St. Landry democrat., 1892-11-12

] :.
walls; the stairs writhed and fell apart;
the beams slid from their supports and
crashed to the earth in debris of wrecked
wood, glass, bricks and plaster.
Gin less than moment, it seems to
me, the beautiful villa of an hour ago
was reduced to a heap of dust and
broken rubbish. All this happened in
less time than it takes to tell it, but
still more terrible scene remained to be
enacted, for all of sudden, with a re-
port like musketry, the earth cracked
open and the ruins were swallowed up
in its depths.
''At the same instant there was scream
behind me in Ninas voice. turned, but
alas. only in time to see the earth open
again where she lay and engnlf my be-
loved as the ruins had been.
" God have mercy upon u.s. | cried,
and sought on hands and knees to fight
my way towards the crevice that | be-
lieved had swallowed her, but now on
every side great rents were coming and
going, nearer and nearer each time to
where I crouched, reckless and paralyzcd
with despair, and then, before | had time
to realize the horror of it, and with only
a momentary vision of dense blackness
before my eyes. | too was engulfed in
the earth!"
NJ. lie Qnai paused to wipe his damp
brow, beaded with sweat at the mere
recollection of that hidcous moment.
"Monsieur," resumed he, presently,
when he had somewhat conquered his
emotion, ''if ever you have dreamed that
you were buried alive, then you have
had a foretaste of the feeling with which
| once recovered consciousness No hell
could have been blacker than the place
where, on regaining my Senses, | found
myself, prone on my back. No crack or
Granny permitted entrance to a single
ray of Gods blessed light and to know
the full torture of eternal darkness you
have only once to experience it. The
deadly silence, too, of the place was aw-
full; my breathing sounded to me like
the Kissing of furnace. I could plain
ly see my heart beat, and even, it seemed
to me, the blood surge through my veins.
"When | tried t. move, sharp pains
shot through my whole body, butt soon
found, to my Joy, that was only bruised
and no bones broken. God knows why
l was not killed, for the floor of my
prison was of solid rock.
GLOW far had fallen2 With an eff
fort, dragged myself to my feet, and
taking trinket hung to my watch chain,
hurled it with all my strength up into
the darkness. 1t struck, but not before
its force was nearly spent. The last hope
left me- l was buried alive in pit--a
pit more than 4 hundred feet deep!
."Overcome by the anguish Of my
thoughts and the oppression of the pitchy
darkness, | sank again to the ground and
gave myself up to utter despair.
CATER while, an eternity in length,
I determined to explore the extent of the
cavern into which fate had plunged me
and which was destined to be my grave
Perhaps, too, a sound that for little
while past had been gradually becoming
audible to me had something to do with
rousng me to action.
''This noise came from a distance, and |
to my heated fancy and sensitive ears,
sounded like the wheeling of a subter-
ranean bellows. l cautiously moved for
ward and found the ground seemed to !
slope towards the point whence the noise
came.
"Wallling on slowly, with outstrctched |
hand, cropping, you may say, it was not
very long before struck against wall |
of rock. Retracing my way, l came
against another, equally solid.
81 am swallowed in a cicftn thought
I, shulderingIy, high, narrow, burrow-
ING deeper and deeper with with every
inch and leading-God knows where =
to the bowls Of the earth, perhaps.'
"Crushcd by this discovery, for awhile
| was powerIess to advance a step, but
then, as | had nothing to lose, I deter
mined to make an effort to press on and
leave no stone unturned that might set
me at liberty. Creeping little by little
down the stony gorge, was at last close
to the point whence those painting putfs
came. My heart beat like hammer.
1T is a precipicc, I thought, and
the wheeling sound the wind in its
depths. Better be killed outright than
die slow death of starvationn
"And l put out my foot expecting to
encounter only space. Instead | stumbled
over something soft and fell forward
Blindly | felt about me and my hand
touched something warm - a human
face
II felt again, running my hand along
the body as the blind explore, and made
out dress! Like flash it dawned upon
me. Nina, Ninar I cried aloud, my
voice rolling and reverberating like the
voice of a thousand
''She was not dead either, for it was
the sound of her breathing that I had
L,
depths or the smothered rushing of
volcanic stream. | caught her hands
| chafed them in mine-but it is useless,
monsieur, to 90 over again those drag
ging moments of agony when 1 worked
over the half-dead body of my love, or
those moments of mingled JOY and tor
ture when her returning consciousness
had to struggle with the fearful reality.
81 told her as well as I could where
we were and how we had come there.
To her piteous pleas for comfort | could
only respond with a sorroWful silence or
an equally piteous entreaty to her to be
hopeful.
cat that moment, sir-how strangely
does the aspect of things change as the
wheel of life goes!-we would both of us
have given ten years of our lives to have
from our living tomb Now I,
at least, would not have escaped that
experience. I should then never have
known those bitter sweet hours when '
my love and |, buried together and with
death staring us in the face, were drawn $
together by the strongest tic humanity
knows-the bond of common adversely. l
"When at last, on my persuasion, '
Nina sought to move, she fell back help I;
less with loud cry of pain; she had j