Part 52

"May God preserve you both!" answered the girl.

As he walked away Roddy turned and shifted his light for what he knew might be his last look at her. He saw her, standing erect as a lance, her eyes flashing. Her lips were moving and upon her breast her fingers traced the sign of the cross.

Roddy waited until his watch showed a minute to nine o'clock. To meet the report of the next gun, he delayed a half-minute longer, and then lit the fuse, and, running back, flattened himself against the side of the tunnel. There was at last a dull, rumbling roar and a great crash of falling rock. Roddy raced to the sound and saw in the wall a gaping, black hole. Through it, from the other side, lights showed dimly. In the tunnel he was choked with a cloud of powdered cement. He leaped through this and, stumbling over a mass of broken stone, found himself in the cell. Except for the breach in the wall the explosion had in no way disturbed it. The furniture was in place, a book lay untouched upon the table; in the draft from the tunnel the candles flickered drunkenly. But of the man for whom he sought, for whom he was risking his life, there was no sign. With a cry of amazement and alarm Roddy ran to the iron door of the cell. It was locked and bolted. Now that the wall no longer deadened the sound his ears were assailed by all the fierce clamor of the battle. Rolling toward him down the stone corridor came the splitting roar of the siege guns, the rattle of rifle fire, the shouts of men. Against these sounds, he recognized that the noise of the explosion had carried no farther than the limits of the cell, or had been confused with the tumult overhead. He knew, therefore, that from that source he need not fear discovery. But in the light of the greater fact that his attempt at rescue had failed, his own immediate safety became of little consequence. He turned and peered more closely into each corner of the cell. The clouds of cement thrown up by the dynamite had settled; and, hidden by the table, Roddy now saw, huddled on the stone floor, with his back against the wall, the figure of a man. With a cry of relief and concern, Roddy ran toward him and flashed his torch. It was Vicenti. The face of the young doctor was bloodless, his eyes wild and staring. He raised them imploringly.

"Go!" he whispered. His voice was weak and racked with pain. "Some one has betrayed us. They know everything!"

Roddy exclaimed furiously, and, for an instant, his mind was torn with doubts.

"And you!" he demanded. "Why are you here?"

Vicenti, reading the suspicion in his eyes, raised his hands; the pantomime was sufficiently eloquent. In deep circles around his wrists were new, raw wounds.

"They tried to make me tell," he whispered. "They think you're coming in the launch. You, with the others. When I wouldn't answer, they put me here. It was their jest. You were to find me instead of the other. They are waiting now on the ramparts above us, waiting for you to come in the launch. They know nothing of the tunnel."

Roddy's eyes were fixed in horror on the bleeding wrists.

"They tortured you!" he cried.

"I fainted. When I came to," whispered the doctor, "I found myself locked in here. For God's sake," he pleaded, "save yourself!"

"And Rojas?" demanded Roddy.

"That is impossible!" returned Vicenti, answering Roddy's thought. "He is in another cell, far removed, the last one, in this corridor."

"In this corridor!" demanded Roddy.

Vicenti feebly reached out his hand and seized Roddy's arm.

"It is impossible!" he pleaded. "You can't get out of this cell."

"I will get out of it the same way I got in," answered Roddy. "Can you walk?"

With his eyes, Vicenti measured the distance to the breach in the wall.

"Help me!" he begged.

Roddy lifted him to his feet and, with his arm around him, supported him into the tunnel. From his flask he gave him brandy, and Vicenti nodded gratefully.

"Further on," directed Roddy, "you will find Señorita Rojas. Tell her she must go at once. Don't let her know that I am going after her father."

"It is madness!" cried Vicenti. "The turnkey is in the corridor, and at any moment they may come to assassinate Rojas."

"Then I've no time to waste," exclaimed Roddy. "Get the Señorita and yourself out of the tunnel, and get out quick!"

"But you?" pleaded Vicenti. "You can do nothing."

"If I must," answered Roddy, "I can blow the whole damn fort to pieces!"

He ran to the spot where McKildrick had placed the extra explosives. With these and the hand-drill, the sledge, and carrying his hat filled with clay, he again climbed through the breach into the cell. The fierceness of the attack upon the fort had redoubled, and to repulse it the entire strength of the garrison had been summoned to the ramparts, leaving, so far as Roddy could see through the bars, the corridor unguarded. The door of the cell hung on three trunnions, and around the lowest hinge the weight of the iron door had loosened the lead and cement in which, many years before, it had been imbedded. With his drill, Roddy increased the opening to one large enough to receive the fingers of his hand and into it welded a stick of dynamite. To this he affixed a cap and fuse, and clapping on his tamp of clay, lit the fuse, and ran into the tunnel. He had cut the fuse to half-length, and he had not long to wait. With a roar that shook the cell and echoed down the corridor, that portion of the wall on which the bars hung was torn apart, and the cell door, like a giant gridiron, fell sprawling across the corridor. Roddy could not restrain a lonely cheer. So long as the battle drowned out the noise of the explosions and called from that part of the prison all those who might oppose him, the rescue of Rojas again seemed feasible. With another charge of dynamite the last cell in the corridor could be blown open, and Rojas would be free. But Roddy was no longer allowed, undisturbed, to blast his way to success. Almost before the iron door had struck the floor of the corridor there leaped into the opening the burly figure of the turnkey. In one hand he held a revolver, in the other a lantern. Lifting the lantern above his head, he stood balancing himself upon the fallen grating. Hanging to his belt, Roddy saw a bunch of keys. The sight of the keys went to his head like swift poison. For them he suddenly felt himself capable of murder. The dust hung in a cloud between the two men, and before the turnkey could prepare for the attack Roddy had flung himself on him and, twisting the bones of his wrist, had taken the revolver. With one hand on the throat of the turnkey he shoved the revolver up under his chin until the circle of steel sank into the flesh.

"Don't cry out!" whispered Roddy. "Do as I tell you, or I'll blow your head off. Take me to the cell of General Rojas!"

Brave as the man had been the moment before, the kiss of the cold muzzle turned his purpose to ice. The desire to live was all-compelling. Choking, gasping, his eyes rolling appealingly, he nodded assent. With the revolver at his back he ran down the corridor, and, as he ran, without further direction, fumbled frantically at his keys. At the end of the corridor he separated one from the others, and with a trembling hand unlocked and pushed open a cell door.