His brain still whirled with the emotions that had so lately overwhelmed
his mind; his right hand hung helplessly by his side, dragged after him
like a prisoner's chain, and lacerated by the uneven surface of the
ground over which it was slowly drawn, as--supporting himself on his
left arm, and creeping forward a few inches at a time--he set forth on
his toilsome journey.
Here, he paused bewildered in the darkness; there, he either checked
himself by a convulsive effort from falling headlong into the unknown
deeps beneath him, or lost the little ground he had gained in labour and
agony, by retracing his way at the bidding of some unexpected obstacle.
Now he gnashed his teeth in anguish, now he cursed in despair, now he
was breathless with exhaustion; but still, with an obstinacy that had in
it something of the heroic, he never failed in his fierce resolution to
effect his escape.
Slowly and painfully, moving with the pace and the perseverance of the
tortoise, hopeless yet determined as a navigator in a strange sea, he
writhed onward and onward upon his unguided course, until he reaped at
length the reward of his long suffering, by the sudden discovery of a
thin ray of moonlight toiling through a crevice in the murky brickwork
before him.
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