A glass was pressed to my lips. I drank thirstily and opened my eyes. Belleville, white-faced but composed now and gloomily frowning, was my minister.
"I make you my compliments," he said in cold, slow, even tones. "You have a quick wit and a nerve of iron. I am glad, because they saved me from a folly. You would cease to be of use to me dead, curse you, though I wish you carrion, and will make you worm food before I am much older."
"You'll not live to repent it," I replied. "I've bound your fate with mine by ties no mortal can unsolve."
"Enough of that rubbish," he retorted harshly. "You cannot haze me twice. You could not have at all if I had stopped to think or been quite well. But I'm liverish and out of sorts to-day--the result of staying up all night nursing Ottley."
"You'll see when the time comes--if you have the courage," I responded in an acrid tone. "You cannot scare me, Belleville, because you cannot harm me without hurting yourself--and in your deeps of heart, you rogue, you know it."
He burst out laughing, but there was a note of nervousness in his mocking mirth that pleased me passing well.
"Pah!" he said at last. "Would you sit there trussed up like a chooky skewered for the table if you had the power you pretend?"
"Idiot!" I snapped. "Can electricity unbuckle straps without machinery? Yet it can splinter rocks without an effort and without assistance."
"Not I," cried he. "I've encountered so many wonders lately that I'm now beginning to regard what I of old considered the impossible as the most likely thing of all to happen. I don't believe you, Pinsent, but neither do I disbelieve you. Therefore, acting on the kindly hint you dropped, I'll take all sane precautions. Au revoir."
He marched to the door, passed out and disappeared. I chewed the bitter cud of thought for some hours. Meanwhile I grew desperately hungry, ay, and thirsty, too. There came a time when I would have given the last of my possessions for a beef-steak and a jug of water. And, oh! how tired I was of my position. The blood gradually ceased to circulate properly through all my parts. My hands became purple. My legs went to sleep. My limbs were on a rack of pins and needles and even breathing hurt me. I did my best by straining at the bonds at intervals to promote the arterial flow and stop the agony of muscular irritation. But it was a poor best, and I sank welcomely at length into a benumbed lethargic state near akin to stupor, from which I knew I could wake to anguish by the merest movement.