Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/400

 after gulp. Sound and in his right mind, the quantity would have well-nigh killed him. At the moment it lent him, temporarily, fictive but necessary strength. He showed it at once in his manner.

"Time?" he demanded.

"They are battering upon the doors; they may break in."

"I can't go this way."

It was true that the people of the castle were assaulting the doors of the great hall; the thundering blows upon the stout oaken panels were rapid and constantly increasing in force. Yet the doors were strong, and would hold yet a little while.

"The way out?" he asked.

She seemed to glide across the floor, swiftly, to one wall, where, beneath a hanging tapestry, she discovered to him a sliding panel. "Here?" she announced, waiting expectantly, quivering with anxiety and pity.

"Turn your back," he commanded roughly, "and stay so for—till I speak."

She obeyed. Despite the exquisite pain he endured, the man nerved himself to manage to remove his coat. With his knife he slit away one sleeve and the side of his shirt—grinding his teeth with mortal anguish. Then, swiftly tearing the linen into strips, he moistened them with water from a silver pitcher on the table and plastered them upon his wounds. "They be not wide, nor deep," he said to himself. "'Tis not worthy the name of O'Rourke I am if I cannot overcome them—win out of here—mend. …" Somehow—it seemed by hours of painful struggling, he got the coat on again and buttoned it tight about him. Then, with his one sound arm pressing the other against his side, tightly, to hold the bandages—such as they were—in place, he turned, gathered himself together for a supreme