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This ridge, or island as it was called, was uninhabited, but it had been faced on the inner front by a wall. The water was deep alongside, and vessels could thus lie in perfect security, secured by their cables to rings let into the masonry. The prevailing wind was from the north, bringing in a heavy surf on the back of the island.
It bent beneath my weight, and then broke; but it came so near the earth before breaking that if my left arm had not struck against the masonry I should have escaped uninjured. As it was, my arm was smashed, and I swooned away with the pain. When I came to, Marguerite was leaning out of the window, calling, "Maxime, speak to me! For the love of heaven, speak to me, and say you pardon me!"
It was a dank, dark place, only lit where the yellow light streamed forth from the scullery. It had a couple of low bays hollowed out of the masonry under the little courtyard, the one filled with wood blocks, the other with broken packingcases, old bottles and like rubbish. I explored these until my hands came in contact with the damp bricks at the back, but in vain.
At one spot the light grew solid as a brick wall, and like a piece of yellow Persian masonry, patterned in blue, daubed coarsely upon the sky the leaves of the chestnuts; at another, it cut them off from the sky towards which they stretched out their curling, golden fingers.
There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty political party. Masons were driven from office.
Although they were several miles down the valley, the thunder of the bursting masonry now echoed in their ears. And up from the bottom of the wall, near its center, a great geyser spouted. In a moment the wall crumbled and they saw tons upon tons of the masonry melt away.
People said, long afterward, that it was by means of a gang of condemned criminals, who were set to work, and executed immediately after they had done, so that nobody knew anything, or in the least suspected the real fact. And what was the fact? Why, that this tower, which seemed a mere mass of masonry, utterly forsaken and uninhabited, was not so at all.
At times the heavier, duller sound, which had been the signal for the whole disorder, one ponderous beat, as on a huge and very slack bass-drum, told that the Black Dog from Rotterdam was not far off. Yet even then there followed no shock of round-shot battering at masonry, but only an access of the stormy whistling and jingling. "Copper cash," declared the voice of Heywood, in a lull.
Faithful in preserving the realities which are confided to it, it covers with its seductive envelope the lessons of the one and the truths of the other." It is from this stand-point that we are to view the allegory of the Stone of Foundation, as developed in one of the most interesting and important symbols of Masonry.
It seemed as though the whole world had split into fragments and were rocketing off into space; and, in quick succession, came the rumble of falling beams and masonry, and the dense dust of disintegrated plaster mingling with the fumes of high explosive. Sara was conscious of being shot violently across the hall, and then everything went out in illimitable black darkness. "Sara! Sara!
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