Happily he wasn’t there, and there was no witness of my cowardice.  Happily, too, it is just as difficult to be a coward for long as to be a hero.  It was Blenkiron’s phrase about Mary that pulled me together—­’She can’t scare and she can’t soil’.  No, by heavens, she couldn’t.  I could trust my lady far better than I could trust myself.  I was still sick with anxiety, but I was getting a pull on myself.  I was done in, but Ivery would get no triumph out of me.  Either I would go under the ice, or I would find a chance of putting a bullet through my head before I crossed the frontier.  If I could do nothing else I could perish decently . . .  And then I laughed, and I knew I was past the worst.  What made me laugh was the thought of Peter.  I had been pitying him an hour ago for having only one leg, but now he was abroad in the living, breathing world with years before him, and I lay in the depths, limbless and lifeless, with my number up.

I began to muse on the cold water under the ice where I could go if I wanted.  I did not think that I would take that road, for a man’s chances are not gone till he is stone dead, but I was glad the way existed . . .  And then I looked at the wall in front of me, and, very far up, I saw a small square window.

The stars had been clouded when I entered that accursed house, but the mist must have cleared.  I saw my old friend Orion, the hunter’s star, looking through the bars.  And that suddenly made me think.

Peter and I had watched them by night, and I knew the place of all the chief constellations in relation to the St Anton valley.  I believed that I was in a room on the lake side of the Pink Chalet:  I must be, if Ivery had spoken the truth.  But if so, I could not conceivably see Orion from its window . . .  There was no other possible conclusion, I must be in a room on the east side of the house, and Ivery had been lying.  He had already lied in his boasting of how he had outwitted me in England and at the Front.  He might be lying about Mary . . .  No, I dismissed that hope.  Those words of his had rung true enough.

I thought for a minute and concluded that he had lied to terrorize me and keep me quiet; therefore this infernal contraption had probably its weak point.  I reflected, too, that I was pretty strong, far stronger probably than Ivery imagined, for he had never seen me stripped.  Since the place was pitch dark I could not guess how the thing worked, but I could feel the cross-bars rigid on my chest and legs and the side-bars which pinned my arms to my sides . . .  I drew a long breath and tried to force my elbows apart.  Nothing moved, nor could I raise the bars on my legs the smallest fraction.

Again I tried, and again.  The side-bar on my right seemed to be less rigid than the others.  I managed to get my right hand raised above the level of my thigh, and then with a struggle I got a grip with it on the cross-bar, which gave me a small leverage.  With a mighty effort I drove my right elbow and shoulder against the side-bar.  It seemed to give slightly . . .  I summoned all my strength and tried again.  There was a crack and then a splintering, the massive bar shuffled limply back, and my right arm was free to move laterally, though the cross-bar prevented me from raising it.