"Is the door underneath the coining-shop?" asked the girl carelessly.
"Yes, if you must know."
"I am ready. Say the oath that I may hear it!"
Fatia Negra repeated his hocus-pocus, kneeling down beside Anicza on the steps of the altar, and raising his eyes towards the black vault of the cavern as he recited the words of a new oath, which kept all the listeners spellbound, so full it was of grisly images and hellish fancies. So deep indeed was the general attention that nobody observed in the meantime that, in the dark background formed by the distant walls of the cavern, a multitude of strange faces were popping up. First two men descended through the machinery of the mill and then two others until, gradually, a hundred of them had assembled. They were all armed and dressed in uniform, but their arms were concealed beneath their mantles, that they might not glimmer through the darkness. And then they quietly formed into ranks like supernumeraries on the stage of a theatre whilst the chief comedian is ending his monologue in front of the footlights. Only Anicza had observed them. During the whole course of the oath, she had not once looked at Fatia Negra's cursing lips, but at the groups forming in the darkness above his head.
The oath over, Fatia Negra seized the reversed crucifix and an electric shock again jolted the hand of the girl which he held fast in his own right hand. "Now, you swear it also!" cried he.
The only reply the girl gave was to passionately tear her hand out of the adventurer's. Rising from her knees, and with her handsome face full of rage, scorn and hatred, she turned upon him, who knelt at her feet, gnashing her pearly teeth as she spoke: "Wretched play-actor! masked imposter! You have deceived everybody, but nobody so much as me. Do you remember that night in the ice valley and how shamefully you betrayed me there? Know then that I was present in that hut, that it was I who blew the horn and brought back the jealous husband from the forest. I saw the tussle that followed and I swore, there and then, that I would be your ruin. Just now you swore that if ever you betrayed me, thus might you yourself be betrayed by whomsoever you trusted most. You said: 'Let water pursue; let fire seize me, let the axe of the headsman descend upon me and the dogs drink up my blood!' Be it so, then—here is fire in front of you and water behind you and the headsman's sword above your head! The dogs that are to lick your blood are already barking for it. I have betrayed you. Look behind you!"
The armed band of soldiers, moving forward in line, like a piece of machinery, suddenly disclosed a row of bayonets glittering in the light of the torches. "We are lost!" howled the mob, whilst the voice of the officer in command (it had a strong foreign accent), rose above the din: "Down with your arms! no resistance!"
Onucz rushed roaring towards his sacks of ducats, the women scattered screaming among the tents. For an instant Fatia Negra stood petrified before Anicza, like a devil caught in a trap, and gazed vacantly at the girl's flaming face.
Anicza now turned quickly towards the armed soldiers and cried with a piercing voice: "Hasten Juon Tare! Seize the smelting-oven entrance, else this devil will still escape us!"
That was why she wanted to know from Fatia Negra which way they would go underground.