We know by the foregoing chapter how the Carcajieu had made a mock of his contrivances.
After quitting the lieutenant, Drudge, with the passive obedience he showed, and the cunning he well concealed under seeming stupidity, began carrying out the order received.
It was then about half after ten.
It was a black night, the fine rain never ceased to fall, and, whisked under the natural vault by a rising wind, appeared to come from all quarters at once. There was no evading it; but Leon seemed quite heedless, though it must have pierced his insufficient garments. He stole away like an eel along the rocky edge, crossing the whole camp longwise till he attained the spot where the platform ended, and the cliff formed an unfathomable gulf where darkness deepened. He stopped short, and looked well about him to make sure he was alone.
Whether alone or not, neither he nor another could see any object though at touching distance. Reasoning that any watcher would, therefore, be perplexed to perceive him, the youth swiftly unwound a leather rope from about his middle. A giant pine leaned out from the precipice. To this he fastened one end of the lasso; coiling the slack up clear for running out in one hand, he attached the loop around a good-sized stone muffled with grass, which even frost had not killed, in a cranny.
He leaned over the gulf, and imitated with rare perfection the inquiring and rather mockingly intoned hiss of the whip snake calling for a mate. Any listener would have imagined that the reptile Don Juan, drowned out of his hole by the icy rain, was seeking with equal relish to taunt a rival or a ladylove to leave its burrow and respond to his challenge or advances. After having repeated this call several times, but without impatience, a similar answer came from below—short, sharp, shrill, angry, as if the rival snake was aroused and climbed up for a fight.
Most of the sentries were asleep, we know; and the others, whether experienced woodmen or not, would pay no attention to what seemed an ordinary incident of the night.
On receiving his reply, though, the youth flung the stone and coils out from him. Softened by the grassy matting, the stone could not be heard to land; but the snake hissed afresh, and the lariat was drawn taut.
The Drudge exhaled a long breath, as one delivered from mortal anguish.
In fact, it had not been an easy task in the perfect gloom, and guided by sound alone in a damp atmosphere, to swing a weighted cord to the very hand of a man expecting it. If, instead of his catching it, it had struck him in the face, he must have been full of fortitude not to have cried out. But chance had favoured the plotters.