“Hold your end and stand away round the wall,” I shouted down to Grey. “Stand away, and I will drop it.”
I heard his answer from below, signifying that I might heave it down. I did so, and then heard him call up: “But what about you?”
“Make haste,” I yelled down; “damn it all, make haste. Save your wife, never mind about me.” Well I knew that my life was worth very little either to myself or anybody else.
He made some reply which I could not catch, then shouted “Good-bye! good-bye!” and something else which was lost in the tumult of the lake below. I watched his torch disappear round the buttress, and then fell to gazing at the small stream of moonlight that now pierced through the darkness above the abyss. Would Grey and his wife get through the giants’ window before that ray was darkened altogether? I prayed that it might be so.
In less than three minutes I was sure of it, for something obstructed the ray for a moment, and then it shone on clear as before, though perceptibly less. They had passed through, and now in a few minutes the giants would close their window for ever.
But before the ray died out it fell above the outer lip of the huge basin, and revealed the form of the wizard negro still standing there spellbound.
What would be his end? I knew the abyss was filling; by the roar of the falling water I judged it was filling rapidly. The picture of that figure in the moonray standing, as soon he must, with nothing but his head above water, unable to stir hand or foot to save himself, moved me strangely. I would release him from his bondage and let him have at least a rat’s chance of drowning on his own responsibility. But I feared it was too late. Would he hear my voice against the roar of the waters? At least I could try. Standing up, I shouted to him across the intervening space:
“Servant of the Brotherhood of Huo! My voice is the only thing—you are free to save yourself if you can.”
He heard me. I saw him crouching down on the rock. Then, as the moonray dwindled away to nothing, there came from the darkness the same wild, unearthly laugh I had heard so often before. It echoed from a thousand crags in the walls and roof of the vast cavern, and was finally bandied about in the central vault like the voice of a fiend chuckling to himself. But he could do no harm now; sooner or later he must drown like any rat.