Sir Clinton's face darkened.
“It's a nuisance we have to go and fish that creature out of the Blowhole. I'd much prefer to leave him there to go through it. He deserves as long a spell as we can give him. But I suppose there would be a howl if we left him to die. Besides, I want to hang him if I can. By the way, what about his jovial colleague, Billingford?”
“He's here too,” Wendover explained. “We thought we'd bring him to the hotel and wait for your instructions. He's safe enough.”
“That's all right. Now here's the constable with the ropes, so I think we'll have to move on.”
Sir Clinton showed no desire to hurry; nor did Wendover when he had learned the state of affairs. Both of them were in the mood to prolong the agony so far as decency permitted. Wendover could not get out of his mind the expression he had seen on Cressida's face at Peter Hay's cottage; and when it came back to his memory he felt that the man in the Blowhole tunnel was getting only a fair retribution for his crime.
As they came near the mouth of the souffleur, the great fountain shot up into the night air and broke in spray in the moonlight. Sir Clinton hurried forward and bent down to listen to the orifice.
“He's there, all right, and still alive,” he reported. “A trifle unnerved, to judge by his appeals. I suppose we'll have to yank him out now.”
Armadale also had been listening to the cries from below.
“If we get him out in that state,” he said, with satisfaction, “there won't be much that he'll keep back when we start questioning him. He's all to pieces.”
Before they could do any more, the souffleur spouted again. Wendover, whose imagination was keener than that of the inspector, was suddenly appalled by the picture conjured up by that wild fountain jetting from the ground. Down below their feet he could see with his mind's eye the miserable wretch clinging for life to some inequality in the tunnel, while the continual blasts of the souffleur tore and battered at him, and the rush of water made him fight for his breath. A rat in a trap would be happy compared with that.