FOR a little, after he had realized the fact that the water could mount no higher, Saxe experienced such joy as must come to any normal person on escaping out of the peril of death. Ultimately, however, the first emotion wore itself out by its own intensity, and he was left free to think coherently again. The result was disastrous. There leaped in his consciousness the hideous truth that death was not avoided, only postponed. This refuge on the heap of rocks offered safety from drowning, from being crushed by the waves against the walls. It gave no more. On this tiny island, the two were marooned, with naught to expect save a slow, a frightful death. They had been borne hither on the first in-rush of the waters, and only the height of the cavern had saved them at that time. Now, there was no means by which they might make their way out from this prison. Beyond the chamber in which they were, the passage that led to the outdoors first dipped sharply. For a great way it must[333] be filled with the flood. Margaret West had spoken of another entrance somewhere, but she had told him nothing in detail. It was evident that this could not be in the chamber, or if there, it must be covered by the lake’s flow, incapable of affording egress. Had it place near the roof, the light of it must have shown clearly against the Stygian blackness. And there was no faintest gleam of light anywhere. Saxe’s eyes roved in fierce longing, but nowhere was there aught except the total darkness. For once, the sage had reasoned ill. There had been grisly mockery in his cry that they were safe—in this place where there could be no safety. This was in truth the safety of the tomb—a narrow perch whereon to attend death, to wait, supine, impotent, for a laggard dissolution by starvation. And Billy realized now the dread certainty of their plight; otherwise, he had not sat there in grim silence. Surely, Roy and David had the better part, since their engulfment had been swift. They were spared the lingering tortures of these survivors, destined to a few dreadful hours. Then Saxe remembered the miser’s gold, and the hate of it welled high in his heart. Truly, there[334] had been a curse on it! And the wretched man thought of Margaret most of all. But that which he thought of her should not be written. It was the supreme agony. Saxe had the courage of the strong man, but nature permits no man to lay down his life uselessly without revolt. Neither Saxe nor Billy was a coward, yet each was craven there in that eyrie above the flood, which imprisoned them in eternal night. The crime of Masters had brought wanton destruction upon them. There was no solace of justice in this doom. They were abandoned of hope. Their hearts were sick within them.
Billy Walker spoke at last, and his voice was humbler than its wont, less sonorous, too. The first angry uproar of the waters was ended now, although they were rippling and swirling daintily still, as if in tender caresses of the rocks, which so recently they had smitten in fury. Above the gentle noise of the eddies, the sage’s voice, mild as it was comparatively, sounded clearly. Instantly, a cry came from the far side of the chamber.
“Billy! Billy! You’re alive!”
It was Roy’s voice, and another voice broke[335] in on the words, shouting shrilly:
“Billy! Thank God!” It was David’s voice.
Billy roared so joyously that all other tones were lost for a time, but, at last, Roy and David caught Saxe’s higher pitch, and they were glad anew. Across the room, questions and answers were volleyed. It was made known that Roy and David, at the first rush of the lake upon them, had held to the projections of the rock where they had just made fast the tackle, and had climbed higher until they were safe above the flood. Now, they rested aloft on a tiny shelf of stone, only a little way beneath the roof, and they, even as Saxe and Billy, realized to the full the impossibility of escape from this sepulchre within the earth. And Roy lamented in characteristic fashion, after Saxe and Billy had explained the cause of the lake’s in-flow, which had been a mystery to the other two.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t have had a chance at Masters before he went.”
David’s voice, usually so kindly, was harsh as he spoke:
“The skunk got us, after all,” he mourned. He added, with frank ferocity: “Damn him!”[336] He knew, as did the others, that such speech concerning the dead was unseemly. Yet none rebuked him. For a moment, the warmth of wrath was comfort against the chill desolation of their case.
Nevertheless, Billy Walker’s ruling passion was so strong that not even death might daunt it. The action of Masters required some explanation, to make all clear before the less-orderly minds of his friends. So, after a period of reflection, he expounded his understanding of the engineer’s part in the final act of their drama. The volume of his voice was such that he did not need to go beyond his usual conversational thundering to be heard distinctly by those on the opposite side of the chamber.
“Masters, naturally, didn’t mean to do this thing,” he declared. “He wasn’t the type to commit suicide. He kept track of us all the time. How he did it doesn’t matter especially. Probably, he used another entrance to the cavern, which we don’t know. Anyhow, he learned what it was we had found down this way. I guess he spied on us, and heard you, Roy, and Dave, working on the tackle, and took it for granted we were all here together.[337] He thought he could burrow through, and get at the gold himself while we were off after help. He meant to blow an opening just big enough to get through, I fancy. He failed to take into consideration the frailness of the roof that stood between the passage and the lake. He blew a hole in the bottom of the lake—and that was the beginning of our troubles, and the ending of his. He couldn’t find a refuge like ours in that other passage. Exit Masters—I regret our fate, but not his.” With this succinct statement, the sage relapsed into silence, which continued until Roy relieved his overwrought feelings by a denunciation against fate.
“I’ve been on the edge of dying many a time,” he declared, bitterly; “but I was never up against this sort of thing before, and I’m free to say that I don’t like it. There’s some satisfaction in being done to death in a good fight, or in battling your best against any kind of odds. Of course, a man doesn’t exactly want to die, any time. But what puts me in the dumps is this particular variety of dying that we’re up against here. We’ve got to sit roosting on a shelf in the dark, like a heathen[338] idol in a temple after it’s been buried in an earthquake—and we’ve just got to sit till we starve to death. I do hope I run across Masters in the next world.&r............