Knowing this, Mervyn fought on, although the desire to submit grew almost overpowering. Never before had he taken part in so fierce a struggle. His eyes seemed starting from his head beneath the strain, and still the merciless ones of his enemy glared into his brain.
Then, when he was almost upon the point of yielding, the gaze of the priest changed to a look of baffled fury.
“So ye resist the supremacy of my will,” he hissed. “So be it; I have other methods. But mark this: if thou wilt not yield me this secret, upon which I have set my heart, I will make thee wish that thou had’st never been born.”
“Do your worst,” returned Mervyn doggedly. “Rather would I be torn limb from limb than reveal to you the secret of our weapons.”
A sneering laugh broke from the priest.
“Dragged limb from limb, sayest thou?” he cried. “That were an easy death to the one I will give thee if thou wilt not obey me.”
Once more he clapped his hands, and the two savages reappeared.
“Bring him forth,” he commanded, and the wolf-men, their faces aglow with diabolical cruelty, hustled Mervyn out of the cell.
Following the priest, a guard on either side of him, the scientist moved down the passage on to which the door of the cell gave access.
It was apparently a natural tunnel in the rock, rough-hewn in places where it had been too narrow to admit of the passage of the savages. From it, on either side, opened galleries, which seemed to run deep into the bowels of the earth.