[CHAPTER XXXIII.]
WAITING FOR THE END.
An hour had passed since Herc's despairing cry had reverberated through the gloomy cellar.
Since his vain appeal for help, the Dreadnought Boy had sat, sunk in a sort of lethargy, on the pile of sail. As the water grew higher, he had mechanically dragged the heap of canvas closer together, raising it and forming a sort of island above the rising inundation.
It was the instinct of life fighting against despair, for that he could ever escape from his prison Herc had long since deemed an impossibility.
He sat there in the darkness listening to the lapping of the water against the walls. His head was sunk in his hands and as the heavy minutes went by, from time to time he would feel the water to convince himself that it actually was rising.
The high water mark on the cellar walls told him how high the tide usually climbed. Long before it had reached that mark the water would be over his head.
It was true that Herc was a first-rate swimmer, strong of limb and sound of wind. But what would that avail him, except to prolong his misery?
Already in prospect he had tasted the bitterness of the last struggle against the incoming flood of waters, the battle that grew hourly less vigorous, and then the final chapter when, too exhausted to fight longer for his life, the slimy waters would engulf him.
He wondered dully if they would ever find him. It seemed hardly likely. Who would dream of looking for him in that place? Again and again he reproached himself bitterly for the mad folly that had led him into such a trap.