DAWN COMES
Out of the darkness of insensibility consciousness came slowly into
being in Aylmer's brain, but memory lagged to join it. He was
bound--that he realized, and his teeth were immovable upon a gag. The
darkness was absolute and so, for the first few minutes through which
his senses woke, was the silence. He could feel rough slabs of wood
which cased his body in. He shifted uneasily and beat his temple upon a
plank. The sweat of terror broke out upon his brow. He was buried alive!
God help him! The worst that could happen to a living soul was his
sentence from the lips of Fate!
Something whimpered in the darkness; something stirred beside his feet.
In a flash came remembrance. The awful moment of disaster through which
he had been carried, blind, speechless, and bound, became a picture in
his brain--a picture the more vivid in that actuality had been hidden
from him and imagination had supplied details beyond the compass of the
real. He stirred afresh, he writhed, his bound wrists beat out upon the
air.
The whimpers ceased and words followed--words in a child's voice shaken
by fear. A trembling hand found Aylmer's sleeve, crept up it to his
cheek, and halted there in miserable hesitation.
"It's me--it's me!" whispered the voice. "Can't you speak? Oh, can't you
speak to me?"
And then the wandering fingers found the linen band which bound the gag
into place and was fastened behind Aylmer's head.
"Is that why?" said the child in eager discovery. "Is _that_ why?"
The band cut into Aylmer's cheek as the knot was twitched with all the
awkwardness of haste, but a moment later the pressure ceased. He spat
the gag from between his teeth.
"Little John!" he cried. "Little John! Are you hurt? are you able to
stand?"
The boy clutched him with a sort of desperation of relief.
"Oh, you _can_ speak--you _can_ speak!" he shouted joyously. "My head
aches and my shoulder doesn't move right, but I can stand. I can reach
nothing above my head--or right--or left."
There was a creaking of timber as he moved, stretching his hands, as was
evident, into the black emptiness about the boat. Aylmer's bound wrists
were lifted to reach him.
"Pick at them--as you did before, little John," he said. "Loose me, so
that we can search the darkness together."
The child's breath came in zealous pants as he tugged and pulled, but
the knots were tightly lashed and sodden with the sea. And his haste was
a handicap; he plucked and twisted ineffectually. And finally he
overbalanced himself and slipped.
He gave a cry of pain.
"I'm hurted--I'm bleeding!" he sobbed. "I fell against something that
cut!"
Aylmer's heart stood still. If the fall had injured the child severely,
if it had disabled him, if he were to lose consciousness--was this
horror of helplessness to be added to those which already had them in
their grip? He stretched out his arms towards the sound of the sobbing,
and this, as he did so, suddenly ceased.
Panic gripped him, only to be fought down. Slowly, and with painful
effort, he twisted himself round in the darkness till his bound wrists
found as their goal the child's cap which still covered his untidy mane
of curls. And these were wet and sticky.
The reason was not far to seek. The baling slipper lay below little
John's temple--the baling slipper mended with a rough strip of tin. And
this had cut through cap and curls, down to the bone. It had finished
what terror had begun. The boy had fainted.
Aylmer's first impulse was to use the whole of his tethered strength in
bringing consciousness back to the child--to what was, he considered,
his only chance of freedom. A moment later chance pointed a quicker
road. His knuckles met and were scarred by the frayed edge of the tin.
He gave an exclamation of impatience at his own dulness. What would cut
him would cut his bonds. Crouching down he managed to grip the slipper
between his knees and steady it there. And then he rasped his lashings
upon its edge.
A minute sufficed, or even less. The cord frayed, gave strand by strand,
and broke apart with a twang. He gasped with relief and fell to work
upon his ankles. As these bonds loosened and fell away in their turn, he
stood up, rising slowly and stretching his hands above his head. He
touched nothing.
He sighed not only with relief, this time, but with a faint tinge of
hope. And then he bent, felt his way past the still motionless child,
and touched, by chance's guidance, Claire Van Arlen's hair. And he gave
another exclamation of self-encouragement. For her cheek was warm.
He plucked the gag from her lips; his hands were already at her wrists
as she uttered his name. He thrilled to the anxiety in her voice.
"You?" she asked anxiously. "You? You were uninjured. I heard you speak
and--and, it seemed, to me that you--_flagged_--that you--were not you!"
"Yes," he answered quietly. "I had not found you then. I did not know--I
do not know it yet--how far you yourself were unhurt."
His fingers were unlashing her feet now. He heard her stir into a
sitting posture and, as her feet were freed, felt her rise to her knees.
Instinct bade him thrust out a hand as she did so, and she rocked up
against it. Her energy had been more than her strength; she leaned
against him panting.
For a full minute he held her, feeling her pulses throb against his,
fanned by her breath that panted past his cheek, one hand warm within
his own, one upon his shoulder. And through the darkness he sent out his
appeal to Fate. If the grim goddess had no farther favors in her store
for him, let her hand close upon him there. Might there be no more weary
struggles; might the end find him and the girl whose hand clung to his
in this intimate protection at once. Let death come in that moment, and
he would ask no more.
Fate gave no answer and the moment passed.
She gave a little sob and, still holding him, staggered to her feet.
"It is the stiffness, and the long hours bound. And the
anxiety--for--for you!" she murmured. "I am unhurt, indeed I am unhurt.
I have scarcely so much as a bruise upon me. And my chatelaine? That is
still at my waist. I have--have matches, if the sea water has spared
them!"
Light! Could they pierce this wall of darkness; could they actually hope
to see how and where they were caged? He scarcely dared to breathe as he
heard her silver chain of trinkets tinkle, and heard the rasp of the
match-head on the box. The red spark sputtered against the blackness and
then flared into yellow being as the wax took flame. They looked about
them with more than curiosity. With awe.
High above their head was an arch of masonry, massively mortised,
curving from a wall to a row of squat, solid pillars; and these last
flanked a pile of heaped rubble and stone. They were in a passage some
twenty feet long, closed at each end as the unwalled side was closed by
the wreck of the house above. It was a cloister. And the open courtyard
which it had rimmed was now a stupendous rubbish heap, massed high above
their heads with ruin.
They looked down. They still stood in the boat, and at Aylmer's feet the
child was huddled in unconsciousness, the blood still welling slowly
from the cut on his brow. Beyond them something indefinite and
unrecognizable lay in a dark heap upon the flags.
Aylmer stepped forward and bent over it.
It was the body of a man, clothed in the dark, red-striped uniform of
the Carbineers. His lips were grim and set. His right hand still
clutched the breach of a rifle. And at his belt was a lantern--the glass
broken, but the tin intact. Aylmer's hands trembled as they fell upon
this prize.
He wheeled back to his companion and touched the flame against the wick.
There was a moment's suspense, and then they sighed in chorus. For the
oil was unspilt. For a time, at least, darkness was not to be among the
terrors which menaced them.
Claire knelt and pulled the child upon her knee. She stanched the blood;
she dropped her handkerchief into the little pool of sea water which was
fast draining through the wrenched seams of the boat, and gently laved
the unconscious face. Little John stirred drowsily, opened his eyes
reluctantly, and looked up with wonder into her face.
He put his hand up weakly to his temple.
"It's--it's queer--and--and hurty," he whispered. "Muhammed? He would
make it well."
She pulled him to her tenderly.
"Does it hurt badly?" she asked. "Muhammed hasn't come to us--yet."
He looked wonderingly around him.
"The house--opened--and let us right in," he mused. "We came up on the
sea--right up--as fast as a train. And Dad? Dad was with us then."
She looked up questioningly at Aylmer. And he had gathered up the dead
Carbineer's cloak and was arranging it against the stern. He made a
motion towards it.
"Sleep is all the medicine we can give him," he advised. "Let him rest.
Meanwhile we must use the light while we have it."
She nodded quickly and laid the child gently down. He smiled at her
drowsily again, whispered a half-distinguishable appeal to be told when
the Moor "came back," and then nature's healing hand closed over his
eyes. He slept--the deep, dead sleep of exhaustion.
Aylmer raised the lamp. Together they paced the length of their prison.
The gray flags were bare except where the Carbineer's body lay. With a
little gesture of compassion, Aylmer straightened the stiffening limbs,
and covered the stern, unfaltering face with the dead man's
handkerchief. And then they passed on, to confront the hill of rubble
which closed the cloister's end. And here they halted, as they looked
down.
Claire shuddered.
A gray sleeve emerged from the stones and an open hand seemed to appeal
for the help which came all too late. Aylmer dragged fiercely at the
ruined wall. A block or two became unseated. These shouldered out others
to rumble at their feet.
A gray-clad body became exposed. They looked at it, instinct preparing
them to recognize what they saw. Battered and disfigured though it was,
they knew it for Miller's face.
For a moment they kept silence, looking at it fixedly. The eyes were
open, but death had wiped out from them the imperturbability which they
had held through life. Fear had gripped the gray man at the last. Horror
had been with him--even panic.
Aylmer leaned down and covered the fear-haunted eyes.
"He has gone, and taken his mystery with him," he said. "What his life
was we shall never ascertain. What led him to betray us? That is beyond
our learning. It may have been no more than fear and the desire to save
himself. I think there was something behind it all that has escaped us,
but"--he shrugged his shoulders as he looked about him--"what does it
matter now?"
He held the lantern at arm's length as he spoke, and looked searchingly
round. The gray stone ringed them in relentlessly. Was there any
expedient in which they could find a challenge to the arbitrary decree
of Fate? He saw none.
The girl at his side watched him. And then her eyes met his. And as he
spoke his voice was strangely gentle.
"God interfered between Landon and his evil purpose, as you said He
would. Perhaps, who knows, He may have other mercies reserved for us.
But in any case we must teach each other to be strong."
She nodded gravely.
"We are in His hands," she said, "and nothing can be as terrible as what
was threatened us by that vile man. The boy is safe. I have the help of
your presence. We must kill imagination with work."
He looked about him again, doubtfully.
"Work?" he questioned. "Have we the chance to work?"
"Isn't it obvious," she said. "That is a courtyard. Above the ruins
which brim it is the sky. If we use our strength and time to pluck a way
through that to life again, we shall, at least, not think."
He paced forward a yard or two and examined the heaped wreckage of
plaster, wooden beams, and stones. He hesitated.
"If we disturb it, there is just a chance of making our situation
worse," he hazarded.
She shook her head.
"No," she said significantly. "Not worse. God might answer us that way,
and save us suspense. And we shall, at any rate, have defied Fate to the
end."
"Yes," he said. "In that I am with you; we will do our best--to the
last. And if God's purpose falls upon us quickly, Claire, I thank Him
here and now that He has permitted me to share this bitter cup with you,
instead of draining that more bitter one which threatened an hour ago.
At least I am not leaving you in Landon's hands, alone."
"And I am not helpless while they work their vile wills upon you," she
answered. "Fate has been cruel enough, but she has spared us that. The
end? That is still her mystery. Let us forget it."
He smiled.
"There is much I can remember which will spare me that. What you have
been and done for me these last wild days--my memory will occupy itself
with that and hope--while I work to make hope true."
And then, still smiling as if he had plumbed the eyes of Hope and found
in them an answering smile, he laid the lantern on the flags and put his
hands upon the barrier of ruin which faced him.
He toiled vigorously but with caution. As he rolled the larger blocks
from their resting-place, he was quick to notice and to support the
beams or flagstones which they had buttressed with their weight. And he
used the first plank which tumbled out of the chaos as a lever upon its
fellows. At his feet Claire worked vigorously, sweeping out the plaster
which filled the openings as he made them, rolling aside the unseated
stones to give him room, lending her lesser strength to aid his, when
some task was trying his powers to the utmost.
For a couple of hours they toiled silently, and a gap had been hewn into
the debris--a gap which seemed to be ceaselessly filled as the
accumulations rolled into it from above, but an opening, nevertheless,
which spoke of progress, which showed a reward for effort, which even
pictured, faintly and indistinctly, a vision of hope. If their strength
lasted? Was there not a chance, a tiny, elusive, but possible chance?
It was the remembrance that uninterrupted effort would fatigue them to a
point where their strength would be taxed beyond recovery which made
Aylmer at last call a halt. They went and sat beside the sleeping child.
To economize the light, they extinguished the lamp.
And then--they rubbed their eyes.
A tiny beam of light, dim, faint, gray but distinguishable, was filtered
down into their prison at the point where one of the cloister pillars
reached an arch. It fell upon the flags in a little circle.
Aylmer reached it in two strides. He gave an exclamation.
"It is a pipe from the spouting of the roof," he cried. "I see the sky.
I see the sky!"
She was at his side in an instant. In her turn she looked up into the
hollow of the tube, to see light. She gave a little gasp.
"It's wonderful--wonderful!" she breathed. "Only that little way up--ten
feet, twelve, perhaps, and freedom. And we are here!"
"It means two things of infinite importance!" he rejoined. "Air and, in
all probability, water. If the gutter which discharges into this is
still intact, we shall receive the rain when it comes. And after
earthquake it comes, invariably."
She was not paying him attention. Her eye was still fixed below the tiny
opening; she continued to look up as if the tiny disc of brightness
fascinated her, as if she would drink draughts of the outer air thus
delivered to them as if from an immense cistern.
And then the emotion of sudden discovery illuminated her face.
"We can signal!" she cried. "We can attract attention! We have only to
thrust a rod up through that, and it will tell our tale. Surely there
are rescuers at work by now; a whole city cannot be left to its fate!"
His eyes glistened.
"God sent that thought to you--God himself!" he cried. "We must have a
rod; we must make one!" He turned and re-lit the lantern. He examined
the splintered woodwork of the boat with a calculating eye.
Wood was at their service in plenty, but the tools to deal with it were
wanting. Neither of them possessed a knife. He searched the pockets of
the dead, but had no success. For a moment they stood regarding each
other in incredulous despair. Surely Fate, after bracing them with this
hope, was not going to torture them by withdrawal? And then Aylmer's eye
fell upon the baling slipper.
He lifted it with a gesture of relief; he tore the strip of tin from off
it and held it up.
"That is our blade!" he cried. "We have only to pare down splinters till
they will pass through the pipe, and the thing is done."
He picked up a piece of planking as he spoke, worked the metal into the
grain till a split began to gape, and then, wrapping a piece of
tarpaulin round each end of his impromptu blade, worked it to and fro
and downwards. A thin sliver of wood was the result--one about eighteen
inches long.
He repeated the operation, slowly and carefully. As each lath was split
and pared, he passed it to his companion and she spliced the ends with
strips of gray cloth. And these? Aylmer took them from the dead body at
the end of the cloister. Miller, in death, was helping to repair some of
the injuries for which his life was responsible.
They worked methodically, without haste, but with every care. Two hours
later they had a twelve-foot staff laid out at their feet. To the top
they attached a little flag, also of gray. They divided it into halves,
thrust the upper half into the pipe, attached the lower one to it, and
then pushed the whole upwards to the full extent of Aylmer's reach.
Claire peered anxiously into the hole. She gave a great cry of relief;
her eyes filled with sudden tears.
"The flag is outside!" she cried. "There is no doubt of that; it is a
certainty. While it was wrapped round the head of the staff inside the
tube, it hid all light from me. And now light has come again--dim, but
there still. It slips down between the staff and the sides. The flag is
out in the air--the air!"
He nodded.
"All that remains, then, is to keep it moving--to show that human beings
are holding its other end. We must work ceaselessly."
He looked round at her as he spoke. Her eyes were bent on him earnestly,
meditatively. And there was something in her gaze for which he had no
clue.
She spoke, and so supplied it herself.
"I think we shall be rescued now," she said quietly. "I feel a certainty
about it, an instinct. Yes, I think we have defeated Fate. We shall come
back into life again, you and I."
He understood. Through the wild days in the boat and on the island, Fate
had given no chance for either of them to probe the future. Hope had
had so tiny a place in their thoughts--hopelessness had so immeasurably
absorbed them all. And now? Was she allowing herself to dwell on life as
it would affect them untouched by Fate, and free? Was she mentally
rearranging her attitude to him?
Fate would supply her own answer. He turned and doggedly began to work
the flagstaff up and down.
A tension of silence was over them as they waited. The hours went by.
With a little gesture she came, took the pole from his hand, and bade
him rest. He surrendered it quietly, spent ten minutes in massaging his
stiffened muscles, and then took it again. It was queer, this sudden
reticence which had arisen between them. It was as if while Fate delayed
to speak, all other words were futile. And her answer might come at any
moment or--God help them--not at all.
The hours lengthened. The thin rays which still filtered through the
half-closed pipe grew dim and at last died altogether. Night had come.
Aylmer turned with a little shrug, placed a plank beneath the butt of
the staff to keep it in position, and came back to the boat.
"There is no need to fatigue ourselves through the darkness," he said.
"Till daylight shows our flag again, we had better rest, to be strong
for to-morrow. Shall we sleep?"
She looked at him curiously, and then answered with a little nod.
"Sleep," she agreed. "You are tired, tired. And wake strong; your
strength--God knows--has been tried enough."
There was something restrained in her voice; something which again
escaped his comprehension, but his fatigue was overmastering. He
stretched himself upon a couple of flags. Sleep overcame him instantly.
Was it a moment later that he awoke in answer to her cry? So he
believed, but as a matter of fact midnight was long past. She had lit a
match; she was holding it to the wick of the lantern.
Her eyes were wide and bright with excitement. She pointed towards the
pipe.
"I could not rest!" she cried. "No, I could not sleep and know that
rescue might be passing by. I have worked at the staff ceaselessly and
now! Now it is gone!"
He sprang towards her.
"Gone!" he repeated. "Gone!"
"They are there--above us--men--men who know we are here. They pulled it
up, out of my hands!" She made a gesture which pled for silence.
"Listen!" she cried. "Listen!"
A tinkling sound came from the pipe and then a tiny bottle sank into
view, dangling from a string. He seized it. It was warm.
"Soup!" he cried. "Food! That is their first thought for us! And I had
forgotten that I was starving. I had forgotten it absolutely!"
He held it to her lips. She put out her hand in protest, but his gesture
was inexorable. She gave a queer little laugh, shrugged her shoulders,
and drank. He took the half she left him and drank in his turn. He tied
the bottle again to the string and shook it. It disappeared and was
lowered again, this time with wine. And half a dozen little rolls
dropped at their feet. They ate, they waked the child and fed him, they
sat, and from above the sound of pick and mattock in the hands of men
who toiled furiously thundered down to them. They speculated how and
whence the first sight of rescue would appear. They laughed in high,
excited tones. Expectancy had them in its grip to the exclusion of all
other emotions.
And then, with a sudden roar and crash, an avalanche of rubble poured
into the hole which they had dug into the mass of debris. And with it
came a man in sailor uniform who mixed anathema and congratulation in
excited but fluent French. He wept, he fell upon Aylmer's neck and
embraced him, he kissed the child and Claire's hand. Slowly they toiled
at his heels, helped by a dangling rope, out into the red glare of a
dozen torches which were held by seamen of the French Marine.
And one of the two officers who directed them called upon the name of
God and all His saints to emphasize his amazement.
It was Rattier who held and shook their hands a hundred times. Rattier,
incoherent, swearing, every vestige of his taciturnity ravished from him
by emotion, plying them with a thousand questions, raining tears upon
little John Aylmer's wondering face.
They reached the market square. They looked upon the ruin which covered
the devastated earth in the wan light of the slowly coming dawn.
Five miles away, swinging at her mooring opposite the ruined port of
Messina was a white-hulled boat--a boat which they looked at with
wistfully incredulous eyes. They whispered her name.
"_The Morning Star?_" they wondered. "_The Morning Star?_"
"What else?" cried the commandant, exultantly. "That Spanish torpedo
boat--did you think nothing was to be heard from her? You disappeared.
Two days later comes the news from Malaga of a felucca, going east with
prisoners on board. Would that not induce your father, Mademoiselle, to
put two and two together? The Melilla port authorities supplied the name
of that felucca and her destination--Sicily. He arrived two days back. I
have seen him, we spoke together, and then God knows all our energies
and thoughts have been with these poor wretches ashore. Down in Messina
your own countrymen and the Russians are doing marvels. The _Diomede_
was the only French ship, alas, in harbor, but we have others coming
from Tunis, from Algiers, from Marseilles. We need every worker we can
get. What you have suffered thousands are suffering still."
Aylmer gave a quick, decided little nod. He looked at Claire.
"You will let one of these sailors see you on board?" he said. "Paul
will spare one to escort you."
She looked at him, startled, a little bewildered, even.
"And you?" she asked. "And you?"
He made a gesture towards the chaos which covered shore and hill.
"Can I leave the work which calls me, knowing what I know?" he asked.
"Paul has put my duty into words. What I have suffered, others are
suffering yet. Would you think well of me, if I left it?"
She looked at him with a smile that told of appreciation, approval, of
something (or was hope a lying glass?) more than these.
"No!" she said quietly. "No!" She hesitated a moment.
"And when I have found my father, eased his mind, delivered to him his
grandchild whom he owes to you, rested, made myself strong to work, will
you come for me to do my part? Will you come--then?"
As the dawn rose over Messina's city of the dead, in John Aylmer's heart
rose the dawn of hope fulfilled. Her eyes? What message did they not
give? He read it as plainly as he knew he would read it at their next
meeting--from her lips.
He lifted her hand. His moustache swept it.
"Till then, Claire," he whispered. "Till then, Beloved."