Then he took Bonvallot’s keys, left the cell, opened the door of Ferminard’s prison and found that gentleman seated on his bed, a vague figure in the light of the moon, a few stray beams of which were struggling through the window.
“Mordieu!” said Ferminard, “what has happened?”
Rochefort, instead of replying, seized him by the arm, and half pushing, half pulling him, led him into the corridor.
“Now,” said he, “quick; we have no time to waste, I have tied up Bonvallot; but when he does not return to the guard-room they are sure to search. There he is. He is not hurt. Come, help me to pull the bed to the window.”
Ferminard, after a glance at Bonvallot lying on the floor, obeyed mechanically. They got the bed close up with the head-rail under the window. Rochefort tied the rope to the head-rail, and, standing on the bed and opening the sash, seized the bar. It came away in his hands, and then, flinging it on the bed, he seized the rope which he had coiled and flung it out.
This done, he leaned out of the window-place and looked down.
The moonlight lit the castle wall and the dangling rope and showed the black shadow of the moat, a terrific sight that made Rochefort’s stomach crawl and his throat close. This was no castle wall which he had to descend. It was like looking over the cliff at the world’s end or one of those terrific bastions of cloud which one sees sometimes banking the sky before a storm. The moonlight it was that lent this touch of vastness to the prospect below, a prospect that made the sweat stand out on the palms of Rochefort’s hands and his soul to contract on itself.
It was a prospect to be met by the unthinking end of man if one wished for any chance of success, so with a warning to Ferminard not to look before he came, and having wedged two pillows under the rope where it rested on the sill, Rochefort got one leg over the sill, straddled it, got the other leg out and then turned on his face. He was now lying on his stomach across the pillow that was forming a pad for the rope, and as bad luck would have it, a knot in the rope just at this point did not make the position any more comfortable. Then he slowly worked his body downwards till he was supported only by his elbows; supporting himself entirely with his left elbow, he seized with his right hand the rope where it rested on the cushion, gave up his elbow hold and with his left hand seized the sill.
He was hanging now with one hand grasping the sill, the other, the rope. The sill was no longer a window-sill, it was the tangible world, to release his hold upon it and to trust entirely to the rope required an effort of will far greater than one would think, so great that even the plucky mind of Rochefort refused the idea for a moment, but only for a moment, the next he was swinging loose.