At first, perfectly mechanical work helps a man to think, as walking generally does; but little by little it dulls the faculties and makes thought almost impossible.  Senseless words begin to repeat themselves with the movement, fragments of tunes fit themselves to the words, and play a monotonous and exasperating music in the brain, till a man has the sensation of having a hurdy-gurdy in his head, though he may be working for his life, as Malipieri was.  Yet the unchanging repetition makes the work easier, as a sailor’s chanty helps at the topsail halliards.

“We must get out before we starve, we must get out before we starve,” sang the regular blows of the bar to a queer little tune which Malipieri had never heard.

When he stopped to clear out the chips, the song stopped too, and he thought of Sabina sitting alone in the vault, propped against the Aphrodite; and he hoped that she might be asleep.  But when he swung the bar back into position and heard it strike the bricks, the tune and the words came back with the pendulum rhythm; and went on and on, till they were almost maddening, though there no longer seemed to be any sense in them.  They made the time pass.

Sabina heard the dull blows, too, though not very loud.  It was a comfort to hear anything in the total darkness, and she tried to amuse herself by counting the strokes up to a hundred and then checking the hundreds by turning in one finger after another.  It would be something to tell him when he came back.  She wondered whether there would be a thousand, and then, as she was wondering, she lost the count, and by way of a change she tried to reckon how many seconds there were in an hour.  But she got into trouble with the ciphers when she tried to multiply sixty by sixty in her head, and she began counting the strokes again.  They always stopped for a few seconds somewhere between thirty and forty.

She wished he would come back soon, for she was beginning to feel very cold again, so cold that presently she got upon her feet and walked a dozen steps, feeling her way along the great bronze statue.  It was better than sitting still.  She had heard of prisoners who had kept themselves sane in a dark dungeon by throwing away a few pins they had, and finding them again.  It was a famous prisoner who did that.  It was the prisoner of Quillon—­no, “quillon” had something to do with a sword—­no, it was Chillon.  Then she felt dizzy again, and steadied herself against the statue, and presently groped her way back to her seat.  She almost fell, when she sat down, but saved herself and at last succeeded in getting to her original position.  It was not that she was faint from hunger yet; her dizziness was probably the result of cold and weariness and discomfort, and most of all, of the unaccustomed darkness.

She was ashamed of being so weak, when she listened to the steady strokes, far off, and thought of the strength and endurance it must need to do what Malipieri seemed to be doing so easily.  But she was very cold indeed, chilled to the bone and shivering, and she could not think of any way of getting warm.  She rose again, and struck one of the matches he had given her, and by its feeble light she walked a few seconds without feeling dizzy, and then sat down just as the little taper was going to burn her fingers.