“You’ll go together, then!” he shouted, and drove me back across the cell. His face and shoulder were bleeding, he was all in, but he laughed in my face as he closed in for the kill.

“This way! This way!” bawls Carl Gustaf. “To me, man!”

I couldn’t have done it, not for a kingdom; I could feel my arm failing before Starnberg’s cuts. One I stopped a bare inch from my face, and lurched back; his arm straightened for the thrust—and then in a moment he stopped dead, his head turning towards the grille, as a shot sounded from the stairs.

“Help!” yelled Carl Gustaf. “Quickly! This way!”

Rudi swore and sprang back to the grille door; there was the sound of shouting and feet clattering on the steps. He waited only an instant, and glanced back at me.

“Another time, damn you,” he cried. “Au revoir, your highnesses!”, and he swung his sabre once and let it fly at me, whirling end over end. It sailed over my head, ringing on the stones, but I had started back instinctively, my feet slipped out from under me, and I came crashing down on the flags. Christ! they weren’t level! I was sliding backwards, and in a moment of paralysing horror I remembered the funnel and that ghastly pit at its base. I heard Carl Gustaf’s cry of warning too late and Rudi’s exultant yell of laughter; they seemed to slide upwards out of my sight as I clawed frantically at the slippery stone. I couldn’t stop myself; my foot caught for an instant and I slewed round sprawling, helpless as a cod on a fishmonger’s slab. Now I was sliding head first; I had an instant’s glimpse of that hellish black hole as I slithered towards it, then my head was over the void, my arms were flailing empty air, and I shot over the lip, screaming, into the depths. Jesus, down the drain, went through my mind as I hurtled headlong towards certain death.

The pipe ran at an angle; my shoulders, hips and knees crashed against its sides as I rushed into the inky blackness. For sheer horror I have known nothing to come near it, for this without doubt was the end—the frightful, unspeakable finish; I was being shot into the bowels of hell beyond all hope, into eternal dark. Down I went, the ghastly wail of my own screams in my ears, and ever down, down, and then with shattering force I was plunged into icy water, plummeting through it like a stone until it gradually drew me to a halt, and I felt myself rising.

For a moment I thought I must have shot out into the Jotunsee, a moment of frantic hope, but before I had risen a foot my back bumped against the pipe. Christ! I was trapped like a rat, for the shaft was too narrow to turn; I was head down with nothing to do but drown!