prey. "To what food," I
thought, "have they been accustomed in the well?"

They had devoured, in spite of all my efforts to prevent them, all but a
small remnant of the contents of the dish. I had fallen into an habitual
see-saw, or wave of the hand about the platter: and, at length, the
unconscious uniformity of the movement deprived it of effect. In their
voracity the vermin frequently fastened their sharp fangs in my fingers.
With the particles of the oily and spicy viand which now remained, I
thoroughly rubbed the bandage wherever I could reach it; then, raising
my hand from the floor, I lay breathlessly still.

At first the ravenous animals were startled and terrified at the
change--at the cessation of movement. They shrank alarmedly back; many
sought the well. But this was only for a moment. I had not counted in
vain upon their voracity. Observing that I remained without motion,
one or two of the boldest leaped upon the frame-work, and smelt at the
surcingle. This seemed the signal for a general rush. Forth from the
well they hurried in fresh troops. They clung to the wood--they overran
it, and leaped in hundreds upon my person. The measured movement of the
pendulum disturbed them not at all. Avoiding its strokes they busied
themselves with the anointed bandage. They pressed--they swarmed upon me
in ever accumulating heaps. They writhed upon my throat; their cold lips
sought my own; I was half stifled by their thronging pressure; disgust,
for which the world has no name, swelled my bosom, and chilled, with a
heavy clamminess, my heart. Yet one minute, and I felt that the struggle
would be over. Plainly I perceived the loosening of the bandage. I knew
that in more than one place it must be already severed. With a more than
human resolution I lay still.

Nor had I erred in my calculations--nor had I endured in vain. I at
length felt that I was free. The surcingle hung in ribands from my body.
But the stroke of the pendulum already pressed upon my bosom. It had
divided the serge of the robe. It had cut through the linen beneath.
Twice again it swung, and a sharp sense of pain shot through every
nerve. But the moment of escape had arrived. At a wave of my hand my
deliverers hurried tumultuously away. With a steady movement--cautious,
sidelong, shrinking, and slow--I slid from the embrace of the bandage
and beyond the reach of the scimitar. For the moment, at least, I was
free.

Free!--and in the grasp of the Inqu