clutching the rope. He knew what had happened. He had stepped too far
and gone through one of the arches.

There was no time for fright. He began to pull himself up by the rope,
hand over hand. At the same time he was acutely conscious of many
things. The Indians were yelling like demoniacs and battering at the
gate. In the garden on the other side, the old priest was shouting Ave
Marias in a high quavering voice. A breeze had sprung up and Roldan felt
the chill in it. And he felt the weight of the cassock. The heavy
woollen garment fatigued his arms and impeded his progress. Were it not
for that he could scramble up like a monkey.

He was within two feet of the top. Suddenly he felt a slackening of the
rope, accompanied by a faint sickening sound. The rope was old, it was
giving way.

Roldan made a wild lurch for the projecting floor of the belfry. The
rope broke. He went down.

He had heard that a drop, however swift, might seem to occupy hours to
the doomed. To his whirling horror-struck brain this descent certainly
seemed very long. It was almost as if he were sauntering. Nor was he
tumbling over and over. He had shut his eyes tight when the rope
snapped. He opened them, gave a shuddering glance downward, then laughed
almost hysterically: his cassock, ample even for a man, had caught the
breeze and spread out on all sides like a parachute.

And although the descent occupied but a moment longer, he comprehended
the situation, with his abnormally sharpened senses, as clearly as
though he stood on high with a spy glass.