Mathias Sandorf

Count Sandorf resumed his task at the window. Three out of the four sockets were already scraped away sufficiently to allow the ends of the crossbar to be moved out of them. The fourth was then attacked by the light of the dazzling flashes which constantly illumined the sky.

At half past ten o’clock the work was done. The crossbar was clear of the walls, and could be slipped out of the embrasure. It only had to be pushed forward and dropped on the outside of the wall. And this was done as soon as Zathmar heard that the sentry had reached the far end of the corridor.

The crossbar was moved along the embrasure. It fell over and vanished.

At the moment there was a lull in the storm. Sandorf listened to hear when the heavy frame struck the ground. He heard not a sound!

“The donjon is built on a high rock which rises from the valley,” remarked Bathory.

“The height does not matter,” answered Sandorf. “There can be no doubt that the lightning conductor reaches the ground, because that is necessary for it to be of any use. And so we shall reach the ground without the risk of a fall.”

The reasoning was right, as a rule, but it was wrong in this instance, for the end of the conductor was plunged in the waters of Foiba.

The window being clear, the moment for escape had come.

“My friends,” said Sandorf, “this is what we had better do: I am the youngest, and, I think, the strongest. It is my place, therefore, to be the first to go down this iron rope. In case of some obstacle, which is impossible for us to foresee, preventing my reaching the ground, I may have strength enough to climb back to the window. Two minutes after I have gone, Stephen, you get out of the window and fellow me. Two minutes after him, Ladislas, yon come the same way. When we three have reached the foot of the donjon we will act according to circumstances.”

“We will obey you, Mathias,” answered Bathory. “We will do what you tell us to do; we will go where you tell us to go. But we do not like your taking the greatest share of the danger on yourself—”

“Our lives are not worth as much as yours,” added Zathmar.

“They are worth quite as much in the face of an act of justice which has to be done,” answered Count Sandorf. “And if one of us alone survives he will be the one to perform the act. Shake hands, my friends.”

And then, while Zathmar went to watch at the door of the cell, Sandorf climbed into the embrasure. ‘ A moment afterward he was hanging in the air. Then, while his knees gripped the iron rope, he slid down, hand under hand, feeling with his feet for the staples on which to rest.

The storm burst forth again with extraordinary violence. It did not rain, but the wind was terrific. Flash over-lapped flash. The zigzags crossed and crossed above the donjon, attracted by its isolated position and its towering height. The point of the lightning rod gleamed with pallid brilliancy as the electricity streamed off in a long spear-point of flame, and the cable shook and swung with the furious lashing of the storm.

The risk that was run in hanging on to this conductor, through which the electricity was traveling, to lose itself in the waters of the Brico, was terrible. Had the apparatus been in perfect condition there would have been no danger of a stroke, for the extreme conductibility of the metal compared to that of the human body, which is very much less, would have preserved the daring man who was suspended from it. But if the point of the conductor were blunted or there were any breakage of continuity in the cable, or a rupture occurred at any spot below, a stroke was quite possible due to the meeting of the positive and the negative; and this without a lightning flash, owing to the tension of the accumulation in the defective apparatus.

Count Sandorf was fully aware of the danger to which he was exposed. A sentiment more powerful than that of the instinct of preservation made him brave it. He slipped down slowly, cautiously through the electric emanations which enveloped him as in a mist. His foot sought each staple down the wall, and for an instant he paused, and as a blinding flash illumined the abyss beneath him he tried, but in vain, to discover its depth.

When Mathias had descended about sixty feet from the window he found a firm resting-place. It was a sort of ledge a few inches wide which marked the beginning of the base of the wall. The lightning conductor did not end here; it went down lower, and—unknown to the fugitive—from this point downward it was unfastened and floated free, sometimes skirting the rocky wall, sometimes swinging in mid-air, sometimes scraping against the rocks that overhung the abyss.

Count Sandorf stopped to recover his breath. His feet rested on the ledge, his hands grasped the iron cable. He saw that he had reached the first course of the masonry of the donjon. But how far he was above the valley he could not estimate.

“That must be very deep,” he thought.

In fact a few large birds, dazed by the brilliancy of the lightning, were flying round him with heavily flapping wings, and instead of rising, sunk out of sight beneath his feet. Hence he must be on the brink of a precipice which fell away, deep down below him.

As the birds disappeared he heard a noise above, and by the light of a vivid flash he saw a confused mass detach itself from the wall.

It was Stephen Bathory escaping from the window. He had grasped the conductor and was slowly slipping down to join Count Sandorf. Mathias waited for him, his feet firmly planted on the narrow ledge. There Stephen could wait while he continued to descend.

In a few minutes both were standing on the narrow stone-work.

As soon as the thunder ceased for an instant they could speak and hear each other.

“And Ladislas?” asked Sandorf.

“He will be here in a minute.”

“Nothing wrong aloft?”

“Nothing.”

“Good! I will make room for Ladislas, and you, Stephen, wait till he reaches you.”

“Agreed.”

A tremendous flash seemed to envelop them in flame. It seemed as though the electricity coursing through the cable had penetrated their nerves. They thought they had been struck.

“Mathias! Mathias!” exclaimed Bathory, under an impression of terror that he could not master.

“Be cool! I am going down! You will follow!” was Sandorf’s reply.

And already he had seized the cable with the intention of slipping to the first staple below, where he intended to wait for his companion.

Suddenly there were shouts from above. They seemed to come from the window of the cell. Then these words rang out:

“Save yourselves!”

It was Zathmar’s voice.

Immediately a bright light shot from the wall, followed by a sharp report. This time it was not the cable broken by a lightning flash which lit up the gloom; it was not the roar of the thunder which resounded m the air. A gun had been fired, a chance shot probably from one of the embrasures of the donjon. It was just as much a signal to the guard as if a bullet had been aimed at the fugitives. The escape had been discovered.

The sentry had heard some noise. He had called five or six of the warders and entered the cell. The absence of two of the prisoners had been immediately discovered, the state of the window showing how they had escaped. And Zathmar rushing to the window had given the alarm.

“Poor fellow!” exclaimed Bathory. “To desert him, Mathias! To desert him!”

A second time there came the discharge of a gun. The report mingled with the roll of the thunder.

“Heaven have pity on him!” said Sandorf. “But we must escape—we must avenge him! Come, Stephen, come!”

It was time. Other windows on the lower story of the donjon were being opened. New discharges lighted them up. Shouts were heard. Perhaps the warders could run round the base of the wall and cut off the retreat of the fugitives! Perhaps they might be shot!

“Come!” exclaimed Sandorf for the last time.

And he slid down the iron cable, which Bathory grasped immediately after him.

Then they saw the rope hung loosely over the abyss. Resting-places, staples, there were none. They were swinging wildly at the end of the rope, which cut their hands as it slipped through them. Down they went with their knees chafing and bleeding, without the power to stop themselves as the bullets whistled past.

For a minute, for eighty feet and more, they glided down—down—asking themselves if the abyss in which they were ingulfed were really bottomless. Already the roar of the raging waters below them could be heard. Then they understood that the lightning conductor led down into the torrent. What was to be done? To climb back to the base of the donjon they could not; their strength was unequal to the task. And death for death, it was better to chance that which waited for them in the depths below.

Suddenly there came a fearful clap of thunder and an intense electric glare. Although the conductor was not struck, yet the tension of the electricity was such that the iron rope grew white as a platinum thread beneath the discharge of a battery or a pile.

Bathory uttered a cry of despair—and let go.

Sandorf saw him pass him, almost touching him his arms wide open.

And then he let go the iron rope which glowed in his hands; and he fell more than forty feet into the torrent of Foiba which foamed along at the foot of the unknown Brico.

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