The fresh match he struck, before going further, showed him that the man inside had not moved, and he found his candle where it had fallen, in time to light it before his match burned out. With it in one hand he went forward on tiptoe, to study the other's features intently, his own expressing fear, absolute disbelief, doubt, a growing conviction in turn.
"It is M'Kissock!" he cried finally, and at the words unconsciously uttered, the other's eyelids began to flicker in the candle-light until at length they opened and remained open at their widest. And for a long time they two stayed thus, regarding each other as if bereft of power of movement or speech.
Then Farish M'Kissock's slack jaws took to twitching convulsively. A low moaning broke from his mouth. A film came over his dreadfully staring eyes. He would have fallen unconscious again had not the engineer snatched up the glass at one side and poured down his throat a few drops of the spirit it held. His teeth closed with a snap and he groaned again, heartrendingly; but, in a little, he had so far benefited by that hurtful remedy as to recover the use of his voice. His lips moved and his rescuer leaned forward to catch the hoarse, agonised whisper that came from them.
"You were always—a cruel devil, Lord St. Just," gasped Farish M'Kissock, "even when you were alive. It should be my right—to torment you now, and not—you me!"
The engineer drew back a little. He knew then that he had not been mistaken.
"You're not dead yet, M'Kissock," said he soothingly, in his voice of a gentleman, "although—I'll be damned if I can understand how that is!" And then, suddenly realising a little of all it must mean to him that his old enemy was still living, "If I had only known—" he murmured with exceeding bitterness. "Oh, my God! Think of all those awful years!"
Farish M'Kissock attempted to laugh, with a very horrid effect. He raised a trembling hand to his head, and looked at its fingers, all smeared with red. His rolling eyes tried to pierce the obscurity of the vault in which he was lying. Remembrance of the more immediate past began to stir in his mind. He drew a long, deep, painful breath.
"I thought—I thought—" he mumbled brokenly, and his eyes closed. He was once more insensible.
The engineer of the Olive Branch looked round for the candlestick he had dropped, and, finding that, made his light safe. Then he kneeled down beside the other and raised his head and lifted him so that his shoulders should rest on the rock behind. Another teaspoonful of the stimulant in the glass flogged his patient's flagging heart into further effort, and Farish M'Kissock opened his eyes again.
"Loose my feet," he begged brokenly, and the engineer did so: but he lay still where he was, too weak to move. For a time, the only sound to be heard was his hurtful, irregular breathing. Then he glanced curiously, for the first time, at his rescuer's threadbare blue uniform.