I stood like a half-sobered drunkard, staring down. There, in the very heart of the bush, gaped between us a damnable black pit, man-hewn, obviously the shaft or ventilator to some quarry, and sunk to God knew what terrific depths. There was no fence about it; even by day one might have stumbled into it without any great accusation of carelessness.
“Did I not warn you of the perils of the hills?” said the Frenchman, in the same thick, sneering tones. “A word to the wise, grand Dieu!”
At the sound of him my wits returned to me, and in a clap of fury.
“Why, in the devil’s name,” I bawled across the gulf, “didn’t you direct me sooner? You saw I was coming straight for it.”
“I thought of course, you knew.”
“You thought?—My God!” The truth sprung upon me in an instant. “You meant me to go down—on my own initiative, so as to quit your lying conscience; only you turned craven at the last. Own up, you infernal dog!”
His eyes looked across at me, ghastly; but, to my surprise, skirting the edge of the opening, he came round and dared me face to face.
“Ananias!” he said. “What right was mine to cross God’s judgment on a liar?”
I regarded him for a little without answering, searching in my mind for some explanation of this extraordinary behaviour, and finding none. I was by now quite cool and self-possessed, and conscious of a full command of the situation.
“If that is to imply,” I said, “that you have sacrificed your conscience to your humanity, it is to imply no motive for it that I can understand. Why did you want to kill me?”