n again.

The sentinel moved outside the door, and the butt end of his carbine
scratched against the lintel. The Gadfly stopped and looked round, the
file still in his lifted hand. Was he discovered?

A little round pellet had been shot through the spy-hole and was lying
on the floor. He laid down the file and stooped to pick up the round
thing. It was a bit of rolled paper.

*****

It was a long way to go down and down, with the black waves rushing
about him--how they roared----!

Ah, yes! He was only stooping down to pick up the paper. He was a bit
giddy; many people are when they stoop. There was nothing the matter
with him--nothing.

He picked it up, carried it to the light, and unfolded it steadily.

"Come to-night, whatever happens; the Cricket will be transferred
to-morrow to another service. This is our only chance."

He destroyed the paper as he had done the former one, picked up his file
again, and went back to work, dogged and mute and desperate.

One o'clock. He had been working for three hours now, and six of the
eight bars were filed. Two more, and then, to climb------

He began to recall the former occasions when these terrible attacks had
come on. The last had been the one at New Year; and he shuddered as
he remembered those five nights. But that time it had not come on so
suddenly; he had never known it so sudden.

He dropped the file and flung out both hands blindly, praying, in his
utter desperation, for the first time since he had been an atheist;
praying to anything--to nothing--to everything.

"Not to-night! Oh, let me be ill to-morrow! I will bear anything
to-morrow--only not to-night!"

He stood still for a moment, with both hands up to his temples; then he
took up the file once more, and once more went back to his work.

Half-past one. He had begun on the last bar. His shirt-sleeve was bitten
to rags; there was blood on his lips and a red mist before his eyes, and
the sweat poured from his forehead as he filed, and filed, and filed----

*****

After sunrise Montanelli fell asleep. He was utterly worn out with the
restless misery of the night and slept for a little while quietly; then
he began to dream.

At first he dreamed vaguely, confusedly; broken fragments of images and
fancies followed each other, fleeting and incoherent, but all filled
with the same dim sense of struggle and pain, the same shadow of
indefinable dread. Presently he began to dream of sleeples