For long they stood in silence, their very beings seeming to co-blend, each the other’s complement, both a perfect whole.
At last Eleanor spoke, and he felt her tremble with the words. “Let us never again speak the name ‘Frazer’ even within ourselves.”
“Nay, never,” he said. “I thank God he hath gone from out our lives.”
But Vytal’s thanksgiving was premature.
Frazer lived. In the cabin on the cliff above them he lived and moved. Slowly, and with great pain, he contrived, by working his way on knees and elbows, to reach the wall, high up in which the torch still sputtered fitfully. Then, although a stream of red had marked his passage across the room, he placed his bound hands between the logs and, with a strenuous exertion, raised himself until he stood unsteadily upon his feet. And now it was not only the cresset’s light that flashed in his blue eyes. A look of victory surmounted the expression of pain, as, stretching out his arms, he held the wrists immediately over the torch’s flame. The fire scorched and blistered his white skin, burning deep and slowly. At the last his teeth, gnashing in agony, met through his underlip, but still he allowed the flame to work its will. For the thongs that bound him, being damp with blood and perspiration, had not yet been severed.
Finally, however, burning like fuses, they parted slowly and fell to the floor. Then, bending forward, he unbound his ankles, stifling a moan as his scorched fingers untied the knots. Suddenly he was free; and, hastening as best he might to a lifeless Spanish soldier who had been killed in guarding him, he was in a moment not only liberated, but armed as well with a musket ready primed.
Having thus provided himself, he once more fell to his hands and knees and crawled, like some dying animal, into the forest. With a superhuman stoicism and determination, he descended by the winding path that led from Vytal’s cabin to the shore, while a circuitous trail of blood marked his progress.
At the wooded margin of the beach he paused and, leaning against a tree, staggered to his feet.
Two figures stood before him, distinctly visible in the light of the consuming flames.
But, as he raised his weapon, one of the figures moved.