"But I do not perceive any----" "By and by, colonel, when your view shall have become accustomed to this half light, like that of the moon, you will lay yourself down flat on your stomach, and there, at the right, at the end of a long natural passage in which one cannot advance except by crawling, you will perceive the light of day which penetrates through a crevasse in the rock." "If the road is sure, it certainly is not easy." "So far from easy, colonel, that I defy the captain of the brigantine who brought you to the Barbadoes, with his great stomach, to enter the passage which remains for us to travel. It is as much as I could do heretofore to glide through; it is the size of the tunnel of a chimney." "And it leads?" "To the bottom of a precipice which forms a defense for Devil's Cliff; three sides of this precipice are a peak, and it is as impossible to descend as to ascend it; but as to the fourth side, it is not inaccessible, and with the help of the jutting rocks one can reach by this road the limits of the park of Blue Beard." "I understand--this subterranean passage will conduct us to the bottom of the abyss above which towers Devil's Cliff?" "Exactly, colonel; it is as if we were at the bottom of a moat, one of whose sides is perpendicular and the other sloping. When I say sloping, that is simply a figure of speech, for in order to reach the summit of the peak, one must more than once hang suspended by some vine between heaven and earth. But when there, we find ourselves at the edge of the park of Devil's Cliff--once there, we can hide ourselves in some place and wait our opportunity----" "And this opportunity is not far distant; come, come, you, who know so much, must, at one time, have been in the service of Blue Beard!" "I told you, colonel, I came from the coast with her and her first husband; at the end of three months, they sent me back; then I left for San Domingo. I have heard no further word of them." "And she--would you know her well?" "Yes, as to her height and general air, but not her face; for we reached the coast at night, and once on shore she was carried in a litter to Devil's Cliff. When by chance she walked in the daytime, she wore a mask. Some say she is as beautiful as an angel; others, that she is ugly as a monster. I cannot say which are in the right, for neither I nor my mates ever put foot in the interior of the mansion. Those who perform the special attendance and service are mulattresses as mute as fish." "And he?" "He is handsome, tall and slender, about thirty-six years old, brown, with black hair and mustache, and has an aquiline nose." "It is certainly he," said the colonel, when John had thus described him. "It is thus that he was always described; and it is not positively known that he is dead?" "It is said he died on the voyage, but no one has ever really known." "And no one doubts that he died?" "Faith! no, colonel, because Blue Beard has been married twice since then."