Grûl lay flat, thrust his head and shoulders far out over the brink, and reached down a long arm.
"That ends it," said I; and I shifted my position, which I had not done, as it seemed to me, for an eternity. The victim's screaming had ceased before the knife touched him.
But I was vastly mistaken in thinking it the end.
"He has not killed him," muttered Mizpah.
And then I saw that Grûl had merely cut the cord which bound his captive's hands. The Abbé was swiftly freeing himself; and Grûl, meanwhile, was lowering him down the face of the cliff. When the unhappy captive had descended perhaps twenty feet, his tormentor secured the rope, and again lay down with his head and shoulders leaning over the brink, his hands playing carelessly with the knife.
The Abbé, with many awkward gestures, presently got his limbs free, and the cord which had enwound him fell trailing like a snake to the cliff foot. Then, with clawing hands and sprawling feet, he clutched at the smooth, inexorable rock, in the vain hope of getting a foothold. It was pitiful to see his mad struggles, and the quiet of the face above looking down upon them with unimpassioned interest; till at last, exhausted, the poor wretch ceased to struggle, and looked up at his persecutor with the silence of despair.
Presently Grûl spoke,—for the first time, as far as we knew.
"You know me, Monsieur l'Abbé, I suppose," he remarked, in tone of placid courtesy.