THE page at last awoke from his stupor. With difficulty
he recalled his wandering senses. He sat up, and was
confronted everywhere by a darkness like that in sealed
tombs. Could he be blind? He rubbed his eyes, and
strained their vision; he saw nothing. Baffled in the appeal
to that sense, he resorted to another; he felt of his
head, arms, limbs, and was reassured: he not only lived,
but, save a few bruises, was sound of body. Then he extended
the examination; he felt of the floor, and, stretching
his arms right and left, discovered a wall, which, like the

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floor, was of masonry. The cold stone, responding to the
touch, sent its chill along his sluggish veins; the close air
made breathing hard; the silence, absolutely lifeless, — and
in that respect so unlike what we call silence in the outer
world, which, after all, is but the time chosen by small
things, the entities of the dust and grass and winds, for
their hymnal service, heard full-toned in heaven, if not by
us, — the dead, stagnant, unresonant silence, such as haunts
the depths of old mines and lingers in the sunken crypts of
abandoned castles, awed and overwhelmed his soul.

Where was he? How came he there? With head drooping,
and hands and arms resting limp upon the floor, weak
in body and spirit, he sat a long time motionless, struggling
to recall the past, which came slowly, enabling him to see
the race again with all its incidents: the enemy in rear, the
enemy in front; the temple stairs, with their offer of escape;
the azoteas, the court, the dash into the doorway under the
colonnade, — all came back slowly, I say, bringing a dread
that he was lost, and that, in a frantic effort to avoid death
in one form, he had run open-eyed to embrace it in another
even more horrible.

The dread gave him strength. He arose to his feet, and
stood awhile, straining his memory to recall the direction of
the door which had admitted him to the passage. Could he
find that door, he would wait a fitting time to slip from the
temple; for which he would trust the Mother and watch.
But now, what was done must needs be done quickly; for,
though but an ill-timed fancy, he thought he felt a sensation
of hunger, indicating that he had been a long time
lying there; how long, of course, he knew not.

Memory served him illy, or rather not at all; so that
nothing would do now but to feel his way out. O for a
light, if only a spark from a gunner's match, or the moony
gleam of a Cuban glow-worm!

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As every faculty was now alert, he was conscious of the
importance of the start; if that were in the wrong direction,
every inch would be from the door, and, possibly, toward
his grave. First, then, was he in a hall or a chamber? He
hoped the former, for then there would be but two directions
from which to choose; and if he took the wrong one, no
matter; he had only to keep on until the fact was made clear
by the trial, and then retrace his steps. “Thanks, O Holy
Mother! In the darkness thou art with thy children no less
than in the day!” And with the pious words, he crossed
himself, forehead and breast, and set about the work.

To find if he were in a passage, — that was the first point.
He laid his hand upon the wall again, and started in the
course most likely, as he believed, to take him to the daylight,
never before so beautiful to his mind.

The first step suggested a danger. There might be traps
in the floor. He had heard the question often at the campfire,
What is done with the bodies of the victims offered up
in the heathen worship? Some said they were eaten; others,
that there were vast receptacles for them in the ungodly
temples, — miles and miles of catacombs, filled with myriads
of bones of priests and victims. If he should step off into a
pit devoted to such a use! His hair bristled at the thought.
Carefully, slowly, therefore, his hands pressed against the
rough wall, his steps short, one foot advanced to feel the
way for the other, so he went, and such was the necessity.

Scarcely three steps on he found another dilemma. The
wall suddenly fell away under his hand; he had come to
the angle of a corner. He stopped to consider. Should he
follow the wall in its new course? It occurred to him that
the angle was made by a crossing of passages, that he was
then in the square of their intersection; so the chances of
finding the right outlet were three to one against him. He
was more than ever confused. Hope went into low ebb.

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Would he ever get out? Had he been missed in the old
palace? If hostilities had broken out, as intimated by the
prince Io', would his friends be permitted to look for him in
the city? The king was his friend, but, alas! his power had
been given to another. No, there was no help for him; he
must stay there as in his tomb, and die of hunger and thirst,—
die slowly, hour by hour, minute by minute. Already
the fever of famine was in his blood, — next to the fact is
the fancy. If his organism had begun to consume itself,
how long could he last? Never were moments so precious
to him. Each one carried off a fraction of the strength
upon which his escape depended; each one must, therefore,
be employed. No more loitering; action, action! In the
darkness he looked to heaven, and prayed tearfully to the
Mother.

The better to understand his situation, and what he did,
it may be well enough to say here, that the steps by which
he descended into the court-yard faced the west; and as,
from the court, he took shelter in a door to his right, the
passage must have run due north. When, upon recovery
from the fainting-spell, he started to regain the door, he was
still in the passage, but unhappily followed its continuation
northward; every step, in that course, consequently, was
so much into instead of out of the labyrinth. And now,
to make the situation worse, he weakly clung to the wall,
and at the corner turned to the right; after which his painful,
toilsome progress was to the east, where the chances
were sure to be complicated.

If the reader has ever tried to pass through a strange
hall totally darkened, he can imagine the young Spaniard
in motion. Each respiration, each movement, was doubly
loud; the slide and shuffle of the feet, changing position,
filled the rock-bound space with echoes, which, by a cooler
head than his, might have been made tell the width and

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height of the passage, and something of its depth. There
were times when the sounds seemed startlingly like the
noise of another person close by; then he would stop, lay
hand on his dagger, the only weapon he had, and listen nervously,
undetermined what to do.

In the course of the tedious movement, he came to narrow
apertures at intervals in the wall, which he surmised to be
doors of apartments. Before some of them he paused, thinking
they might be occupied; but nothing came from them,
or was heard within, but the hollow reverberations usual
to empty chambers. The crackle of cement underfoot and
the crevices in the wall filled with dust assured him that
a long time had passed since a saving hand had been there;
yet the evidences that the old pile had once been populous
made its present desertion all the more impressive.
Afterwhile he began to wish for the appearance of somebody,
though an enemy. Yet father on, when the awful
silence and darkness fully kindled his imagination, and gave
him for companionship the spirits of the pagans who had
once — how far back, who could say? — made the cells
animate with their prayers and orgies, the yearning for the
company of anything living and susceptible of association
became almost insupportable.

Several times, as he advanced, he came to cross passages.
Of the distance made, he could form no idea. Once he
descended a flight of steps, and at the bottom judged himself
a story below the level of the court and street; reflecting,
however, that he could not have clomb them on the
way in without some knowledge of them, he again paused
for consideration. The end of the passage was not reached:
he could not say the door he sought was not there; he simply
believed not; still he resolved to go back to the starting-point
and begin anew.

He set out bravely, and proceeded with less caution than

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in coming. Suddenly he stopped. He had neglected to
count the doors and intersecting passages along the way;
consequently he could not identify the starting-point when
he reached it. Merciful God! he was now indeed LOST!

For a time he struggled against the conviction; but when
the condition was actually realized, a paroxysm seized him.
He raised his hands wildly, and shouted, Ola! Ola! The
cry smote the walls near by until they rang again, and, flying
down the passage, died lingeringly in the many chambers,
leaving him so shaken by the discordance that he cowered
nearly to the floor, as if, instead of human help, he had conjured
a demon, and looked for its instant appearance. Summoning
all his resolution, he again shouted the challenge,
but with the same result; no reply except the mocking
echoes, no help. He was in a tomb, buried alive! And at
that moment, resulting doubtless from the fever of mind
and body, he was conscious of the first decided sensation
of thirst, accompanied by the thought of running water,
cool, sweet, and limpid; as if to add to his torture, he
saw then, not only that he was immured alive, but how
and of what he was to die. Then also he saw why his
enemies gave up the pursuit at the passage-door. Lost in
the depths of the Cû, out of reach of help, groping here
and there through the darkness, in hours condensing years
of suffering, dead, finally, of hunger and thirst, — was he
not as much a victim as if formally butchered by the teotuctli?
And if, in the eyes of the heathen god, suffering
made the sacrifice appreciable, when was there one more
perfect?

“No, no,” he cried, “I am a Christian, in care of
the Christian's God. I am too young, too strong. I can
walk; if need be, run; and there are hours and days before
me. I will find the door. Courage, courage! And
thou, dear, blessed Mother! if ever thou dost permit a

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shrine in the chapel of this heathen house, all that which
the Señor Hernan may apportion to me thou shalt have.
Hear my vow, O sweet Mother, and help me!”

How many heroisms, attributed to duty, or courage, or
some high passion, are in fact due to the utter hopelessness,
the blindness past seeing, the fainting of the soul called
despair! In that last motive what mighty energy! How it
now nerved Orteguilla! Down the passage he went, and with
alacrity. Not that he had a plan, or with the mind's eye
even saw the way, — not at all. He went because in motion
there was soothing to his very despair; in motion he
could make himself believe there was still a hope; in motion
he could expect each moment to hail the welcome door
and the glory of the light.