They all strained eagerly to look. It was a long match. Everybody sighed.
“Next,” said Mulholland.
Curley and Hackett looked at one another excitedly. Then each spoke.
“You go first.”
“No, you go first.”
“Go ahead. I don’t mind drawing the last.”
“What’s the difference? You’re nearest. Draw.”
“Why should I? It’s your turn. You draw.”
“Come on,” snarled Mulholland, “one of you draw. We have no time.”
They both made a movement towards the matches. Then each stopped to let the other advance. Their hands and legs were jerky. They stared at one another with hatred.
“Come on,” hissed Mulholland again. “Didn’t ye hear the Commandant’s orders, that we were to get outa the place as soon as possible? Are ye afraid or what?”
“Oh no,” cried both men together in an offhand tone.
They both rushed at the matches. They tussled for them.
“Keep back now. It’s my turn.”
“Keep back, you. You weren’t so quick before. Let me draw.”
“No, I won’t. I was here first.”
“For goodness’ sake,” cried Mulholland, “ye pair o’ babies. Will I have to pull me gat on ye?”
The two of them stood still, looking at Mulholland dazedly.
“It’s against the rules,” continued Mulholland with a great sense of importance, “but I’m goin’ to call ye in the order o’ yer rank. You draw first, Comrade Curley.”
Curley’s thin fingers shot out instantly. He drew the match. It was a long one. He gasped. Then he burst into a thin laugh.
“Comrade Hackett.”
Hackett stumbled forward. He reached for the short match that Mulholland held out to him with a strange smile.
“It’s your shot, comrade,” whispered Mulholland.
Hackett grasped the match and crushed it into fragments immediately. He threw the little bundle away in terror. He rubbed his palms slowly. Then he struck his right coat pocket suddenly with his hand. He laughed.
“Good Lord!” he blubbered, “I thought I’d lost me penknife.”
XIV
For ten minutes Gypo lay perfectly still in the cell, after the door was bolted. He lay on his back. His head and neck were buttressed into an upright position by a square block of stone that jutted from the floor, by the wall farthest from the door. His feet were stretched out, wide apart. One hand lay on his right hip, palm upwards, with the fingers bent inwards, as if he had fallen asleep clawing something. The other hand lay across his eyes. He drew very deep breaths at long intervals. His face was perfectly at peace. It was bruised slightly around the mouth and on the cheekbones. Each feature was impassive, like the features of a carved image. The glossy skin, the humps, the eyebrows that were like snouts, the thick Ethiopian lips, attained a majesty during that ten minutes of abnormal rest, a majesty that was not so apparent while they were in movement, responding to the strange impulses of his mind.
Gypo rested, exhausted, while he was being condemned to death. It was a dead rest, like the rest of a child in the womb before birth, sucking strength all round for the savage struggle with life that will soon commence. Every organ and tissue and muscle was straining for a renewal of strength.
When blundering reason flees, instinct, that is fundamental and unerring, rushes to the defence of life.
At twelve minutes past three, one minute after he had been condemned to death, Gypo moved. He opened his eyes and closed the right hand that lay palm upwards on the ground. He clenched the hand rigidly until the wrist joint snapped with the tension. Then he took the other hand away from his eyes and dropped it to his bosom. He moved his eyes around from side to side, slowly, suspiciously, blinking and listening intently.
The cell was pitch black. Only at one point was there a speck of light. There was a dim, oblong patch of light hanging slantwise in the darkness some distance to his left front. That was the aperture near the top of the door. It did not penetrate the darkness of the cell. It merely hung there, obscurely and uselessly, like a foolish suggestion. All round was pitch dark. Gypo shivered.
He was not afraid. No. He did not feel at all in the ordinary sense of the word. But he was immediately fully conscious, as soon as he moved, of all that had happened before he had been thrown into the cell. Still more peculiar, he was quite calm and collected about everything. The darkness consoled him. He felt at home in it. It concealed him. He felt immensely big and strong in the darkness. There was nothing in his immediate neighbourhood but a darksome void that his personality overpowered. He could bellow and his voice would resound through that darkness indefinitely. There would be no resistance. There was no limit to the darkness, no wall, no horizon, no end. He was encompassed by it, sheathed in it. It wound round and round him. It was an impenetrable coat of mail, without weight, without thickness, intangible.
Beyond it somewhere were his enemies. It came between him and them. Ha!
He gathered himself up with a sudden spring. He got to his hands and knees. Several joints snapped as he did so. His bruised body had grown stiff, lying motionless on the stone floor. Just as he lay that way on his hands and knees, he heard a rattle at the door. Immediately he threw himself down again and pretended to be asleep. But he fell so that his eyes were toward the oblong patch of light. He knew what had rattled. It was the sentry having a look at him. An electric torch was thrust through the aperture. It rested on him for a moment or two. Then it was withdrawn.
During the couple of moments that the torchlight had flooded the cell Gypo’s eyes were busy. They had darted around. Yes. The walls were hopeless. He knew that of course. He had himself guarded a prisoner in this same cell, a condemned prisoner whom he
