Royal Amethyst/Chapter 24
XXIV
If I had not been gagged, I should have burst into ravings of despair on seeing Hartopp and his companion desert me. For a few moments I was almost beside myself with rage, fury, and my sense of awful helplessness. I struggled to break my bonds, and only when I realized that I was beyond all hope of release did I gradually grow calm and begin to think the whole matter out.
I was bound to the pillar by cords that secured every part of my body. A burning sensation in my head was accompanied by the first symptoms of thirst, while the pressure of the cords about my body made my feet and hands ache violently. I endeavored to lean against my ropes, in order to lessen the pressure, but they had been tied too tightly to admit of any relief.
My captors had drawn the rope around the capital of the pillar so as to lift me almost off my feet. Before me, so near that I could have touched it with my foot had I been able to move, lay the body of Count Hofberg, the grinning face mutilated and bruised by the savage kicks that Hartopp had bestowed upon it, the body crumpled up in the helplessness of sudden death. It was a horrible sight. I began to grow a little delirious.
They had left the lamps burning. One of them was burning low already, and the unpleasant smell of the wick came to my nostrils and made me feel sick. From the appearance of the others it seemed that they might last for several hours—perhaps for a whole day.
The pain in my head and limbs grew duller, less sharply defined, as time passed on. It was very still down there, for a long while I did not catch a sound.
It came upon me, at last, that I could hear the silence. My ears pricked themselves lest they should lose anything of what it had to tell me. There was something soothing in its rhythmic monotony—something that acted like a sedative on my nerves. I closed my eyes, and I think I fell asleep.
I awoke with a sudden horror that drove a cold sweat out of my cramped body and left me trembling in every muscle and fiber. Something was moving somewhere near at hand!
I lifted my head and listened. I heard it plainly—a soft, stealthy movement as of padded feet falling gently and uncertainly on a floor thick with long undisturbed dust.
Now and then the footfalls came swiftly—now they ceased altogether—now again they came slowly and diffidently. Sometimes they were on my right, sometimes on the left, and then they were in front, away among the shadows. After a time they sounded behind me, and then again on my right. When I heard them behind me, I could have screamed with uncontrollable terror but for the gag.
This went on for some little time. At last the sound came nearer, and was mingled with the breathing of an animal. It became still clearer, and suddenly I was aware of two bright spots of green flame glaring at me from the darkness that lay immediately before me and beyond the circle of lamplight.
They remained absolutely motionless for some moments, and then the animal out of whose head they shone drew nearer. His eyes were glaring at me out of the darkness.
The brute came out of the darkness at last, with a slow, slinking, half bold, half frightened gait, and advanced into the circle of the lamps. He stared at me, and I caught the gleam of a bared fang. He was a great beast—loose and long of limb, unkempt—a sheep dog that appeared to have been cut adrift, and to have led a freebooter's life in the woods and fields. He was a sheep-killer, no doubt. There was murder all over the gaunt, half starved body.
As I watched him, he slunk nearer and nearer to the dead man. He kept his eye on me as he nosed the ground before him, and presently he began to complain in peevish snarlings and grumblings. He continued to nose the air and to grumble as he crept nearer and nearer to the body.
For a moment after he reached it he remained beside it, perfectly quiet, his eyes watching me. He began to sniff and grumble again; then he started to lap up, greedily, the blood that had gathered in a pool about the dead man's head. He lapped and lapped, and he grumbled at me all the time. His white teeth gleamed through the crimson which began to stain his long, pointed nose and jaws, and above them I saw the brighter gleam of his eyes, fixed upon me.
After some moments he slunk off to a little distance. He began to exhibit symptoms of impatience and distress, giving vent to his feelings in short, sharp barks of resentment and anger. He sat down on his haunches and whined; and in the end he went back to the dead man, and growled at me defiantly as he fell to work.
I could not bear to see even a treacherous enemy like Count Hofberg made food for a dog, and I closed my eyes to shut out the sight; but I could not shut my ears, and I was obliged to hear the brute's savage growling and snarling. I kept my eyes closed until I heard the man-eater shuffling away in the darkness, and then I only opened them in order to see what his movements were.
He went away, still slinkingly, and I heard him licking his chops as he vanished beyond the ring of light. Everything became very silent. I kept my eyes firmly turned away from the torn and mangled thing at my feet.
I do not know how long it was between this episode and the going out of the lamps. I think I became delirious or unconscious. After that came oblivion.