No doubt that those accustomed to travel the Via Mala always carried lights; the air was clean and dry and any lighted torch could have lived in such an atmosphere.  But Evelyn Erith carried no lights —­had thought of none in the haste of setting out.

Years seemed to her to pass in the dreadful darkness of that descent as she felt her way downward, guided by the touch of her feet and the contact of her hand along the unseen wall.

Again and again she stopped to rest and to check the rush of sheerest terror that threatened at moments her consciousness.

There was no sound in the Via Mala.  The thick darkness was like a fabric clogging her movements, swathing her, brushing across her so that she seemed actually to feel the horrible obscurity as some concrete thing impeding her and resting upon her with an increasing weight that bent her slender figure.

There was something grey ahead....  There was light—­a sickly pin-point.  It seemed to spread but grow duller.  A pallid patch widened, became lighter again.  And from an infinite distance there came a deadened roaring—­the hollow menace of water rushing through depths unseen.

She stood within the shadow zone inside the tunnel and looked out upon the gorge where, level with the huge bowlders all around her, an alpine river raged and dashed against cliff and stone, flinging tons of spray into the air until the whole gorge was a driving sea of mist.  Here was the floor of the canon; here was the way they had searched for.  Her task was done.  And now, on bleeding little feet, she must retrace her steps; the Via Mala must become the Via Dolorosa, and she must turn and ascend that Calvary to the dreadful crest.

She was very weak.  Privation had sapped the young virility that had held out so long.  She had not eaten for a long while—­did not, indeed, crave food any longer.  But her thirst raged, and she knelt at a little pool within the cavern walls and bent her bleeding mouth to the icy fillet of water.  She drank little, rinsed her mouth and face and dried her lips on her sleeve.  And, kneeling so, closed her eyes in utter exhaustion for a moment.

And when she opened them she found herself looking up at two men.

Before she could move one of the men kicked her pistol out of her nerveless hand, caught her by the shoulder and dragged the trench-knife from her convulsive grasp.  Then he said in English: 

“Get up.”  And the other, the signalman, struck her across her back with the furled flags so that she lost her balance and fell forward on her face.  They got her to her feet and pushed her out among the bowlders, through the storming spray, and across the floor of the ravine into the sunlight of a mossy place all set with trees.  And she saw butterflies flitting there through green branches flecked with sunshine.

The officer seated himself on a fallen tree and crossed his heavy feet on a carpet of wild flowers.  She stood erect, the signaller holding her right arm above the elbow.