Clawing and scratching like a drowning cat and rendered half-stupid by the blow, I yet managed to grasp the rope with my other hand, and so dangle there with little more than strength just to cling on. Once I sought to ease the intolerable strain on my arms by toeing for foothold on the paddle again, but the wheel, swinging free now, slipped from under me, so that I was nearly jerked from my clutch. Then there was nothing for it but to gather breath and pray that power might come to me to swarm up the rope by and by. Drooping my head as I hung panting, the blackness I had thought impenetrable was traversed by the green glint of light below that I have mentioned. The sight revived me in a moment. It was like a draught of water to a fainting soldier. Now I felt some connectedness of thought to be possible. With a bracing of all my muscles, I passed my legs about the rope and began toilingly to drag myself upward. I had covered half the distance, when I felt myself to be going mad. How this was I cannot explain. The fight against material difficulties had hitherto, it seemed, left tremors of the supernatural powerless to move me. Now, in a moment, black horror had me by the heart. That I should be down there--clambering from the depths of that secret and monstrous pit, the very neighborhood of which had always filled me with loathing, seemed a fact incredible in its stupendous unnature. This may sound exaggerated. It did not seem so to me then. Despite my manhood and my determination, in an instant I was mastered and insane. Still I clung to the rope and crawled upward. Then suddenly I saw why night had fallen upon me in one palpable curtain when the lantern was extinguished; for the door of the cupboard was closed. Had it only swung to? But what air was there in the close room beyond to move it? Hanging there, like a lost and fated fiend, a bubble of wild, ugly merriment rose in me and burst in a clap of laughter. I writhed and shrieked in the convulsion of it; the dead vault rung with my hysterical cries. It ceased suddenly, as it had begun, and, grinding my teeth in a frenzy of rage over the thought of how I had been trapped and snared, I swung myself violently against the door, and, letting go my hold at the same instant, burst it open with the force of my onset and rolled bleeding and struggling on the floor of the room beyond. After a minute or two I rose into a sitting posture, leaning on one hand, half-stunned and half-blinded. A dense and deadly silence about me; but this was penetrated presently by a fantastic low whispering sound at my back, as if there were those there that discussed my fate. I turned myself sharply about. Dull emptiness only of rotting floor and striding rafter, and the gathered darkness of wall corners.