"Then be quiet while I cut your bonds; afterwards move back toward me. But mark well you tread lightly along the floor, with no sound to attract attention."
He chuckled grimly.
"Fathers of Israel! it will astound those fellows to discover this place empty—'t is likely they will imagine me gone back to the Sun."
Making no response to this natural conceit, I stretched myself forward the full length of my body, quickly drew the keen knife edge across his bonds, severing them with one stroke, thus setting free his arms. As the sundered cords dropped noiselessly to the floor I drew back into hiding, leaving him to rid himself of whatever might remain. A moment later he joined me, silently as a great shadow, and I cordially extended my hand to him.
CHAPTER XXXI
WE MOUNT THE CLIFF
"May the gracious blessing of the Lord rest upon you, Geoffrey Benteen," exclaimed the old Puritan fervently, as we faced each other in that gloomy passage, and it somehow heartened me to note tears in his gray eyes. There was heart, then, under all his crabbedness. "I have suffered much of late both in spirit and flesh, and the very sight of you is as a gift of mercy unto me. No angel with healing in his wings could prove more welcome, yet I dislike leaving yonder food for the sustenance of that foul idolater."
"You hunger then?" I questioned, amused at the regret with which he glanced backward.
"Is it hungered you call a man who has had but two dry bones to pick since yester-noon?" he groaned, pressing both hands upon his stomach. "I am lean as the Egyptian kine, and fain would welcome even locusts and wild honey."