As the two entered here, Margaret halted,[258] and Saxe eagerly stepped to her side. The girl flashed the torch here and there, to reveal the nature of the place. Saxe guessed that the room had a diameter of about fifty feet. The walls of ragged rock formed an uneven circle. They bent inward in the ascent, with a dome-like effect, to a height of hardly two score feet.
Margaret wasted no time. After one examination of the walls by the torch, she fixed the light on a portion of the side opposite them, a little to the left. Saxe, peering intently in this direction, thought that he detected two patches of shadow, a little denser than the surrounding dark, which might be the openings into other tunnels. The girl’s words proved his surmise right.
“There are two passages over there, close together,” she announced. “As I remember, the one we followed was that on the right. Of course, the money might be hidden anywhere. But we might go a little way in that passage first, so that you’ll understand how it runs downward.”
“Yes,” Saxe agreed. “The place in which to search is narrowed by the statement in the cipher about the bottom of the lake. Does the[259] other passage, too, run downward?”
The girl shook her head instinctively, although the action was not visible, since the outdoor light did not penetrate thus far, and the beam cast by the torch was directed from her.
“I know nothing of the second passage,” she explained. “We didn’t enter it. Come.”
They set out across the chamber, walking side by side, and so came to the passage-way of which Margaret had had experience. This proved to be somewhat broader than that through which they had come. They had advanced but a very short way, when the floor began to slope sharply downward. Saxe realized that this rate of descent need not be continued long to bring them to the level of the lake’s bottom. He knew that the highest point of the island could have hardly more than a hundred feet of elevation above the surface of the lake. Indeed, he was sure that the entrance to the cavern was only a little distance above the level of the water. They had climbed the bluff that lined the shore, and had afterward ascended a few slight rises, but the total vertical height could not have been more than fifty[260] feet. The inclination of the passage downward was enough to overcome this speedily, if it should continue. And it did continue, for such a long way that at last Saxe was sure the waters of the lake lay above them.
The two wayfarers within this secret place of the earth spoke little, and that for the most part of the things immediately about them. The floor of this passage-way here was not free from rubble, as the other had been. It was littered everywhere with fallen fragments, so that there was need to watch each step with care. Saxe experienced a new happiness when the difficulties of the path became so serious as to justify him in taking the hand of Margaret to help her in surmounting a fallen boulder. As the pulse of her blood touched his, it throbbed a rapture in his heart. In this dark vault of the earth, he forgot the first object of the subterranean wandering—forgot in worship of the woman at his side; Margaret herself sharply recalled him to the prosaic.
“Do you notice the difference in the light?” she asked. “I’m sure it’s dying out. It must need recharging. We must hurry back.”
A note of apprehension in the speaker’s voice[261] aroused Saxe to instant concern. He gave a quick glance toward the circle of light cast by the torch, and perceived that its radiance had in fact grown less.
“Yes,” he answered, “it’s failing. We must turn. Anyhow, I’ve seen enough to understand that this is the likeliest place in which to hunt for the gold.”
As he spoke, they turned about together, and began the ascent with hastening steps, for the thought that the torch might die out while they were still within the cavern was far from pleasant to either of them. The girl’s anxiety was revealed in the next question:
“Have you matches?”
With a start of dismay, Saxe recalled that he had left his match-safe in the pocket of his coat, which remained in the canoe. Nevertheless, he made a perfunctory search.
“No,” he admitted reluctantly; “I left them in the canoe.” He heard the girl sigh; but she said nothing more, only hastened her steps. The dimming of the torch was very apparent now.
The two scrambled over the unevennesses of the passage with what haste they might. Saxe[262] congratulated himself on the fact that there had been no other passages branching from that in which they had made the descent, for the turns, while never sharp, had been frequent enough to breed perilous confusion were there need of choice. In the next instant, however, he remembered the abstraction of his thoughts during the traversing of the route, and he was filled with self-reproach at the realization that, after all, there might have been such branches. And, just then, the two halted abruptly, arrested by a sudden consciousness of the truth. They were descending!
For a moment, neither spoke. In that little interval, the feeble glow of the torch died out altogether.
There came a gasp of dismay from Margaret. Saxe’s clasp on her hand tightened in the instinct of protection. Then he essayed a cheerful laugh, albeit there was small merriment in it.
“Now,” he declared briskly, “we must stop right where we are until we’ve planned a campaign. This is a real adventure.” Even as he spoke, miserably aware of the serious predicament[263] into which the going out of the torch had plunged them, he was conscious of the delicate fragrance of her hair, so near his lips, and the vague, yet penetrant, perfume that exhaled from her to the ravishing of his senses. He fought manfully against the temptation to draw her to his breast, as every fibre of him besought. Under the stress of desire denied, his voice came with a ring of imperiousness. “I had a lot of experiences in caves, when I was a boy. This thing will be easy.”
“But we’re going downward,” Margaret faltered. The mystery of the event had sapped courage.
“Exactly!” Saxe conceded. “Somewhere, we turned off into a branch passage. Did you know of any branch?”
“No,” came the answer. The inflection of distress gave new strength to the temptation that beset him.
“I should have noticed it on the way down,” Saxe confessed, in great bitterness of spirit; “but my mind was wool-gathering.”
The girl ventured no question. Perhaps she guessed the nature of that distraction.
“Anyhow, we’ve managed to leave the passage[264] in which we came down. We couldn’t have turned around in it, without knowing the fact. It seems to me that we’ve only to face about, and make our way upward again—merely watching out that we don’t get switched off another time. The ascent will surely take us back by one or the other of the two corridors into the big room above.”
“But—if it should not!” Margaret stammered. The woe in her voice was pitiful. “Why, we might—here in the dark—no light—no food—oh!”
Saxe spoke with a manner of authority:
“Stop! Don’t imagine things. Worry wastes strength. Save yours for this exciting climb through the dark. There’s no danger—that I know.” The calm confidence with which he contrived to charge his voice soothed the girl, and restored to her some measure of courage. From his position on the left side of her, he put out his free hand, and touched the wall. “Put out your right hand,” he bade her, “until it reaches the wall. Now, we’ll turn round, and begin the journey in the right direction. Keep in touch with the wall, please. Move slowly, using your feet in place of eyes,[265] to avoid stumbling.”
In this fashion, they set forth through the blackness of the cavern. It was slow and tedious going. It had been tiresome enough when the torch made plain the obstacles strewn over the floor. Now, the difficulties were multiplied an hundredfold by the absence of light. They could only shuffle a foot about cautiously until it secured a firm place, then by like clumsy feeling choose the next step. Often, one or the other stumbled, was near to falling, but, since these mishaps occurred rarely at the same instant, the one still in balance gave sufficient support. Yet, slow as was their progress, Saxe found heart to be content with it. Always it was upward, until he dared believe that they were actually in either the passage by which they had descended, or in that which opened near it in the big room. He told his faith to Margaret, and she strove her best to throw off the gloom bred of this hateful environment, but could not; nevertheless, despite her fears, they won through at last to the great chamber.
“Hurrah!” cried Saxe. His guiding left hand swept suddenly into emptiness—another step, and still there had been no contact[266] to his roving fingers. It was then that he halted, and gave a shout of triumph. “There’s no wall on your side?” he demanded.
The girl put out her hand, but there was nothing within reach. With a pang of compunction, she realized that she had been remiss in the duty appointed her, for she had not felt the wall even once in a long while. She made admission of her guilt, with charming contrition.
“It’s no matter,” Saxe declared. Profound relief sounded in his words. “We’ve come safe to the big room, and nothing else counts.” In sheer exuberance over their escape, he pressed the fingers that lay so lightly within his.
The girl thrilled in answer to the clasp. The announcement of their return to the chamber came to her overwrought mind as a reprieve from fearful doom. With the joy now possessing her, there came relaxation of the tension that had sustained her. In the warm pressure of his hand over hers was a comfort that loosed the self-control in which she had held herself hitherto. Without[267] any warning, she drooped as she stood; her form grew limp. She would have fallen, had not Saxe, in terror for her as he felt the yielding of her muscles, drawn her to his breast. He held her close there. It seemed strange to him, as she lay motionless within his embrace, the while his lips touched softly a strand of the wonderful hair, that the glory of those tresses should not make all things visibly radiant in the blackness of the cavern, even as the nearness of her made a golden sunlight in his heart. He did not utter a word or venture aught beyond the kiss on that lock which kindliest fate had laid across his lips—only rested motionless, holding her firmly, reverently, what time she wept softly on his bosom. Surely, there needed no clumsy vehicle of words between those two embraced in the solitary dark. Twain pulses throbbed as one. In their rhythm ran a song of heavenly things.