First, however, with perilous curiosity, he cast a look round the room he was about to leave. The principal girder of the ceiling was bent in the middle from the intense heat, smoke was pouring into the room through every crack and crevice, and filled it already to the height of a man's stature; it was slowly descending in regular layers, lower and lower, like a gradually falling cloud.
Little fluttering fiery threads were darting hither and thither, in the grey cloud, like tiny flashing birds. The fiery spectre, peeping through the rent in the roof, was already laughing a thunderous "ha! ha! ha!" Peter Zudár laughed back at it.
"If thou dost laugh, I can laugh too, so the pair of us may laugh together!"
Already he had crept half through the opening, whence he observed how the beams were curving above his head, how they were bursting and charring.
All at once he recollected something.
Hastily he scrambled out of the hole again. To walk upright in that room was impossible, for the clouds of smoke were now only three feet from the ground. He crept along the floor on all fours to his oaken chest, opened it, and drew forth therefrom a little Prayer Book and a couple of ribbons, which he thrust into his bosom.
Then he also drew forth a long leather bag which was fastened at each end by a clasp. These clasps he opened, one by one, with the utmost composure. Inside lay the pallos,[16] that bright, two-edged implement which flashes at the command of the criminal law, the weapon of Justice.
[16] The sword of the public executioner.
When Peter Zudár felt it in his hand, his gigantic figure suddenly arose bolt upright, and there he stood amidst the smoke, amidst the flames, like an avenging demon, slashing about him with his sparkling blade as if he would say to the smoke and the flames, "Fear me! I am the headsman!"
At that moment a thundering crash resounded behind him. His gun, which had been leaning up against the wall, suddenly exploded by reason of the intense heat, and the bullets penetrated the wall.