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When Seymour felt himself gripped from behind, as he stood gazing down into the abyss, his first sensation was one of deadly fear. Overcoming this, however, he swung round quickly and grappled his hideous opponent. To and fro they swayed upon the brink, each gripping the other’s throat, each struggling to hurl his enemy over the edge of the chasm.
With all his enormous strength Seymour could barely hold his own. The wolf-man’s muscles seemed of iron, his fingers gripped like a vice, and beneath their pressure the baronet’s life was slowly choked out.
It was at this moment that he managed to gasp out the cry which attracted the attention of his friends; but, as we know, they were too late to aid him, and both he and the loathsome savage pitched over into the abyss.
His mind was a complete blank during the few moments of his fall. He did not swoon, yet his mental and physical powers were alike suspended—paralysed, as it were. Then suddenly his faculties were fully restored by a plunge into rushing water. He sank like a stone, the water roaring madly in his ears, seeming to beat him downward to a terrible depth. With all his strength he struck out for the surface, fighting his way up through the surging waters that he might empty his bursting lungs.
It was the agony of years concentrated into a few seconds of time through which he passed in that upward struggle; but he gained the surface at length, and, with the thunderous boom of a cataract in his ears, was swept forward by the current. For a time he was content to be carried along without attempting to swim, only paddling sufficiently to keep himself afloat. The roar of the fall died away behind him as he was swept on, and the speed of the current gradually slackened.
Slower and slower his progress grew, and at last he was obliged to strike out for himself. As to his whereabouts, he had no idea, but, deeming one direction as good as another in the midnight darkness by which he was surrounded, he swam boldly ahead.
Ere long he found that, strong as he was, to swim fully clothed for any length of time would be an impossibility; so, floating there, in the midst of a profound and awful silence, hedged about on either side by a solid pall of darkness, the intrepid baronet removed his boots and clothes. Then, naked as he was born, he struck out once more with long, steady strokes that ate up the distance.
Where was his enemy, the wolf-man? he wondered. Had he, too, escaped, and at the present moment was swimming somewhere in the darkness? The thought sent a shiver through Seymour’s frame, and he half expected to see a pair of fierce eyes glaring through the gloom and to feel once more those bony fingers gripping his throat. But there came no sign to show that the savage had escaped, and gradually the baronet’s anxiety on that score died.
For hours, so it seemed to him, he was swimming before his outstretched hand touched solid stone. Treading water, he reached upward, striving to discover how high this barrier was; but the top was beyond his reach.