If he thought to escape that way his hope was desperate. The depth to
the water-level was not, he judged, twelve feet. But Peridol had told
the truth. Below lay not water, but a smooth surface of viscid slime,
here luminous with the florescence of rottenness, there furrowed by a
tiny runnel of moisture which sluggishly crept across it to the slow
stream beyond. This quicksand, vile and treacherous, lapped the wall
below the window, and more than accounted for the absence of bars or
fastenings. But, leaning far out, he saw that it ended at the angle of
the building, at a point twenty feet or so to the right of his position.
He sprang to the floor again, and listened an instant; then, with guarded
movements--for there was fear in the air, fear in the silent room, and at
any moment the rush might be made, the door burst in--he set the lanthorn
and wine-pitcher on the floor, and took up the table in his arms. He
began to carry it to the window, but, halfway thither, his eye told him
that it would not pass through the opening, and he set it down again and
glided to the bed. Again he was thwarted; the bed was screwed to the
floor. Another might have despaired at that, but he rose with no sign of
dismay, and listening, always listening, he spread his cloak on the
floor, and deftly, with as little noise and rustling as might be, be
piled the straw in it, compressed the bundle, and, cutting the bed-cords
with his dagger, bound all together with them. In three steps he was in
the embrasure of the window, and, even as the men in the passage thrust
the lieutenant aside and with a sudden uproar came down to the door, he
flung the bundle lightly and carefully to the right--so lightly and
carefully, and with so nice and deliberate a calculation, that it seemed
odd it fell beyond the reach of an ordinary leap.
An instant and he was on the floor again. The men had to unlock, to draw
back the bolts, to draw back the door which opened outwards; their
numbers, as well as their savage haste, impeded them. When they burst in
at last, with a roar of "To the river! To the river!"--burst in a rush
of struggling shoulders and lowered pikes, they found him standing, a
solitary figure, on the further side of the table, his arms folded. And
the sight of the passive figure for a moment stayed them.
"Say your prayers, child of Satan!" cried the leader, waving his weapon.
"We give you one minute!"
"Ay, one minute!" his followers chimed in. "Be ready!"
"You would murder me?" he said with dignity. And when they shouted
assent, "Good!" he answered. "It is between you and M. de Biron, whose
guest I am. But"--with a glance which passed round the ring of glaring
eyes and working features--"I would leave a last word for some one. Is
there any one here who values a safe-conduct from the King? 'Tis for two
men coming and going for a fortnight." And he held up a slip of paper.