'You must have slept, otherwise you would surely know that you had already spent a night in this place.'
'When I found I couldn't get out,' he answered, 'I took to wandering in the darkness, and lost the light, and losing that, lost this corridor. I turned and plied and groped, and then my candle being burnt out, I sat down as I now sit, and I have no doubt I slept. I awoke, and began to grope my way along again, and after a long time my hands brought me to some entrance just down yonder, clear into the view of this orifice.'
'When you get out,' said she, smiling faintly, 'you will have had enough of the Devil's Walk.'
'I shall thank God for my escape, madam,' cried he, with real fervour, 'if it is only for your preservation. May I venture to ask the name of the good and heroic lady who has come at the risk of her life to release a man from a living tomb?'
'My father is Commander Conway, late of the Royal Navy--what he will think--what he will fear--the fruitless searches he will be making--I am his only child--he will suppose I have been overtaken by the tide and drowned. Yet they should still be looking for me there,' she exclaimed, gazing out to sea.
'No, madam, they wouldn't creep in the surf,' said he; 'they'd watch for the breakers to strand you. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Captain Jackman, late of the ship _Lovelace_, which arrived home a week or two ago. I left her, and having heard much of these parts, thought I would make a cruise to your neighbourhood, and a pretty cruise it has been.'
'No. I am supposed to descend from a good old English family.'
'Well, God must help us out. He must help us out, for it is too, _too_ awful,' she cried, burying her face.
'If people don't pass to-day, they will come along to-morrow,' said Captain Jackman; 'and I have got the voice of a lion.' Saying which, he stood up and sent 'Ship ahoy! For God's sake, help us,' slinging in ringing echoes across the troubled breast of the sea.
'Ay!' she exclaimed; 'but think what must pass between now and to-morrow.' She looked at her watch. 'Do you know the time?' she inquired.
'By the light in the west, I should say it is not far from six,' he answered.
'It is six,' she said, replacing her watch, 'and we have the night before us.'
