“Erik,” cried Christine, “do you swear to me, monster, do you swear to me that the scorpion is the one to turn? …”
“Yes, to hop at our wedding.”
“Ah, you see! You said, to hop!”
“At our wedding, ingenuous child! … The scorpion opens the ball. … But that will do! … You won’t have the scorpion? Then I turn the grasshopper!”
“Erik!”
“Enough!”
I was crying out in concert with Christine. M. de Chagny was still on his knees, praying.
“Erik! I have turned the scorpion!”
Oh, the second through which we passed!
Waiting! Waiting to find ourselves in fragments, amid the roar and the ruins!
Feeling something crack beneath our feet, hearing an appalling hiss through the open trapdoor, a hiss like the first sound of a rocket!
It came softly, at first, then louder, then very loud. But it was not the hiss of fire. It was more like the hiss of water. And now it became a gurgling sound:
“Guggle! Guggle!”
We rushed to the trapdoor. All our thirst, which vanished when the terror came, now returned with the lapping of the water.