His tongue, swollen and red, was protruding from his mouth as he lay panting for breath and clutching at his parched throat in a paroxysm of pain.
When this had subsided, he continued—
“Now—now, before it’s too late, swear—swear by all you hold sacred to do my bidding.”
“What do you mean? I don’t understand.”
“If—if I tell you the secret and you escape from this, you’ll be able to take my place as a living witness of her guilt—you’ll be able to wreak vengeance upon her in my stead; to end a career, dark and dishonourable, shadowed by a terrible crime.”
“Relate the facts,” urged the younger man impatiently, for he well knew that the other’s strength was fast failing, and feared lest the end should come before he could narrate the story.
“You have not sworn. Take an oath to deliver her up to justice should you escape, then I will show you the full extent of her villainy.”
The dying man’s terrible earnestness alarmed him.
“How can I do so until I am convinced?” he argued. What proof was there, he reflected, that Valérie had been false to him? After all, perhaps these wild words were the irresponsible expressions of a person whose mind was unhinged.
At that moment the madman in the boat’s stern started up with a fearful oath, afterwards laughing, fiendishly, and keeping up a hideous gibbering which added to the horror of Trethowen’s surroundings.