The termination of their course was not yet reached. At the further end of the court, the old warden opened a little gate; through this, and by a narrow arched passage which the dragoons could only pass by stooping, they reached at length a kind of guard-room which through two holes pierced in the wall received some light--at this time but feebly dispensed by the moon. This room, it was clear, lay near to the sea-shore; for the wind without seemed as if it would tear up the very foundations of the walls. The old man searched anxiously in his bundle of keys, and at length applied an old rusty key to the door-lock. Not without visible signs of anxiety he then proceeded to unlatch the door. But scarce had he half performed his work, when the storm spared him the other half by driving in the door and stretching him at his length upon the floor.
Below them at an immense depth lay the raging sea--luridly illuminated by the moon which looked out from the storm-rent clouds. The surf sent upwards a deafening roar, although the raving of the wind seemed to struggle for the upper hand. This aerial gate led to a little cell which might not unjustly have been named the house of death. From the rocky wall, upon which the guard-room stood, ran out at right angles into the sea a curtain of granite--so narrow that its utmost breadth hardly amounted to five feet, and resembling an artificial terrace or corridor that had been thrown by the bold architect across the awful abyss to a mighty pile of rock that rose like a column from the very middle of the waves. About a hundred feet from the shore this gallery terminated in a circular tower, which--if the connecting terrace had fallen in--would have looked like the work of a magician. This small corridor appeared the more dreadful, because the raging element below had long since forced a passage beneath it; and, the breach being continually widened by the equinoctial storms, it was at length so far undermined that it seemed to hang like an archway in the air; and the narrow causeway might now with some propriety be termed a sea-bridge.
Bertram here recognized that part of Walladmor Castle which he had seen from the deck of the Fleurs de Lys.[[2]]
The rude dragoons even looked out with awe upon the dreadful spectacle which lay before and below. One of them stepped with folded arms to the door-way, looked out in silence, and shaking his head said--"So that's the cage our bird must be carried to?"
"Aye," said the old man, (who had now raised himself from the floor;) "desperate offenders are always lodged there."
"By G---," replied the dragoon, "at Vittoria I rode down the whole line of a French battalion that was firing by platoons: there's not a straw to choose between such service as that and crossing a d---d bridge in the clouds through a gale of wind like this. A man must have the devil's luck and his own to get safe over."
"What the h---ll!" said the other dragoon,--"this fellow is to be killed at any rate; so he's out of the risk: but must we run the hazard of our lives for a fellow like him? I'm as bold as another when I see reason: but I'll have some hire, I'll have value down, if I am to stand this risk."
"It's impossible," cried the first constable--"no man can stand up against the wind on such a devil's gallery: what the devil? it has no balustrade."
"Shall we pitch the fellow down below?" said the second constable.
"I have nothing to say against it," replied one of the dragoons.