His hands were so fastened that he
could not loosen the cords, and there was no water for him to give
me; but he could and did bestow a higher alms, - the tenderness of
a brother, the manly sympathy of a soldier, the balm of the priest
of God. I lay in silence, and he spoke not often; but when he did
so, there was that in the tone of his voice - Another cycle of pain,
and I awoke from a half swoon, in which there was water to drink
and no anguish, to hear him praying beside me. He ceased to
speak, and in the darkness I heard him draw his breath hard and his
great muscles crack. Suddenly there came a sharp sound of
breaking iron, and a low "Thank Thee, Lord!" Another moment,
and I felt his hands busy at the knotted cords. "I will have them off
thee in a twinkling, Ralph," he said, "thanks to Him who taught my
hands to war, and my arms to break in two a bow of steel." As he
spoke, the cords loosened beneath his fingers.
I raised my head and laid it on his knee, and he put his great arm,
with the broken chain dangling from it, around me, and, like a
mother with a babe, crooned me to sleep with the twenty-third
psalm.
CHAPTER XXVI IN WHICH I AM BROUGHT TO TRIAL
MY lord came not again into the hold, and the untied cords and the
broken chain were not replaced. Morning and evening we were
brought a niggard allowance of bread and water; but the man who
carried it bore no light, and may not even have observed their
absence.
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