But the winding
and uneven nature of the track which he had formed to lead him through
the wall, effectually prevented the moonbeams, then floating into the
outermost of the cavities that he had made, from reaching the place
where he now lay. Not a single object was even faintly distinguishable
around him. Darkness hemmed him in, in rayless and triumphant
obscurity, on every side.
The first agonies of the injury he had received had resolved themselves
into one dull, heavy, unchanging sensation of pain. The vision that had
overwhelmed his senses was now, in a vast and shadowy form, present only
to his memory, filling the darkness with fearful recollections, and not
with dismal forms; and urging on him a restless, headlong yearning to
effect his escape from the lonely and unhallowed sepulchre, the prison
of solitude and death, that his own fatal exertions threatened him with,
should he linger much longer in the caverns of the wall.
'I must pass from this darkness into light--I must breathe the air of
the sky, or I shall perish in the damps of this vault,' he exclaimed in
a hoarse, moaning voice, as he raised himself gradually and painfully
into a creeping position; and turning round slowly, commenced his
meditated retreat.
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