Chapter VI: Part THREE: The Pit of Oppression (2)

"We have better than nails now," said Sebastian, luxuriously. He opened his hand and showed Andrew a thin glass bottle full of yellow liquid. He shook it lovingly. It rattled. "Files," he said huskily. "Two files. And oil to quiet them."

Andrew began to laugh soundlessly--a painful laughter that racked the pit of his stomach. Then he thought of something else, and his laughter stopped.

"What did they do to her?" he said, trembling.

"Caterina? They whipped her, that next morning. That's why she couldn't come before. Even now--" He stretched out his arms. The slow roll of his voice filled the chamber like the beating of an iron heart. "Oh, Christ on the Cross--" he prayed, "Oh, Christ on the Cross--You have given us a way to the air--Give us vengeance too--if only a little--a little--" He broke off. "We must rest for a while," he said more naturally. "Even with the bar cut through we will need all our strength for the stone."

4.

The bar was all but cut through--the cut plastered over and concealed. Then they had to wait. They had rested longer than they had intended before starting the work, sinking down into a black, murmuring bog of sleep as soon as their heads touched the floor, and when the task was nearly done, the air beyond the window had changed, and, behind dark gauzes, yellow dawn began to stir faintly, like a bird still hidden in the egg. After that, they could sleep again for a while, but not as they had slept before. They were too tense, the bog refused to receive them, they napped in uneasy snatches like dogs before a hunt. Andrew, waking a dozen times, each time glowered up at the window and was angry to see how slowly the first pale stiletto of light broadened into a yellow sword.

When the corporal brought their breakfast they were both broad awake and very restless. They tried to hold him in talk to make the minutes pass but he was surly and would only mutter in general terms against sergeants who cheated honest men out of their pay with dice that had a spell on them.

"By God," he growled, "if both of you weren't such traitors, I'd change you a bottle of Augustine rum for the promise of a couple of knucklebones after you were hanged. They say a hanged man's knucklebones make wizardy dice, if he's strung up in the natural course of crime--but being traitors, yours wouldn't serve most likely--'tis just my luck--I never played jailer before except on a black fellow that stole the Governor's wig for a heathen idol in Jamaica and he was a poor pagan that didn't leave me as much as a copper ear-ring. I was born with a caul, too, but I've never had any luck from it. When I was christened parson opened the book at the wrong place and started blazing away at the Burial Service most savagely before a' could be halted and it's shadowed me ever since. I can feel the Resurrection and the Life stuck in my throat at night like a slice of apple--You're lucky to be decently hanged, you are, there's some more grievous and judgmatical death in store for me, and it rises my dinner in me to have to think of it--" So he mourned himself away, leaving them alone with a vast desert of time.

The light grew, the hours dragged, they could not keep their eyes from the bar and the stone. They would talk to each other feverishly for a while and then, without intention, fall suddenly into a staring silence. Andrew found at last that he was talking to himself under breath. "Night," he was murmuring. "Night. Oh _lente, lente, currite, noctes equi_--" no, that was the wrong quotation, that asked night's coursers to slacken their pace.

"What time do you suppose it is, Sebastian?" he said for the twentieth time.

"We must have hours yet," said Sebastian. Andrew had expected the answer, but he sighed all the same. He looked at the bar again. To the eyes of both the crack in it had grown, all through the morning. Now it yawned--a blunt, metal mouth, insecurely stuffed with mud and straw. It seemed impossible that the stupidest of jailers should not detect it at a glance.

"Sebastian, do you think if--" began Andrew, and stopped himself. He must keep his eyes from the bar--if he did not something would make him leap up and swing from it chattering like a monkey. For a moment he half-wished the corporal had seen the crack and suspected. Anything was better than this waiting. Then he made a sort of formless prayer to anything which might be listening not to pay the slightest attention to his wish.

There were footsteps in the corridor--coming nearer. Andrew felt his body grow taut--glancing over at Sebastian he saw that he too was rigid. His wish had been granted. They were found out. They were coming to take them to some other cell, deep down, where even a file would be of no use. They were coming to hang them, now, while the light still held and the air was sweet.

The door opened. The corporal was there with two other men.

"You're wanted," he said, jerking his thumb at Andrew. "No--not you--him," as Sebastian started to rise.

Andrew got up slowly, feeling sweat on his palms. Sebastian and he were to be separated--ironed perhaps. Either step would be fatal to both, now. Why hadn't they chanced it last night?

"Who wants me?" he said, licking his mouth.

"You're wanted," said the corporal, grinning. "Come on now--shake a leg."

"_Adios, amigo_," murmured Andrew stiffly as he passed Sebastian. They touched hands.

"Come on now," said the corporal impatiently, "Last Wills and Testaments not executed at this shop without longer notice."

5.

"Well, Andrew," said Dr. Gentian, pleasantly, "I am sorry to see you so unkempt. I wish I could lend you a razor. When I was in prison at Poona," he continued reflectively, rubbing his chin, "I managed to shave with a broken cowrie-shell. But it was a painful expedient, at best. I should not advise its imitation, though it passes the time as well as trying to tame a rat. I wonder at the patience of those men who find prison-rats so easy to tame. Mine were savage little beasts--Orpheus himself could not have made them affable." He broke off, tracing a little pattern with his right thumb in the silver scrollwork on the butt of Andrew's pistol.

The two were alone--the soldiers had retired outside the door. Andrew, through lowered lids calculated the distance between them and the possibility of springing across the table and getting that firm throat between his hands before the balanced forefinger could pull the trigger.

"I wouldn't," said the doctor, smiling. "This priming happens to be dry and--let me compliment you on your taste in small-arms, Andrew. You may not have observed it, but this particular pistol is a weapon of delightful precision. I experimented with it this morning upon a humming-bird--the poor thing was blown into feathers at twenty paces."

"What do you want with me?" said Andrew, heavily. His eyes were still blinking with the unaccustomed plenty of daylight in this windowed room. He had almost forgotten there were such rooms, he realized, now--and realized too, distastefully, the scarecrow figure he must cut before the Immaculate Doctor. His clothes were ragged and foul--dirty stubble covered his face--he had not been clean for days. His eyes were furtive--his body had a prison smell to it--when he walked, he walked like a prisoner, with a heavy, shuffling step. In a tale, such tiny things would not matter to the heroic captive--it was monstrously unfair that they should matter now.

"I wanted to see you, Andrew," said the Doctor, softly, "and now that I have, I confess myself satisfied."

Andrew hardly heard him--his mind was busy with a different problem. "For God's sake tell them to give me a clean shirt, you devil!" he burst out suddenly, and instantly felt ashamed.

The Doctor laughed. "Your request is quaintly put," he said, with enjoyment, "but I'll grant it. You shall have a clean shirt--yes, Andrew--and soap and a razor--and go wherever you wish. For a price, of course," he added, tracing his pattern.

Andrew had straightened up at the first of his words. Now his shoulders sagged again.

"There would be," he said, flatly, "No."

"You haven't heard my terms yet," said the Doctor. "I ask very little. Only a lapse of memory." He looked at Andrew but Andrew did not reply.

"I do not even ask you to go on with your projected marriage." He continued, "A son-in-law," his thumb crept along a tiny silver scroll, "whose brother is--disaffected--whose father--will be bankrupt--would hardly fit with my plans. All I ask is--seven days forgotten. Completely. Your word on it. Then you're free."

"Why?" said Andrew, bluntly. "Why not hang me out of hand at once?"

"Oh--call it a whim--a vagary," said the Doctor with masked eyes, "I've always rather loved fools--after my own fashion. And then--I'll be frank enough--trying you in Augustine would be such a tedious business--I could carry it through--don't mistake me--but there might be embarrassing questions. I'd rather have your word."

"Suppose I broke my word?"

"To be frank," said the Doctor, "I do not care very greatly what you do--out of the Floridas. Till then--you would sign a--confession--I have drawn up. You could have it back--in time."

"Confession of what?" said Andrew.

"Oh--not too much," said the Doctor, pursing his lips. "Disloyalty, chiefly--an attempt on my daughter's honor, perhaps--just enough to discredit you. I assure you I should use it with the greatest reluctance," and, strangely enough, Andrew thought that he spoke the truth.

"Sebastian and Caterina?" he said.

The Doctor pondered. "You can have the girl," he said finally. "I should regret it, but after all--Mrs. Gentian deserves consideration. The man, no. I must keep discipline. But I might merely send him to St. Augustine prison, then."

"What happens to him otherwise?" said Andrew, breathing.

"The currycomb," said the Doctor in a wisp of voice. "A distressing end."

Andrew looked at him.

"I should really advise against it," said the Doctor very softly, with his forefinger alert. "You could not possibly reach me in time. Besides, there are always the soldiers."

Andrew drew a long breath.

"And--I--?" he said.

"Oh, you would merely hang," said the Doctor, recovering his cheerfulness. "Merely hang. You're young to hang, Andrew."

Andrew passed his hand over his eyes, trying to think. He could save Sebastian's life, Caterina's, his own. Sebastian was patient and clever--even in the dungeons of St. Augustine he might find some way of escape. Then they would all be saved. The other way was death. He could refuse for himself, and die, but he would not have to die in torment as Sebastian must.

For an instant he saw himself free, at the rail of a ship, with Caterina at his side. Her hand was lightly on his, she was telling him he had done well, her eyes were gentle. Cool as the fronds of lilies floating on a hushed and evening pool, her fingers touched his, and met, and somewhere, Sebastian was smiling at them both from his dungeon...

His mind revolted from the mirage, smarting with shame and self-disgust. Dr. Gentian was very adroit. He had put this thing so subtly that he, Andrew, could not only save himself but Caterina for himself and fool his mind into thinking he had acted nobly. No one could accuse him if he did this--Sebastian would not--his own spirit might for a while but it would grow sleepy--a year from now, this present would be forgotten, buried under a drifting red-and-yellow heap of leaf-brittle days like the skeleton of a rat, to crumble into earth and water and sun. And Sebastian would be still in his dungeon--but perhaps Caterina and he could buy him out somehow if he had not died ...

The stone. The bar. The escape.

But it seemed impossible that they should really escape. Dr. Gentian was too strong. He had been in prison himself--he would not have left them there, together, unchained, without providing against any escape. All the time that they had been gnawing in the dark he had been outside the window, listening, smiling, till he could no longer contain the mirth in his belly and went slowly back to laugh at them aloud with the devils that lived in the chimney of his study. Yes, he must have been doing that.

There was no use trying to bargain with him over Mr. Cave's projected plan of revolt. He knew of that, too, undoubtedly--and if, by some miracle, he did not, it offered the one slim chance that, in the confusion of such an event, they might escape indeed.

Was he overrating Dr. Gentian's powers? Perhaps. But as he stared at him now, with heavy eyes, he saw him as a man no longer, not even a Cæsar, but something inhuman, with the transient powers of the inhuman over human stuff. An undying figure that walked from the East, with a cloud of flies above it, and a gilt pomander in its hand.

"Aren't you ever afraid of hell?" he found himself saying, queerly, with a catch in his voice. "I should think you'd be afraid of hell."

The smile on Dr. Gentian's face became a rictus cut in ivory, the muscles of the jaw stood out.

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it," he quoted in a slow, dry voice., "'Think'st thou that I'--did you ever read Marlowe, Andrew? The style is very impure--bombastic, even--he cannot compare with Pope--but there are things in his Faustus which--"

He stopped. His mouth relaxed. But while he spoke, there had been something in his face that Andrew had never expected to see there--a turn of the mouth--a shape behind the eyes--something ruined and very lonely--a statue defaced--a barren bough in the gale.

It passed. "Well?" said the easy voice.

Andrew looked at the floor. He was twenty-two. When you were twenty-two, Death was something far-off that happened to other people. It needn't happen to him for a long time.

What if the Minorcans were oppressed? They weren't actually slaves. They got along. Some people, maybe, had to be oppressed. It wasn't his quarrel.

Then he saw them, young and old, women and children, the dead on the voyage, the dead in the first months of fever, the priest swinging in his robes, the sallow boy, screaming, under the currycomb. But it wasn't his quarrel.

There were two doors open. One meant life, and a clean shirt, and Caterina's hand on his hand, by the rail of a ship, at night, while the moon climbed up in heaven like a silver woman. The other was death for all of them. He shut his eyes and chose death.

"No, I won't," he said, in a voice he was surprised to find so even.

Dr. Gentian sighed. "I'm sorry," he said. "Dying is so wasteful. You can have twenty-four hours to think it over, Andrew. I will see you again tomorrow, when they are up. Think it over. Sergeant," he called and struck on a bell. "I hate to hang you, Andrew--it will be a great nuisance. I had a parrot once that amused me. I had to wring its neck. It is much the same. You may take the prisoner back now, Sergeant, if you will."

6.

"He gave me twenty-four hours," Andrew ended. He looked at his friend.

"It is more than enough," said Sebastian. "We shall escape in twelve."

Before the certitude of his tone the image of Dr. Gentian that towered in Andrew's mind like a genie rising from a bottle in a blue, magic fume, diminished gradually. He became what he was, a man of great parts, whose knowledge of his own abilities had swollen with power till it festered, and so spoiled a tyrant instead of making a king. Seen so, he was no longer terrific or even hateful, only beggared, as all men are beggared in one way or another who seek from life a passion more intense than the body can bear. He was a king in check--a torch inverted--a fire that wasted itself against a column of salt--and as Andrew began to perceive this, slowly and delicately as the slow lifting of a slab of bronze from his breast, the fear of death passed from him and left him composed. It would return, undoubtedly, but for this moment, brief as the flight of a bird between tree and tree, it had gone. He could smell the mignonette in his mother's garden. Dr. Gentian could kill them both, but that was all he could do.

"What are you going to do, Sebastian, when we are free?" he said casually, out of a strange peace.

"Tell the governor to free my people," said Sebastian. The cool stone of peace had touched at his lips as well, he spoke with the simplicity of a ghost. "When they are free--" he shrugged. "Who knows? Life is long--there are many things to do before the priest comes with his oil. If I had money I should like to buy a fishing-boat--my father was a fisherman. I should like to marry, too, and have a son. It is good to have a son to help you draw in the nets. And you, my friend?"

"I shall go North," said Andrew. "Perhaps to help the ass you spoke of kick off his rider--yes." It was the first time he had definitely put the thought at the back of his mind into words. He was astonished to find how rational it sounded. "After all--as long as they've called me a traitor--" he said, musingly. He wondered if that were really what he would do. It was difficult to see himself with a ragamuffin musket, presenting it at Lion and Unicorn.

Sebastian nodded. "I thought so," he said. "There are three things one cannot run away from--war, love and death." His voice held that indolent fatalism that has so often deceived the North by its languid pride. "Sometime I should like to go back to Minorca," he confessed. His eyes glittered. "This is a good country, here, but it is not Fererias."

"Tell me about your island," said Andrew, childishly. He settled himself in a corner to listen.

"You'd laugh at it, if you went there," said Sebastian. "It is small and harsh and poor. But the people are friendly there. My uncle lives in Mahon, if he has not died--he is a very friendly and hospitable person. My aunt has copper pans in her kitchen," he continued, with some pride. "They tease her about being rich--she is not--they came from her father who was a copper-smith--but few of us have copper vessels, even in the town--" His voice droned on, lulling Andrew into the content of a sleepy child. It was now almost entirely dark in their cell, though outside the sun had not yet set. There would be hours still before they would be safe in cutting through the rest of the bar, but now Andrew did not care how many there were. The fear of death no longer ran about with the rats in the darkness and he was quite happy listening to the slow story of certain doings in the family of a foreign copper-smith which could not possibly interest any person of gentility.

7.

Dr. Gentian laid his book down with a sigh, and glanced at his watch. He rose, and stood for a moment, observing how surely and skilfully the petal of a flower grew in rose-colored silk upon gauze, under the deft, shining strokes of his wife's embroidery needle.

"That must tire your eyes, my dear--especially at night," he said, with solicitude.

"I am never tired." She did not turn her head to answer. "Are you going now?"

"Yes, my dear. I am going now. You need not wait up for me. I shall not be back till late."

She made a knot in the silk. "You never believe me," she said. "Even if I told you, you were walking into a pitfall--you wouldn't believe me."

He smiled, "I should merely think your natural concern for my safety had overbalanced your excellent reason," he said.

"No doubt," she said wearily, her face still averted. "Well--you can go, then. I shan't wait up."

"It matters to you still," he said, consideringly. "That seems strange."

"Strange enough." Her eyes were fixed on her work. "You'd be a clever man, Hilary, if you left well enough alone."

"A clever man never leaves well enough alone," he said and smiled.

The silk thread broke in her fingers. "You're blind," she said. "Blind and deaf. There's a shadow on your back tonight. But you're deaf and blind. You only think of playing cat and mouse with that boy."

"One must have games." The Doctor's tone was amused. "And cat and mouse is an excellent game, for the cat."

"You'd better watch your daughter." She turned her face now and looked at him.

"My dear!"

"I've told you. She and her lackey. They've been too quiet these last days. Oh, well--go your road. But my Greeks talk to me. There's a rat in the wall of this house, Hilary--a rat in the wall--"

Her voice ceased. Her fingers busied themselves re-threading the needle.

"I think you have the gift, tonight," he said quietly, regarding her. "See for me, my dear."

His hand fell on her shoulder, light as a butterfly. She put it off. "No," she said in a dry, thin voice. "You're wrong. I haven't had the sight for years. If I had it tonight, would I use it? No."

"Not for me?" His mouth had honey in it.

"No." Her fingers were moving again, she seemed to have no mind for anything but her silk. "Not for you."

He sighed. "Be consoled," he said. "I shan't live for ever. Indeed, sometimes I wonder that I have been able to live this long."

"It would be like you to die first," she agreed, remorselessly. A flash passed over her face. "I'd save you from that," she said, with a prick of her needle.

He chuckled a little. "I believe you. I believe you, indeed. But if something should--cripple me, for instance--just enough--eh?"

She drew in a deep breath. "Some time," she said, huskily. "Soon or late. The candle's not burnt to the wick yet. I can wait for it."

"Really, sometimes, one would think you believed in the fates, my dear. If one didn't know you."

"I believe in waiting," she said, nodding her head. "Yes, I believe in waiting."

His fingers twitched, momentarily. "I wish you'd see for me," he said.

She made no reply. He hesitated for a moment, oddly indecisive. Then he looked at his watch again and turned toward the door.

"Good night, my dear."

The second petal of the flower was half-completed, the needle stitched on, the face was averted anew. "Good night," said the dry, colorless voice. Dr. Gentian passed out of the room. With his hand on the latch of the front door he hesitated for a second time and threw a glance back up the stairs. Then he shook his head impatiently, opened the door and went out.

As soon as his footsteps had died away, Mrs. Gentian rose. Very softly indeed, she climbed the stairs to the upper corridor and paused, listening, outside the door of her daughter's room. She scratched on the panel twice, gently--no sound replied. "Sparta," she called in a low, sharp voice, waited, repeated the call. The name fell into darkness and was absorbed, no echo mocked it even. Mrs. Gentian laughed under her breath and opened the door of the room. The light of her candle showed it empty, the bed undisturbed. She nodded, as if in assent to an unspoken query and stood in the doorway for a moment, erect as an effigy, not seeming to notice that when her candle guttered it shook flecks of hot wax on her dress. Then she shut the door and went softly down the stairs again, returning to her chair and her needlework. Her face seemed at once resolved and satisfied, and, for a time, the pattern of her embroidery had never grown more swiftly. Then, after a while, the pace of her fingers slackened and stopped. The embroidery still lay in her lap, but she worked at it no longer, though she remained sitting in the chair, with folded hands and that curious expression on her face, her head bent a little forward, as if she were listening for the wind to bring her a piece of long-expected news.

Meanwhile, Dr. Gentian was walking briskly down the road to the guardhouse. He carried a light cane in one hand and was humming to himself and now and then cutting little flourishes in the air with his cane. The moon was up enough for him to pick his way along the well known path without hesitation, while his mind turned over one thing and another in its usual active fashion. His wife's words had stirred him more than he cared to admit and, not for the first time, he felt, with some annoyance, that there was some quality in her which even he could only master by snatches, unless she willed to have it so.

She was the only person he had ever met who did not sooner or later betray himself or herself by talking too much. He had taught her that trick of reticence, likely enough--but now it seemed to him, uneasily, that the pupil was beginning to outstrip her master. It must not be so--yet what could he do to change it? He could not deal with her as he dealt with others--from their first meeting he had thought of her as the living symbol of his luck and the broadening of that vein of superstition which was his weakness, during these later years, had only increased the feeling. The fierce passion that had first united them was long extinguished, but her words still carried a certain weight of omen for him, and at times he came closer being afraid of her than he ever had been of any merely human being.

He smiled a little, recalling certain events. What a sharp, wild, dazzling creature she had been in her first youth--not fair in Sparta's fashion, not fair at all in the way he consciously admired, but with a fire in her like the fire at the heart of his emerald. Wooing her had been like wooing a tiger-cub--his mind still bore the scars of it, for all its balance, as his body bore the thin, seamed scar of the knife she had struck him with, long ago, when she thought he looked too often at that dark little Cypriote. For an instant his body felt young, and he saw, from a tossing boat, a torch flaring at the mouth of a cave and a girl's intense and eager face in the red gush of light.

She would not strike him with a knife again. That had been in the days of their passion, and they and his youth were over. Her love had taken a deal of killing, certainly. He felt that to be unfortunate, honestly enough, for unnecessary ugliness always offended him. But it would have been the same with any other man--she was not the sort that lived easily. In any event, she hated him now, but it did not matter, for, in spite of her hate, he had a unique sort of confidence in her. The struggle between them would only end with life, but in the pauses of it they understood each other.

He smiled--it would seem a queer way of living to that boy in the guardhouse. One had to give up youth to taste the full flavor of hazard--youth lacked the steadiness of hand. For himself, the constant experiment of sharing meat and drink, year-in, year-out, with a creature whose heart still held the savage so barely kept in check by mere adroitness of eye and hand, was life and a good one. Some day, no doubt, the eye would fail or the hand lose cunning, and he would be torn. Well, let it be so, he had had his game.

Meanwhile, there were other diversions, such as that he purposed for this evening. He would think of that now, and taste it in expectation. But when he tried to do so, his wife's words beat in his ears, and he came to a halt for a moment, leaning a little on his cane. After all, it was possible to alter his plans. He had given too much time to young Beard these last months--too little to the plantation. Cave, too, he had been careless recently with Cave--he suspected Cave and the lesser animals in general of getting a little out of hand. Perhaps it might be well to--then he shook his head. His project for to-night was too well matured--tomorrow would be time enough for Cave and the others. He cut a weed down with his cane and went on, but, though a stranger would have thought his bearing composed enough, he was not entirely at ease.

Now it seemed to him that he could hear movement far off in the woods at his left. He stopped again and listened. Something was abroad in the woods, undoubtedly, but the sound was too indistinct for him to make it out clearly. A shadow darted between two trees near the road--a man with a bag on his back--he opened his mouth to call at it--no, it was only a trick of the eye. As for the distant sound, now quieted, it might be a couple of strayed deer or a band of half-tame Indians on a rice-stealing expedition--the latter most probably. The Indians had been growing bold, lately--he must see to that, too. Again, he was almost on the point of turning back to the coquina-house. Then he looked at his watch once more--it was later than he had supposed--the tiny fact decided him. He marched on, swinging his cane--the moon had a bright face to-night--the features of the man in it were distinct. He thought of the old story and smiled. The moon, as a post of observation, would have its advantages.

He turned a corner--there were guardhouse and storehouses below him, their roofs wintry with moonlight. The quiet familiarity of the scene blew the last of his uneasiness away--he had never felt more sure of himself or his luck. A few paces away from the guardhouse door he was challenged in a low voice by a sentry, held a conversation in whispers for a minute, and then went in.

The minutes passed, the still, glittering face rose higher in the sky till the night was perfect. It cast a long straggling shadow over the barred window of Andrew's cell and a bright pool on the floor of Sparta Gentian's empty chamber. In the deep woods that gave upon the St. Augustine road it barely pierced enough to touch with occasional silver the faces and bodies of men and women who came slipping silently between the trees, one by one, like deer trooping together, till the road was full of them. They came from the direction of the colony, burdened with packs or children--there seemed no end to their number--they greeted each other in hushed voices--soon the first of them were filtering away down the road.

In the colony itself the silver dagger fell upon a different sort of surreptitious stir, and a clotting together of shadowy shapes on the skirts of the Italian quarter. Dr. Gentian had wished better than he knew when he had wished for a post of observation upon the cold peaks of the moon, and it was unfortunate for him that his wish could not have been granted. As it was he sat in the guardhouse, tapping his snuffbox and recapitulating the heads of a certain discourse he intended to deliver shortly, ignorant that events already in train were to render that discourse quite unnecessary.

Mrs. Gentian, however, was soon to be better informed. Her rigid attitude of the listener had not altered for the last half hour, she sat in her chair like a sculpture, her hands were marble. Only her eyes discovered life in them, deep in the pupils, contained, patient and somehow dreadful in its certitude, like the life in the eyes of a spirit caught in a cleft stone. She was waiting for a sound, and already the last moments of her vigil were upon her. A mile away, even as one shape among the clotted shapes at the edge of the Italian huts began to issue orders to the others, a Greek boy watched from a shadow and then crawled off, to break into a run for the coquina-house as soon as he was well away from the huts.