ch the foe was climbing!

The hair rose on Claude's head, but he set his teeth; though the man
died, though he died, the portcullis must fall! More than his own life,
more than the lives of both of them, more than lives a hundred or a
thousand hung on that bolt; the fate of millions yet unborn, the freedom
and the future of a country hung on that bolt which would not give
way--though now he had found it and was hammering it. Grinding his
teeth, the sweat on his brow, he beat on it with the pike, struck the
iron with the strength of despair, stooped to see what was amiss--still
with the frenzied prayers of the other in his ears--saw it, and struck
again and again--and again!

Whirr! The winch flew round, barely missing his head. With a harsh,
grinding sound that rose with incredible swiftness to a scream, piercing
the night, the ponderous grating slid down, crashed home and barred all
entrance--closed the Porte Neuve. It did more, though Claude did not
know it. It cut off the engineer from the outer gate, of which the keys
were at the Town Hall, and against which in another minute, another
sixty seconds, he had set his petard. That set and exploded, Geneva had
lain open to its enemies. As it was, so small was the margin, so fatally
accurate the closing, that when the day rose, it disclosed a portent.
When the victors came to examine the spot they found beneath the
portcullis the mangled form of one of the engineers, and beside him lay
his petard.

CHAPTER XXIV.

ARMES! ARMES!

Claude did not know all that he had done, or the narrow margin of time
by which he had succeeded. But he did know that he had saved the gate;
that gate on the outer side of which four thousand of the picked troops
of Savoy were waiting the word to enter. He knew that he had done it
with death at his elbow and with the cries of his panic-stricken comrade
in his ears. And in the moment of success he rose above the common
level. He felt himself master of fear, lord of death; in the exultation
of his triumph he thought nothing too hard or too dangerous for him.

It was well perhaps that he had this feeling, for he had not a moment to
waste if he would save himself. As the portcullis struck the ground with
a thunderous crash and rebounded, and he turned from the winch to the
stairhead, a last warning, cut short in the utterance, reached him, and
he saw through the gloom that his companion was already in the grip of a
figure which had succ