It seemed to them that their shovels crawled, and yet they worked like mad. If the guard got there before they finished, all was lost. Spadeful after spadeful,—was ever a man so hard to cover? Another step and the sentinel would be upon them, and the blanket scarcely hidden, and those tell-tale boards and the cane yet in sight. It was a fearful moment. Peter’s heart stood still, and his comrade’s hands were like ice.
“What the devil are you so long about?”
But it was only the angry voice that reached them; a blinding lightning flash ripped the heavens wide open, and the wind with a demoniacal shriek rushed down the beach, throwing the sand in a swirling cloud about the on-coming man, making him stagger with its force and snatching away his hat and rain coat. Half blinded, he raced down the sloping stretch to regain his garments which more than once eluded him. Then in the lull he came back swearing furiously; and finding the men leaning on their shovels, he stuck his bayonet into each of the three mounds. Into the third it penetrated only a little way; but he did not notice, for the wind was again gathering itself for a fresh burst of fury.
“Now then, get you to the boats!” he cried, standing behind them.
Peter paused a moment and crossed himself reverently, saying in a loud voice, “Your bodies to the earth, your souls to God’s care; and may you pass to liberty in the folds of the in-rolling fog.”
“Pass to hell and the devil! Get on, I say!” cried the guard, angrily, as he struck Peter across the shoulders with his bayonet. And Peter, having said his say, ran nimbly to the boat; and pushing it off, they leaped in, and were soon toiling amid the breakers to reach the ship’s side.
It seemed to Richard that long months passed while he lay motionless under that weight of sand, breathing spasmodically through the bit of reed. The drift-boards kept the pressure partially from his chest so that he suffered very little. The guard’s bayonet had grazed his leg without piercing it, but the thirst in his throat was something terrible. Peter’s voice had penetrated through the boards and their thin covering of sand, so that he knew the fog was following the wind from the sea. It was for this he had hoped, and it was this Peter meant to tell him in those last words. Dear old Peter; how he had tried to dissuade him from this mad plan, and when that was impossible, how he had risked his own safety to aid him. Richard felt the tears on his face as he recalled his friend’s unselfish offices. Several times during the wait for a stormy day he had been on the point of giving up the whole plan, lest it work a mischief for Peter; but the latter had said it would mean only a day in irons for him, and that he was willing to risk that much for his friend’s liberty; it was for Richard himself that he feared. But even death had a smiling face for Richard, compared to a winter spent in the vile ship; and so the plan had gone on, and by Peter’s care he was lying here in his grave, accounted of the world as dead.
By and by his limbs began to cramp and ache. Through strong will power he had kept them rigid during those terrible moments of examination and removal from the ship. He would not have dared assay the plan had he not known how superficial, through repetition, had become the warden’s inspection of the corpses—just a few questions and that savage kick. Each time there had been a death during the past fortnight, he had studied the details of the preparation and burial, until he was convinced that he could carry his scheme to a successful close if only Peter was allowed to be one of his sextons.
As the minutes now passed, the ache in his limbs increased, for the pressure of the sand was stopping the circulation. Then the dryness in his throat grew and grew, until he could bear it no longer. Had he lain there a year, or only a day? Slowly and cautiously he drew his hands up to his breast, then higher, and finally placed the palms against the board over his head. The first movement brought the sand in a shower upon his shoulders; but after a while he worked it far enough back to leave a crack between it and its fellow. This he could only feel, for knowing the sand would strangle and blind him, he had not as yet taken the blanket from his face, since moving it ever so little to receive the reed into his mouth. Next, he slowly pushed the other board downward until a rush of cold air told him he was once more in the world of humanity, not forever sealed in the haunt of ghouls. Cautiously he shoved the blanket from his face and looked up into the storm-hung heavens. It was mid-afternoon, and he had thought it must be midnight. Eagerly he drew in the air, cool and laden with moisture, and tried to forget his aching limbs. He dared not stir yet lest the patrol should see him. He must wait; and while he waited, how the moments lagged!