Doubtless brave Ian Dhu might protect Ernestine and free Gabrielle, even as I would have done; but, remembering the dangers that surrounded him only an hour ago, and the musket shots I had heard, it was more than probable that he and all who were with him had fallen in combat, and were now lying in the ruined street—perhaps not twenty yards from me. Whether he and Kœningheim too had escaped, or perished by the explosion, was all a mystery to me; but the former seemed next to an impossibility; and I pictured the anguish of Ernestine when morning stole into the dull and comfortless cabin of the Anna Catharina—when the bright sun came to gladden the grey waters—when the waves rolled in light, and Denmark's flat but wooded shores were sparkling in the sunny haze—when hour after hour would steal away, and when I did not come! What would be her emotions when the terrible truth was told her by some survivor of our Raid to Kiel?
The atmosphere of the place gradually became closer and more difficult to inhale; at times I thought this was fancy—at others, reality; but perhaps my nervous and excited state exaggerated the truth. I thought with horror of the pangs of hunger and thirst to be endured before I should die; my fate, ignominious and unhonoured; my unshared, solitary, and unimagined agonies—even my grave might never be known. My death might be mourned for while I was yet alive; for I calculated on living for many days yet to come.
Again and again all these thoughts, and others of home and my dear native country, recurred to me; again and again they returned, each time with renewed poignancy and bitterness, and the anticipation of dying there unknown, was as bad for a time as those of hunger and thirst. The vulgar fear of being devoured by rats was not the least of my torments; for of these vermin, I had born in me a powerful and unconquerable aversion.
The air seemed to grow stifling. I shouted with that loud hallo which, many a time and oft, I had sent far through the Highland deer forests; but my own voice sounded dull and faint, as it was returned upon my ear.
Overburdened by thought and anxiety, my heart became sick and weary; my head ached as the oppression of the atmosphere became greater; and I have no doubt that the effect of my recent wound—the contusion received at Eckernfiörd—greatly contributed to exaggerate all that the darkness, mystery, loneliness, and the anticipation of a most horrible death, could produce on an active imagination.
The Imperialists would think no more of me than of the last year's leaves; and the idea of their digging for me, even if Kœningheim escaped, seemed simply absurd.
I endeavoured to picture the slow agonies of a death by hunger and thirst, but shrunk from the task, and remembered to have heard my mother tell me, that when David Duke of Rothesay was found dead in the vault of Falkland-tower, in his hunger and madness he had gnawed and torn with his teeth the flesh from his left arm. Could I ever be reduced to such a state?
My bones might lie for ten, twenty, or even a hundred years, before discovery; and I thought grimly of the speculation they might excite, when some grave pathologist delivered his opinion, and when men spoke of the wars of other times—those wars of which their sires had spoken, and in which their grandsires fought; and I remembered the various instances of bones being brought to light under similar circumstances, and under my own observation, the vague mystery and fear with which these poor reliques of humanity were regarded by those who endeavoured in vain to conjecture the story that belonged to them; the crime perpetrated, or the wrong endured—the story that none could tell, and which would never be known until the last trumpet rent the earth to its centre.
I began to feel weak, helpless, and confused, and listened with agonised intensity to catch any sound, however distant; and then, as before, it seemed as if many a voice with which I was familiar came to me. My mind wandered, I imagined myself again on board the king's ship, and amid the smoke, carnage, and boom of the cannonade. Then came other ideas of strife—an imaginary conflict; Ian with his eagle's plume, red-bearded Angus M'Alpine, Kildon with his M'Kenzies, M'Coll of that Ilk, and all the gallant hearts of our regiment were by my side. I heard the yell of Torquil's pipe; I saw the tartans waving, the red musketry flashing as its echoes rolled over hill and valley; I saw the gleam of steel, and felt the glow of the bright warm sun of a summer noon, as it shone on the broad arena of a bloody battle. I brandished my sword—I shouted. Kœningheim was again before me; his steel rang on mine, and I was conscious that Bandolo, poniard in hand, was gliding near me like a serpent.
All this wild vision and its excitement evaporated, and I believe that I must have slept; for long after, on awakening once again to the horrors of that dark and living tomb, and worse than all to my own tormenting thoughts, I found myself lying on the damp ground.