Ruth let out a little half-suppressed scream. A pasteboard tube slipped from her grasp and fell to the floor. A purple ball of fire bursting forth from the tube shot across the floor, climbed a stone wall, then suddenly blinked out. The yellow gleam of a tallow candle shot downward. A tin can struck the floor with a dull thud. The candle blinked out. Then all about the girl’s trembling figure was darkness, darkness so complete that it seemed you might cut it with a knife.
It was terrifying, that darkness, in an underground place at night. Yet it was not the darkness that affected her most. Nor was it the ball of fire that had danced about her feet.
There had been another ball of fire, and through that red ball of fire she had seen a face.
“The face!” she whispered. “The eyes! I must have blinded him. How perfectly terrible! Whatever am I to do?”
What, indeed? She could not turn and run. Which way should she run? The candle was out. She had counted on the candle to show her the way. The way she had taken was winding, many turns, many corners, and always stone walls.
“And now,” she thought with a sinking feeling at the pit of her stomach. “Oh! Why did I come?
“We started out to stage a sham battle. And I have blinded a man.”
A man! Her thoughts were sobering now. Questions arose. What was the man doing here in the heart of the old abandoned fort on House Island? That was a question.
“His face was low down, close to the stone floor, as if he were crawling.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Perhaps he was crawling. Perhaps I did not injure him after all. He may be at my very feet now. Crawling!” The thought drove her overwrought nerves into tremors.