flash of light illumined the passage. Another step would have plunged us into a pool a thousand feet below.
CHAPTER XXXVI
Death in a Cavern
An Ocean Temple
The cavern thus opened to us[39] seemed to be the magazine of some place of trade. It was crowded with chests and bales, heaped together in disorder. What dangerous owners we might meet cost us no question; life and liberty were before us. I cheered Jubal till his scattered senses returned, and he clasped my feet in humiliation and gratitude.