He had no weapon, so he caught up a large table-knife and stuck it in his waistband. It was not much, but something, and at that moment he recalled Mary Dell’s history—how she had told him that they had begun with a canoe; through that captured a larger boat; that larger boat had enabled them to take a vessel; and so on till the swift schooner had been obtained.
In the same way that knife should grow into a sword, he said to himself; and then he felt a sensation of half-blind rage at himself for making the comparison.
“What is this hateful unsexed creature to me!” he said, angrily, as he stood thinking as to his next step.
Food! He must have food. In his excitement and the fury of the haste that was upon him, the trouble of taking it angered him; but he knew that he must have it, and gathering together what he could, he paused once more to think and listen.
All was silent, and the drawing aside of the great curtain proved that Bart was not on guard, for there was no dull, yellow gleam of his lantern at the end of the corridor, and once more it came over the prisoner as a feeling of wonder that he should not again and again have taken such steps as these. Almost unguarded, his prison doors and windows always open, and freedom given him to wander about the ruins, and yet like a pinioned bird he had stayed.
“They know that the sea before, the forest and mountain behind, are stronger than bolt and bar,” something seemed to whisper to him as he stood hesitating.
“But not to a determined man, ready to do or die!” he cried, as if forced to answer aloud; and he set his teeth as he still hesitated and paused before hurrying out of the great dark place.
He stopped. What would she do when she found that he had gone? What would she say of the man whom, with all her faults, she evidently dearly loved, and would sacrifice all to win?
Humphrey Armstrong stamped fiercely upon the old stone flooring, making the vaulted roof echo as he thrust his fingers into his ears in a child-like attempt to shut out and deafen himself to the silent whisperings which assailed him.
He gave one glance round, trying to penetrate the darkness, and hesitated no longer, but strode away, passing out of the long corridor out among the ruins, and, well accustomed to the place now, making straight for the pathway which, at its division, turned toward the old temple.