Having bound Flora Francatelli to the chair in the manner just described, the three nuns fell back a few paces, and the wretched girl felt the floor giving way under her.
A dreadful scream burst from her lips, as slowly—slowly the chair sank down, while the working of hidden machinery in the roof, and the steady, monotonous revolution of wheels, sounded with ominous din upon her ears.
An icy stream appeared to pour over her soul; wildly she cast around her eyes, and then more piercing became her shrieks, as she found herself gradually descending into what seemed to be a pit or well—only that it was square instead of round.
The ropes creaked—the machinery continued its regular movement, and the lamp fixed in the skylight overhead became less and less brilliant.
And bending over the mouth of this pit into which she was descending were the three nuns—standing motionless and silent like hideous specters, on the brink of the aperture left by the square platform or trap, whereon the chair was fixed.
“Mercy! Mercy!” exclaimed Flora, in a voice expressive of the most acute anguish.
And stretching forth her snowy arms (for it was round the waist and by the feet that she was fastened to the chair), she convulsively placed her open palms against the wooden walls of the pit, as if she could by that spasmodic movement arrest the descent of the terrible apparatus that was bearing her down into that hideous, unknown gulf! But the walls were smooth and even, and presented nothing whereon she could fix her grasp.
Her brain reeled, and for a few minutes she sat motionless, in dumb, inert despair.
Then again, in obedience to some mechanical impulse, she glanced upward; the light of the lamp was now dimly seen, like the sun through a dense mist—but the dark figures were still bending over the brink of the abyss, thirty yards above.
The descent was still progressing and the noise of the machinery still reached her ears, with buzzing, humming, monotonous indistinctness.