"Nannin, ch'est tres ship-shape, Maitre!"
The Undertaker's Apprentice was wrong. He had made everything ship- shape, as he thought, but a gin had been set for him. The rope to be used at the hanging had been measured and approved by the Vicomte, and the Undertaker's Apprentice had carried it to his room at the top of the Cohue Royale. In the dead of night, however, Dormy Jamais drew it from under the mattress whereon the deathman slept, and substituted one a foot longer. This had been Ranulph's idea as a last resort, for he had a grim wish to foil the law even at the twelfth hour.
The great moment had come. The shouts and hootings ceased. Out of the silence there arose only the champing of a horse's bit or the hysterical giggle of a woman. The high painful drone of the chaplain's voice was heard.
Then came the fatal "Maintenant!" from the Vicomte, the platform fell, and Elie Mattingley dropped the length of the rope.
What was the consternation of the Vicomte and the hangman, and the horror of the crowd, to see that Mattingley's toes just touched the ground! The body shook and twisted. The man was being slowly strangled, not hanged.
The Undertaker's Apprentice was the only person who kept a cool head. The solution of the problem of the rope for afterwards, but he had been sent there to hang a man, and a man he would hang somehow. Without more ado he jumped upon Mattingley's shoulders and began to drag him down.
That instant Ranulph Delagarde burst through the mounted guard and the militia. Rushing to the Vicomte, he exclaimed:
"Shame! The man was to be hung, not strangled. This is murder. Stop it, or I'll cut the rope." He looked round on the crowd. "Cowards— cowards," he cried, "will you see him murdered?"
He started forward to drag away the deathmann, but the Vicomte, thoroughly terrified at Ranulph's onset, himself seized the Undertaker's Apprentice, who, drawing off with unruffled malice, watched what followed with steely eyes.
Dragged down by the weight of the Apprentice, Mattingley's feet were now firmly on the ground. While the excited crowd tried to break through the cordon of mounted guards, Mattingley, by a twist and a jerk, freed his corded hands. Loosing the rope at his neck he opened his eyes and looked around him, dazed and dumb.