'
'Yes, darling,' I muttered to myself, drawing her to me and burying
my face in her bosom, 'there is one escape, only one.'
For death seemed to me the only escape from a tragedy far, far worse
than death.
If she made me any answer I heard it not; for, as I sat there with
closed eyes, schemes of escape fluttered before me and were dismissed
at the rate of a thousand a second. A fiery photograph of the cove
was burning within my brain, my mind was absorbed in examining every
cranny and every protuberance in the semicircular wall of the cliff
there depicted; over and over again I was examining that
brain-picture, though I knew every inch of it, and knew there was not
in the cliff-wall foothold for a squirrel.
X
The moon mocked me, and seemed to say:
'The blasting spectacle shining there on the other side of that heap
of earth must be passed, or Needle Point can never be reached; and
unless it is reached instantly you and she can never leave the cove.'
'Then we will never leave it,' I whispered to myself, jumping up.
As I did so I found for the first time that her forehead had been
resting against my head; for the furious rate at which the wheels of
thought were moving left no vital current for the sense of touch, and
my flesh was numbed.
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