Ivan clutched hold of the rope with both hands.
Mekipiros with vigorous tugs hoisted him upwards, hauling up the rope with his short arms as easily as if there were no weight attached to it.
"How I wish he would let him fall," murmured Dame Zudár to herself.
Thomas Bodza had much the same sort of wish in his own heart. Each of them had his or her particular reasons for wishing Ivan's plan to fail.
But Mekipiros did not let him drop. He hoisted him up right on to the roof and helped him to climb up on to the metal gutter.
Ivan scarce felt his feet once more, however, when, instead of expressing his gratitude, he expended his pent-up rage on his companion.
"You mad bullock, you, why did you roar out just now, eh?" he whispered in the ear of Mekipiros, and he viciously tugged at the stunted monster's bristly hair with one hand, at the same time holding his other hand before his mouth to prevent him from screaming out.
At that same instant Mekipiros turned upon Ivan with flashing eyes, seized him round the thighs and holding him fast embraced, hauled him along the roof. For a second the pair of them tottered on the very edge of the gutter, but then Ivan clutched the metal cornice and held on to it convulsively with both hands.
"Hamama, hamama, hamama!" howled the enraged monster. Like a heavy load of sin, he hung on to the legs of his prey, squeezing his knees together in an iron embrace, worrying his enemy's calves with his teeth, kicking and cuffing him, and striving to hurl him into the abyss below.
"Help!" he roared, in a voice capable of arousing the Seven Sleepers, "help! He is killing me!"
"I knew what would be the end of it!" cried Dame Zudár, gnashing her teeth. "The poltroon is betraying us himself. Let him perish if he does not know how to live."
"Scoundrel!" Bodza shouted to him. "What! cannot you die speechless like a Julius Cæsar? And when the common cause demands that you should keep silence too! Fie upon you, I say!"
Ivan, in his desperation, writhed over the gulf beneath him, and forgetting everything but the horrible death awaiting him, bellowed hoarsely to those standing below:
"Help, for the love of Christ. Men, I say! do not let me perish! I am falling! I am dying. Woe is me! Spread straw underneath, can't you? Hold a carpet below me! Mercy, mercy! Let me go, Mekipiros! I beseech you, for God's sake, let me go!"