“Are you ready, Ambrose?” said the Doctor presently, “I see that you are ready. Have you nothing to ask of me? No boon?”
“Nay,” answered the other; “for hath an outworn garment aught to ask of him who casts it away?”
There was silence; and thereupon I, who had stood by until then like one spell-bound, recovered myself. I was ready to have drawn my rapier, and madly to have fallen upon the guards; but, chancing to look at Doctor Copicus, I stopped: his face was all twisted like a child’s that is about to burst forth into strong weeping.
It held but for a moment, and passed.
“Let the man go!” said Doctor Copicus.
But Ambrose sank swooning upon the grass.
CHAPTER XXXI.
NEITHER ONE NOR THE OTHER.
That night I dreamt a monstrous dream; and it seemed to me that a ship anchored off the island on a dark midnight.
Then rose up the dreadful figure on the shore, and stretched forth an arm of stone, and with a stone hand laid hold on the ship, and lifted her aloft, and dropt her all shattered into the crater of the volcan. Whereupon, with a blast of sulphurous fire, the ship was blown an appalling great height into the air.
With that, I awoke; but, though the phantasy of my dream passed away, I knew, as by an instinct, that something monstrous had, indeed, happened on the island. I felt along the wall for the little brass knob; and, having found and pressed it, I looked round in the lighted cell. One of the walls was rent in a long fissure!