The Pursuit Part 45

CHAPTER XXII

THE PRISON

"What is to be the end?" asked Claire, suddenly, wearily. "What is to be the end?"

Aylmer looked up from his pallet on the floor--looked at the girl--looked at the walls of bare masonry--looked at the shaft of sunlight which slanted through the barred window. For eight and forty hours he had lain there, shamming, shamming, shamming. For three days previous to his being brought to that place, he had lain as motionless in the lazaret of the _Santa Margarita_.

Conceive it--you who walk abroad as you list! Nearly a week of inaction, when all the time your blood is coursing healthily in your veins, your feet itch for the road, and your wrath, above all, is suffering a continual fever for which no remedy is presently available.

The picture, however, had its other side. Could he, in any other circ.u.mstances, have advanced so far in intimacy with his companion?

When, in the ordinary intercourse of uneventful life, would the barrier which she had raised against him have been flung down? Where else than in this island prison of Salicudi would he have seen the glorious vision of hope over that barrier's crumbling walls? Dwelling on these matters, he was able to answer her pessimism with a genuine smile.

"When I first met you I told myself that I should have to play a waiting game," he said. "Well, it is proving itself so, literally."

She flushed faintly.

"You must forgive me," she sighed. "We women are not taught to wait. And in America we are allowed to be petulant, you know." She smiled. "You Britishers have more sense of discipline. But an end? Surely you yourself must want to see one? How long are you to lie there, paralyzed for action?"

He was silent for a moment, and his eyes were shadowed.

"It is I who must ask forgiveness," he said at last. "Perhaps--I hardly realized what it is--for you."

A throb of compunction stung her. She gave a little cry of protest.

"For me? It is a thousand times worse for you. I have liberty, in a sense. They let me walk abroad, even, at times--I am not interfered with--I can look out to sea and--and hope. I have you to lean on. But you? You lie within these four walls and think, and think. Your only support is within yourself. And I am a drag upon you."

And then she turned her face from the sudden pa.s.sion in his eyes.

"Claire!" he said. "Claire!"

She did not answer in words. She made a little gesture which seemed to plead for forbearance, for a postponement to an inevitable but far distant morrow. She rose and walked to the window.

"There is a ship pa.s.sing now," she reported. "Half a mile from land. I can see her flag--the Union Jack. A Newcastle collier, I expect, by her bulk and her grime. I suppose there are a score of unwashed deck hands and heavers in her forecastle who would sweep this island bare of the human vermin who infest it if we could let them know our need, if we could signal--wave--act! Act? But to go on waiting? To have not so much as a plan?"

He rose cautiously.

"There is no one in sight?" he asked.

She looked right and left, keenly suspicious.

"No," she said, at last. "I watched Luigi back to the houses after he left our food. He and half a dozen more are at the landing place. Two or three are on board the felucca, working her with sweeps into the shelter of the little breakwater. Mr. Miller? He is sitting on a boulder, watching--and like us, I suppose--waiting. What are we all doing but that? Fate is to be the arbiter for all of us. We can offer no interference."

He came up beside her, keeping in the shadow and peering cautiously between the bars. His glance was directed at the _Santa Margarita_ as the toilers at the sweeps slowly worked her to her moorings.

"They are making it the more difficult for us," he said slowly. "While she lay out there in the open, she represented the weapon with which we might have defeated Fate, if Fate is against us. Inside the breakwater the edge of the weapon is blunt. Did Fate read my thoughts?"

She looked at him anxiously.

"You have had a plan?" she asked. "You have not been leaving all to chance?"

"Wind--that is all I asked," he said. "A storm, a moonless night, and a little luck. If I could have got on board the felucca with you and cut her from her moorings, we would have played a deal with Fate then. We would have enlisted her on our side, to take us where she willed."

Her eyes grew vivid with hope and with anxiety.

"But to get on board? We are locked in at night, bolted. And those dogs of theirs are loose."

"That is it--they are loose," he said. "A few handfuls of food saved and we can attract them to the window, and they will be quiet enough when they are fed. It is merely a question of the getting out."

"And how?"

He pointed to a corner of the unmorticed wall.

"Their bars are sound enough, their bolts are out of reach of our tampering. But the building itself? Its foundations date from the days of Augustus, as likely as not. At night, while you slept, I tried its stability, course by course. It was in that corner that I found the weak spot. The lower stone I can remove at will. The one above it will fall when the support of the first is removed. And I put pressure enough on to the outer stones to know that a strong effort will thrust them away.

The road is open, when we choose to take it."

She clapped her hands softly. Her face glowed.

"Why not now?" she cried. "Why not choose the pa.s.sing of a ship and then signal--as you signalled to the torpedo boat?"

He shook his head.

"A warship is one thing," he objected, "a merchant ship another. We should be poising our all on the intelligence of a look-out-man who would be scanning the water, not the land, or of a third officer who might not know the code international."

She sighed.

"So we wait," she said despondently.

"So we wait," he agreed. "But not for long." He was looking westward at the sky.

"You see something?" she said quickly. "What?"

"Wind clouds," he answered. "Cirrus. Fate may be making her preparations for to-night."

"To-night?" She repeated the word faintly, incredulously. "I wonder,"

she said slowly. "I wonder if, after all my yearning for action, I shall--be brave when it really comes to--to-night?"

He looked down at her.

"And I?" he said. "Have I as good a chance as you to show courage?"

"You?" she answered wonderingly. "You are a man."

"Yes," he answered. "I am a man. And you, a woman, are dependent on me and I am taking you into perils that I can only guess at, dangers that lie absolutely in the hands of chance. For which of us is it easiest to be brave, you or me?"

Her eyes dropped from his.