d ease, a little, the
dislocating ache in my armpits by slackening the overhead rope.

But after a little, a cramping pain began to flare through the arches of
my feet, and it became impossible to support my weight on tiptoe. I
jarred down with violent strain on my wrists and wrenched shoulders
again, and for a moment the shooting agony was so intense that I nearly
screamed. I thought I heard a soft breath near me.

After a little it subsided to a sharp ache, then to a dull ache, and
then to the violent cramping pain again, and once more I struggled to
get my toes under me. I realized that by allowing my toes barely to
touch the floor they had doubled and tripled the pain by the tantalizing
hope of, if not momentary relief, at least the alteration of one pain
for another.

I haven't the faintest idea, even now, how long I repeated that
agonizing cycle: struggle for a toehold on rough stone, scraping my bare
feet raw; arch upward with all my strength to release for a few moments
the strain on my wrenched shoulders; the momentary illusion of relief as
I found my balance and the pressure lightened on my wrists.

Then the slow creeping, first of an ache, then of a pain, then of a
violent agony in the arches of feet and calves. And, delayed to the last
endurable moment, that final terrible anguish when the drop of my full
weight pulled shoulder and wrist and elbow joints with that
bone-shattering jerk.

I started once to estimate how much time had passed, how many hours had
crawled by, then checked myself, for that was imminent madness. But once
the process had begun my brain would not abandon and I found myself,
with compulsive precision, counting off the seconds and the minutes in
each cycle: stretch upward, release the pressure on the arms; the
beginning of pain in calves and arches and toes; the creeping of pain up
ribs and loins and shoulders; the sudden jarring drop on the arms again.

My throat was intolerably dry. Under other circumstances I might have
estimated the time by the growth of hunger and thirst, but the rough
treatment I had received made this impossible. There were other,
unmentionable, humiliating pains.

After a time, to bolster my flagging courage, I found myself thinking of
all the ways it might have been worse. I had heard of a _shegrin_
exposed to the bite of poisonous--not fatal, but painfully
poisonous--insects, and to the worrying of the small gnawing rodents
which can be trained to bite