To make assurance doubly sure, however, they agreed to remain where they were for another half-hour; but when at length they judged that period to have elapsed they crept very cautiously out of the place of concealment which had served them so well, and made their way to the choir stalls, upon the soft cushions of which they rested their weary limbs for a short time while their eyes were growing accustomed to the gloom of the place. Then, having agreed that a certain small door, immediately opposite that by which they had found their way into the church, must be the one giving access to the vestry, they stole silently across the pavement, and Phil, having first satisfied himself that the room, or whatever it was that lay beyond, was in darkness, found the handle and proceeded to turn it as cautiously as though he believed the place on the other side to be full of people. The door proved to be unlocked; and a minute later the fugitives found themselves, as they had expected, in the vestry of the church. The room was a small one, but it was lighted by a fairly large window, and as the night happened to be brilliantly fine and starlit, the gloom here was not nearly so intense as it had been in the interior of the church, consequently they were able to distinguish without much difficulty that there were indeed, as Fray José had said, a number of garments of some sort hanging from pegs on one of the walls. Why these garments should be kept there the fugitives never troubled themselves to conjecture, the fact that they were there was sufficient for them; and they lost no time in appropriating and donning two of them. They were long black garments reaching from shoulder to ankle, with large hoods which might be drawn up over the head, almost entirely concealing the features when the wearer was out of doors, and were confined round the waist by a girdle of knotted rope. Attired in these, the pair felt that they might safely brave any but the very closest scrutiny, and they therefore had no scruples about sallying forth into the open forthwith.
The window of the vestry overlooked a portion of the extensive garden, a glimpse of which they had gained through the great west door of the church earlier in the day, and, peering out through it, the two friends saw that there was a thick shrubbery at no great distance that looked as though it might afford them good cover from which to reconnoitre the ground prior to their attempt to gain the street beyond, and they at once decided to make for it in the first instance. Another moment and they were at the outer door, which proved to be locked. But the key was, luckily, in the lock, and on the inner side of the door, that slight difficulty was therefore soon got over; and a minute later the pair drew a great breath of relief as they found themselves once more in the open air—and free.
Chapter Seventeen.
How they escaped from the Inquisition.
Yes; free—in a sense; yet not wholly so; for they were still within the boundaries of the Holy Inquisition, although outside the building. To have done so much as they had, however; to have evaded capture for the best part of a day, and finally to have won outside the walls, undetected, was no mean achievement; and they felt that, having accomplished so much, the rest ought to be an easy matter.
Standing within the deep shadow of the doorway for a minute or two after they had silently closed the door behind them, the pair searched with their gaze as much of the garden as came within the range of their vision, and nowhere could they detect any sign of human presence within it; indeed they scarcely expected to do so, for it was now altogether too dark for anything in the nature of gardening operations; moreover, they surmised that it was about the hour when everybody connected with the establishment would be at supper. Therefore, feeling that the moment was propitious, they left the shelter of the doorway, and, keeping as closely within the shadow of the building as they could, moved off toward the shrubbery, into the dense obscurity of which they plunged a minute or two later. Here, as they wound their way cautiously among the bushes, they suddenly found themselves close to a long low block of buildings which, being entirely in darkness, they surmised must be sheds devoted to the storage of the gardeners’ tools, implements, and paraphernalia generally, and they at once halted and subjected the buildings to careful examination; for, their weapons having been taken away from them by the soldiers who had seized them, weapons of some sort were now a first necessity with them, and they hoped that the sheds might at least afford them a knife apiece, if nothing better. Investigation, however, resulted in the discovery that the sheds were locked; but this difficulty was soon overcome by the simple process of breaking a pane of glass, inserting a hand, unfastening the hasp, and entering through the open window, when their enterprise was eventually rewarded by the discovery of several formidable pruning knives, two of which, together with a couple of short, stout iron bars, and a length of thin, strong rope, they unhesitatingly appropriated.
The two adventurers now felt that, whatever might befall them, they were no longer altogether defenceless, and leaving the sheds behind them, they again plunged into the shrubbery, their object now being to discover a way of escape from the garden into the streets of the city.
The first obstacle which they encountered was a stone wall about fifteen feet high, surmounted by chevaux de frise; and deciding that this was rather too formidable to be tackled until they had made a further search, they followed the wall for some distance, and eventually arrived at a stout wicket gate built of wood. Of course, it was locked; but upon examination they soon came to the conclusion that, with the help of their pruning knives and bars, it would not be a difficult matter to burst the lock open. Unfortunately, however, this could not be done without making a considerable amount of noise, and they had already ascertained, while examining the lock, that a good many people were still abroad in the city, for they heard footsteps frequently passing on the other side of the wicket; they therefore decided to seek further before attempting to force a way out, their decision being influenced by the fact that it was evidently still early in the evening, or there would not be so many people moving about, and that consequently it might be wise to delay their final escape until the bulk of the population had retired to rest. Soon afterward, however, while pursuing their investigations, they reached a spot where the wall ended and where the grounds were enclosed for some distance by a lofty iron railing which, despite the fact that it was formidably spiked at the top, they thought might be easily scaled by two men who were accustomed, as they were, to climbing the masts and rigging of a ship. But on the other side of the railing was a wide, open street, along which people were constantly passing to and fro; the adventurers therefore retired to the shelter and concealment of the shrubbery, having come to the resolution not to run any unnecessary risk by undue precipitancy, since they had managed so excellently thus far.