The torch had filled the captain's room with a resinous smoke,
but the flame was growing pale. Dawn was coming in greyly through
a slender arrow-slit, and with it ever and again the glow from some
mountain out of sight, which was shooting forth spasmodic bursts of
fire. With it also were mutterings of distant falling rocks, and
sullen tremblings, which had endured all the night through, and I
judged that earth was in one of her quaking moods, and would
probably during the forthcoming day offer us some chastening
discomforts.

On this account, perhaps, my senses were stilled to certain
evidences which would otherwise have given me a suspicion; and
also, there is no denying that my general wakefulness was sapped by
another matter. This woman, Nais, interested me vastly out of the
common; the mere presence of her seemed to warm the organs of my
interior; and whilst she was there, all my thoughts and senses were
present in the room of the captain of the gate in which we sat.

But of a sudden the floor of the chamber rocked and fell away
beneath me, and in a tumult of dust, and litter, and bales of the
captain's plunder, I fell down (still seated on the flagstone) into
a pit which had been digged beneath it. With the violence of the
descent, and the flutter of all these articles about my head, I was
in no condition for immediate action; and whilst I was still
half-stunned by the shock, and long before I could get my eyes into
service again, I had been seized, and bound, and half-strangled
with a noose of hide. Voices were raised that I should be
despatched at once out of the way; but one in authority cried out
that, killing me at leisure, and as a prisoner, promised more