cellars of all. Down there he could hear but faintly the sound
of the fighting; yet it seemed to him that through the stone he could
hear the slow booming of the sea, and as he went deeper into the
castle's foundations the louder had grown its note. "Does the sea come
in all the way under the castle?" he wondered. "Oh that it would sap the
foundations and sink castle and all, rather than let them give up old
Jarl's stronghold to his enemies!"

All was quite dark here, where the castle stood embedded; but now
and then little Duke Jarl could feel a puff of wind on his face, and
presently he was noticing how it came, as if timed to the booming of the
sea underneath: whenever came the sound of a breaking wave, with it came
a draught of air. He wondered if, so low down, there might not be some
secret opening to the shore.

Groping in the direction of the gusts, his feet came upon stairs. So low
and narrow was the entrance, he had to turn sideways and stoop; but
when he had burrowed through a thickness of wall he was able to stand
upright; and again he found stairs leading somewhere.

Down, these led down. He had never been so low before. And what a storm
there must be outside! Against these walls the thunders of: the sea grew
so loud he could no longer hear the tramp of his own feet descending.

And now the wind came at him in great gusts; first came the great boom
of the sea, and then a blast of air. The way twisted and circled, making
his head giddy for a fall; his feet slipped on the steepness and slime
of the descent, and at each turn the sound grew more appalling, and the
driving force of the wind more and more like the stroke of a man's fist.

Presently the shock of it threw him from his standing, so that he had to
lie down and slide feet foremost, clinging with his eyelids and nails
to break the violence of his descent. And now the air was so full of
thunder that his teeth shook in their sockets, and his bones jarred in
his flesh. The darkness growled and roared; the wind kept lifting him
backwards--the force of it seemed almost to flay the skin off: his face;
and still he went on, throwing his full weight against the air ahead.

Then for a moment he felt himself letting go altogether: solid walls
slipping harshly past him in the darkness, he fell; and came headlong,
crashed and bruised, to a standstill.

At first his brain was all in a mist; then, raising himself, he saw a
dim blue light falling through a low