This time, Billy heard.
“Use your reason, the water at my foot marks the level of the lake. It can rise no higher. Cheer up, my boy.”
CHAPTER XXIV
ENTOMBED
FOR a little, after he had realized the fact that the water could mount no higher, Saxe experienced such joy as must come to any normal person on escaping out of the peril of death. Ultimately, however, the first emotion wore itself out by its own intensity, and he was left free to think coherently again. The result was disastrous. There leaped in his consciousness the hideous truth that death was not avoided, only postponed. This refuge on the heap of rocks offered safety from drowning, from being crushed by the waves against the walls. It gave no more. On this tiny island, the two were marooned, with naught to expect save a slow, a frightful death. They had been borne hither on the first in-rush of the waters, and only the height of the cavern had saved them at that time. Now, there was no means by which they might make their way out from this prison. Beyond the chamber in which they were, the passage that led to the outdoors first dipped sharply. For a great way it must be filled with the flood. Margaret West had spoken of another entrance somewhere, but she had told him nothing in detail. It was evident that this could not be in the chamber, or if there, it must be covered by the lake’s flow, incapable of affording egress. Had it place near the roof, the light of it must have shown clearly against the Stygian blackness. And there was no faintest gleam of light anywhere. Saxe’s eyes roved in fierce longing, but nowhere was there aught except the total darkness. For once, the sage had reasoned ill. There had been grisly mockery in his cry that they were safe—in this place where there could be no safety. This was in truth the safety of the tomb—a narrow perch whereon to attend death, to wait, supine, impotent, for a laggard dissolution by starvation. And Billy realized now the dread certainty of their plight; otherwise, he had not sat there in grim silence. Surely, Roy and David had the better part, since their engulfment had been swift. They were spared the lingering tortures of these survivors, destined to a few dreadful hours. Then Saxe remembered the miser’s gold, and the hate of it welled high in his heart. Truly, there had been a curse on it! And the wretched man thought of Margaret most of all. But that which he thought of her should not be written. It was the supreme agony.
Saxe had the courage of the strong man, but nature permits no man to lay down his life uselessly without revolt. Neither Saxe nor Billy was a coward, yet each was craven there in that eyrie above the flood, which imprisoned them in eternal night. The crime of Masters had brought wanton destruction upon them. There was no solace of justice in this doom. They were abandoned of hope. Their hearts were sick within them.
Billy Walker spoke at last, and his voice was humbler than its wont, less sonorous, too. The first angry uproar of the waters was ended now, although they were rippling and swirling daintily still, as if in tender caresses of the rocks, which so recently they had smitten in fury. Above the gentle noise of the eddies, the sage’s voice, mild as it was comparatively, sounded clearly. Instantly, a cry came from the far side of the chamber.
“Billy! Billy! You’re alive!”
It was Roy’s voice, and another voice broke in on the words, shouting shrilly: