Then indeed the faces above turned pale with consternation. Domenico vanished, and the chaplain, nearly falling out in his earnestness, clasped his hands and implored the gentleman to be quiet, to moderate the transports of his just indignation. The Eminenza was ill—to learn of this accident suddenly might be fatal to him. But at this point Rinaldo, still calling down the wrath of Heaven on all implicated in the tragedy, heard the heavy bolts withdrawn, and, through the slowly opening portal, saw men standing up to their knees in water and the steep ascent to the courtyard crowded with terrified servants.
Leaving Peppino to take care of the boat, he sprang out and landed among them like a firebrand. In five minutes he had picked out some likely assistants and had them under orders, carrying ladders, ropes and lanterns down the dark stairway which led from a corner of the courtyard to the subterranean regions.
When they had followed him down to the last step above water in the crypt Rinaldo raised his lantern high above his head and peered across an inky sea to locate the Professor, but all he could make out was a crumpled heap sunk together on the stone platform beneath a window; and no glad cries came from it to answer his encouraging shouts. He tried the depth of the water at his feet and found some seven or eight feet of it; so there was only one thing to do: he coiled a rope round his body, placed one end in the hand of a trembling domestic, with frightful threats of what would overtake him should he let go, and then swam across to the outer wall. There he ran lightly up the steps and lifted the Professor, who had fallen on his face in collapse and unconsciousness at last. The reaction of relief when he had caught at the boat, the agony of disappointment on seeing himself, as his dazed senses told him, again forsaken, had been too much after the horrible experience of the day, and he lay in Rinaldo's arms an inert and heavy mass which it would be by no means easy to carry back. It would be better to have help, so Rinaldo shouted to the men on the steps to go and fetch his friend—and to see that the boat was made fast. A few minutes later Peppino's cheery call sounded up in the echoing darkness of the vaults, and the splash of his stroke as he shot through the water struck pleasantly on Rinaldo's ear.
Peppino turned white and shrank back when he touched Bianchi's clay-cold hand, but Rinaldo assured him that the man had only fainted—his heart was still beating. Between them they roped him to themselves, slipped smoothly into the water, and swam in perfect unison to the foot of the stairs. There Domenico and the chaplain fell on their necks almost weeping in their thankfulness and their admiration of what they called the young gentlemen's amazing courage. The boys shook them off, laughing, for the little feat was ease and simplicity itself; and then Rinaldo, picking up the still unconscious Professor, imperiously demanded a warm bed for his patient. In an incredible short time the poor chilled victim was rolled up in heated blankets, surrounded by scalding bricks, and Rinaldo made him swallow a draught, the hottest and fieriest that had ever passed his abstemious lips.
He was quite alive now, but a little light-headed. He shed copious tears of relief and weakness while he clung to and kissed Rinaldo's hand, called him Hermes, and vowed that if only he would grow a beard nobody would ever notice the place where his head was joined to his body.
Before all this was accomplished, the Cardinal's bell had been ringing repeatedly, and at last the chaplain and Domenico, the latter quaking with apprehension, presented themselves before him.
"What is this commotion that I have been hearing?" the prelate asked quite sternly. "Twice and three times have I rung the bell and no one has come. I had never imagined that such remissness was possible. Explain."
"Eminenza," Domenico wailed, "there has been trouble, just a little trouble. Nothing serious. Let the Eminenza not be alarmed." This last in compliance to the young priest's grip of his arm and a frowning reminder that the Cardinal must not be agitated.
But Paolo Cestaldini was more than agitated, he was terribly incensed, when the whole miserable story, wrapped in palliations and excuses, was laid before him.
"What?" he cried, his usually gentle face lighted up with a flame of anger, "you actually left that good and illustrious man to suffer, to drown, to accuse you of his death before his Maker? You, Domenico, you never took the trouble to assure yourself that he had left the vault. It is only by Heaven's mercy and that brave young stranger's charity that you are not a murderer to-day. Coward, pagan, without heart, without conscience—how can I ever endure to have you near me again?"