Also, Joseph Winthrop, Bishop of Alden, thought of death. How should a bishop die? He remembered Saint Paul, on bishops. But there seemed to be nothing in those passages that bore on the matter immediately in hand.
Joseph Winthrop, a simple man, direct and unafraid, guessed that he would die very much as another man would die, with his rosary in his hand.
But was there not a certain ignominy in being trapped here as the dumb and senseless brute creatures were being trapped? For the life of him, the Bishop could no more see ignominy in the matter or the manner of the thing than he could see heroism.
He had come out on a bootless errand, to save 171 the lives of certain men, if it might be. God had not seen wisdom in his plan. That was all. He had meant well. God meant better.
Into these quiet reflections the voice of a girl broke insistently with a shrill hail. A horse somewhere neighed to his horse, and the Bishop realised with a start of horror that a woman was here in this square of fire.
“It’s you, Bishop, isn’t it?” the voice cried frantically. “I thought I’d never find you. Over here to the right. Let your horse come. He’ll follow mine. The Gaunt Rocks,” she yelled back over her shoulder, “we can make them yet! There’s nothing there to burn. We may smother. But we won’t burn!”
Thus the Bishop found himself and his horse taken swiftly under command. It was Ruth Lansing, he recognised, but there was no time to think how she had gotten into this fortress of death. His horse followed Brom Bones through a whirl of smoke and on up a break-neck path of loose stones. Before the Bishop had time to get a fair breath or any knowledge of where he was going, he found himself on the top of what seemed to be a pile of flat, naked rocks.
They stopped, and Ruth was already down and talking soothingly to Brom Bones when the Bishop got his feet to the rocks. Looking around he saw that they were on a plateau of rock at least several acres in extent and perhaps a hundred feet 172 above the ground about them. Looking down he saw the sea of fire lapping now at the very foot of the rocks below. They had not been an instant too soon. As he turned to speak to the girl, his eye was caught by something that ran out of one of the lines of fire. It ran and fell headlong upon the lowest of the rocks. Then it stirred and began crawling up the rocks.
It was a man coming slowly, painfully, on hands and knees up the side of the refuge. The Bishop went down a little to help. As the two came slowly to the top of the plateau, Ruth stood there waiting. The Bishop brought the man to his feet and stood there holding him in the light. The face of the newcomer was burned and swollen beyond any knowing. But in the tall, loose-jointed figure Ruth easily recognised Rafe Gadbeau.
The man swayed drunkenly in the Bishop’s arms for a moment, then crumpled down inert. The Bishop knelt, loosening the shirt at the neck and holding the head of what he was quick to fear was a dying man.