CHAPTER XVIII.

SUFFOCATION--THE DARK PIT.

"Where the deuce am I?" was my first thought and exclamation on rallying my scattered energies.

I was painfully certain of entombment under a mountain of fallen masonry, which, for aught that I could foresee, might not in these times of trouble be removed for years. The air soon became close and oppressive. I began an examination of the trap into which I had fallen, by feeling all round me with outspread hands; for the darkness was as dense as if I had been shut up in a block of marble.

The ceiling--if it could be called so--was composed of beams of hard wood planked over, being evidently the floor of an apartment above; and by the dull, dead sound those planks returned, when striking on them with the hilt of my sword, I became convinced that the whole debris of a fallen house was heaped above me! Of this I was the more certain on discovering that the trapdoor, through which I had passed, was choked up by fragments of torn partitions, beams and stones, which I could grasp with my hands when standing upon a barrel over which I had stumbled in the dark. Around me were four stone walls, forming an area of about twenty feet by fifteen, and below me was the damp earth. I was undoubtedly buried alive in a cellar, from which escape seemed hopeless.

As this terrible conviction came home to my mind, the perspiration oozed from every pore, and a pang of agony entered my heart like a sharp poniard. My emotions cannot be described, and thoughts that were bitter and heart-rending came crowding upon me like a torrent.

Ernestine, whom I would never see more--whose voice I would never hear again--and whose dark eye would never turn to mine with its mild inquiring glance, or its glad and roguish smile, was left among rough soldiers and rougher sailors on board of Christian's wandering fleet, exposed to danger and perhaps to insult; for when I was dead to whom could she turn with confidence for protection? And Gabrielle, too! Gabrielle, whom I had hoped to free and restore to her, would now be left hopelessly the prisoner of Merodé, exposed to greater perils, and such as it was impossible to consider with calmness or contemplate with patience.

Doubtless brave Ian Dhu might protect Ernestine and free Gabrielle, even as I would have done; but, remembering the dangers that surrounded him only an hour ago, and the musket shots I had heard, it was more than probable that he and all who were with him had fallen in combat, and were now lying in the ruined street--perhaps not twenty yards from me. Whether he and Kœningheim too had escaped, or perished by the explosion, was all a mystery to me; but the former seemed next to an impossibility; and I pictured the anguish of Ernestine when morning stole into the dull and comfortless cabin of the _Anna Catharina_--when the bright sun came to gladden the grey waters--when the waves rolled in light, and Denmark's flat but wooded shores were sparkling in the sunny haze--when hour after hour would steal away, and when I did not come! What would be her emotions when the terrible truth was told her by some survivor of our Raid to Kiel?

The atmosphere of the place gradually became closer and more difficult to inhale; at times I thought this was fancy--at others, reality; but perhaps my nervous and excited state exaggerated the truth. I thought with horror of the pangs of hunger and thirst to be endured before I should die; my fate, ignominious and unhonoured; my unshared, solitary, and unimagined agonies--even my grave might never be known. My death might be mourned for while I was yet alive; for I calculated on living for many days yet to come.

Again and again all these thoughts, and others of home and my dear native country, recurred to me; again and again they returned, each time with renewed poignancy and bitterness, and the anticipation of dying there unknown, was as bad for a time as those of hunger and thirst. The vulgar fear of being devoured by rats was not the least of my torments; for of these vermin, I had born in me a powerful and unconquerable aversion.

The air seemed to grow stifling. I shouted with that loud hallo which, many a time and oft, I had sent far through the Highland deer forests; but my own voice sounded dull and faint, as it was returned upon my ear.

Overburdened by thought and anxiety, my heart became sick and weary; my head ached as the oppression of the atmosphere became greater; and I have no doubt that the effect of my recent wound--the contusion received at Eckernfiörd--greatly contributed to exaggerate all that the darkness, mystery, loneliness, and the anticipation of a most horrible death, could produce on an active imagination.

The Imperialists would think no more of me than of the last year's leaves; and the idea of their digging for me, even if Kœningheim escaped, seemed simply absurd.

I endeavoured to picture the slow agonies of a death by hunger and thirst, but shrunk from the task, and remembered to have heard my mother tell me, that when David Duke of Rothesay was found dead in the vault of Falkland-tower, in his hunger and madness he had gnawed and torn with his teeth the flesh from his left arm. Could I ever be reduced to such a state?

My bones might lie for ten, twenty, or even a hundred years, before discovery; and I thought grimly of the speculation they might excite, when some grave pathologist delivered his opinion, and when men spoke of the wars of other times--those wars of which their sires had spoken, and in which their grandsires fought; and I remembered the various instances of bones being brought to light under similar circumstances, and under my own observation, the vague mystery and fear with which these poor reliques of humanity were regarded by those who endeavoured in vain to conjecture the story that belonged to them; the crime perpetrated, or the wrong endured--the story that none could tell, and which would never be known until the last trumpet rent the earth to its centre.

I began to feel weak, helpless, and confused, and listened with agonised intensity to catch any sound, however distant; and then, as before, it seemed as if many a voice with which I was familiar came to me. My mind wandered, I imagined myself again on board the king's ship, and amid the smoke, carnage, and boom of the cannonade. Then came other ideas of strife--an imaginary conflict; Ian with his eagle's plume, red-bearded Angus M'Alpine, Kildon with his M'Kenzies, M'Coll of that Ilk, and all the gallant hearts of our regiment were by my side. I heard the yell of Torquil's pipe; I saw the tartans waving, the red musketry flashing as its echoes rolled over hill and valley; I saw the gleam of steel, and felt the glow of the bright warm sun of a summer noon, as it shone on the broad arena of a bloody battle. I brandished my sword--I shouted. Kœningheim was again before me; his steel rang on mine, and I was conscious that Bandolo, poniard in hand, was gliding near me like a serpent.

All this wild vision and its excitement evaporated, and I believe that I must have slept; for long after, on awakening once again to the horrors of that dark and living tomb, and worse than all to my own tormenting thoughts, I found myself lying on the damp ground.

Was it night or was it day on the upper earth? In that palpable darkness, no one could tell.

I listened, and heard my heart beating. At times I thought there came other sounds to me, in my loneliness. Once a horse's hoofs rang on the pavement; a dragoon had perhaps passed through an adjacent street. At another time I heard the faint note of a trumpet; and these sounds served but to increase my fretful eagerness to be free.

I do not think that I prayed aloud to Heaven to help me; but many a deep, pious, and fervent thought swelled my heart; and after a time I took courage, and searched my whole prison minutely again for some crack, joint, or cranny, by which a passage might be forced.

Around me the walls were as solid as stone could make them; above me were the oaken beams and jointed planks, rendered quite as solid and immovable by the superincumbent load of a fallen house.

I sat down again in despair. My head was still aching, and my breast was oppressed by the difficulty experienced in respiration; my weakness and helplessness increased; sensations of suffocation were coming on, and at length I lay on the earth in the belief that I was dying. My soul trembled at the terrible conviction that I was on the verge of eternity, and I endeavoured to pray, but my thoughts and words were all too incoherent for utterance.

Wild visions floated before me, with long blanks and pauses between; and during these blanks I now believe that I must have been insensible.

My tongue was parched and burning; then imaginary fountains of pure water gushed and sparkled in the sunshine, as they poured over cool and mossy rocks into deep and shady dells; in some instances, when I approached them, the water seemed to vanish, and the bare and arid rock alone remained; in others, I was bound and fettered hand and foot, unable to move, and saw the gurgling water winding between flowery borders into the shady recesses of a wooded dell. I stretched my hands towards it; but a mighty incubus weighed down my limbs, then the vision passed away, and I lay prostrate and gasping amid a dark, a moist, and noxious atmosphere.

Many hours must thus have passed away--not less, perhaps, than six-and-thirty. I imagined that Ernestine spoke to me from time to time, and I heard her voice coming as from a vast distance. She was laughing, and we were among summer fields where the yellow corn was waving; where the green trees rustled their heavy foliage in the warm breeze, and the glossy ravens were wheeling aloft into a blue and sunny sky.

Then I heard the sound of other voices, the clink of axes and grating of shovels; I thought that the hour of deliverance was at hand; that I was about to be dug out, and restored to the upper world, and I laughed with joy. The German soldiers were jesting and singing at their work, as they seemed to draw nearer and nearer to me.

Then I heard Kœningheim say that their labour was in vain, and might be relinquished, for by this time I must assuredly be dead--and I heard them retire! Methought I strove to shout, to let them hear that I still lived, but my tongue clove to the roof of my parched throat--my hard and baked lips refused their office, and the horror of the dream awoke me for an instant to the life I had been assured was gradually passing away from me.

Still the same darkness, the same solemn stillness, the same mysterious and horrible abandonment. I sank again; but the old vision returned with the clank of shovels and axes, the rattle of stones and crow-bars, with a laugh or an oath, as the German pioneers cleared away the rubbish, till their feet and implements sounded distinctly on the planks of oak. Oh! it was a delicious and a joyous dream!

Then all at once there burst upon my half-blinded eyes a stream of glorious sunlight, with the pure and refreshing air, as one pickaxe was inserted, and a plank torn up; then, but not till then, did I learn that it was no dream, but a dear reality, and that I was saved! I heard three or four soldiers drop after each other into the pit; strong hands were laid upon me, and I was lifted up from among the ruins; then a horn of Neckar wine was given me, for I was faint and trembling. I soon revived, but with the utmost difficulty retained my eyes open, after such a long immersion in Cimmerian gloom; and I was so feeble, that Kœningheim and one of his officers had to support me between them, as they conveyed me through the ruined street towards the castle of Kiel.