Chapter X: Romance in the Sight of Death
28. The next page of the diary is badly blurred and torn, but the
following can be made out:
"We are all about played out.... The boy is exhausted and lying over
in a little excavation upon his sisters' wraps, his fingers bleeding
and one eye blinded with the sand.... The passageway behind us is
almost closed up.... In front of us we have hit a solid wall.... The
exhausted mother is binding her boy's hands with a portion of her
petticoat.... As she kneels there, with the faint flicker of a light
falling on her finely chiseled profile, she resembles Botticelli's
magnificent Madonna in the Uffizi Gallery at Florence.... The
picture is completed by the dark background and the solicitous
attitude of the girls as they cluster around the sufferer.... With a
little imagination one can delineate the jeweled crown which the two
girlish angels are holding above her head.... Pathos, resignation and
a sort of recreating FAITH are painted against that threatening wall
and overhanging dirt.... If that should fall WE ARE ALL BOUND TO
SUFFOCATE before any help can come.... My 'prisoner' is not a bit
discouraged, however.... He is using his jackknife against the
concrete wall with great patience and whistling softly and slowly an
air from 'The Blessing of the Waters.'... WATER!... I know those
girls are CHOKING for a drink as I have been for the last ten hours
myself.... Still, not one of them has murmured at our grief and
Anastasie has become quite chummy in pretending to cheer ME up.... Aristocracy or Royalty, even, with Democracy in a tunnel, makes us ALL of one size! Under certain conditions a man of my education and family connections MIGHT be privileged to forget the veiled lady of Buckingham and accept these endearing little attentions with some guarantee of hope.... But WHAT IF WE ALL ARE BURIED HERE like the happy families of Herculaneum and Pompeii?... Future inquisitive scientists may find this diary with our bones and classify us as a species of an extinct Tartar tribe!... The wall my prisoner is gouging out seems to be getting wet...."
29. Then there follows the entry:
"Water has burst through the hole my prisoner has been making in that wall!..."
30. The next entry has been evidently water-soaked and is entirely
blotted out.
31. This entry seems sufficiently distinct to make out what the writer
has been through:
"I tried in the foregoing to jot down enough of what was happening
to enable anyone who would find our bodies to make out how we had
died.... What I forgot to record in the excitement I'll put down
now.... When the wall caved in and the water burst down upon us it
seemed that we would soon be drowned alive.... The small hole in the
wall had allowed enough water to filter through at first to slake
our thirst and make us all quite happy.... But gradually the ground
beneath us became damp and sticky and the blue mud clung to our shoes
like glue until we could hardly move.... The little air that crept
in with the water, though, was a positive blessing to us all.... We
should have stifled.... Finally the water ceased and our hearts began
to sink....
"... It was Maria who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today.... With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall.... Suddenly the wall bulged inward.... There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,--and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell. Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits.... My 'prisoner' moved calmly over to the stately woman, who was holding up the boy, and patted her gently on the head. 'It will be all right, darling,' he said.... Then he kissed all his children and impulsively dashed in the direction of the cataract.
"... Struggling hard against the flood he worked his way nearer
and nearer toward the broken curbing and finally DOVE through the
waterspout and clung grimly to the wall.... For a moment his body
seemed to tremble.... Then with a supreme effort he pulled his body
into the opening and for a moment checked the flood.... It seemed like
a gallant sacrifice.... at the same time.... the girl, Maria, waded
back toward the opening that was NOW completely SEALED BY THE STICKY
CLAY and began to tear frantically at the bank....