Bart’s step could be faintly heard now, and, feeling safe, the prisoner went back to his couch, and gazed up in the direction from whence the voice had come.
“Are you still there?” he said, softly.
There was no reply; and a repetition of the question was followed by the same silence.
“It’s strange,” he said, gazing up in the gloom overhead to where, in the midst of a good deal of rough carving, there seemed to be a small opening, though he could not be sure. “Why should he come and watch me, and take this interest in my well-being? I am not like an ordinary prisoner, and his friendly way, his submission to the rough contempt with which I treated him—it’s strange, very strange! What can it mean?”
He threw himself upon the couch, to lie for some time thinking and trying to interpret the meaning; but all was black and confused as the dark mass of carving from which the woman’s voice had seemed to come; and, giving it up at last, he rose, and without any hesitation walked straight out through the opening, and made his way along the corridor to where the sun blazed forth and made him stand and shade his eyes, as he remained considering which way he should go.
The prisoner made a bold dash in a fresh direction, going straight toward where he believed the men’s quarters to be; and, as before, the moment he had passed behind the ruins he found himself face to face with a dense wall of verdure, so matted together that, save to a bird or a small animal, farther progress was impossible.
Defeated here, he tried another and another place, till his perseverance was rewarded by the finding of one of the dark, maze-like paths formed by cutting away the smaller growth and zig-zagging through the trees.
Into this dark pathway he plunged, to find that at the end of five minutes he had lost all idea, through its abrupt turns, of the direction in which he was going; while before he had penetrated much farther the pathway forked, and, unable to decide which would lead him in the required direction, he took the path to the right.
It was plain enough that these green tunnels through the forest had been cut by the buccaneers for purposes of defence in case of an enemy carrying their outer works, so that he was in no way surprised to find the path he had taken led right to a huge crumbling stone building, whose mossy walls rose up among the trees sombre and forbidding, and completely barring his way.
It was a spot where a few resolute men might keep quite an army at bay, for the walls were of enormous extent, the windows mere stone lattices, and the doorway in front so low that a stooping attitude was necessary for him who would enter. This was consequent upon the falling of stones from above, and the blocking partially of the way.