CHAPTER XLVI.
CAUGHT.
In the first horror of blackness I came near to letting go the rope and falling from my perch on the blade. My brain went with a swing and turn and a sick wave overwhelmed my heart and flooded all my chest with nausea.
Was I trapped after all—and just when confidence seemed established in me? For some evil moments I remained as I was, not daring to move, to look up, even; blinded only by the immediate plunge into cabined night, terrible and profound.
I had left the matches above. There was no rekindling of the lamp possible. Up through the darkness I must climb—and how?
Then for the first time it occurred to me that my father’s directions had not included the method of the return journey. Perhaps he had thought it unnecessary. To clearer senses the means would have been obvious—a scramble, merely, by way of the paddles, while the wheel was held in position by the rope.
In the confusion of my senses I thought that my only way was to swarm up the dangling rope; and, without doubt, such was a means, if an irksome one, of escape. Only I should have left the tackle anchored as it was to the wheel. This I did not do, but, moved by a sudden crazy impulse, stooped and turned the button that held all in place.
It was good fortune only that saved me then and there from the full consequences of my act. For, pulled taut as it was, and well out of the perpendicular, the moment it was released the rope swung through the slit like a pendulum, carrying me, frantically clinging to it with one hand, off the paddle. Then, before I had time to put out my free hand to ward off the danger, clump against the wheel I came in the return swing, and with such force that I was heavily bruised in a dozen places and near battered from my hold.
Clawing and scratching like a drowning cat and rendered half-stupid by the blow, I yet managed to grasp the rope with my other hand, and so dangle there with little more than strength just to cling on. Once I sought to ease the intolerable strain on my arms by toeing for foothold on the paddle again, but the wheel, swinging free now, slipped from under me, so that I was nearly jerked from my clutch. Then there was nothing for it but to gather breath and pray that power might come to me to swarm up the rope by and by.
Drooping my head as I hung panting, the blackness I had thought impenetrable was traversed by the green glint of light below that I have mentioned. The sight revived me in a moment. It was like a draught of water to a fainting soldier. Now I felt some connectedness of thought to be possible. With a bracing of all my muscles, I passed my legs about the rope and began toilingly to drag myself upward.
I had covered half the distance, when I felt myself to be going mad. How this was I cannot explain. The fight against material difficulties had hitherto, it seemed, left tremors of the supernatural powerless to move me. Now, in a moment, black horror had me by the heart. That I should be down there—clambering from the depths of that secret and monstrous pit, the very neighborhood of which had always filled me with loathing, seemed a fact incredible in its stupendous unnature. This may sound exaggerated. It did not seem so to me then. Despite my manhood and my determination, in an instant I was mastered and insane.