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d feet. His knees were numb. He measured the paralysis of death creeping up his legs inch by inch, driving the sharp pains before it, until suddenly his weight tottered under him and he hung heavily upon the thong about his throat. For a full half minute he ceased to breathe, and a feeling of ineffable relief swept over him, for during those few seconds his body was at rest. He found that by a backward contortion he could bring himself erect again, and that for a few minutes after each respite it was not so difficult for him to stand.
After a third effort he turned again toward Neil. A groan of horror rose to his imprisoned lips. His companion's face was full upon him, ghastly white; his eyes were wide and staring, like balls of shimmering glass in the starlight, and his throat was straining at the fatal rawhide! Nathaniel heard no sound, saw no stir of life in the inanimate figure.
A moaning, wordless cry broke through the cloth that gagged him.
At the sound of that cry, faint, terrifying, with all the horror that might fill a human soul in its inarticulate note, a shudder of life passed into Neil's body. Weakly he flung himself back, stood poised for an instant against the stake, then fell again upon the deadly thong. Twice--three times he made the effort, and failed. And to Nathaniel, staring wild eyed and silent now, the spectacle was one that seemed to blast the very soul within him and send his blood in rushing torrents of fire to his sickened brain. Neil was dying! A fourth time he struggled back. A fifth--and he held his ground. Even in that passing instant something like a flash of his buoyant smile flickered in his face and there came to Nathaniel's ears like a throttled whisper--his name.
"Nat--"
And no more.
The head fell forward again. And Nathaniel, turning his face away, saw something come up out of the shimmering sea, like a shadow before his blistering eyes, and as his own limbs went out from under him and he felt the strangling death at his throat there