"I tell you it is certain death to remain here fifteen minutes longer. Even I could not save you then. The more they throw into the water the more frenzied they become for other victims. They will ransack the entire boat; but they won't find you down there. Lebœuf alone knows this place. Quick! If you would live to see the sun rise to-morrow, go down the steps of that ladder."
He took her by the shoulder to assist in the descent. His touch was so distasteful to her that she threw off his hand and went down the ladder unaided. "Make not the slightest sound, whatever you may hear going on up here above you, and wait patiently until I come to release you."
With these words the door was shut down and Lebœuf went out and up to the deck alone.
The vessel had reached a point in the river just outside the city. Here the stream narrowed and ran swiftly between the banks.
The sky was windy; and between the rifts of the high-banked clouds the moon shone fitfully. To the east lay the city of Tours, its spires standing out in sharp silhouette against the sky. On the river bank the wind swept over the dead, dry grass with a mournful, swaying sound and rattled the rotting halyards of the old hulk, which with one small sail set in the bow to keep it steady, made slowly down the river with the current, hugging the left bank as if fearful of trusting itself to the swifter depths beyond.
A rusty chain rasped through the hawse-hole, and the vessel swung at anchor.
In a small and close compartment in the ship's depths, totally without light, and with her nerves wrought upon by Lebœuf's appalling story, Edmé could only guess at what was happening above her head.
She knew that something terrible was taking place. She could hear a confusion of cries and trampling of feet; of hoarse shouts and commands; and she pictured in her imagination scenes quite as horrible as were actually taking place above her. In every wave that splashed against the vessel's side she could see the white face of a struggling, drowning creature, and every sound upon the vessel was the despairing death-note of a fresh victim. Through it all she could see the large face of Lebœuf leering at her with his bleary eyes. To have exchanged one fate for a worse one was to have gained nothing, and in her mental agony she almost envied those who a short time ago had been struggling helplessly in the hands of their executioners, and whose bodies now were quietly sleeping in the waters of the flowing river.
A quiet fell upon the vessel. The last cry had been uttered, the last command given, and no sound reached Edmé's ears but the soft plash of the water as it struck under the stern of the boat.
Then the remembrance of Lebœuf's face and look became still more vivid. She feared him in spite of all her courage; in spite of her pride that was greater than her courage, she feared him. The knowledge that he was aware of his power and took delight in it made the thought that she would soon have to face him there alone more terrible than her dread of the worst of deaths.