11.   The house seemed a flimsy shack, its heating a roaring fire barely contained by the small dark basement, and a love affair fell apart.

12.   The party, he recalled, worked out of a dark basement office.

13.   After nine months in dark basements and with little food, the two Hungarian relief workers Sunday thanked all those who contributed to their release by Chechen captors.

14.   At the local hospital, the head nurse, who asked not to be named, showed me patients evacuated from wards lying in a dark basement corridor.