I was breathing when I became conscious once more, and my heart was straining in my breast. I got my eyes open. There followed hours of light-tortured delirium, during which I struggled to regain the motor powers. With infinite endeavor I placed one hand upon the other and passed it up the wrist and forearm. The muscles were all gone. The ulna and radius were perfectly distinguishable, and I could encircle either with my fingers, after I had managed to flex them. I noticed that my joints creaked like rusty hinges.

I tried to bend my elbows, and this next grim battle lasted an incalculable time. Gradually I became aware of some obstacle on each side of me. Then, for the first time since my awakening, I knew that I was inside the cylinder. But I did not know that it had fallen upon its side until it slid forward, and my puny struggles dislodged me and flung me free into a pool of water. I drew in a deep breath, feeling my lungs crackle like old parchment, and plunged my face and shoulders beneath the surface. My skin sucked up the moisture like a sponge, and I contrived to get a few drops past my swollen tongue. I had just sense enough and time to turn my face upward before I became unconscious again.

I must have slept long, for, on my next awakening, the light was brighter and still more torturing. Memory began to stir. I recalled my conversation with Sir Spofforth, our journey into the annex, Lazaroff’s invitation to me to enter the cylinder. He must have shut me in for a moment by way of a practical joke, and gone away with Esther, persuading himself and her that I could free myself and would follow. I tried to call him. But only a croaking gasp came from my lips. I tried again and again, gradually regaining the power of vocal utterance. But there came no answer, and each time that I called, the echoing, hoarse susurrus brought me nearer to the realization of some terror at hand which I did not dare to face.

I looked about me. Beside me lay the cylinder, almost buried in mud. I was still within the secret vault, but a part of the brick partition had fallen inward in such a way as to screen the few visible inches of the steel case that had housed me, so that nobody would have suspected its presence in the mud of the little chamber. I remembered that there had been two more; I looked about me, but there was no sign of them.

Now I began to realize that there had been a considerable change in my surroundings since I became unconscious. The light which had distressed me came through a hole in the roof of the adjoining cellar, filtering thence through the aperture in the broken wall, and was of the dimmest. In place of the concrete floor there was a swamp of mud, with pools of water here and there, and the dirt was heaped up in the corners and against the walls. Moss and splotched fungi grew among the tumbled bricks, and everywhere were spore stains and microscopic plant growth.

I was bewildered by these signs of dilapidation everywhere. The guinea-pigs and monkeys were gone; the cellar was empty, save for some low, rough planks of wood fitted on trestles and set about the floor. On the wall at the far end hung something that gradually took form as I strained my aching eyes to a focus.

It was a crucifix. The cellar had become a subterranean chapel. The cross was hewn coarsely of pine, and the figure that hung upon it grotesquely carven; yet there was the pathos of wistful, ignorant effort in the workmanship that bespoke the sincerity of the artist.

I made my difficult way toward the stairs

I made my difficult way upon hands and knees through the gap in the wall, across the mud floor of the cellar, toward the stairs, resting several times from weariness before I reached my destination. But when I arrived at the far end, where the stairs should have been, I received a shock that totally unnerved me. The stairs were gone. In place of them was a debris of rubble and broken stones, as firmly set as if workmen had built it into the wall. The mass must have been there for years, because, out of the thin soil that had drifted in, a little oak tree sprang, twisting its spindling stem to rear its crown toward the patch of daylight.