All sorts of tremors began to creep over my body; the muscles of my back jerked of their own accord. The suspense was driving me mad. I had to move, I had to see, if only to hinder myself from leaping to my feet and making a headlong rush. Very slowly I turned my head sideways; I looked backwards along the ground, until I saw. The moon had swum out from the clouds, and the five men were standing in arrested attitudes with their eyes fixed upon something that glittered very bright upon the ground. I could see it myself through the gorse glittering and burning white, like a delicate flame, and my heart gave a great leap within me as I understood what it was. It was a big silver shoe-buckle that shone in the moonlight, and the shoe-buckle was on my foot.
The game was up. I thought that I might as well make a fight of it at the last, and I jumped to my feet suddenly, with a faint hope that the suddenness of the movement might startle them and let me through. But there was to be no fighting for me that night. It is true that the men all scattered from about me, but a voice a few yards to my right thundered, "Stand!" and I stood stock-still, obedient as a charity-school boy.
For Peter Tortue was standing stock still too, with his right arm stretched out in a line with his shoulder and the palm of his hand upturned. On the palm of that hand was balanced a long knife with an open blade, and the moonlight streaked along that blade in flame, just as it had burned upon my shoe-buckle.
George Glen rubbed his hands together.
"You will lie down, Mr. Berkeley," said he, with his most insinuating smile. "You will down, 'flat on my face,' says you."
"But I have only just got up," said I.
Glen tittered nervously, but no one else showed any appreciation of my sally. I thought it best to lie down flat on my face.
"Cross your hands behind your back," said George Glen, and I knew he was winking.
"Any little thing like that, I am sure," I murmured, as I obeyed. "Only too happy," and in a trice I was nothing more than a coil of rope. It cut into my wrists, it crushed my chest, it snaked round my legs, it bit my ankles.
"To be sure," said I, "they mean to send me somewhere by the post."