early. The rain had already extinguished the
candle. I heard an oath from Belville, a laugh from Raffles, and for a
second that was all. Raffles was coming to me, and the other could not
even see to fire; that was all I knew in the pitchy interval of
invisible rain before the next crash and the next flash.

And then!

This time they came together, and not till my dying hour shall I forget
the sight that the lightning lit and the thunder applauded. Raffles
was on one of the parapets of the gulf that my foot-bridge spanned, and
in the sudden illumination he stepped across it as one might across a
garden path. The width was scarcely greater, but the depth! In the
sudden flare I saw to the concrete bottom of the well, and it looked no
larger than the hollow of my hand. Raffles was laughing in my ear; he
had the iron railing fast; it was between us, but his foothold was as
secure as mine. Lord Ernest Belville, on the contrary, was the fifth
of a second late for the light, and half a foot short in his spring.
Something struck our plank bridge so hard as to set it quivering like a
harp-string; there was half a gasp and half a sob in mid-air beneath
our feet; and then a sound far below that I prefer not to describe. I
am not sure that I could hit upon the perfect simile; it is more than
enough for me that I can hear it still. And with that sickening sound
came the loudest clap of thunder yet, and a great white glare that
showed us our enemy's body far below, with one white hand spread like a
starfish, but the head of him mercifully twisted underneath.

"It was all his own fault, Bunny. Poor devil! May he and all of us be
forgiven; but pull yourself together for your own sake. Well, you can't
fall; stay where you are a minute."

I remember the uproar of the elements while Raffles was gone; no other
sound mingled with it; not the opening of a single window, not the
uplifting of a single voice. Then came Raffles with soap and water,
and the gyve was wheedled from one wrist, as you withdraw a ring for
which the finger has grown too large. Of the rest, I only remember
shivering till morning in a pitch-dark flat, whose invalid occupier was
for once the nurse, and I his patient.

And that is the true ending of the episode in which we two set
ourselves to catch one of our own kidney, albeit in another place I
have shirked the whole truth. It is not a grateful task to show
Raffles as completely at fault as he real