The Argosy — page 93: what you’re looking at

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

How Lord Roland Met his Wife. 83 *‘ Your father killed my son,” he said, ‘and now I shall kill his. Look at this cask of powder ; see this candle standing in it. I light it””——he did so, with the utmost care—“ it will burn, burn, for hours, and you will watch it burning ; it will grow shorter, slowly, slowly ; it will reach the powder—and then it will blow you intg atoms !” With these words the madman turned, and with his grin of mingled rage and triumph which made his hideous features abso- lutely diabolical, left the cave without another word. Roland heard his steps upon the rocks outside grow fainter, and at last die off upon the sand. He was alone—with death before him. II, ALL this had passed so quickly that it was some minutes before Roland began to realise the facts of his position. Involuntarily, he fixed his eyes upon the flaming candle, and upon the black shining grains in which it stood. He was there, fixed face to face with its descending flame, doomed, in helpless agony of mind, to watch its slow decrease. How long would the candle burn—one hour, or two, or three—before its low flame reached the powder, and blew him into atoms ? Roland was no coward. Asa soldier he would have led a charge, or volunteered for a forlorn hope, without a thought of fear; but to watch, in passive helplessness, the slow advance of certain death will shake an iron heart and nerves of steel. ‘The madman’s vengeance had been cunningly conceived. It was safe for the assassin; for before the powder could explode, he would be many a league away, perhaps far off at sea, leaving no trace behind him, no dead body to tell tales; a flash, and the victim would be blown to nothingness. And of all the methods which vindictive ingenuity has devised to rack the mind as well as kill the body, none could surpass the agony of this. Men set to sink in quicksands, sucked slowly from the sight of earth and sky ; men fixed under the knife-pendulum, or chained erect in pits of water, falling only drop by drop; such, and such alone, have drunk as deep a measure of the bitterness of death. As the full horror of his fate was borne upon his mind, every fibre in his frame began to thrill, and the hairs upon his head to crawl in every root like things of life. But was he doomed ?—was there no possibility of escape? He looked eagerly about the cave. Except for the powder cask and the block of wood on which he sat, the place was absolutely bare. He turned his scrutiny upon the block itself, and upon the chain which held him. The block was a huge bulk-head, half sunken in the earth ; immovable as a wall of solid rock. Upon the block, just behind him as he sat, there was an iron ring. His chain went twice about his waist, leaving his arms free, passed through the ring, and was fastened ECOMiCcOOolkKS —_— (CO