Had either of us but known it, Osman and his men were close at hand; a brave handful observing the fort and all who came or left, at first from a distance, and later, as dusk fell, creeping forward to lie hidden beneath the gates themselves. Every scrap of shadow was pressed into service as they sought to learn what they could, both of my fate and of the plans of their adversaries; and, since the very presence of others on the island was as yet unsuspected, let alone the existence of alert ears within a stone's-throw of the walls, Osman contrived to learn a great deal, though little that seemed of immediate import.

Of myself, he could establish almost nothing beyond doubt, for so far as he could tell I had slipped through their fingers entirely, and none who spoke had any real knowledge of my whereabouts, or even if I were still within the fort. The manner, however, of my presumed escape was of a nature calculated to interest Danik exceedingly, if events should lead the company of the Avalanche to seek entrance by a secret stair; the more so as it seemed successive search parties, starting from that point, had trampled up the ground to such a degree that what had once been secret was now known to every man in the fort, and by daylight would no doubt be plain for any stranger's eye to read.

Nothing, however, could be done at night, not even after moonrise. It was not, therefore, until the following day, at nine or ten of the clock, when the two parties met again for their appointed rendezvous, that Danik learned of the news — and under circumstances calculated to drive it instantly from his mind.

"What was that?" He'd broken off his sentence in mid-word, and Osman, likewise arrested by the distant sound, was looking very grim. A glance between them confirmed Danik's worst fears.

"Small-arms fire —" he listened a moment longer — "and from the Avalanche!" They looked at each other again, and then at those around them; in the next instant, the whole shore party had begun to run.

Left on board a vessel at anchor, together with a skeleton crew, while the most part of the ship's company had taken the boats ashore and gone to search for Maman, Jehan had not yet found time to become tired of this new adventure. With the ship lying idle between the cliffs there was little work to do, and those crewmen left aboard were only too glad to amuse the child with tales, or let him watch the crafts taking place between their own skilled hands. In the placid waters of the bay, he'd been permitted to explore places within the ship that had always been forbidden before — the close-packed casks within the hold and the massive, treacherous coils of the anchor-chain within the chain-locker, whose shifting coils at sea could break a man's limb with ease or crush his lungs if he slipped and fell. He'd even been allowed to climb the masts, with young Reinhardt at his side to aid him if he froze, and to thrust him upwards where the rungs of the rigging were stretched too far apart for his childish reach.

It was from the lookout's lofty perch that he'd first seen the strange men coming down to the cove. He'd pointed them out to Reinhardt, who'd gone very quiet, and seemed in a great hurry to get them both down to the deck as quickly as might be. But by the time he'd struggled down the last taut-braced stretch of rope, the visitors were quite clearly visible even from the deck and didn't seem very friendly; and it occurred to him for the first time that the people on this island might think that the Avalanche had no right to be here....

"Get below!" The big sailor pulled at his arm, roughly. He'd never seemed to like Jehan very much; his name was Pawitsch, the boy remembered... and looking at him now, he understood for the first time what it was he'd seen on every face on the deck. The men were afraid — afraid not only because there were far more men on the shore than there were here, but afraid because of him, Jehan. Because he was here, and they'd been told to look after him, and they weren't going to be able to...

"Go on — get down. Get out of sight!" Pawitsch shoved him again. "Don't come out. No matter what happens, whatever you hear, whatever they say — don't come out. Do you understand?"

Jehan nodded and swallowed hard, not comprehending the look in the big man's eyes. Then he turned and ran, trying not to cry. Even as he left the deck, he heard the first gun-shots from the shore.

Of the capture of the Avalanche — how her tiny band of defenders fought and fell, how her own boats were used to board her, and how the last resistance was hunted down below-decks — Jehan knew mercifully little and remembered less. The picture that overwhelmed all the others, so that it was all he could see even when he had forgotten that day save in his dreams, was the moment when, darting from his hiding-place aghast, he had stumbled upon big Pawitsch lying face-up on the lower deck, most horribly and definitely dead. A cutlass-slash had opened his throat from ear to ear.

When all on board was finally quiet, and every hiding-place scoured to check for missing crew, and those who were found still living had been shipped ashore and carried up to to the fort, Jehan de la Tour was still crouched in a tiny corner behind the anchor-chain, shivering, not daring even to sob. Barely a hundred metres away across the bay, the shore held Danik, and Maman, and everyone from the ship who was still alive. But without help he had no way to warn them, or even to escape. Even if he could have reached the water, unaided he could not swim.

"Don't come out," Pawitsch had warned him, "don't come out." Danik would come back soon. He had to believe that. Danik, who had saved him from those men who'd stolen him away from home with lies — who was even now rescuing Maman —

But seven years old though he might be, Jehan was no fool. Even Danik of Ruritania could not lead his men in an attack across a hundred metres of open water under fire. The men who were up on deck now were shooting at every movement on the shore, be it bird or beast or wind, their nerves constantly on the alert. Danik wouldn't stand a chance... unless somehow the invaders could be got to look the other way, even for a minute or two....

By Danilo's telling, my Jeannot saved dozens of lives; indeed, by his account, without the child it might have proved impossible to retake the ship, to our great loss and perchance to our utter ruin. As to whether that be truth, I cannot say; for he had Jehan by him at the time, and the light in the boy's eyes at the praise was such that neither he nor I could have borne to quench it by a shadow of doubt.

It was bravely done, without question. Jehan contrived to creep down onto the anchor chain and there signal to the shore, being in such a place that Danik and those ashore could see him and those aboard could not. Then, trusting that Danik had guessed his intention, he slipped on deck and ran out shouting, in childish defiance.

It could not last long. It did not; although, being both small and quick and his presence unsuspected in the least, he profited by his pursuers' surprise to evade their grasp and stage a merry chase around the deck. He could do them no harm, and in all justice they would not have drawn steel upon a child — but it was within his power to draw all eyes towards the pursuit, and this he did. To such success, indeed, that the swimmers from the shore gained the ship's side entirely unnoticed, even by those posted to guard against just such an event; and the brief battle for recapture which followed was all but decided before it began.

One thing, however, was beyond doubt. The presence of the Avalanche, and that of her crew, could no longer be assumed to be unknown. Even if the initial capture of the ship had been mischance, with a search party happening upon the cove where she lay — a guess later confirmed — by now, news of the interlopers would have reached the fort, together with those prisoners who had survived. Danik could no longer keep his small force in reserve. He must act openly — or retreat; and for the Ruritanians, the second of those alternatives was not even to be considered...

It was at this moment, when questioning Jehan as to the fate of his missing crew, that Danik remembered again Osman's discoveries of the previous night; and they served only to cement his resolve. The prisoners lay within the fort. L'Aiglonne too might lie concealed there, for all its inhabitants knew — and, it seemed, there was another entrance, which might prove easier of access than the guarded gate.

His orders were simple. The Avalanche would set sail, for some closer cove. Danik, Osman, and all those who could be spared, would make a direct raid upon their enemy's stronghold. Their missing shipmates would be found — and if L'Aiglonne were still on the island, they should make her such a signal as none could overlook.

Nor would our enemies have overlooked it — though, as ever, Danilo doubtless spared scant thought for that! But what would have quenched even his spirit, had he known, was that not one whisper of the bright defiance he planned could have reached me, were he to set the whole fort by the ears. I remained upon the island indeed; but entombed so fast within the stone that he could have passed within an arm's-length of my prison and never known. When I had awoken, in the hours before dawn, it had been to despair.

Yet when the first paroxysm of my tears had passed, and I lay half-fainting in the depths of that stone box which seemed to bid fair to become my own tomb, a strange clarity came over my thoughts even as I resigned myself to my fate. Providence had not seen fit to deliver me in my sleep, despite the struggles that had all but stifled me with foul air. Even as the cracks had admitted indirectly the soldiers' light, so, during the hours of my oblivion, must they have replenished the atmosphere in which I lay. If I had lived this long, then I need have no fear of suffocation, unless by some violent act.

Thirst was another matter. Already my throat was parched and aching, as much from the frantic cries to which I had given vent as from lack of water, and I found myself begrudging the very tears which were drying upon my cheeks. Thirst would rob me of what strength I had, and with it, all chance of escape. If anything was to be done, then I must act quickly, while force still remained to my limbs.

I set myself first of all to take stock of my situation, reckoning up what resources lay within my grasp. Lapse of time — I will not say custom — had served to deaden the abhorrent nature of my couch, and I felt about now with my hands among the bones to learn what sort of burial this had been, with scarce a thought for the corruption and decay to which they had been subject.

Too much, perhaps to hope for a crowbar among the grave-goods; but by the end of my explorations I had been brought almost to wish that our Christian dead were interred like the ancient Egyptians, with the tools of their household around them. The woman of times past with whom I shared my confinement — I divined her sex not so much from the slenderness of her bones, which I fear had become sadly splintered in my earlier struggles, but from the nature of those few ornaments I found — this woman, then, who had first been buried in this casket had taken nothing with her to the grave save the fragments of her shroud and a tangle of delicate chain I guessed to have been a necklace. A plain band might have been a wedding-ring; two rounded loops were earrings in the Spanish style.

My heart leapt when I felt a sturdy hilt of metal under my hand; but ere my surmise as to the reason for the presence of such a weapon in a lady's tomb could venture beyond its wild beginning, the truth of the matter was borne in upon me, almost with a smile. It was that same broken blade with which I had prised at the secret doorway that led me here, and had carried unthinking with me into the cliff and concealment, only to let fall, forgotten, in the frenzy of my first attempts to escape. I myself had brought it to this place.

Yet however it came so aptly to my hand, the stout metal of my new-found tool offered the first hope that I had yet encountered, and I began to set my mind in earnest towards devising some escape. The lid of my coffin was not by any means close-fitting; yet the centre was of double-thickness, such that it bedded down securely between the walls, while its weight rested upon the slender lip of the outer rim, and could not be slid sideways, but only raised upward by steady pressure or by some sharp shock akin to that which I had first delivered when I stumbled and fell.

It was this circumstance which had trapped me. While it lay within my power to raise the weight of the lid and swing it aside, the double burden of the second slab, cast carelessly down atop my refuge, proved more than I could lift. As I had learned to my cost in the choking terror of that first hour, were I to pit the utmost of my strength against that stone it would yield to me but a crack. I could stir the slab, but not enough to lift it free.

I tried my powers once more against my prison, and heard the dull sound as the weight dropped home as if it were a sudden groan. I could not do it — not in desperation, nor even yet in cool-headed striving. If the lid was to be raised, it must be by some other means... or — the idea sprang to life like Minerva from the head of Jove, full-born — or else... by slow degrees. If I could but keep that great mass from falling back, when once I had begun to raise it —

My breast was beating wildly in this access of sudden hope. All at once, I forgot my thirst and my foul state, in my eagerness to put it to trial. Setting the broken blade-end of my knife against the join above my head, I summoned all my strength braced against that cramped space in which I lay, and heaved. The stone yielded; and the knife-blade slid into the crack. Give me but a lever, and I will move the world.... I had my lever — yet, as the first few moments told me, it was scarcely sufficient to the task.

I will not dwell in over-great length upon the hours that followed, though they are branded on my heart with letters of flame. Hours of hope, and despair, and aching toil, as one sliver of steel after another shattered in the grip of that terrible vice, until it came to me at last to use the only material I had to hand — those poor fragments of shattered bone.... I pray God may forgive me. As to that long-gone lady, she at least has no more need of her earthly housing where she is now; and I trust she will look down on me with indulgence for my need. I can touch her chain now, here about my neck, where I set it that day for safe-keeping. I wear it in memory of her, and of what I owe, and hope some day to find her name.

When I began upon that dreadful labour, I had woken restored to all but my full strength. For all that, I knew full well it could not last, and indeed so it proved as thirst and close confinement took their toll. The hours blurred into spasms of exertion separated only by eternities of gasping rest, as the blood beat in my ears and the air seemed to thicken around me, and day and night were swallowed up in the endless, ageless blackness all around. My voice was long since parched, and when I sought to urge myself to greater efforts, it was in a death-like croak. In raising up the coffin-lid upon a bed of the very grave-dust around me, I was perforce sealing off the better part of those cracks which supplied me with life-giving air, yet I dared not halt, for I knew that delay could only weaken what endurance remained.

Every time I forced myself up from exhausted drowsing, my strength seemed to have ebbed a little further. If I could not win my way to freedom ere it was all spent, I would remain here, helpless, until my bloated tongue should choke me and my eye-sockets shrivel.... I have seen men dying of thirst. Life in these our islands is counted cheap; but it is an end I would not wish upon a dog.

I would not let myself think of it. The great stone was packed up now, grain by grain, upon the lip of freedom. Five or six more thrusts, and the recess would no longer hold it, and I could swing the weight aside. I judged that to remain within my powers — barely.