"And now, brother," said Feodor, "the entertainment I promised you is about to begin. My fellows are already sitting in your long-boat and their own skiffs. The sound of the bell is the signal that all is ready."
With these words he left Zeno alone in the observatory and hurried downstairs to give the signal.
With a violent effort, Zeno succeeded in getting one foot so far out of his bonds that he could reach the ground with his heel. With this foot he gradually pushed himself nearer and nearer to the edge of the low open window. Then, with a desperate effort, he tilted the chair forward, and precipitated himself and it together into the depths beneath. For him there was neither entertainment nor spectacle any more on this earth.
Meantime Feodor strode down to the dining-room where he usually rang the bell in the concealed room by means of the silken cord. He stopped suddenly and turned pale with fear when he discovered that the cord had been cut.
"The cord had been cut"
He burst into the next room. There Mashinka's bed was empty. He hurried into his son's bedroom. The boys were nowhere to be seen. The open window and the rope dangling outside in the wind told him plainly enough of their flight.
It was too late now. In vain his cry of wrath sounded through the fortress. In vain he pierced with his sword the empty bed from which his victim had escaped. In vain he now beat his breast for having harboured a human feeling within it. That weakness, he now saw, had indeed been his ruin.
In his boundless wrath he rushed up to the observatory to wreak all his baffled vengeance on his one remaining victim. He consoled himself with the thought that he at least could not escape.
But Zeno too had vanished. He was no longer where he had left him.