The monastery of Hadgi-Antoniou towered aloft on its rocky pillar, and the prisoners and their guards stood below looking up at it, for there was no apparent means of reaching the top. Here and there ladders were visible on the face of the rock, but they ceased in the most capricious way at the points of greatest danger, and the lowest was something like a hundred and fifty feet above the ground. But the brigands did not share the perplexity of their captives, and two or three of them fired off their rifles. This was evidently the recognised way of attracting the attention of the inhabitants, for two heads, with long beards and high square caps, appeared far above against the sky, and a few words were exchanged, after which a rope, with something fastened to the end, seemed to come crawling down the rock from a projecting tower.
“Oh, Maurice, what is going to happen?” whispered Zoe, gazing fascinated at the slowly moving rope.
“I suppose they will draw us up one by one,” he answered.
“One by one? Then we shall be separated,” said Eirene fearfully.
“I hope not, but in any case, let us make a compact together that none of us will come to any decision, or enter into any promise, without the other two. If they try to work upon us separately, let us each demand to be confronted with the others. It’s our only chance.”
The girls promised hastily, eyeing the parcel at the end of the rope, which had now reached the ground, and revealed itself as a large net, attached by its four corners to a stout hook. The brigands unhooked the corners, and laying the net flat, made signs to the prisoners.
“Have we to go up in that?” said Zoe, turning white.
“I had better go first,” said Maurice. “Then you’ll see what it’s like.”
Eirene uttered an inarticulate protest, but he sat down on the net, the corners were gathered together and hooked above his head, and he was slowly raised from the ground. The girls watched the ascent with panting breath and a sick feeling of horror, for the rope moved jerkily, and at each jerk the net swung backwards and forwards, now sending Maurice against the rock, from which he was obliged to ward himself off with his hands, and now out into mid-air. It seemed to them that they had given him up for lost a hundred times before the net was grasped by sturdy hands and hauled into the tower, and they discovered that they were standing with their arms round one another, locked in a tight grip. A voice shouted something from the tower as the rope began to descend again, and almost before they had realised that one of them must make the journey next, the brigand chief was spreading out the net, and indicating that they might go up together. But Maurice’s voice called from above, “Not both at once. The rope isn’t strong enough,” and Zoe pushed Eirene forward. “You next,” she said, and immediately, after her usual fashion, began to wonder whether she had really chosen the harder part for herself in watching a second ascent, or had merely deprived Eirene of the encouragement of example.
Eirene’s journey was much less exciting than Maurice’s, and Zoe guessed that her brother was exercising a guiding influence on the rope, for the terrifying oscillations had almost ceased. Be that as it might, the ascent was sufficiently awful, and Zoe wished vigorously that she had not possessed such good sight. Looking resolutely upwards, when it was her turn to be enclosed in the net, she saw, with a thrill of horror, that the rope, which cut the clear sky like a black line, was old and frayed, reduced in some places, as she persuaded herself, almost to a single strand. Looking down gave her no comfort, for the ground seemed immeasurably distant, and the swinging motion, slight as it now was, made her giddy, so that at last she shut her eyes, and kept them closed until she felt herself seized and dragged roughly sideways, then deposited upon some sort of floor, and the net unhooked.