Commodore Junk — page 275: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

268 COMMODORE JUNK. Humpbrey felt half-paralysed again; but the voice above was once more raised. “ Now,” it said, “ there must be foothold in that spot where the stone fell. Try.” The young officer obeyed, and rousing himself for a supreme effort as his last before complete inaction set in, he strove hard. The hands seemed like steel bands about his wrists, and his struggle sent the blood coursing once more through his nerve- less arms. Then, with a perfect avalanche of stones falling from the crumbling side, he strove and strained, and, how he knew not, found foothold, drew himself up, and half crawling, half dragged by the buccaneer as he backed up the slope, reached the level part of the passage between the entrance and the doorway of the inner temple, where he subsided on the stones, panting, exhausted, and with an icy feeling running through his nerves. “Commodore Junk,” he whispered hoarsely as he lay in the semi-darkness, “you have saved my life.” “As you saved mine.” Those two lay there in the gloomy passage listening to the solemn whisperings and lappings of the water, which seemed to be continued for an almost interminable time before they died out, and once more all was silent. But the expectancy remained. It seemed to both that at any moment the miser- able would-be assassin might rise to the surface and shriek for help, or that perhaps he was still above water, clinging to the side of the cenote, paralysed with fear, and that as soon as he recovered himself he would make the hideous gulf echo with his appeals. By degrees, though, as the heavy laboured panting of their breasts ceased, and their hearts ceased beating so tumultuously, a more matter-of-fact way of looking at their position came over them. Gomichbooksneo =>