He made no attempt to fight me, but only to escape, and his face was hideously stamped with fear.
"Let me go!" he howled. "Ah, you will repent it! Monsieur, let me go! I will give you a half-share in the gold. What do you want with me?"
What did I want? I did not know. It must have been the same instinct that leads one to stamp upon a noxious insect. I think it was his joy in the hideous spectacle beneath the cataract that had made me long to kill him.
But now a dreadful fear was dawning on me.
"Jacqueline!" I screamed.
"I have not seen her," he replied. "Now let me go! Ah, mon Dieu, will you never let me go? It is too late!"
Suddenly he grew calm.
"It is too late," he said in a monotonous voice, "You have killed both of us!"
And, with the sweat still on his forehead, he stood looking maliciously at me.
"If you had let me go," he said, "you would have died just as you are going to die."