Explore "Where England Sets her Feet" by Bernard Capes on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Slowly, as in a theatre, when dark veils are lifted one by one to simulate a gradual dawn, before Brion's eyes, as they accustomed themselves to the gloom, came into shadowy being the shapes and forms about him. He stood, he saw, in a low vaulted chamber, a score of armed men surrounding him and the two who held him captive. Narrow shafts ran up into the groining of the roof, against one of which lolled he who had spoken in his ear, and who appeared to be the captain of the party. His conductor had disappeared -- presumably to notify some one of his seizure -- and silence and stagnation prevailed, pending, it seemed, the messenger's return. The occasional clearing of a throat or the shuffle of a foot on the stone flags were the only sounds to break the dead stillness.
Somewhere in front of him, and above the level of his eyes, a vertical line of silver, the merest thread, seemed to denote the presence of heavy curtains, shrouding the way into the inner recesses of the house; and on that line he fixed his attention.