SHADOWS GO
Dawn flushed into full daylight as the sun rose upon the ruined city.
Morning dragged its length to midday and midday merged in afternoon. And
the workers toiled on doggedly, burrowing, hewing, climbing, flinging
their energies, risking their lives, against the inanimate barriers of
destruction. Italian and Frenchman, Englishman and Russian vied with
each other in deeds of humanity against the common foe. Nor was that foe
content with the victory already won. Further shocks furrowed the
stricken shores: ruin became more complete, danger more menacing, but
the toilers worked on.
Aylmer's rescuers had gone aboard their ship and had been replaced by a
new relay. He himself remained. The pressing needs of those who lay, as
he had lain, in living tombs around him were first in his mind. But
another thought was ceaseless. Certainty--that was what he asked.
Certainty of Landon's fate. He scarcely allowed himself to realize how
he hoped--_yearned_--to know definitely that Landon was dead. He simply
contemplated it as a matter of completeness, as news that would bring
infinite relief to those on board _The Morning Star_. If he were alive?
He set his lips grimly. Though law was suspended, order out of gear,
Landon should meet his deserts. If not by instruments of Italian
justice, then by Aylmer's own hands--by the law of retribution, not the
law of revenge.
He dropped the mattock which he had been wielding. He stood up and
straightened himself, turning his eyes from the wearying expanse of
wreckage towards the sea.
A boat was running up beside the ruined jetty. Before the mooring ropes
were cast ashore a tall figure leaped from it--a figure clad in a
_soutane_.
Aylmer made an exclamation, hesitated, and then clambered down the walls
and ran across the uneven flags, holding out his hand.
Padre Sigismondi flung up his arms. His gesture was one of incredulous
relief.
"But the Signora?" he cried, stricken with sudden apprehension. He
panted, his eyes were vivid with anxiety. "The Signora?"
As Aylmer answered with the one vital word, the priest cried aloud
again. He lifted his face towards the sky and made the sign of the
cross.
"Safe!" he repeated. "Safe! If there was a single hope left to me amid
the horrors which have overwhelmed us, it was that. I told myself that
God, who allowed me to fail in my duty to you through my arrogant
self-confidence, might be saving you in the midst of--and by--this
destruction. When I came to myself and found you gone, I writhed. My
friend, I cast myself upon the ground in the agonies of my
self-reproach. Not to have plumbed the wicked devices of these men--I,
who have worked among them a score of years!"
Aylmer gripped his hand.
"You, yourself?" he inquired. "You come here--how?"
"One of the many boats which were speeding to Messina--some, alas, with
no charitable intent, I fear--saw my signals and took me off. And now?
One scarcely knows where to begin. How can one confront such a disaster
with one's puny efforts? God send me His strength! My own is as water!"
A shout echoed to them suddenly from the group of sailors. One stood up
and waved to them with his neckcloth.
Aylmer made an answering gesture. He took the priest's arm.
"Begin here, father," he said quietly. "Some of those we have found are
alive, but death's claim, I fear, is relaxed for no more than an hour or
two. They need your offices. It may be for such an one that they are
signalling to us now."
They hurried across the square. They climbed the pyramid of ruin.
The sailors were looking down at something which lay at their
feet--something brown, and white, and vivid red.
The quartermaster pointed to a crevice in the masonry.
"There is a hollow," he explained. "We pulled him out by the arms,
which--God forgive us--are broken. There are in there, perhaps, others.
His eyes imply it. Words are beyond him."
The priest gave a startled exclamation. Aylmer echoed it. Disfigured,
battered, crushed as it was, they recognized the figure in the
blood-stained _djelab_ of brown.
A growing dimness was clouding Muhammed's eyes. The quick pant of his
breathing weakened as they watched. But a flash of feeling illuminated
the pallid features as the Moor's glance reached and dwelled upon
Aylmer's face.
His lips moved.
"The child?" he asked in a faint whisper. "The Sidi Jan?"
Padre Sigismondi darted an inquiring look at his companion and then
knelt beside the dying man.
"The child is well," he answered gravely. "Yourself? Is there no message
to give, no delivery of your soul you wish to make? Time is short for
you. Use it, and me, as you wish."
The brown eyes searched the priest's features with a queer disdain, as
it seemed--or was it, perchance, compassion. The stiffening lips became
more grimly resolute.
"I proclaim!" said the Moor. "I proclaim that there is One God--One
God--," and passed, unfaltering, to meet Him.
For a moment there was silence. Aylmer broke it.
"Perhaps we owe him more than we think," he said slowly. "The boy? That
was always his first care. Perhaps he stood between the child and harm.
I believe that he would have done so in the face of the child's father
himself!"
Sigismondi drew a fold of the _djelab_ over the bruised face.
"The God to whom he appealed is his judge," he said. "Let us leave it in
His hands. The living, now, my friend. It is not here that we can
concern ourselves with the dead."
They turned to the sailors. Half a dozen blocks had been rolled from the
opening, which gaped wide over an empty darkness. The quartermaster
slung himself carefully down into it and slowly disappeared.
A moment later they heard his voice.
"A rope," he demanded. "Here is one who is, at least, warm."
They passed down a rope carefully. Aylmer's heart became suddenly
audible to himself. What would appear; what had Fate still in store for
him?
Again the quartermaster's voice echoed from the darkness with
directions. The sailors bent their backs and hauled.
A face appeared in the opening, travelling upwards.
Aylmer felt no surprise. This was the expected, the inevitable. Landon
was dragged out into the day--Landon--alive.
They laid him silently at his cousin's feet.
And as Aylmer looked down he felt a thrill of what must have been nearly
akin to sympathy. God help the mutilated wretch!
His arms hung beside him limp and helpless, the fractured bones
distorted in hideous angles. There were marks as of burns upon his face.
But the supreme horror was in the sockets which held nothing
recognizable as human eyes. Coals might have lain within them--coals
pressed down to find their quenching there.
He moaned ceaselessly, swinging himself from side to side. And then
words came slowly, piteously, one by one.
"Oil!" he gasped. "For God's sake, a little oil--upon my eyes!"
Sigismondi shuddered. Then he bent and placed his hand compassionately
on the scarred temple.
"As soon as it can be found, my brother," he said. "Try to keep your
courage while we do our utmost. We have to carry you--where you can be
treated."
The tortured wretch moaned again and made an instinctive effort to raise
a hand to his face. He shrieked as the shattered bones failed him,
shrieked and cursed in hideous blasphemies. His brain began to wander
upon the border-line of delirium.
"Hours--days--weeks," he wailed. "Broken--broken! Immovable and always
in agony--burning--my eyes--my eyes! And the rain--running over them
and bringing more agony--and more--and more. And unable to move a
finger. My feet hanging in emptiness--my hands crushed in upon
me--crushed--crushed--crushed!"
The quartermaster made a gesture of infinite compassion.
"The room had been newly plastered, do you see?" he whispered. "He was
caught bodily--in the closing of the walls--as a nutcracker closes. And
he was held and crushed--like the nut. The lime was deep upon his
face--and when the rain came, washing it in--eating him--" He turned
away with another pregnant motion of his hands, as if he put from him
the picture which imagination conjured up.
Aylmer leaned down and spoke.
"We are going to take you from here," he said. "We are going to lift
you. Be prepared."
Landon's groans ceased. His body became suddenly rigid with attention.
"Jack?" he whispered incredulously. "Jack?"
"It is I," said Aylmer gravely. "I--am unhurt."
Landon's face grew yet more distorted.
"Claire?" he muttered eagerly. "Claire--is gone?"
A light gleamed tempestuously in Aylmer's eyes and then as quickly died.
His voice was even and restrained.
"She is safe, and well," he said. "She is on her father's yacht."
An inarticulate howl of rage burst from Landon's lips. He rocked himself
to and fro; he made as if he would beat his broken hands upon the
stones.
"God! If they'd suffered alongside me, if they'd been there, if they had
given me groan for groan, I could have stood it--enjoyed it--damn them,
I could have laughed with the lime in my eyes, if they'd been there--if
they'd been there!"
He jerked himself to a sitting posture; he writhed backwards and
forwards. His spite was a sort of ecstasy, possessing him, freeing him,
as it seemed, from even the sense of pain.
Aylmer made a significant motion. He bent and slipped his arms beneath
Landon's shoulders. The quartermaster lifted his knees.
Landon struggled in their arms.
"Let me be!" he cried. "Let me stand. Damn you, let me stand upon my own
feet!"
They hesitated. Then with a shrug the quartermaster laid down his
burden.
"This is no place for a blind man to pick his way," he remonstrated. "To
get down, Monsieur, you have to poise yourself along the wall thirty
feet above the square."
Landon stood panting and leaning against his cousin. The spasms of agony
were convulsing his face.
"I will not be carried," he panted. "I'll walk upon my feet--like a
man."
They looked at each other, hesitating.
"But your arms?" protested Aylmer. "Your arms?"
The breath hissed between Landon's teeth.
"My arms!" he repeated. "God! If I'd my arms! You--you must lead
me--carefully--carefully. Put your hand upon my shoulder; keep
close--close."
For a dozen yards he tottered along, and the sweat broke out astream
upon his scars. And then he halted, and stumbled.
The quartermaster instinctively put a hand upon one of the broken
wrists. Landon shrieked, and cursed him hideously.
"Monsieur might have fallen," apologized the man. "My excuses, Monsieur,
but it was so quick--so near--the danger. The drop is sheer, do you see,
sheer down to the square."
Landon gasped. "Which side?" he asked thickly. "Which side?"
"The right," said Aylmer. "Lean away from me, inwards, to the left!"
Landon drew a deep breath.
The next instant he had flung himself against Aylmer's guiding hand,
outwards, to the right!
For the second time the quartermaster cried aloud and stretched out a
hand. But it was not Landon's sleeve which it reached, but
Aylmer's--reached and gripped it while the two bodies reeled upon the
crumbling edge and sent the flying blocks down to break into powder upon
the solid flags below.
And then, where two had struggled, one alone remained and clung. Landon
had gone. Like the blocks he lay thirty feet below--broken.