In space other worlds might have crumbled into ruin; on earth the stories of empires might have been written and the lives of men grown old in those first century-long seconds in which John Aldous held his breath and waited after the chiming of the hour-bell in the watch on the cavern floor. How long he waited he did not know; how closely he was crushing Joanne to his breast he did not realize. Seconds, minutes, and other minutes--and his brain ran red in dumb, silent madness. And the watch! It _ticked, ticked, ticked!_ It was like a hammer.
He had heard the sound of it first coming up through her hair. But it was not in her hair now. It was over him, about him--it was no longer a ticking, but a throb, a steady, jarring, beating throb. It grew louder, and the air stirred with it. He lifted his head. With the eyes of a madman he stared--and listened. His arms relaxed from about Joanne, and she slipped crumpled and lifeless to the floor. He stared--and that steady _beat-beat-beat_--a hundred times louder than the ticking of a watch--pounded in his brain. Was he mad? He staggered to the choked mouth of the tunnel, and then there fell shout upon shout, and shriek upon shriek from his lips, and twice, like a madman now, he ran back to Joanne and caught her up in his arms, calling and sobbing her name, and then shouting--and calling her name again. She moved; her eyes opened, and like one gazing upon the spirit of the dead she looked into the face of John Aldous, a madman's face in the lantern-glow.
She put up her hands, and with a cry he ran with her in his arms to the choked tunnel.
"Listen! Listen!" he cried wildly. "Dear God in Heaven, Joanne--can you not hear them? It's Blackton--Blackton and his men! Hear--hear the rock-hammers smashing! Joanne--Joanne--we are saved!"
She did not sense him. She swayed, half on her feet, half in his arms, as consciousness and reason returned to her. Dazedly her hands went to his face in their old, sweet way. Aldous saw her struggling to understand--to comprehend; and he kissed her soft upturned lips, fighting back the excitement that made him want to raise his voice again in wild and joyous shouting.
"It is Blackton!" he said over and over again. "It is Blackton and his men! Listen!--you can hear their picks and the pounding of their rock-hammers!"