Told by the death's head

by Mór Jókai

I said to myself: "If these human beings—that they are not phantoms I am convinced—came to the castle through the crypt, then I, another human being, may go out the way they entered."

I took my lamp, descended to the crypt, and discovered that one of the memorials, which lined the walls, had been shoved to one side. An examination of this memento to a deceased knight revealed that it was not a slab of marble, but a sheet of tin painted to imitate the more solid material. Nor was the niche it covered a tomb, but the outlet to a narrow stairway that ascended in steep spirals from the crypt, opposite to the one which descended to it from the chapel.

"I took my lamp, descended to the crypt"

I mounted seventeen steps, when further progress was barred by a statue—that of Saint Sebastian. The heroic martyr was represented bound to a tree, his body filled with arrows, as he had appeared when being tortured to death by the commands of the godless Diocletian.

I had seen this statue often enough by day in the reception-hall of the castle; then it stood in its niche face toward the room; here, at the head of the secret stairway from the crypt, it stood with its face also toward me. "Surely," said I to myself, "St. Sebastian must know something about the secret outlet."

And he did.

I began to examine the niche; then the statue. I noticed that three of the arrows in the breast were brass, and that the one in the middle was brighter than the other two, as if it had been taken hold of frequently. I mounted the pedestal, and, with one arm around the saint to steady myself, I tried to turn the brighter arrow. After a little, it yielded to the pressure of my hand, and the statue, as well as the niche, began to turn slowly on an unseen axis, and in a few moments I saw the starlit sky above me.

Then I turned the arrow in the opposite direction, and found myself returned to my prison. I had solved the mystery of the phantoms' appearance in the chapel! I returned to the chapel and examined the mechanism concealed under the Arminius monument. What would be the result, I asked myself, if I turned the head of the grand master back to its proper position?