But to this continent Elsie never attained. She had succumbed to the sagacity of Columbus, and in a moment more her forehead rested peacefully upon the work of Mr. Nicholas, M.D., that renowned traveller.
Let a man or a woman learn this passage by heart, so that asleep or awake he can recall it even when he forgets his own name, and it will not be labour lost. He will live long in the land. His sleep shall be sweet, swift, and easy. Like Elsie he will never reach the haven of Columbus—
"Not poppy nor mandragora,
Nor all the drowsie syrrups of the world
Shall ever medicine him to that sweete sleepe"
like to the prose which Mr. Nicholas, M.D., wrote as he approached the island of Trinidad.
Elsie slept. Time passed. My father filed and sawed in his recess, muttering to himself, his head nearly through into the dark cupboard; but one ear cast ever backward for the first grate of Mad Jeremy's key in the lock of his door.
Before him he could see the thin line of light which was the crack of the cupboard door. Beyond that sat Elsie with her head on her book, her mind a thousand leagues away.
But between my father and the sleeping girl there was that bar of iron, the upper part of which, by reason of some twist, was giving far more difficulty than the under.
So it came about that, without daring to make himself heard, my father was a witness of the final scene in the oven chamber behind the monks' bakehouse. He had a bar of iron against his shoulder and a file knife in his right hand, but for all that he was helpless to render any assistance till he should have cut through the thick diagonal of metal, and so made a way for himself into the dark cupboard.
All at once, my father, lying prone on his breast and sawing at the obstruction as best he could, with his arms in a most uncomfortable position for working—being higher than his head—became aware of an additional light in the room which he could before see only dimly illuminated by Elsie's candle.
A man had opened the outer fastenings. His dark shadow crossed the crack of light which was the edge of the cupboard door ajar. There was also a flash of a brighter light for a moment in my father's eyes, which was the swinging of the lantern the man carried. He laid his hand on the young girl's shoulder, and with a cry which went to Joseph Yarrow's heart, Elsie came back from the Orinoco, to find Mad Jeremy looking down upon her.