“All is over,” said the hangman, climbing back into the cell. “Farewell, brother!”
He drew a cutlass from his belt. “Go feed the fishes in the fjord. Your body to the waves; your soul to the flames!”
With these words, he cut the taut rope. The fragment still fastened to the iron ring lashed the ceiling, while the deep, dark waters splashed high as the body fell, then swept on their underground course.
The hangman closed the trap as he had opened it; as he rose, he saw that the room was full of smoke.
“What is all this?” he asked the halberdiers. “Where does this smoke come from?”
They knew no better than he. In surprise, they opened the door; the corridors were also filled with thick and nauseating smoke. A secret outlet led them, greatly terrified, to the square courtyard, where a fearful sight met their gaze.
A vast conflagration, fanned by a violent east wind, was consuming the military prison and the barracks. The flames, driven in eddying whirls, climbed stone walls, crowned burning roofs, leaped from gaping window-frames; and the black towers of Munkholm now shone in a red and ominous light, now vanished in a dense cloud of smoke.
A turnkey, who was escaping by the courtyard, told them hastily that the fire had broken out in the monster’s cell during the sleep of Hans of Iceland’s keepers, he having been imprudently allowed to have a fire and straw.
“How unlucky I am!” cried Orugix, when he heard this story; “now I suppose Hans of Iceland has slipped through my hands too. The rascal must have been burned; and I sha’n’t even get his body, for which I paid two ducats!”
Meantime, the unfortunate Munkholm musketeers, roused suddenly from their sleep by imminent death, crowded toward the door only to find it closely barred. Their shrieks of anguish and despair were heard outside; they stood at the blazing windows, wringing their hands, or dashed themselves madly upon the flagging of the court, escaping one death to meet another. The victorious flames devoured the entire structure before the rest of the garrison could come to the rescue.