'Twas said
that in times past (when, perhaps, the chimes were rung more often than
now) the voice of this bell had led safe home boats that were lost in the
fog; and this night its clangour, mellow and profound, reached even to
the vault. Bim-bom it went, bim-bom, twelve heavy thuds that shook the
walls, twelve resonant echoes that followed, and then a purring and
vibration of the air, so that the ear could not tell when it ended.
I was wrought up, perhaps, by the strangeness of the hour and place, and
my hearing quicker than at other times, but before the tremor of the bell
was quite passed away I knew there was some other sound in the air, and
that the awful stillness of the vault was broken. At first I could not
tell what this new sound was, nor whence it came, and now it seemed a
little noise close by, and now a great noise in the distance. And then it
grew nearer and more defined, and in a moment I knew it was the sound of
voices talking. They must have been a long way off at first, and for a
minute, that seemed as an age, they came no nearer. What a minute was
that to me! Even now, so many years after, I can recall the anguish of
it, and how I stood with ears pricked up, eyes starting, and a clammy
sweat upon my face, waiting for those speakers to come. It was the
anguish of the rabbit at the end of his burrow, with the ferret's eyes
gleaming in the dark, and gun and lurcher waiting at the mouth of the
hole.
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