They lay
in pitch-darkness, in a vault where not even a sound could reach them,
except the whispered echo of their own voices and the scampering of
the rats. They were growing nearly blind, and nearly crazed, with
the darkness and the silence and the fear.
Every second they expected to see daylight through the cracks above,
as rebels levered up the door, or to hear feet and voices coming through
the vaults below, for doubtless the vaults led somewhere. But for
their fear of snakes and rats and unknown horrors, they would have
tried to find a way through the vaults themselves. But as each movement
that they made, and each word that they spoke, sent echoes reverberating
through the gloom, they lay still and shuddered.
Once they heard footsteps on the stone flags overhead. But the footsteps
went away again, and then all was still. Soon they lost all count
of time. They were only aware of heat and discomfort and fear and
utter weariness.
One woman and an infant wept. One woman prayed aloud incessantly.
The third woman--the menial, the worst educated and least enlightened
of the three, according to the others' notion of it--stubbornly refused
to admit that there was not some human means of rescue.
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