Slowly the dull, dead, impenetrable blackness above him was lifted off. It was as though a spirit breathed on the night and it fled away. When the woolly hue of morning dappled his larger sky, Christian could hear the slow beat of the waves on the shore. The coast rose up before his vision then, silent, solemn, alone with the dawn. The light crept into his prison-house. He looked down at the deep black tarn. And now hope rose in his heart again. Overhead he saw timbers running around and across the shaft. These had been used to bank up the earth and to make two grooves in which the ascending and descending cages had once worked. Christian lifted up his soul in thankfulness. The world was once more full of grace, even for him. He could climb from stay to stay, and so reach the surface. Catching one of the stays in his uplifted hands, he swung his knees on to another. One stage was accomplished, but how stiff were his joints and how sinewless his fingers! Another and another stage was reached, and then four feet and no more were between him and the gorse that waved in the light of the risen sun across the mouth of his night-long tomb. But the rain of years had eaten into these timbers. In some places they crumbled and were rotten. God! how the one on which he rested creaked under him at that instant. Another minute, and then the toilsome journey would be over. Another minute, and his dead self would be left behind him, buried forever in this grave! Then there would be a resurrection in very truth! Yes, truly, God helping him. Christian had swimming eyes and a big heart as he raised himself on to the topmost stay that crossed the shaft, and clutched the long tussacs of the clinging gorse. Then, at the last spring, he heard a creak--another--louder--the timbers were breaking beneath his feet. At the same moment he heard a half-stifled cry--saw a face--it was Mona's face--there was a breathless instant of bewildered consciousness. In another moment Christian was standing on the hillside, close locked in Mona's arms. CHAPTER XVI GOD'S WRITING ON THE SEA When the knocking ceased at Kisseck's, and Mona's footsteps were heard to turn away, Corteen and Killip knelt on the floor and felt the body of the master, and knew that he was dead. "Let's get off anyway," said one; "let's away to sea, as the gel said. The fac's is agen us all." "Maybe the man was right," said the other. "It's like enough she's got the Castle Rushen fellows behind her, and they'll be on us quick. Come, bear a hand." Their voices sounded hollow. They lifted Kisseck on to their shoulders. A thin red stream was flowing from his breast. Corteen picked up a cap from the floor, and stanched the blood. It was Danny's cap, and as they passed out it fell again in the porch.