THE JAWS OF DEATH IN REAL EARNEST.
Shadows are trailing,
My heart is bewailing,
And tolling within
Like a funeral bell.”
— LONGFELLOW.
BY AND BY, I was aware of a trickling of water over my feverish brow, and a movement of air about my burning throat. I was gasping and ill: my tongue was dry, and my head aching. I opened my eyes slowly; I stared around me with a start. Li Sing was fanning me with a fan, and applying eau-de-Cologne to my aching forehead with a wet towel.
No more than that seemed clear to me at » first. I was merely aware of an unpleasant sensation of coming to, much as I have since felt it after having a tooth drawn under gas at a modern dentist’s.
I raised my eyes feebly, and saw Lucrezia Borgia smiling down upon me from her sallow pallid bust, and Mrs. Bates, the murderess, preparing to stab her sleeping victim. In a minute more, I remembered where I was and recognized that for some hours at least I must have been sleeping heavily. It was pitch-dark without, and the Chamber of Horrors was lighted up within by a single kerosene lamp, which just sufficed to throw a ray of visible gloom upon the distorted faces of all those waxen murderers. A terrible fear seized upon me that the Sacramento might by this time have really come in, and that Edith might have found herself, on her landing, alone among strangers.
I put my hand into my pocket to feel for my watch; or at least, I tried to; but to my utter surprise I discovered I couldn’t move a joint of my arm. Was this rheumatism or paralysis? I gave a mad wrench. Great heavens! what could it mean? Ah, gentlemen, you may stare. My arms and legs were tied! Tied with a stout new rope, that confined me to the chair. I was bound hand and foot in Guiteau’s seat, unable to move a muscle for my own deliverance.
“What does it mean, you scoundrel?” I burst out, the sense of my helplessness just beginning to dawn upon me. “How dare you attempt —— —— —— —”
But before I could get another word out, Li Sing had stepped behind me with dexterous rapidity, and, quicker than I knew what was happening, slipped something adroitly into my mouth between my open teeth — something that prevented me from uttering a single cry or sound, and that no struggling on earth could ever avail me to get rid of. I recognized in a moment that it was a cunningly devised mechanical gag with india-rubber adjustments, like those that are used for gagging the mouths of guillotined criminals. It formed part of the apparatus of that hideous show, and Li Sing had shown it to us the afternoon before with all the other paraphernalia of his hateful exhibition.
As soon as it was fitted on, and I sat there, helpless and speechless, but trembling all over with rage, Li Sing stepped back a couple of paces deliberately, and cast an admiring glance at his own careful preparations. “English gentleman, don’t be afraid,” he said, in his horrible jargon. “Li Sing only tly little piecey expeliment. English gentleman makee dollar present to Li Sing. Li Sing go out buy piecey lope while gentleman sleepie, and tie up lope lound English gentleman.”
He smiled a bland smile of infantile delight at his own cleverness as he said it. But his words appalled me. The scoundrel had used my own dollar that I gave him, to buy the rope with which he had bound me hand and foot in the murderer’s chair there.
Then it dawned upon me slowly that he must have hocussed my tea, and kept me asleep there on purpose while he bought the rope and bound me.
I don’t know whether the Chinaman read this suspicion in my angry eyes, but at any rate he looked me back in the face, and answered me almost as if I had spoken to him. “Yes, English gentleman,” he said, gazing across at me pensively from those mild almond eyes of his, “Li Sing burn piecey opium in the loom while gentleman sit and wait for tea. Li Sing put piecey Indian hemp in tea-pot. Indian hemp velly good for makee gentleman sleep. Indian hemp bling plenty dleam. Li Sing go out and buy piecey lope to tie gentleman up while gentleman sleep there.” And he laughed musically.
A cold thrill of horror coursed through my bones. I realized in a flash the full awfulness of the situation. The impassive, phlegmatic, pitiless yellow man had me wholly at his mercy, and could murder me, if he chose, with no more compunction than you or I would show at crushing a cockroach.
The very deliberateness with which he spoke and moved had something inhuman in its crawling cruelty. He toyed with death as a cat toys with a mouse. He played with his victim, with a smile on his face, as a boy plays with a frog while he mangles it mercilessly.
I may be prejudiced, gentleman, as I said before, but somehow, I can never quite trust those yellow-faced Chinamen.
Presently, he disappeared for a moment, and then came back with a bucket of water. He laid it by the side of the guillotine, and worked the knife up and down in the groove to see if it went smoothly without a hitch anywhere. After that, he sat down on a stool before me, like a man who has plenty of time to spare, and needn’t hurry himself. I knew now he had awaked me and refreshed me with eau-de-Cologne in order that he might enjoy the full delight of watching my helpless misery. He looked at me close, not savagely, but good-humoredly (which was ten thousand times worse), and smiled once more that bland, infantile smile; “Li Sing workee guillotine evelly day,” he said slowly and very distinctly, watching my face as he spoke, to see if it twitched; “Li Sing makee plenty blood flow; but never blood from living Melican gentleman. Allee time, Li Sing want to see how guillotine workee on living man. To-day, English gentleman come see Li Sing; talkee Li Sing in loom; tellee Li Sing him stlanger in Flisco. Li Sing tinkee, this good time for tly piecey expeliment. English gentleman alone; English gentleman tired. Makee English gentleman go sleepie with Indian hemp in Guiteau’s chair. Go out buy lope, tie English gentleman up. Now go cut head off English gentleman.”
The stolid joy of blood with which he spoke added to the horror and awe of my situation. In a moment, a ghastly picture rose up before my eyes. I thought of Edith, coming alone by night to that strange town, and finding when she arrived her future husband missing — perhaps even learning at once by what horrid fate he had died. For her sake, I fervently prayed one prayer. If Li Sing killed me, I trusted at least he would escape detection. I trusted he would destroy every trace of blood. I trusted his crime would never be discovered. I trusted Edith might never know the awful truth as to my disappearance.
Li Sing looked at me once more, and once more he smiled. He seemed to read my thoughts with Oriental cunning. “Melican judge never find out,” he said, shaking his shaved head till the pigtail waved behind him. “Li Sing always buy bucket of blood evelly day in market. Plenty of blood in Li Sing’s drain. Washee up allee right, makee guillotine clean again. Takee body to Chinatown, likee Chinaman do. Sendee box to Chinatown cemetelly with body to belley him. Chinaman no wantee know what body I belly. English gentleman stlanger in Flisco; got no fiends. Nobody comee askee after English gentleman.”
He told me all his vile scheme cynically, just so, with a chuckle of delight. Then he rubbed his hands quietly in passive Celestial joy. “Tly guillotine at last on live gentleman’s neck,” he said, hugging himself with the pleasure of an ideal achieved. “See plenty blood lun out; live blood; warm, beautiful!”
I groaned inwardly. It was all I could do. I was tied so tight from head to foot that I couldn’t move a limb or a finger any way. And Edith by this time might be looking for me in vain at every hotel in San Francisco.
At last, after he had gloated long enough over my helpless condition, the Chinaman rose again, and came toward me cautiously. He cut with his knife the rope that bound me externally to the chair, and unwound it by stages. I could see then that he had used two pieces of rope, one to tie me rigidly from head to foot in a stiff, upright position, and the other to bind me to the chair, with cramped legs, while he made his final preparations for guillotining me.
As the outer rope was loosed, I made one violent effort to shake myself free; but all in vain. Li Sing had done his work far too cleverly for that. He was a practised hand, for he had been an assistant in a hospital at Hongkong, he told me. I couldn’t wriggle a limb half an inch either way under those firm close knots of his.
He lifted me in his arms, all rigid as I lay, and carried me over in his arms as one might carry a log of cordwood, for I had no more power of will or motion. Then he laid me down on the platform of the hideous machine, and fitted my neck into the horrible groove. I looked up, and saw the hateful knife gleaming over my head. Li Sing looked up too, and chuckled to himself audibly. “Plenty blood lun, lun,” he said. “Velly plitty expeliment. Li Sing wantee allee time to see how guillotine workee on Melican gentleman.”
No, gentlemen; I tell you, it’s not all prejudice. The yellow man is as pitiless as Nature herself. He kills, and laughs. He tortures, and enjoys it.
Li Sing stood watching me with my head in the groove, in my helpless agony, for full five minutes. Evidently, now he had gained his heart’s desire at last, he couldn’t bear to get over the scene too quickly. He wanted to drink it in, bit by bit, and taste its full flavor by rolling it delicately on his mental palate. The five minutes seemed to me like a perfect eternity. But I knew they were no more, because he took out my watch, and held it up visibly before my eyes. I saw it pointed to twenty minutes past two in the morning. “Give you five minutes,” the Chinaman said, with the watch in his hand. And then, he counted them out with deliberate slowness. “One... two... three... four... and a quarter... four and a half... four and three-quarters... five! And now for the expeliment!”
As he spoke, with stolid, fiendish joy gleaming childishly on his smooth face, he clutched at the cord, and gave a hasty pull to the weighted machinery. I closed my eyes, and knew all was up. I had but one last prayer: “Heaven grant that Edith may never learn it!”
How long a time a second seems when you’re waiting for the axe of a guillotine to fall! Slowly, slowly, the awful thing slipped down. I heard it slide in the groove with incredible deliberateness. I waited and wondered, with my eyes closed. But as the second lengthened itself out to half a minute at least — half an eternity, rather — I opened my eyes at last once more, and glanced patiently upward.
Li Sing stood gazing at the knife with a disappointed look. And the blade itself, which I had heard sliding slowly downward in its groove, and grating against the side, stuck in the machine half a yard above me.
This was unspeakable suspense, in the very jaws of death. Why torture me so by such delays? Was it chance that had done it, or was Li Sing still playing with me? Was he trying intentionally to prolong my agony?
But no. Something had surely gone wrong with the working of the machine. There was a hitch, clearly. Li Sing lifted the knife slowly into place once more, and examined the weights and pulleys with close attention. Then he slid it up and down twice or thrice to try it, and felt with his hand for any obstruction in the channelled groove. At last he appeared to have found it. He chuckled to himself once more, and stood up on the platform, gazing benignly at the knife. All was ready now for the final attempt. At last my awful suspense would be ended — by death: and in two minutes more I should be free from a world that grows such things as these yellow-faced Chinamen!