22 
LAND & WATER 
February i, 1917 
{Continued from page 22) 
" I shall not go," she went on, " but I want you to be of 
one mind with me. Tell me that you agree." 
" Yes," he said, " I agree." 
" What is it, Patrice ? You seem distraught again." 
He gave a hoarse cry : 
" Look ! . . . Look ! . . ." 
Tliis time he was certain of what he had seen. The ladder 
was going up. The ten minutes were over. 
He rushed forward and caught hold of one of the rungs. 
The ladder no longer moved. 
He did not know exactly what he intended to do. The 
ladder afforded CoraUe's only chance of safety. Could he 
abandon that hope and resign himself to the inevitable ? 
One or two minutes passed. The ladder must have been 
hooked fast again, for Patrice felt a firm resistance up above. 
Coralie was entreating him : 
" Patrice," she asked, " Patrice, what are you hoping for ? " 
He looked around and above him, as though seeking an 
idea, and he seemed also to look inside himself, as though he 
were seeking that idea amid all the memories which he had 
accumulated at the moment when his father also held the 
ladder, in a last effort of will. And suddenly, throwing up his 
leg, he placed his left foot on the fifth rung of the ladder and 
began to raise himself by the uprights. 
It was an absurd attempt to scale the ladder, to reach the 
skylight, to lay hold of the enemy and thus save himself and 
CoraUe. If his father had failed before him, how could he 
hofje to succeed ? 
It was all over in less than three seconds. The ladder was 
at once unfastened from the hook that kept it hanging from 
the skylight ; and Patrice and the ladder came to the ground 
together. At the same time, a strident laugh rang out above, 
followed the next moment by the sound of the skylight closing. 
Patrice picked himself up in a fury, hurled insults at the 
enemy and, as his rage increased, fired two revolver shots, 
which broke two of the panes. He next attacked the door 
and windows, banging at them with the iron dog which he 
had taken from the fender. He hit the walls, he hit the floor, 
he shook his fist at the invisible enemy who was mocking 
him. But suddenly, after a few blows struck at space, he 
was compelled to stop. Something like a tliick veil had glided 
overhead. They were in the dark. 
He understood what had happened. The enemy had 
lowered a shutter upon the skylight, covering it entirely, 
y Patrice ! Oh, Patrice ! Where are you ? " 
Their hands touched, Coralie's poor Uttle frozen fingers 
and Patrice's hands that burned with fever, and they pressed 
each other and twined together and clutched each other as 
though to assure themselves that they were still living. 
" Oh, don't leave me, Patrice ! " Coralie implored. 
" I am here," he replied. " Have no fear : they can't 
separate us." 
" You are right," she panted, " they can't separate us. , 
We are in our grave." 
The word was so terrible and Coralie uttered it so mourn- 
■fully that a reaction overtook Patrice. 
" No 1 What are you talking about," he exclaimed. " We 
must not despair. There is hope of safety until the last 
moment." 
Releasing one of his hands, he took aim with his revolver. 
A few faint rays trickled through the chinks around the sky- 
light. He fired three times. They heard the crack of the 
wood-work and the chuckle of the enemy. But the shutter 
must have been lined with metal, for no split appeared. 
Besides, the chinks were forthwith stopped up ; and they 
became aware that the enemy was engaged in the same work 
that he had performed around the doors and windows. It 
was obviously very thorough and took a long time in the 
doing. Next came another work, completing the first. The 
enemy was naihng the shutter to the frame of the skyhght. 
It was an awful sound ! Swift and light as were the taps 
of the hammer, they seemed to drive deep into the brain of 
those who heard them. It was their coffin that was being 
nailed down, their great coffin with a lid hermetically sealed 
that now bore heavy upon them. Tliere was no hope l-ft, 
not a possible chance of escape. Each tap of the hammer 
■strengthened their dark prison, making yet more impregnable 
the walls that stood between them and the outer world and 
bade defiance to the most resolute assault : 
" Patrice," stammered Coralie, " I'm frightened. . . That 
tapping hurts me so ! " 
She sank back in liis arms. Patrice felt tears coursing 
down her cheeks. 
Meanwhile, the work overhead was being completed. 
They underwent the terrible experience which condemned 
men must feel on the morning of their last day, when from 
their cells they hear the preparations: the engine that is 
being set up, or the electric batteries that are being tested. 
" Don't leave me," sobbed Coralie, " don't leave me ! . . ." 
" Only for a second or two," he said, " We must be avenged 
later." 
" What is the use, Patrice ? What can it matter to us ? " 
He had a box containing a few matches. Lighting them one 
after the other, he led Coralie to the panel with the in- 
scription. 
" Wliat are you going to do ? " she asked. 
" I will not have our death put down to suicide. T want 
to do what our parents did before us and to prepare for the 
future. Someone will read what I am going to write and will 
avenge us." 
He took a pencil from his pocket and bent down. There 
was a free space, right at the bottom of the panel. He wrote : 
" Patrice Belval and Coralie, his betrothed, die the same 
death, murdered by Simeon Diodokis, 14th April 1915." 
But, as he finished writing, he noticed a few words of 
the former inscription which he had not yet read, because 
they were placed outside it, so to speak, and did not appear 
to form part of it. 
" One more match," he said. " Did you see ? There 
are some words there, the last, no doubt, that my father wrote." 
She struck a match. By the flickering Ught they made 
out a certain number of misshapen letters, obviously written 
in a hurry and forming two words : ' 
"Asphyxiated . . ..Oxide . . ." 
The match went out. They rose in silence. Asphyxiated I 
They understood. That was how their parents had perished 
and how they themselves would perish. But they did not 
yet fuUy realize how the thing would happen. The lack 
of air would never be great enough to suffocate them in 
this large room which contained enough to last them for 
many days. 
" Unless," muttered Patrice, " imless the quaKty of the 
air can be impaired and therefore . . ." 
He stopped. Then told Coralie what he sospected, or 
rather what conformed so well with the reaUty as to leave no 
room for doubt. He had seen in old Simeon's cupboard 
not only the rope-ladder which the madman had brought 
with him, but also a coil of lead pipes. And now Simeon's 
behaviour from the moment when they were locked in, hii 
movements to and fro around the lodge, the care with which 
he had stopped up every crevice, his labours along the wall 
and on the roof all this was explained in the most 
definite fashion. 
Panic-stricken, they began to run aimlessly about the room, 
holding hands, while their disordered brains, bereft of thought 
or will, seemed Uke tiny things shaken by the fiercest gale. 
Coralie uttered incoherent words. Patrice, while imploring 
her to keep calm, was himself carried away by the storm and 
powerless to resist the terrible agony of the darkness wherein 
death lay waiting. 
They stopped, exhausted. A low hiss was heard some- 
where in the room, the faint hiss that issues from a badly- 
closed gas-jet. They hstened and perceived that it came 
from above. The torture was beginning. 
" It will last half an hour, or an hoiu" at most," Patrice 
whispered. 
Coralie had recovered her self-consciousness : 
" We shall be brave," she said. 
She suddenly appeared so placid that he on his side wa» 
filled with a great peace. Seated on a sofa, their fingers 
still entwined, they silently steeped themselves in the mighty 
calm which comes when we think that events have run theii 
course. 
They sat wrapped in an infinite silence. They perceived 
the first smell of gas descending but they felt no fear. 
" Everything will happen as it did before, Coralie," whis- 
pered Patrice, " down to the very last second. Your mother 
and my father, who loved each other as we do, also died in 
each other's arms, with their lips joined together. They had 
decided to unite us and they have united us." 
Our grave will be near theirs," she murmured. 
Little by little their ideas became confused and they began 
to think much as a man sees through a rising mist. The 
dread of the coming annihilation faded out of their thoughts. 
Coralie, the first to be affected, began to utter delirious 
words which astonished Patrice at first : 
" Dearest, there are flowers falling, roses all around us. 
How delightful ! " 
Presently he himself grew conscious of the same blissful 
exaltation, expressing itself in tenderness and joyful emotion. 
With no sort of dismay he felt her gradually yielding in his 
arms and abandoning herself ; and he had the impression that 
he was following her down a measureless abyss, all bathed 
with light, where they floated. 
And suddenly, worn out, his body shaking with fever, 
he pitched forward into a great black pit . . . 
('To be continued.) 
