Dawn flushed into full daylight as the sun rose upon the ruined city. Morning dragged its length to midday and midday merged in afternoon. And the workers toiled on doggedly, burrowing, hewing, climbing, flinging their energies, risking their lives, against the inanimate barriers of destruction. Italian and Frenchman, Englishman and Russian vied with each other in deeds of humanity against the common foe. Nor was that foe content with the victory already won. Further shocks furrowed the stricken shores: ruin became more complete, danger more menacing, but the toilers worked on.

Aylmer's rescuers had gone aboard their ship and had been replaced by a new relay. He himself remained. The pressing needs of those who lay, as he had lain, in living tombs around him were first in his mind. But another thought was ceaseless. Certainty—that was what he asked. Certainty of Landon's fate. He scarcely allowed himself to realize how he hoped—yearned—to know definitely that Landon was dead. He simply contemplated it as a matter of completeness, as news that would bring infinite relief to those on board The Morning Star. If he were alive? He set his lips grimly. Though law was suspended, order out of gear, Landon should meet his deserts. If not by instruments of Italian justice, then by Aylmer's own hands—by the law of retribution, not the law of revenge.

He dropped the mattock which he had been wielding. He stood up and straightened himself, turning his eyes from the wearying expanse of wreckage towards the sea.

A boat was running up beside the ruined jetty. Before the mooring ropes were cast ashore a tall figure leaped from it—a figure clad in a soutane.

Aylmer made an exclamation, hesitated, and then clambered down the walls and ran across the uneven flags, holding out his hand.

Padre Sigismondi flung up his arms. His gesture was one of incredulous relief.

"But the Signora?" he cried, stricken with sudden apprehension. He panted, his eyes were vivid with anxiety. "The Signora?"

As Aylmer answered with the one vital word, the priest cried aloud again. He lifted his face towards the sky and made the sign of the cross.

"Safe!" he repeated. "Safe! If there was a single hope left to me amid the horrors which have overwhelmed us, it was that. I told myself that God, who allowed me to fail in my duty to you through my arrogant self-confidence, might be saving you in the midst of—and by—this destruction. When I came to myself and found you gone, I writhed. My friend, I cast myself upon the ground in the agonies of my self-reproach. Not to have plumbed the wicked devices of these men—I, who have worked among them a score of years!"

Aylmer gripped his hand.

"You, yourself?" he inquired. "You come here—how?"

"One of the many boats which were speeding to Messina—some, alas, with no charitable intent, I fear—saw my signals and took me off. And now? One scarcely knows where to begin. How can one confront such a disaster with one's puny efforts? God send me His strength! My own is as water!"

A shout echoed to them suddenly from the group of sailors. One stood up and waved to them with his neckcloth.

Aylmer made an answering gesture. He took the priest's arm.

"Begin here, father," he said quietly. "Some of those we have found are alive, but death's claim, I fear, is relaxed for no more than an hour or two. They need your offices. It may be for such an one that they are signalling to us now."

They hurried across the square. They climbed the pyramid of ruin.

The sailors were looking down at something which lay at their feet—something brown, and white, and vivid red.

The quartermaster pointed to a crevice in the masonry.

"There is a hollow," he explained. "We pulled him out by the arms, which—God forgive us—are broken. There are in there, perhaps, others. His eyes imply it. Words are beyond him."

The priest gave a startled exclamation. Aylmer echoed it. Disfigured, battered, crushed as it was, they recognized the figure in the blood-stained djelab of brown.

A growing dimness was clouding Muhammed's eyes. The quick pant of his breathing weakened as they watched. But a flash of feeling illuminated the pallid features as the Moor's glance reached and dwelled upon Aylmer's face.

His lips moved.

"The child?" he asked in a faint whisper. "The Sidi Jan?"

Padre Sigismondi darted an inquiring look at his companion and then knelt beside the dying man.

"The child is well," he answered gravely. "Yourself? Is there no message to give, no delivery of your soul you wish to make? Time is short for you. Use it, and me, as you wish."

The brown eyes searched the priest's features with a queer disdain, as it seemed—or was it, perchance, compassion. The stiffening lips became more grimly resolute.

"I proclaim!" said the Moor. "I proclaim that there is One God—One God—," and passed, unfaltering, to meet Him.

For a moment there was silence. Aylmer broke it.

"Perhaps we owe him more than we think," he said slowly. "The boy? That was always his first care. Perhaps he stood between the child and harm. I believe that he would have done so in the face of the child's father himself!"

Sigismondi drew a fold of the djelab over the bruised face.

"The God to whom he appealed is his judge," he said. "Let us leave it in His hands. The living, now, my friend. It is not here that we can concern ourselves with the dead."

They turned to the sailors. Half a dozen blocks had been rolled from the opening, which gaped wide over an empty darkness. The quartermaster slung himself carefully down into it and slowly disappeared.

A moment later they heard his voice.

"A rope," he demanded. "Here is one who is, at least, warm."

They passed down a rope carefully. Aylmer's heart became suddenly audible to himself. What would appear; what had Fate still in store for him?

Again the quartermaster's voice echoed from the darkness with directions. The sailors bent their backs and hauled.

A face appeared in the opening, travelling upwards.

Aylmer felt no surprise. This was the expected, the inevitable. Landon was dragged out into the day—Landon—alive.

They laid him silently at his cousin's feet.

And as Aylmer looked down he felt a thrill of what must have been nearly akin to sympathy. God help the mutilated wretch!

His arms hung beside him limp and helpless, the fractured bones distorted in hideous angles. There were marks as of burns upon his face. But the supreme horror was in the sockets which held nothing recognizable as human eyes. Coals might have lain within them—coals pressed down to find their quenching there.

He moaned ceaselessly, swinging himself from side to side. And then words came slowly, piteously, one by one.

"Oil!" he gasped. "For God's sake, a little oil—upon my eyes!"

Sigismondi shuddered. Then he bent and placed his hand compassionately on the scarred temple.

"As soon as it can be found, my brother," he said. "Try to keep your courage while we do our utmost. We have to carry you—where you can be treated."

The tortured wretch moaned again and made an instinctive effort to raise a hand to his face. He shrieked as the shattered bones failed him, shrieked and cursed in hideous blasphemies. His brain began to wander upon the border-line of delirium.

"Hours—days—weeks," he wailed. "Broken—broken! Immovable and always in agony—burning—my eyes—my eyes! And the rain—running over them and bringing more agony—and more—and more. And unable to move a finger. My feet hanging in emptiness—my hands crushed in upon me—crushed—crushed—crushed!"

The quartermaster made a gesture of infinite compassion.

"The room had been newly plastered, do you see?" he whispered. "He was caught bodily—in the closing of the walls—as a nutcracker closes. And he was held and crushed—like the nut. The lime was deep upon his face—and when the rain came, washing it in—eating him—" He turned away with another pregnant motion of his hands, as if he put from him the picture which imagination conjured up.

Aylmer leaned down and spoke.

"We are going to take you from here," he said. "We are going to lift you. Be prepared."

Landon's groans ceased. His body became suddenly rigid with attention.

"Jack?" he whispered incredulously. "Jack?"

"It is I," said Aylmer gravely. "I—am unhurt."

Landon's face grew yet more distorted.

"Claire?" he muttered eagerly. "Claire—is gone?"

A light gleamed tempestuously in Aylmer's eyes and then as quickly died. His voice was even and restrained.

"She is safe, and well," he said. "She is on her father's yacht."

An inarticulate howl of rage burst from Landon's lips. He rocked himself to and fro; he made as if he would beat his broken hands upon the stones.

"God! If they'd suffered alongside me, if they'd been there, if they had given me groan for groan, I could have stood it—enjoyed it—damn them, I could have laughed with the lime in my eyes, if they'd been there—if they'd been there!"

He jerked himself to a sitting posture; he writhed backwards and forwards. His spite was a sort of ecstasy, possessing him, freeing him, as it seemed, from even the sense of pain.

Aylmer made a significant motion. He bent and slipped his arms beneath Landon's shoulders. The quartermaster lifted his knees.

Landon struggled in their arms.

"Let me be!" he cried. "Let me stand. Damn you, let me stand upon my own feet!"

They hesitated. Then with a shrug the quartermaster laid down his burden.

"This is no place for a blind man to pick his way," he remonstrated. "To get down, Monsieur, you have to poise yourself along the wall thirty feet above the square."

Landon stood panting and leaning against his cousin. The spasms of agony were convulsing his face.

"I will not be carried," he panted. "I'll walk upon my feet—like a man."

They looked at each other, hesitating.

"But your arms?" protested Aylmer. "Your arms?"

The breath hissed between Landon's teeth.

"My arms!" he repeated. "God! If I'd my arms! You—you must lead me—carefully—carefully. Put your hand upon my shoulder; keep close—close."

For a dozen yards he tottered along, and the sweat broke out astream upon his scars. And then he halted, and stumbled.

The quartermaster instinctively put a hand upon one of the broken wrists. Landon shrieked, and cursed him hideously.

"Monsieur might have fallen," apologized the man. "My excuses, Monsieur, but it was so quick—so near—the danger. The drop is sheer, do you see, sheer down to the square."

Landon gasped. "Which side?" he asked thickly. "Which side?"

"The right," said Aylmer. "Lean away from me, inwards, to the left!"

Landon drew a deep breath.

The next instant he had flung himself against Aylmer's guiding hand, outwards, to the right!

For the second time the quartermaster cried aloud and stretched out a hand. But it was not Landon's sleeve which it reached, but Aylmer's—reached and gripped it while the two bodies reeled upon the crumbling edge and sent the flying blocks down to break into powder upon the solid flags below.

And then, where two had struggled, one alone remained and clung. Landon had gone. Like the blocks he lay thirty feet below—broken.