"He is here, Captain; he came with the cage."
"The coffin, you mean!" roared the Captain, with an ugly laugh which froze the blood in my veins. "The coffin! the sepulchre! the sarcophagus! the catafalque! Where is the Smith?"
A stout, fair man stepped forward from the group. His face was gentle, and his kind blue eye contradicted the suspicion that he gloried in his ghastly profession. He gave a pitying glance at the lad—a friendly glance, I thought—then walked round behind the table where the Admiral sat, and raised on end the mass of steel which I had seen brought into the cave when I was in the gallery. Ah me! How long ago that seemed to me now! Then, nothing was further from my thoughts than that I should ever become a nearer spectator of this fearful scene.
The Smith dragged the frame to the close proximity of one of the empty niches and spread it upon the ground. He pulled and pushed and coaxed the thing into shape until, as I looked, I saw that it assumed somewhat the figure of a human being. There was the skeleton cage for the head, the band for the throat, the rounding slope to encase the shoulders, the form of the trunk, the arms, the legs and feet—all, all were comprised in this instrument of confinement. I cast my eyes toward the skeletons hanging in the other niches, and discovered on nearer view that they, too, had each one his confining cage, and I knew now, for the first time, why the figures remained upright in these places hollowed out for them, and why they swayed with the gusts of fierce wind, never losing their balance and never falling from their terrible upright positions. There was a ring in the top of the mask, and to it was fastened a chain. It seemed to be a strong chain. The cage which the blacksmith was handling was almost bright in places, but those upon the figures in the niches were rusted and dull, which told me why I had not understood how these grim remains of men had remained for so long a time in their original attitudes.
"Is that about the size of the Lord George Trevelyan?" squeaked the Admiral of the Red. I looked at the lad. His eyes were glued with horror to the dreadful machine. They seemed to grow large and dilate. His eyelids opened and closed rapidly; he seemed on the verge of insanity.
"And what about the ransom, Lord George Trevelyan?" the brutal villain added. "Will you ask it now?" But while I looked the lad sank down in a heap upon the floor.
"No time to dilly-dally with dead lords. Shut him in! shut him in!" shouted Captain Jonas.
I stood petrified with horror. I may truly say that all thought of self had flown. To see this boy, little more than a child, inclosed in this devilish contrivance, fastened there and left to die and rot piecemeal, was more than I could bear. My tongue, which has got me into so much trouble, as usual added to it in this instance.
"Admiral! Captain Jonas! you don't mean to leave that poor lad here to die alone?"
The Smith, who was slowly fastening the clasps of the cage around the unconscious form of the boy, looked up at me quickly with a warning glance, and I saw that I might have better kept quiet; but impulse has always been my bane.