| THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM EDGAR ALLEN POE |
THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM
by Edgar Allan Poe
I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound
me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence,
the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached
my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one
dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of REVOLUTION,
perhaps from it's association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a
brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw, but with how
terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared
to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin
even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of
immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees
of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a
deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered,
because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror,
the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped
the walls of the apartment; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles
upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender
angels who would save me: but then all at once there came a most deadly nausea
over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire
of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with
heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there
stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there
must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long
before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to
feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished as if magically, from before
me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the
blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a
mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and
night were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it
there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not
lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no!
Even in the grave all was not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing
from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream.
Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we remember not
that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages;
first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical
existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could
recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in
memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is, what? How at least shall we
distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I
have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after long interval, do they
not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never
swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that
glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may
not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he
whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which
has never before arrested his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavours to remember, amid earnest struggles to
regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had
lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have
been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the
lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that
condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell indistinctly
of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down, down, still down, till a
hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the
descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's
unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all
things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the
limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I
call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all in MADNESS -- the madness of a
memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the tumultuous
motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which
all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation
pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought,
a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, THOUGHT, and shuddering
terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire
to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to
move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of
the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that
followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavour have enabled
me vaguely to recall.
So far I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back unbound. I reached
out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it
to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I
longed, yet dared not, to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects
around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew
aghast lest there should be NOTHING to see. At length, with a wild desperation at
heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The
blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity
of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably
close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind
the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real
condition. The sentence had passed, and it appeared to me that a very long
interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself
actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is
altogether inconsistent with real existence; but where and in what state was I? The
condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the auto-da-fes, and one of these
had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my
dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months?
This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover
my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and
light was not altogether excluded.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a
brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once
started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly
above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step,
lest I should be impeded by the walls of a TOMB. Perspiration burst from every
pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew
at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and
my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of
light. I proceeded for many paces, but still all was blackness and vacancy. I
breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most
hideous of fates.
And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon
my recollection a thousand vague rumours of the horrors of Toledo. Of the
dungeons there had been strange things narrated fables I had always deemed
them, but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to
perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate perhaps
even more fearful awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of
more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to
doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.
My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was a
wall, seemingly of stone masonry, very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it up;
stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had
inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the
dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point
whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so perfectly uniform seemed the
wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket when led into the
inquisitorial chamber, but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a
wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute
crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty,
nevertheless, was but trivial, although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at
first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe, and placed the fragment at
full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I
could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. So, at least, I
thought, but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own
weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for some time,
when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate,
and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher
with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate
and drank with avidity. Shortly afterwards I resumed my tour around the prison,
and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period
when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk I had counted
forty-eight more, when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred
paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty
yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could
form no guess at the shape of the vault, for vault I could not help supposing it to
be.
I had little object, certainly no hope in these researches, but a vague curiosity
prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of
the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor although
seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime. At length, however, I took
courage and did not hesitate to step firmly, endeavouring to cross in as direct a
line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when
the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. I
stepped on it, and fell violently on my face.
In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat
startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay
prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this: my chin rested upon the floor of the
prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less
elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, my forehead seemed
bathed in a clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my
nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very
brink of a circular pit, whose extent of course I had no means of ascertaining at
the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in
dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I
hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its
descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud
echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening,
and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed
suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.
I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself
upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and
the world had seen me no more and the death just avoided was of that very
character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting
the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its
direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been
reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I
trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting
subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall, resolving there to perish
rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured
many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might
have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses;
but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of
these pits that the SUDDEN extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible
plan.
Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I again
slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of
water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It
must have been drugged, for scarcely had I drunk before I became irresistibly
drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me, a sleep like that of death. How long it lasted of
course I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes the objects around me
were visible. By a wild sulfurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first
determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.
In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed
twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain
trouble; vain indeed, for what could be of less importance, under the terrible
circumstances which environed me than the mere dimensions of my dungeon? But
my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in endeavours to account
for the error I had committed in my measurement. The truth at length flashed upon
me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces up to the period
when I fell; I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in
fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awaking,
I must have returned upon my steps, thus supposing the circuit nearly double
what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I
began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived too in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my
way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity, so
potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep!
The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd
intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for
masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal in huge plates, whose
sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this metallic
enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which
the Chanel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in
aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images,
overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these
monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colours seemed faded and
blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too,
which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had
escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal condition had been
greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a
species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long strap
resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body,
leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could by dint
of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my
side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been removed. I say to my
horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the
design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently
seasoned.
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet
overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very
singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he
is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual
glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see
on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this
machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly
upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in
motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and
of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in
wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes
upon the other objects in the cell.
A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several enormous
rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my
right. Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops hurriedly, with ravenous
eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it required much effort and
attention to scare them away.
It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour (for I could take but
imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw
confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent
by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But
what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly DESCENDED. I now
observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was
formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn;
the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a
razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and
broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole
HISSED as it swung through the air.
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture.
My cognisance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents, THE PIT,
whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, THE PIT, typical
of hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultimate Thule of all their punishments. The
plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and 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 oscillations 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 odour 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. But it
might have been long, for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon,
and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I
felt very, oh! Inexpressibly sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid
the agonies of that period the human nature craved food. With painful effort I
outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the
small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within
my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy, of hope. Yet what
business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought, man has many
such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy, of hope; but I felt also
that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect, to regain it. Long
suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile,
an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the
crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of
my robe; it would return and repeat its operations, again and again.
Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the
hissing vigour of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the
fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish; and
at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it
with a pertinacity of attention as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest HERE the descent
of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should
pass across the garment, upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of
cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were
on edge.
Down, steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its
downward with its lateral velocity. To the right, to the left, far and wide, with the
shriek of a damned spirit! To my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I
alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.
Down, certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom! I
struggled violently, furiously to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow
to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me to my mouth with
great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I
would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have
attempted to arrest an avalanche!
Down still unceasingly, still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each
vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its very sweep. My eyes followed its outward or
upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed
themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a
relief, O, how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a
sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my
bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver, the frame to shrink. It was
HOPE, the hope that triumphs on the rack, that whispers to the death-condemned
even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact
with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the
keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours, or
perhaps days, I THOUGHT. It now occurred to me that the bandage or surcingle
which enveloped me was UNIQUE. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke
of the razor like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so detach it that it
might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in
that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle, how
deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen
and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my
bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed,
my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my
breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save
SAVE IN THE PATH OF THE DESTROYING CRESCENT.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when there flashed
upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea
of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only
floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips.
The whole thought was now present, feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but
still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its
execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay had
been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous, their red eyes
glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me
their prey. "To what food," I thought, "have they been accustomed in the well?"
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small
remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave
of the hand about the platter; and at length the unconscious uniformity of the
movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened
their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which
now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then,
raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change, at the
cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. But
this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their voracity.
Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon
the frame-work and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general
rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood, they
overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of
the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied
themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed, they swarmed upon me in
ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my
own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has
no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one
minute and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening
of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed.
With a more than human resolution I lay STILL.
Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I
was FREE. The surcingle hung in ribbons from my body. But the stroke of the
pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It
had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of
pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave
of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement,
cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage
and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least I WAS FREE.
Free! And in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden
bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish
machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up by some invisible force through the
ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was
undoubtedly watched. Free! I had but escaped death in one form of agony to be
delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eyes
nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual,
some change which at first I could not appreciate distinctly, it was obvious had
taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling
abstraction I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this period I
became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulfurous light which illumined
the cell. It proceeded from a fissure about half-an-inch in width extending entirely
around the prison at the base of the walls which thus appeared, and were
completely separated from the floor. I endeavoured, but of course in vain, to look
through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at
once upon my understanding. I have observed that although the outlines of the
figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colours seemed blurred
and indefinite. These colours had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming,
a startling and most intense brilliancy, that give to the spectral and fiendish
portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own.
Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand
directions where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre
of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal.
UNREAL! -- Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the
vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper glow
settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson
diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted ' I gasped for breath!
There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors, oh most unrelenting! Oh,
most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell.
Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness
of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my
straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost
recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning
of what I saw. At length it forced, it wrestled its way into my soul -- it burned itself
in upon my shuddering reason. O for a voice to speak! Oh, horror! Oh, any horror
but this! With a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands
weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fit
of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell and now the change was
obviously in the FORM. As before, it was in vain that I at first endeavoured to
appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt.
The inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there
was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I
saw that two of its iron angles were now acute, two consequently, obtuse. The
fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an
instant the apartment had shifted it's form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration
stopped not here, I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the
red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said "any death
but that of the pit!" Fool! Might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the
object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? Or if even that,
could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with
a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its
greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back but the closing walls
pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there
was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no
more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of
despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink -- I averted my eyes.
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many
trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls
rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It
was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition
was in the hands of its enemies.
by Edgar Allan Poe
I was sick, sick unto death, with that long agony, and when they at length unbound
me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence,
the dread sentence of death, was the last of distinct accentuation which reached
my ears. After that, the sound of the inquisitorial voices seemed merged in one
dreamy indeterminate hum. It conveyed to my soul the idea of REVOLUTION,
perhaps from it's association in fancy with the burr of a mill wheel. This only for a
brief period, for presently I heard no more. Yet, for a while, I saw, but with how
terrible an exaggeration! I saw the lips of the black-robed judges. They appeared
to me white -- whiter than the sheet upon which I trace these words -- and thin
even to grotesqueness; thin with the intensity of their expression of firmness, of
immovable resolution, of stern contempt of human torture. I saw that the decrees
of what to me was fate were still issuing from those lips. I saw them writhe with a
deadly locution. I saw them fashion the syllables of my name, and I shuddered,
because no sound succeeded. I saw, too, for a few moments of delirious horror,
the soft and nearly imperceptible waving of the sable draperies which enwrapped
the walls of the apartment; and then my vision fell upon the seven tall candles
upon the table. At first they wore the aspect of charity, and seemed white slender
angels who would save me: but then all at once there came a most deadly nausea
over my spirit, and I felt every fibre in my frame thrill, as if I had touched the wire
of a galvanic battery, while the angel forms became meaningless spectres, with
heads of flame, and I saw that from them there would be no help. And then there
stole into my fancy, like a rich musical note, the thought of what sweet rest there
must be in the grave. The thought came gently and stealthily, and it seemed long
before it attained full appreciation; but just as my spirit came at length properly to
feel and entertain it, the figures of the judges vanished as if magically, from before
me; the tall candles sank into nothingness; their flames went out utterly; the
blackness of darkness supervened; all sensations appeared swallowed up in a
mad rushing descent as of the soul into Hades. Then silence, and stillness, and
night were the universe.
I had swooned; but still will not say that all of consciousness was lost. What of it
there remained I will not attempt to define, or even to describe; yet all was not
lost. In the deepest slumber -- no! In delirium -- no! In a swoon -- no! In death -- no!
Even in the grave all was not lost. Else there is no immortality for man. Arousing
from the most profound of slumbers, we break the gossamer web of some dream.
Yet in a second afterwards (so frail may that web have been) we remember not
that we have dreamed. In the return to life from the swoon there are two stages;
first, that of the sense of mental or spiritual; secondly, that of the sense of physical
existence. It seems probable that if, upon reaching the second stage, we could
recall the impressions of the first, we should find these impressions eloquent in
memories of the gulf beyond. And that gulf is, what? How at least shall we
distinguish its shadows from those of the tomb? But if the impressions of what I
have termed the first stage are not at will recalled, yet, after long interval, do they
not come unbidden, while we marvel whence they come? He who has never
swooned is not he who finds strange palaces and wildly familiar faces in coals that
glow; is not he who beholds floating in mid-air the sad visions that the many may
not view; is not he who ponders over the perfume of some novel flower; is not he
whose brain grows bewildered with the meaning of some musical cadence which
has never before arrested his attention.
Amid frequent and thoughtful endeavours to remember, amid earnest struggles to
regather some token of the state of seeming nothingness into which my soul had
lapsed, there have been moments when I have dreamed of success; there have
been brief, very brief periods when I have conjured up remembrances which the
lucid reason of a later epoch assures me could have had reference only to that
condition of seeming unconsciousness. These shadows of memory tell indistinctly
of tall figures that lifted and bore me in silence down, down, still down, till a
hideous dizziness oppressed me at the mere idea of the interminableness of the
descent. They tell also of a vague horror at my heart on account of that heart's
unnatural stillness. Then comes a sense of sudden motionlessness throughout all
things; as if those who bore me (a ghastly train!) had outrun, in their descent, the
limits of the limitless, and paused from the wearisomeness of their toil. After this I
call to mind flatness and dampness; and then all in MADNESS -- the madness of a
memory which busies itself among forbidden things.
Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound -- the tumultuous
motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which
all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation
pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought,
a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, THOUGHT, and shuddering
terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire
to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and a successful effort to
move. And now a full memory of the trial, of the judges, of the sable draperies, of
the sentence, of the sickness, of the swoon. Then entire forgetfulness of all that
followed; of all that a later day and much earnestness of endeavour have enabled
me vaguely to recall.
So far I had not opened my eyes. I felt that I lay upon my back unbound. I reached
out my hand, and it fell heavily upon something damp and hard. There I suffered it
to remain for many minutes, while I strove to imagine where and what I could be. I
longed, yet dared not, to employ my vision. I dreaded the first glance at objects
around me. It was not that I feared to look upon things horrible, but that I grew
aghast lest there should be NOTHING to see. At length, with a wild desperation at
heart, I quickly unclosed my eyes. My worst thoughts, then, were confirmed. The
blackness of eternal night encompassed me. I struggled for breath. The intensity
of the darkness seemed to oppress and stifle me. The atmosphere was intolerably
close. I still lay quietly, and made effort to exercise my reason. I brought to mind
the inquisitorial proceedings, and attempted from that point to deduce my real
condition. The sentence had passed, and it appeared to me that a very long
interval of time had since elapsed. Yet not for a moment did I suppose myself
actually dead. Such a supposition, notwithstanding what we read in fiction, is
altogether inconsistent with real existence; but where and in what state was I? The
condemned to death, I knew, perished usually at the auto-da-fes, and one of these
had been held on the very night of the day of my trial. Had I been remanded to my
dungeon, to await the next sacrifice, which would not take place for many months?
This I at once saw could not be. Victims had been in immediate demand. Moreover
my dungeon, as well as all the condemned cells at Toledo, had stone floors, and
light was not altogether excluded.
A fearful idea now suddenly drove the blood in torrents upon my heart, and for a
brief period I once more relapsed into insensibility. Upon recovering, I at once
started to my feet, trembling convulsively in every fibre. I thrust my arms wildly
above and around me in all directions. I felt nothing; yet dreaded to move a step,
lest I should be impeded by the walls of a TOMB. Perspiration burst from every
pore, and stood in cold big beads upon my forehead. The agony of suspense grew
at length intolerable, and I cautiously moved forward, with my arms extended, and
my eyes straining from their sockets, in the hope of catching some faint ray of
light. I proceeded for many paces, but still all was blackness and vacancy. I
breathed more freely. It seemed evident that mine was not, at least, the most
hideous of fates.
And now, as I still continued to step cautiously onward, there came thronging upon
my recollection a thousand vague rumours of the horrors of Toledo. Of the
dungeons there had been strange things narrated fables I had always deemed
them, but yet strange, and too ghastly to repeat, save in a whisper. Was I left to
perish of starvation in this subterranean world of darkness; or what fate perhaps
even more fearful awaited me? That the result would be death, and a death of
more than customary bitterness, I knew too well the character of my judges to
doubt. The mode and the hour were all that occupied or distracted me.
My outstretched hands at length encountered some solid obstruction. It was a
wall, seemingly of stone masonry, very smooth, slimy, and cold. I followed it up;
stepping with all the careful distrust with which certain antique narratives had
inspired me. This process, however, afforded me no means of ascertaining the
dimensions of my dungeon; as I might make its circuit, and return to the point
whence I set out, without being aware of the fact, so perfectly uniform seemed the
wall. I therefore sought the knife which had been in my pocket when led into the
inquisitorial chamber, but it was gone; my clothes had been exchanged for a
wrapper of coarse serge. I had thought of forcing the blade in some minute
crevice of the masonry, so as to identify my point of departure. The difficulty,
nevertheless, was but trivial, although, in the disorder of my fancy, it seemed at
first insuperable. I tore a part of the hem from the robe, and placed the fragment at
full length, and at right angles to the wall. In groping my way around the prison, I
could not fail to encounter this rag upon completing the circuit. So, at least, I
thought, but I had not counted upon the extent of the dungeon, or upon my own
weakness. The ground was moist and slippery. I staggered onward for some time,
when I stumbled and fell. My excessive fatigue induced me to remain prostrate,
and sleep soon overtook me as I lay.
Upon awaking, and stretching forth an arm, I found beside me a loaf and a pitcher
with water. I was too much exhausted to reflect upon this circumstance, but ate
and drank with avidity. Shortly afterwards I resumed my tour around the prison,
and with much toil came at last upon the fragment of the serge. Up to the period
when I fell I had counted fifty-two paces, and upon resuming my walk I had counted
forty-eight more, when I arrived at the rag. There were in all, then, a hundred
paces; and, admitting two paces to the yard, I presumed the dungeon to be fifty
yards in circuit. I had met, however, with many angles in the wall, and thus I could
form no guess at the shape of the vault, for vault I could not help supposing it to
be.
I had little object, certainly no hope in these researches, but a vague curiosity
prompted me to continue them. Quitting the wall, I resolved to cross the area of
the enclosure. At first I proceeded with extreme caution, for the floor although
seemingly of solid material was treacherous with slime. At length, however, I took
courage and did not hesitate to step firmly, endeavouring to cross in as direct a
line as possible. I had advanced some ten or twelve paces in this manner, when
the remnant of the torn hem of my robe became entangled between my legs. I
stepped on it, and fell violently on my face.
In the confusion attending my fall, I did not immediately apprehend a somewhat
startling circumstance, which yet, in a few seconds afterward, and while I still lay
prostrate, arrested my attention. It was this: my chin rested upon the floor of the
prison, but my lips, and the upper portion of my head, although seemingly at a less
elevation than the chin, touched nothing. At the same time, my forehead seemed
bathed in a clammy vapour, and the peculiar smell of decayed fungus arose to my
nostrils. I put forward my arm, and shuddered to find that I had fallen at the very
brink of a circular pit, whose extent of course I had no means of ascertaining at
the moment. Groping about the masonry just below the margin, I succeeded in
dislodging a small fragment, and let it fall into the abyss. For many seconds I
hearkened to its reverberations as it dashed against the sides of the chasm in its
descent; at length there was a sullen plunge into water, succeeded by loud
echoes. At the same moment there came a sound resembling the quick opening,
and as rapid closing of a door overhead, while a faint gleam of light flashed
suddenly through the gloom, and as suddenly faded away.
I saw clearly the doom which had been prepared for me, and congratulated myself
upon the timely accident by which I had escaped. Another step before my fall, and
the world had seen me no more and the death just avoided was of that very
character which I had regarded as fabulous and frivolous in the tales respecting
the Inquisition. To the victims of its tyranny, there was the choice of death with its
direst physical agonies, or death with its most hideous moral horrors. I had been
reserved for the latter. By long suffering my nerves had been unstrung, until I
trembled at the sound of my own voice, and had become in every respect a fitting
subject for the species of torture which awaited me.
Shaking in every limb, I groped my way back to the wall, resolving there to perish
rather than risk the terrors of the wells, of which my imagination now pictured
many in various positions about the dungeon. In other conditions of mind I might
have had courage to end my misery at once by a plunge into one of these abysses;
but now I was the veriest of cowards. Neither could I forget what I had read of
these pits that the SUDDEN extinction of life formed no part of their most horrible
plan.
Agitation of spirit kept me awake for many long hours; but at length I again
slumbered. Upon arousing, I found by my side, as before, a loaf and a pitcher of
water. A burning thirst consumed me, and I emptied the vessel at a draught. It
must have been drugged, for scarcely had I drunk before I became irresistibly
drowsy. A deep sleep fell upon me, a sleep like that of death. How long it lasted of
course I know not; but when once again I unclosed my eyes the objects around me
were visible. By a wild sulfurous lustre, the origin of which I could not at first
determine, I was enabled to see the extent and aspect of the prison.
In its size I had been greatly mistaken. The whole circuit of its walls did not exceed
twenty-five yards. For some minutes this fact occasioned me a world of vain
trouble; vain indeed, for what could be of less importance, under the terrible
circumstances which environed me than the mere dimensions of my dungeon? But
my soul took a wild interest in trifles, and I busied myself in endeavours to account
for the error I had committed in my measurement. The truth at length flashed upon
me. In my first attempt at exploration I had counted fifty-two paces up to the period
when I fell; I must then have been within a pace or two of the fragment of serge; in
fact I had nearly performed the circuit of the vault. I then slept, and upon awaking,
I must have returned upon my steps, thus supposing the circuit nearly double
what it actually was. My confusion of mind prevented me from observing that I
began my tour with the wall to the left, and ended it with the wall to the right.
I had been deceived too in respect to the shape of the enclosure. In feeling my
way I had found many angles, and thus deduced an idea of great irregularity, so
potent is the effect of total darkness upon one arousing from lethargy or sleep!
The angles were simply those of a few slight depressions or niches at odd
intervals. The general shape of the prison was square. What I had taken for
masonry seemed now to be iron, or some other metal in huge plates, whose
sutures or joints occasioned the depression. The entire surface of this metallic
enclosure was rudely daubed in all the hideous and repulsive devices to which
the Chanel superstition of the monks has given rise. The figures of fiends in
aspects of menace, with skeleton forms and other more really fearful images,
overspread and disfigured the walls. I observed that the outlines of these
monstrosities were sufficiently distinct, but that the colours seemed faded and
blurred, as if from the effects of a damp atmosphere. I now noticed the floor, too,
which was of stone. In the centre yawned the circular pit from whose jaws I had
escaped; but it was the only one in the dungeon.
All this I saw indistinctly and by much effort, for my personal condition had been
greatly changed during slumber. I now lay upon my back, and at full length, on a
species of low framework of wood. To this I was securely bound by a long strap
resembling a surcingle. It passed in many convolutions about my limbs and body,
leaving at liberty only my head, and my left arm to such extent that I could by dint
of much exertion supply myself with food from an earthen dish which lay by my
side on the floor. I saw to my horror that the pitcher had been removed. I say to my
horror, for I was consumed with intolerable thirst. This thirst it appeared to be the
design of my persecutors to stimulate, for the food in the dish was meat pungently
seasoned.
Looking upward, I surveyed the ceiling of my prison. It was some thirty or forty feet
overhead, and constructed much as the side walls. In one of its panels a very
singular figure riveted my whole attention. It was the painted figure of Time as he
is commonly represented, save that in lieu of a scythe he held what at a casual
glance I supposed to be the pictured image of a huge pendulum, such as we see
on antique clocks. There was something, however, in the appearance of this
machine which caused me to regard it more attentively. While I gazed directly
upward at it (for its position was immediately over my own), I fancied that I saw it in
motion. In an instant afterward the fancy was confirmed. Its sweep was brief, and
of course slow. I watched it for some minutes, somewhat in fear but more in
wonder. Wearied at length with observing its dull movement, I turned my eyes
upon the other objects in the cell.
A slight noise attracted my notice, and looking to the floor, I saw several enormous
rats traversing it. They had issued from the well which lay just within view to my
right. Even then while I gazed, they came up in troops hurriedly, with ravenous
eyes, allured by the scent of the meat. From this it required much effort and
attention to scare them away.
It might have been half-an-hour, perhaps even an hour (for I could take but
imperfect note of time) before I again cast my eyes upward. What I then saw
confounded and amazed me. The sweep of the pendulum had increased in extent
by nearly a yard. As a natural consequence, its velocity was also much greater. But
what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly DESCENDED. I now
observed, with what horror it is needless to say, that its nether extremity was
formed of a crescent of glittering steel, about a foot in length from horn to horn;
the horns upward, and the under edge evidently as keen as that of a razor. Like a
razor also it seemed massy and heavy, tapering from the edge into a solid and
broad structure above. It was appended to a weighty rod of brass, and the whole
HISSED as it swung through the air.
I could no longer doubt the doom prepared for me by monkish ingenuity in torture.
My cognisance of the pit had become known to the inquisitorial agents, THE PIT,
whose horrors had been destined for so bold a recusant as myself, THE PIT, typical
of hell, and regarded by rumour as the Ultimate Thule of all their punishments. The
plunge into this pit I had avoided by the merest of accidents, and 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 oscillations 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 odour 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. But it
might have been long, for I knew there were demons who took note of my swoon,
and who could have arrested the vibration at pleasure. Upon my recovery, too, I
felt very, oh! Inexpressibly sick and weak, as if through long inanition. Even amid
the agonies of that period the human nature craved food. With painful effort I
outstretched my left arm as far as my bonds permitted, and took possession of the
small remnant which had been spared me by the rats. As I put a portion of it within
my lips there rushed to my mind a half-formed thought of joy, of hope. Yet what
business had I with hope? It was, as I say, a half-formed thought, man has many
such, which are never completed. I felt that it was of joy, of hope; but I felt also
that it had perished in its formation. In vain I struggled to perfect, to regain it. Long
suffering had nearly annihilated all my ordinary powers of mind. I was an imbecile,
an idiot.
The vibration of the pendulum was at right angles to my length. I saw that the
crescent was designed to cross the region of the heart. It would fray the serge of
my robe; it would return and repeat its operations, again and again.
Notwithstanding its terrifically wide sweep (some thirty feet or more) and the
hissing vigour of its descent, sufficient to sunder these very walls of iron, still the
fraying of my robe would be all that, for several minutes, it would accomplish; and
at this thought I paused. I dared not go farther than this reflection. I dwelt upon it
with a pertinacity of attention as if, in so dwelling, I could arrest HERE the descent
of the steel. I forced myself to ponder upon the sound of the crescent as it should
pass across the garment, upon the peculiar thrilling sensation which the friction of
cloth produces on the nerves. I pondered upon all this frivolity until my teeth were
on edge.
Down, steadily down it crept. I took a frenzied pleasure in contrasting its
downward with its lateral velocity. To the right, to the left, far and wide, with the
shriek of a damned spirit! To my heart with the stealthy pace of the tiger! I
alternately laughed and howled, as the one or the other idea grew predominant.
Down, certainly, relentlessly down! It vibrated within three inches of my bosom! I
struggled violently, furiously to free my left arm. This was free only from the elbow
to the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me to my mouth with
great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I
would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have
attempted to arrest an avalanche!
Down still unceasingly, still inevitably down! I gasped and struggled at each
vibration. I shrunk convulsively at its very sweep. My eyes followed its outward or
upward whirls with the eagerness of the most unmeaning despair; they closed
themselves spasmodically at the descent, although death would have been a
relief, O, how unspeakable! Still I quivered in every nerve to think how slight a
sinking of the machinery would precipitate that keen glistening axe upon my
bosom. It was hope that prompted the nerve to quiver, the frame to shrink. It was
HOPE, the hope that triumphs on the rack, that whispers to the death-condemned
even in the dungeons of the Inquisition.
I saw that some ten or twelve vibrations would bring the steel in actual contact
with my robe, and with this observation there suddenly came over my spirit all the
keen, collected calmness of despair. For the first time during many hours, or
perhaps days, I THOUGHT. It now occurred to me that the bandage or surcingle
which enveloped me was UNIQUE. I was tied by no separate cord. The first stroke
of the razor like crescent athwart any portion of the band would so detach it that it
might be unwound from my person by means of my left hand. But how fearful, in
that case, the proximity of the steel! The result of the slightest struggle, how
deadly! Was it likely, moreover, that the minions of the torturer had not foreseen
and provided for this possibility! Was it probable that the bandage crossed my
bosom in the track of the pendulum? Dreading to find my faint, and, as it seemed,
my last hope frustrated, I so far elevated my head as to obtain a distinct view of my
breast. The surcingle enveloped my limbs and body close in all directions save
SAVE IN THE PATH OF THE DESTROYING CRESCENT.
Scarcely had I dropped my head back into its original position when there flashed
upon my mind what I cannot better describe than as the unformed half of that idea
of deliverance to which I have previously alluded, and of which a moiety only
floated indeterminately through my brain when I raised food to my burning lips.
The whole thought was now present, feeble, scarcely sane, scarcely definite, but
still entire. I proceeded at once, with the nervous energy of despair, to attempt its
execution.
For many hours the immediate vicinity of the low framework upon which I lay had
been literally swarming with rats. They were wild, bold, ravenous, their red eyes
glaring upon me as if they waited but for motionlessness on my part to make me
their prey. "To what food," I thought, "have they been accustomed in the well?"
They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a small
remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual see-saw or wave
of the hand about the platter; and at length the unconscious uniformity of the
movement deprived it of effect. In their voracity the vermin frequently fastened
their sharp fangs in my fingers. With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which
now remained, I thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then,
raising my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.
At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the change, at the
cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many sought the well. But
this was only for a moment. I had not counted in vain upon their voracity.
Observing that I remained without motion, one or two of the boldest leaped upon
the frame-work and smelt at the surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general
rush. Forth from the well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood, they
overran it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of
the pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes, they busied
themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed, they swarmed upon me in
ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips sought my
own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust, for which the world has
no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled with heavy clamminess my heart. Yet one
minute and I felt that the struggle would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening
of the bandage. I knew that in more than one place it must be already severed.
With a more than human resolution I lay STILL.
Nor had I erred in my calculations, nor had I endured in vain. I at length felt that I
was FREE. The surcingle hung in ribbons from my body. But the stroke of the
pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had divided the serge of the robe. It
had cut through the linen beneath. Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of
pain shot through every nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave
of my hand my deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement,
cautious, sidelong, shrinking, and slow, I slid from the embrace of the bandage
and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least I WAS FREE.
Free! And in the grasp of the Inquisition! I had scarcely stepped from my wooden
bed of horror upon the stone floor of the prison, when the motion of the hellish
machine ceased and I beheld it drawn up by some invisible force through the
ceiling. This was a lesson which I took desperately to heart. My every motion was
undoubtedly watched. Free! I had but escaped death in one form of agony to be
delivered unto worse than death in some other. With that thought I rolled my eyes
nervously around on the barriers of iron that hemmed me in. Something unusual,
some change which at first I could not appreciate distinctly, it was obvious had
taken place in the apartment. For many minutes of a dreamy and trembling
abstraction I busied myself in vain, unconnected conjecture. During this period I
became aware, for the first time, of the origin of the sulfurous light which illumined
the cell. It proceeded from a fissure about half-an-inch in width extending entirely
around the prison at the base of the walls which thus appeared, and were
completely separated from the floor. I endeavoured, but of course in vain, to look
through the aperture.
As I arose from the attempt, the mystery of the alteration in the chamber broke at
once upon my understanding. I have observed that although the outlines of the
figures upon the walls were sufficiently distinct, yet the colours seemed blurred
and indefinite. These colours had now assumed, and were momentarily assuming,
a startling and most intense brilliancy, that give to the spectral and fiendish
portraitures an aspect that might have thrilled even firmer nerves than my own.
Demon eyes, of a wild and ghastly vivacity, glared upon me in a thousand
directions where none had been visible before, and gleamed with the lurid lustre
of a fire that I could not force my imagination to regard as unreal.
UNREAL! -- Even while I breathed there came to my nostrils the breath of the
vapour of heated iron! A suffocating odour pervaded the prison! A deeper glow
settled each moment in the eyes that glared at my agonies! A richer tint of crimson
diffused itself over the pictured horrors of blood. I panted ' I gasped for breath!
There could be no doubt of the design of my tormentors, oh most unrelenting! Oh,
most demoniac of men! I shrank from the glowing metal to the centre of the cell.
Amid the thought of the fiery destruction that impended, the idea of the coolness
of the well came over my soul like balm. I rushed to its deadly brink. I threw my
straining vision below. The glare from the enkindled roof illumined its inmost
recesses. Yet, for a wild moment, did my spirit refuse to comprehend the meaning
of what I saw. At length it forced, it wrestled its way into my soul -- it burned itself
in upon my shuddering reason. O for a voice to speak! Oh, horror! Oh, any horror
but this! With a shriek I rushed from the margin and buried my face in my hands
weeping bitterly.
The heat rapidly increased, and once again I looked up, shuddering as if with a fit
of the ague. There had been a second change in the cell and now the change was
obviously in the FORM. As before, it was in vain that I at first endeavoured to
appreciate or understand what was taking place. But not long was I left in doubt.
The inquisitorial vengeance had been hurried by my two-fold escape, and there
was to be no more dallying with the King of Terrors. The room had been square. I
saw that two of its iron angles were now acute, two consequently, obtuse. The
fearful difference quickly increased with a low rumbling or moaning sound. In an
instant the apartment had shifted it's form into that of a lozenge. But the alteration
stopped not here, I neither hoped nor desired it to stop. I could have clasped the
red walls to my bosom as a garment of eternal peace. "Death," I said "any death
but that of the pit!" Fool! Might I not have known that INTO THE PIT it was the
object of the burning iron to urge me? Could I resist its glow? Or if even that,
could I withstand its pressure? And now, flatter and flatter grew the lozenge, with
a rapidity that left me no time for contemplation. Its centre, and of course, its
greatest width, came just over the yawning gulf. I shrank back but the closing walls
pressed me resistlessly onward. At length for my seared and writhing body there
was no longer an inch of foothold on the firm floor of the prison. I struggled no
more, but the agony of my soul found vent in one loud, long, and final scream of
despair. I felt that I tottered upon the brink -- I averted my eyes.
There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many
trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls
rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell fainting into the abyss. It
was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition
was in the hands of its enemies.
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