When I awoke I relit my stump of candle. My watch had stopped. In that clammy darkness it was impossible to tell whether it was night or day. I sat up and stretched myself with no other sensation save that I was ravenously hungry. The silence was oppressive. I lay back against the rocky wall and waited....
CHAPTER XXI
A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS AND WHAT CAME OF IT
As I learned from Marjorie later, the slit extended for only a few feet. Then the roof sloped up again. Marjorie found herself in a narrow passage with the fresh breeze blowing on her face. In fact, the draught was so great that the candle went out directly and she had to put on her shoes and grope her way forward in pitch darkness.
Her great fear was that the passage might lead to others and that before she knew it, she would be involved in a maze of subterranean galleries and, if the worst came to the worst, not even be able to rejoin me. She tried to maintain her direction by keeping always close to the right-hand wall and by counting her steps. But the gallery was so dark and it twisted so frequently that she soon lost count. At last she went blindly along, stopping at intervals to satisfy herself that she still felt the wind on her cheek.
She had halted irresolute and was thinking about turning back when, out of the darkness in front of her, a little glow appeared. At first a mere suggestion of light, it grew to a steady yellow radiance that lit up, though but dimly, the rocky roof of the corridor. The light itself appeared to be concealed by a bend in the gallery.
Marjorie remained perfectly still, her heart beating fast. Foot-steps were approaching; then the murmur of voices reached her ear. Her first instinct was to turn tail and flee; but then the foot-steps stopped and the light stood still.
"Four and twenty hours already are they away," said a deep rumbling voice in German, "and not back yet! Der Stelze is too confident, Herr Leutnant...."
"Yet the doctor described exactly where he tied up the launch," answered another voice, hard and metallic, with a more refined enunciation. "Do you know what I think, Schröder? This English nobleman and his orderly have seized the launch——"