The face leered down upon me, and the eyes taunted me, vile slits that they were, in the impassive cruelty of that smooth countenance.
Then a frenzy seized me and lent strength to bone and sinew.
“I will save you, man, or I will die with you.” The sound came thickly from between my teeth.
I thrust my spear deep into the ground beside the pit. I tied about me one end of the garment of the dead priest, and fastened the other to the spear. Then with my naked hands I made a kind of foothold in the close packed earth, and let myself down over the edge. If there was a flaw in the iron forged by savage hands, the spear would snap. The woven strip of cloth that cut into my flesh might part under the strain, or the stake be pulled from its earthen bed. I dared not look below, but I heard Lestrade’s quick, hard breathing.
That twelve feet seemed a hundred, and the snail pace all the slower for the galloping pulses of my heart.
All at once—for the ear grows keen in danger—I heard Gaston’s fingers slipping,—slipping along the rock.
“Friend, I can do no more.”
The faint whisper was borne upward from the pit. With a superhuman effort I let go my hold with one hand, and my fingers closed upon the collar of Lestrade’s shirt.
He hung a dead weight, limp in my grasp, and I thought my arms would start from their sockets. The spear above us swung to one side; the sweat from my forehead ran down and blinded my eyes.
With an animal instinct I clung to the side of the pit. I could feel the veins in my temples full to bursting, and for one brief moment, ease from that terrible rack seemed more to be desired than a friend’s life; more precious than sunlight; a better thing than honor itself. The next instant, and my foot, by the Lord’s mercy, touched the stone that had stayed Lestrade’s fall.