Beneath the battlements--they are choked above with jungle
grass and tamarinds and many flowery weeds--the precipice fell away
a sheer two thousand feet, and below spread a vast rich green plain
populous and diversified, bounded at last by the blue sea, like an
amethystine wall. Over this precipice Christophe was wont to fling
his victims, and below this terrace were bottle-shaped dungeons
where men, broken and torn, thrust in at the neck-like hole above,
starved and died: it was his headquarters here, here he had his
torture chambers and the means for nameless cruelties. . . .
"Not a hundred years ago," said Benham's companion, and told the
story of the disgraced favourite, the youth who had offended.
"Leap," said his master, and the poor hypnotized wretch, after one
questioning glance at the conceivable alternatives, made his last
gesture of servility, and then stood out against the sky, swayed,
and with a convulsion of resolve, leapt and shot headlong down
through the shimmering air.
Came presently the little faint sound of his fall.
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