I could see him now stretching his stockinged foot downwards in a vain attempt to reach the next crack, and drawing it back again; could see his tortured face, a white blot upon the red granite.
Then that face vanished and blackness gathered round me, and in the blackness visions: of the living, resistless avalanche, of the snow-grave into which I had sunk--oh! years and years ago; of Ayesha demanding Leo's life at my hands.

Blackness and silence, through which I could only hear the cracking of my muscles.
Suddenly in the blackness a flash, and in the silence a sound.

The flash was the flash of a knife which Leo had drawn.

He was hacking at the cord with it fiercely, fiercely, to make an end.

And the sound was that of the noise he made, a ghastly noise, half shout of defiance and half yell of terror, as at the third stroke it parted.
I saw it part.