The fancy seemed logical enough; there seemed nothing of the fantastic in it; Quarrier waited, there in the smothering dark, for the quick knife-thrust that would mean the end—or the deadening impact of the slung-shot.
But, unimaginative as he was, like a man who has but lately undergone the surgeon’s scalpel he feared to move, to feel, even while he assured himself that he was unhurt save for the throbbing in his temples, and the very bruises that he felt upon him, but would not touch.
But there was something else. After a little his hesitant, exploring fingers found it. The length of line bent in a sort of running bowline about his shoulders and arms. And behind him, from a staple in the wall, it hung, sliding like a snake in the thick darkness.
He moved his head, slowly, carefully, like a man testing himself for an invisible hurt. And then—
“Ha!” he breathed, deep in his throat, the shadow of a cry. For, moving an inch further to the right, it would have been a noose, tightening as he moved, strangling him there, choking him out of sound and sense.
Brave as he was, Quarrier shivered, his shoulders twitching with the thought. And it was not cold. Moving with an infinite caution, he ran his exploring fingers along the hempen strands.
Whoever had devised that noose had been a sailor. And only a sailor could undo it.
And there in the dark, trussed as he was, at the mercy of what other peril he knew not. Quarrier permitted himself the ghost of a grin. His hand went up, slowly, carefully, the fingers busy with the rope; there came a tug, and, coiling at his feet like a snake, the noose slid slithering along the stones.
Quarrier was not a praying man, in the ordinary sense, but now he sent heavenward a silent aspiration of gratitude for the impulse which, years previous, had prompted his signing on as a foremast hand in the China seas. And the long hours in the doldrums, below the line, had, as it proved, been anything but wasted.
Now, easing his cramped muscles in a preliminary stretching, he rose gingerly to his feet, moving with the stealth and caution of an Indian. He was free of that constricting rope, but as he moved forward, groping, just ahead there came to him a sudden murmur of voices, low, like the growling of savage beasts. There was that sort of note in it: A fierce, avid mutter, and presently, as he advanced, he made out here and there a word.