made for the French windows at the time of the burglar
scare? He went round to see if he could hear me through them, and he
came back rubbing his hands. But now I took no more notice of his
taunts. The last and cruellest was at the very flecks of blood on floor
and shavings, flung far as froth in my demented efforts to tear either
my foot from the trap or myself limb from limb.... And I had only sworn
at him in my terrible preoccupation.

"No, that's where _you're_ going, old cock!" he had answered. "And by
the way, Gillon, when you get there I wish you'd ask for your friend
Delavoye's old man of the soil; tell him his mantle's descended on good
shoulders, will you? Tell him he's not the only pebble on the shores of
Styx!"

That gave me something else to think about towards the end; but I had no
longer any doubt about the man's inveterate insanity. His pale eyes had
rolled and lightened with unstable fires. There had been something
inconsecutive even in his taunts. Consistent only in keeping out of my
way, he had explained himself once when I was trying to picture the
wrath to come upon him, in the felon's dock, in the condemned cell, on
the drop itself. It was only fools who looked forward or back, said
Edgar Nettleton.

And I, who have done a little of both all my life, like most ordinary
mortals, as I look back to the hour which I had every reason to
recognise as my last on earth, the one redeeming memory is that of the
complete calm which did ultimately oust my undignified despair. It may
have been in answer to the prayers I uttered in the end instead of
curses; that is more than man can say. I only know that I was not merely
calm at the last, but immensely interested in what Nettleton would have
called the winning candle. It burnt down to the last thin disk of
grease, shining like a worn florin in the jungle of shavings that seemed
to lean upon the flame and yet did not catch. Then the wick fell over,
the last quarter-inch of it, and I thought that candle had done its
worst. Head and heart almost burst with hope. No! the agony was not to
be prolonged to the next candle, or the next but one. The very end of
the first wick had done the business in falling over. I had forgotten
that strong smell and the pools now drying on the floor.

It began in a thin blue spoonful of flame, that scooped up the worn
grease coin, grew into a saucerful of violet edged with orange, and in
ten or twenty seconds had the whole jungle