Part 56 (2/2)

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--G.o.d 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, compa.s.sion. The stiffening lips became more grimly resolute.

”I proclaim!” said the Moor. ”I proclaim that there is One G.o.d--One G.o.d--,” and pa.s.sed, 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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sed 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.

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