Notwithstanding every mental exertion the task was
a severe one. I had to traverse waste halls and mysterious
galleries, where the rays of the lamp extended but a short distance
around me. I walked, as it were, in a mere halo of light, walled in by
impenetrable darkness. The vaulted corridors were as caverns; the
ceilings of the halls were lost in gloom. I recalled all that had been
said of the danger from interlopers in these remote and ruined
apartments. Might not some vagrant foe be lurking before or behind me,
in the outer darkness? My own shadow, cast upon the wall, began to
disturb me. The echoes of my own footsteps along the corridors made me
pause and look round. I was traversing scenes fraught with dismal
recollections. One dark passage led down to the mosque where Yusef,
the Moorish monarch, the finisher of the Alhambra, had been basely
murdered. In another place, I trod the gallery where another monarch
had been struck down by the poniard of a relative whom he had thwarted
in his love.
A low murmuring sound, as of stifled voices and clanking chains, now
reached me. It seemed to come from the Hall of the Abencerrages. I
knew it to be the rush of water through subterranean channels, but
it sounded strangely in the night, and reminded me of the dismal
stories to which it had given rise.
Soon, however, my ear was assailed by sounds too fearfully real to
be the work of fancy.
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