Adrift in Pacific and Other Great Adventures – 17 Titles in One Volume (Illustrated Edition). Jules Verne
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embrasure. With his knife Franz managed to get the round part off, working noiselessly, and stopping now and then to listen and make sure that nothing was moving on the other side.
Three hours afterwards the bolts were free and the door opened with a scroop on its hinges.
Franz then returned to the little court so as to breathe a less stifling air.
At this moment the sun no longer shone across the opening of the well, and consequently must have sunk behind Retyezat. The court was in complete darkness. A few stars gleamed above, as if they were seen through the tube of a long telescope. A few small clouds drifted along in the intermittent breath of the night breeze. A peculiar haze in the atmosphere showed that the moon must have risen above the eastern mountains. It was evidently about nine o’clock at night.
Franz went back to the crypt, where he ate some of the food and quenched his thirst from the spring, after throwing away the liquid in the jug. Then, with his knife at his belt, he went out by the door, which he shut behind him.
And now would he meet the unfortunate La Stilla wandering in these subterranean galleries? At the thought his heart beat almost ready to burst.
As soon as he had made a few steps he stumbled. As he had thought, there was a flight of stairs, of which he counted the steps; sixty only instead of the seventy-seven he had come down to the threshold of the crypt. Consequently he was about eight feet below the level of the ground.
Having nothing better to do than to follow the dark corridor, the sides of which he could touch with his out stretched hands, he hurried on in that direction.
And he went on for half an hour without being stopped by door or railing. But the large number of turns had prevented him from knowing in what direction he was going with regard to the wall which faced the Orgall plateau.
After halting a few minutes to get his breath, Franz continued his advance, and it seemed as though the corridor were to be interminable, when an obstacle stopped him.
This was a wall of bricks.
Tapping it at different heights, he could find no sign of an opening.
This was the only way out from the corridor.
Franz could not help exclaiming. All his hopes were shattered against this obstacle. His knees bent, his legs gave way, and he fell at the foot of the wall.
But just on the ground the wall had a narrow crack in it, and the bricks, being rather loose, shook as he touched them.
“That is the way!” said Franz. “Yes! that is the way!”
And he began to pull out the bricks one by one, when there was a noise of something metallic on the other side.
Franz stopped.
The noise had not ceased, and at the same time a ray at light swept across the hole.
Franz looked through.
It was the old chapel that he saw. To what a lament able state of dilapidation time and neglect had reduced it!—the roof half fallen in, a few only of the ribs perfect on their swelling columns, two or three pointed arches threatening to fall, a window-frame with flamboyant mullions thrust out of place; here and there a dusty tomb beneath which slept some ancestor of the family of Gortz, and at the end a fragment of an altar with the reredos still showing traces of sculpture; then the remains of the roof still over the apse which had been spared by the storms, and then over the ridge above the entrance the shaking belfry from which hung a rope to the ground—the rope of the bell which occasionally rang to the terror of the people of Werst.
Into this chapel, deserted for so long, open to all the rigours of the Carpathian climate, a man had just entered, holding in his hand a lantern, the brilliant light of which shone full on his face.
Franz instantly recognized him. It was Orfanik, that eccentric individual whom the baron had made his only companion during his sojourn in the large Italian towns, that oddity he had seen along the streets gesticulating and talking to himself, that incomprehensible scientist, that inventor ever in search of some chimera, and who doubt less put all his inventions at the service of Rodolphe de Gortz.
If Franz had retained any doubt as to the presence of the baron at the Castle of the Carpathians, even after the apparition of La Stilla, this doubt was changed to certainty when he saw Orfanik.
What was he going to do in this ruined chapel at this advanced hour of the night?
Franz tried to discover, and this is what he saw.
Orfanik, stooping over the ground, was lifting up a few iron cylinders to which he was attaching a line, which he unrolled from a reel placed in one of the corners of the chapel. And such was the attention he gave to his work, that he would not even have seen the young count if he had been able to get near him.
Ah! why was not the hole Franz had begun to enlarge sufficient to let him pass? He would have entered the chapel, he would have hurled himself on Orfanik, he would have compelled him to lead him to the donjon.
But perhaps it was as well that he could not do so, for if the attempt failed, the Baron de Gortz would have doubtless made him pay with his life for the secrets he had discovered.
A few minutes after the arrival of Orfanik another man entered the chapel.
It was Baron Rodolphe de Gortz. The never-to-be-forgotten physiognomy of this personage had not changed.
He did not even seem to have aged, with his pale, long face, which the lantern illuminated from top to bottom, his long grey hair thrown back behind his ears, and his look glittering from the depths of his black orbits.
Rodolphe de Gortz went near to examine the work on which Orfanik was engaged.
And this was the conversation exchanged between the men in short, sharp tones.
CHAPTER XV.
“Is the connection with the chapel finished, Orfanik?”
“I have just done it.”
“Everything is ready in the casemates of the bastions?”
“Everything.”
“The bastions and chapel are in direct connection with the donjon?”
“They are.”
“And after the instrument has made the current, we shall have time to get away?”
“We shall.”
“Have you made sure that the tunnel on to the Vulkan is clear?”
“It is.”
They were silent for a few minutes while Orfanik took up his lantern and directed its light into the corners of the chapel.
“Ah! my old castle!” exclaimed the baron. “You will cost them dear who would storm your walls.”
And Rodolphe de Gortz pronounced these words in a tone which made the count shudder.
“You have heard what they say at Werst?” the baron asked Orfanik.
“Fifty minutes ago I heard on the wire what they were talking about at the ‘King Mathias.’”
“Is the attack to be to-night?”
“No, not until daybreak.”
“When did this Rotzko return to Werst?”
“Two hours ago, with the police he brought from Karlsburg.”
“Well! as the castle cannot defend itself,” said the baron, “at least it can crush under its ruins this Franz de Télek and all his people with him.”
Then,