a soldier sleeps, taking full rest out of the hours,
and letting no harassing thought disturb me. It is only the weak who
permit their sleep to be broken on these occasions. And when the dark
was well set, I roused and fetched those who should attend to the rope.
Our Lady the Moon did not shine at that turn of the month: and the air
was full of a great blackness. So I was out of sight all the while they
lowered me.

I reached the tumbled rocks that lay at the deep foot of the cliff,
and then commenced to use a nice caution, because Phorenice's soldiers
squatted uneasily round their camp-fires, as though they had forebodings
of the coming evil. I had no mind to further stir their wakefulness. So
I crept swiftly along in the darkest of the shadows, and at last came to
the spot where that passage ends which before I had used to get beneath
the walls of the city.

The lamp was in place, and I made my way along the windings swiftly. The
air, so it seemed to me, was even more noxious with vapours than it had
been when I was down there before, and I judged that Zaemon had already
begun to stir those internal activities which were shortly to convulse
the city. But again I had difficulty in finding an exit, and this, not
because there were people moving about at the places where I had to come
out, but because the set of the masonry was entirely changed. In olden
times the Priests' Clan oversaw all the architects' plans, and ruled out
anything likely to clash with their secret passages and chambers. But
in this modern day the Priests were of small account, and had no say in
this matter, and the architects often through sheer blundering sealed up
and made useless many of these outlets and hiding-places.

As it was then, I had to get out of the network of tunnels and galleries
where I could, and not where I would, and in the event found myself at
the farther side of the city, almost up to where the outer wall joins
down to the harbour. I came out without being seen, careful even in this
moment of extremity to preserve the ordinances, and closed all traces of
exit behind me. The earth seemed to spring beneath my feet like the deck
of a ship in smooth water; and though there was no actual movement as
yet to disturb the people, and indeed these slept on in their houses and
shelters without alarm, I could feel myself that the solid deadness
of the ground was gone, and that any moment it might break out into
devastating waves of movem