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Koupriane gave me that advice one day when he was here and had pricked his ears at the noise of the pendulums, to stop all my watches and clocks so that there would be no chance of confusing them with the tick-tack that might come from an infernal machine planted in some corner.
It is the general, who has bad nights. He cannot sleep without a narcotic, and that gives him a fever. I am going to tell you now how the third attack came about. And then you will understand, by the Virgin Mary, how it is I have yet, always have, the tick-tack in my ears.
At the farther end of the room the open door of an adjoining closet seemed but a black square in the wall. Still there was not a sound. The half-hour struck. The pendulum gave but a feeble tick-tack amid the general drowsiness that brooded over the whole chamber.
I turned my head in all directions, and decided that the sound came from my husband's chamber. I ran there. He still slept, man that he is! The tick-tack was there. But where? I turned here and there like a fool.
There he lay, his poor foolish head rolling about on the carpet, and his body some distance off. Hopelessly broken, a ruined mandarin, he would never nod any more! For a minute the little girls gazed speechlessly at the wreck; there was silence in the room, except for the steady tick-tack of the clock. Then Ethelwyn turned a terrified face towards her friend.
Injun was like most other boys when it came to mischief, and Whitey taught him the ancient game of tick-tack. In case you don't know it, I'll tell you how it's done. To make a tick-tack get a long string, the longer the better; meaning the longer the safer. Then get a small fish-hook, and tie it to the end of your string, and tie a little stone about eight inches below your fish-hook.
The terrible bondage of this tick-tack of time, this twitching of the hands of the clock, this eternal repetition of hours and days oh God, it was too awful to contemplate. And there was no escape from it, no escape. She almost wished Gerald were with her to save her from the terror of her own thoughts.
"She's always playing tricks," and he began to feel about the outside ledge of the bay window. But there was nothing there to solve the mystery. "A tick-tack!" declared Harry, "I'll bet, from the girls' room!" and without waiting for another word he jumped out of his window, ran along the roof to Nan's room, and then grabbed something. "Here it is!" he called, confiscating the offending property.
"For myself, I think I hear the tick-tack all the time since the last attempt. It haunts my ears, it is frightful, to say to one's self: There is clockwork somewhere, just about to reach the death-tick and not to know where, not to know where! When the police were here I made them all listen, and I was not sure even when they had all listened and said there was no tick-tack.
"Let's see your hook," Whitey said, as another pickerel was pulled almost to shore, and then flopped back into its native element. When Injun displayed the hook, Whitey saw that it was one of the little ones they had used in fastening the tick-tack to Wong's window. "Why, this is too small for pickerel," exclaimed Whitey. "It's for perch. You ought to have a bigger one."
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