He devoutly wished it were not necessary to
climb that hill again, for he feared he would not have the
strength to descend it.
Luckily for the sake of the secret, Evangelina spent most of the
day searching for food, while Asensio lay babbling upon his bed,
too ill to notice the peculiar actions of his companions.
It was with a strange, nightmare feeling of unreality that the
trio dragged themselves upward to the ruined quinta when darkness
finally came. They no longer talked, for conversation was a drain
upon their powers, and the reaction from the day's excitement had
set in. O'Reilly lurched as he walked, his limbs were heavy, and
his liveliest sensation was one of dread at the hard work in store
for him. The forcing of that door assumed the proportions of a
Herculean task.
But once he was at the bottom of the well and beheld the handiwork
of Sebastian, the slave, just as he had left it, his sense of
reality returned and with it a certain measure of determination.
Inasmuch as he had made no visible impression upon the bulkhead by
his direct attack, he changed his tactics now and undertook to
loosen one of the jambs where it was wedged into the rock at top
and bottom. After a desperate struggle he succeeded in loosening
the entire structure so that he could pry it out far enough to
squeeze his body through.
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