The
plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, I
knew that surprise, or entrapment into torment, formed an important
portion of all the grotesquerie of these dungeon deaths. Having failed
to fall, it was no part of the demon plan to hurl me into the abyss;
and thus (there being no alternative) a different and a milder
destruction awaited me. Milder! I half smiled in my agony as I thought
of such application of such a term.
What boots it to tell of the long, long hours of horror more than
mortal, during which I counted the rushing vibrations of the steel!
Inch by inch --line by line --with a descent only appreciable at
intervals that seemed ages --down and still down it came! Days
passed --it might have been that many days passed --ere it swept so
closely over me as to fan me with its acrid breath. The odor of the
sharp steel forced itself into my nostrils. I prayed --I wearied
heaven with my prayer for its more speedy descent. I grew
frantically mad, and struggled to force myself upward against the
sweep of the fearful scimitar. And then I fell suddenly calm, and
lay smiling at the glittering death, as a child at some rare bauble.
There was another interval of utter insensibility; it was brief;
for, upon again lapsing into life there had been no perceptible
descent in the pendulum.
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