From above his head, but a little to the right, came the murmur of voices.
How far was he from Jodot and William? What was the cliff he had to scale like—a sheer wall, or sloping enough to climb? He could not tell. He must trust to luck. [[291]]
He stripped and rubbed his chilled limbs and body with handfuls of gravel. Then he wrung out his sopping shirt and trousers and put them on again. His warmed body quickly warmed them, and feeling fit again, he attacked the cliff.
It was neither a sheer fall, nor a slope. It was composed of huge steps, a cyclopean staircase. He could climb them, leaping up, catching the edge of each step, but with what an immense effort! Loose pebbles slipped from under his gripping fingers; plants he grasped were unrooted. Again and again he fell, only to leap again. But the voices above were growing louder.
In the light of day he would never have attempted such a climb. But the unceasing “Tick-tack! Tick-tack!” of his watch drove him on with an irresistible impulsion. Every second that struck on his ear, was a moment in Aurelie’s waning life. He must succeed!
He succeeded. Of a sudden no other cyclopean step barred his way; he was on level turf; and a light was shining through the darkness.
A few yards from him the surface of the plateau dipped into a hollow, in the middle of which stood a small ruined hut; from a branch of the tree which towered above it hung a lantern.
On the opposite edge of the hollow, two men lay at full length on their bellies on the turf with their backs to him. Their rifles and revolvers lay within reach. [[292]]Between them stood an electric lamp, the light of which had been his beacon.
He looked at his watch and shivered. It had taken him fifty minutes, much longer than he had thought to reach the top of the cliff.
“I have half an hour at the most to stop the water rising,” he said to himself. “If I haven’t torn from Jodot the secret of the sluices in half an hour, all that is left for me is to return to Aurelie and die with her, as I promised.”