But Hanbury—for Mansel was resting—wasted no time. By his direction we immediately withdrew five yards and began to drive a new tunnel out of the left-hand wall.
For no reason that I can offer, the half hour that followed seems for me to stand out of that period of toil and trouble; and I remember most vividly the sob of the hewer each time that he launched his pickaxe and the smell of sweat and the blinding glare of the search-light and even a mark on a timber retaining the left-hand wall. To our right, the five yards we had won to no purpose continually mocked us, like the Psalmist’s bulls of Bashan, gaping upon us with its mouth; to our left, our long, clean-cut gallery seemed to be leading fantastically into another world. I can see Hanbury poising the compass and hear him curse as his sweat fell on to its dial; and, when Bill who was hewing, missed his stroke, I remember snatching the pickaxe and missing mine.
So the work went on, and the niche in the left-hand wall had grown to an entrance, when Hanbury looked at his wrist-watch and cried that my time was up.
I stumbled back to wake Mansel and fell asleep in his stead, for the champagne had done its business and my knees were beginning to sag.
Almost at once Hanbury woke me, and I started up with a cry.
“Have you found?”
“Found be damned,” says George. “You’ve had five minutes over your time.”
So it was with us all; and we battled rather than laboured, fighting with nature, like madmen, in our effort to find the chamber before she could wear us down. For the pace was too hot to last; we all knew that; and unless we could win very soon, we were playing a losing game. Yet we went steadily on, like men in a dream, losing all count of Time and confusing Night with Day. Indeed, the demands of the battle so wholly possessed our senses that, used in some other direction, these were beginning to fail. We shouted, one to another, when a whisper could have been heard; the hand that could still ply a hammer, could not be trusted to raise a glass to the lips; and, if ever I glanced at my wrist-watch, this seemed a great way off.
At a quarter past nine the next morning, our new shaft was eight yards deep. And this alone shows that we were beside ourselves, for, though we had cut down the width, relying upon the crow-bar to make this good, such progress was superhuman. Yet, to advance this shaft further seemed little worth, and we started another tunnel out of its right-hand wall. This was by Hanbury’s direction; for Mansel was resting and we others knew no more where to turn than the man in the moon.
“Are you certain,” said I, “that we’re not too far to the left?”
“Certain,” said Hanbury. “Mansel will bear me out. The shaft from the well to the chamber is not so steep as we thought, so we’ve aimed too much to the right. You mark my words, if you don’t strike the chamber this time, we shall hit the shaft.”
Such confidence did us good, but when I roused Mansel, I saw him tighten his lips, and I knew that he had been hoping to be sent for before his time.
I now know that I must have slept for nearly my hour, when I dreamed I was listening to Mansel broadcasting news and that a storm somewhere was blotting out what he said. I must have dreamed for some moments, for I was heavy with sleep, but at last awoke, to find Tester barking like fury three feet away.
In an instant I had caught him up and had blundered through the postern to fall headlong over the breastwork with the dog in my arms. However, I was up in a moment and made haste to close the gate; but I dared not fasten it closely, for fear of a bomb.
I had much ado to quiet Tester, who was seething with wrath; but, when I had done so and could listen, I heard no sound.
So we lay still for five minutes; then I heard Mansel’s voice.
“Are you at your post, Chandos?”
“I am,” said I.
“What happened?”
“I’ve no idea,” said I. “I woke up to find Tester barking, and that’s as much as I know.”
“Stay where you are,” said he.
Then he unmasked the search-light and turned the beam on to the trap. Presently he raked the dungeon, letting the beam discover the timber and piles of earth.
At length—
“Let Tester go,” he said. “And you come in.”
The dog ran to him at once and jumped up to lick his face. Then he turned away and began to growl and bristle, with his eyes on the trap.
“Not much doubt about that,” said Mansel, stooping to make much of the dog. “Our friends have found the front door. I suppose they’re not quite ready, and that that’s why they shut it again. Well, we’re quite ready when they are, and till then, we may as well work.”
Then he sent me to bathe and eat, and, when I came back, Hanbury was asleep in the dungeon, with Tester in the crook of his arm.
We gave no more time to the riddle, for in truth we had none to give. The business smacked of a nightmare; yet, our present life was a dream; and so, if we thought, we did not speak of it, but tacitly took it for granted that Mansel’s interpretation was good.
At six o’clock that evening we started another shaft.
The last we had driven five yards, and had sunk a three-feet crow-bar into its nose. And found nothing. And so at six o’clock we started another shaft. This was driven from the nose of our second, so that our original tunnel would soon be a left-handed fork with three five-yard prongs.
And here I am bound to record that we were beginning to fail. I will swear that the spirit was willing, but the flesh was beginning to flag. It was nearly forty-five hours since Mansel and I had returned from our reconnaissance, and, though in that time we had each had ten hours’ sleep, the reconnaissance had come at the end of a full day’s toil. We had, therefore, been jaded when we began to spurt, and our spurt was losing its sting, because it did not end.
We were beginning to fail.
I knew that my strength was failing, and tried to conceal the fact. I fancy the others did the same, for the collapse of one must mean the end of our effort. The camel’s back would have broken; hot even Mansel could have carried another straw.
When I roused him at half past seven, he held up two canvas kit-bags for me to see.
“The Burglar’s Delight,” said he, with half a laugh.
I tried to laugh back, and lay down—but not to sleep. And there was the surest sign that the end was at hand, for it showed that the flesh was rebelling against its chastisement.
When Mansel returned from the gallery, he stopped to peer at me. I pretended slumber; but his action showed me that he, too, had not slept.
I think the hour that followed was the worst I have ever spent. I was so sick and weary that I would have sold a kingdom for unconsciousness; but this was steadfastly withheld; and, though at times I fell into a kind of doze, this state was more dreadful than my first, for then my brain was unruly and flitted and gambolled, as a gnat on a summer’s eve.
I was, indeed, thankful when Hanbury limped into the dungeon and I could go back in his place.
The gallery we were now driving was completing the uppermost prong of the letter E, the upright of which was formed by our second shaft and the base, or bottom prong, by the last five yards of our first. But, because of all our sounding, the works had a shapeless look and seemed to reflect the frenzy with which they had been done. The roof and walls were eccentric, and the timbers were all awry; indeed the carpenter’s task was now fit work for a wizard, and faithfully to prop and retain such irregular excavation was almost impossible.
At half past ten that night our new shaft was two yards deep. Mansel, Hanbury and I were working alone, for Bell had just left to rouse Rowley and take his place. And all was quiet, for Mansel had stopped for a moment to drink his wine, Hanbury was pencilling a timber, which he was going to saw, and I, who was hewing, was extracting a morsel of dirt, which had made its way into my eye.
At first I thought Hanbury’s pencil was making a scraping noise; then I saw he had stopped and was listening and that Mansel was doing the same.
For a moment
no one of us moved.
Then Hanbury stepped to my side and set his ear to a hole which the crow-bar had made a foot back in the left-hand wall.
“That’s right,” said he, after a moment. “It’s coming from here.”
Then he stood away, and I made play with the pickaxe about the hole.
I had soon made a hollow, in which by sinking the crow-bar we should gain another foot; but, before we did this, Mansel tore off his zephyr and folded it into a pad which should muffle the sound of the blows.
Gently I drove the bar home, and could almost have pressed it for the last foot of its way; and I drew it out with my hands without any effort at all.
The noise was distinct now—a thin, regular murmur as if someone was whetting a chisel upon a hone.
What it was I could not imagine, and was just beginning to think that our calculations had led us to the top of the well, when Mansel let out a sob and caught us each by an arm.
“My God, I’ve got it,” he cried. “That’s the chamber ahead. AND THEY’RE FILING THE BARS.”
There is, I believe, a height at which a man’s heart will break; and so, I suppose, there is a pitch of excitement at which a man’s brain will balk. And I think we had come to this, for Mansel was trembling as a man smitten with an ague; if I had tried to speak, I should have broken down; and, while we were standing thus silent, Hanbury’s knees sagged and he fell down in a swoon.
The faint was nothing, and, before I had brought the bucket which was standing ten paces away, George was again on his feet; but we made him dip his head in the water, and then Mansel and I did the same.
Then we fell to, like madmen, to deepen the breach I had made.
We worked in what silence we could and let the carpentry go; each of us hewed for two minutes, while the others withdrew his winnings and strewed them about the shafts; now and again we had to employ the shovel, but mostly we used our hands, so as to make less noise.
All the time the noise of the filing went steadily on, only ceasing from time to time to instantly recommence. Each time that it stopped our hearts went into our mouths; for, close as we were, if once the bars were severed, we might have been five miles off for all the good we could do.
When Rowley came back, we told him and sent him back to tell Bell.
“And say,” said Mansel, “that I may not arrive when I should, but that, whatever happens, he must remain where he is; for now the case is altered, and he and Tester are holding our line of retreat.”
Rowley was back in two minutes and wild to take his turn, and, once he had got it, he would not surrender the pickaxe, and I had fairly to wrest it out of his hands.
Now what the time was when it happened I do not know—for I cannot tell to an hour how long we took to cut through that last three feet—but I know that I launched the pickaxe and its head went out of my sight and that there I was, looking through a hole into an empty space, beyond which, when they gave me the light, I could see a stone wall.
It was the chamber indeed.
At once I saw that the well-diggers’ excavation had been bigger than the chamber itself and that they had not lined the cavity which they had dug, but had built the chamber within it, like a box within a box.
There was now no mistaking the whine of iron biting iron, and it sounded to our frantic ears as though whosoever was filing was nearing the end of his task.
We, therefore, fell to, like fury, and soon had a ragged window, I suppose, some three feet square, opening into the cavern in which the chamber stood.
A moment’s inspection now showed that the chamber was round, like the well, and was plainly constructed of stones which had been cut by the masons to build the walls of the well. To break out of the chamber, therefore, would have been ten times as simple as to break in; for the stones were undoubtedly wedge-shaped, and, that being so, if they were truly laid, a battering-ram itself would not avail us. The joints, moreover, were as fine as those of the walls of the well, and to cut out one stone with a chisel would have taken an hour or more.
“What of the roof?” whispered Mansel.
At once I stretched up an arm, to find the roof just out of sight, but two minutes’ work with the pickaxe had laid the edge of it bare.
Now how the roof was constructed I do not know, but between the slab we could see and the stones upon which it was resting, there was a layer of mortar as thick as a Camembert cheese. And this was so loose that I picked out a piece with my thumb.
Here, then, was the way to break in, for we had but to drive a chisel, and, when it was fairly in, to lever against the slab, to prize a stone out of the wall, and, once one stone was out, we could make our breach.
“And, when we do,” breathed Mansel, “look out for squalls; you can bet your life they’re not going to give us this trick.”
We had to make for the lever; so once more I handled the pickaxe, whilst the others marshalled the tools for the final assault.
All this time the filing continued, and, to judge from the ring of the metal, some bar was nearly in two. Indeed, as I threw down the pickaxe, again the noise stopped, and we heard some blows administered, as though the workman believed he could burst asunder the filament that remained.
We waited to hear no more.
I fitted the edge of the chisel into the chink; and, whilst I held it, Mansel hammered it home.
The stone below must have been loose, for, the moment we levered, it yielded, and a second later I pulled it out with my hands. The two below came away, and, as Hanbury gave me the searchlight, I heard a strangled cry.
On the tiny floor was a bag, thick covered with dust, of the shape of a sack of corn. Its mouth was shut, but one of its sides was gaping and spilling the stuff it held. By its side was another; but this was all gone to ruin, and its contents lay in a heap. The dust lay so deep over all that it might have been trash, but I saw the shape of a crucifix standing up out of the ruck.
Immediately opposite was the entrance, barred by the four iron bars. Behind these I saw two faces, unshaven, like those of beasts. The one I had never seen, but the other was that of Ellis; and that I believe I shall see so long as I live, for if ever the devil possessed the soul of a man he possessed it then.
The other seemed blinded by the search-light, but Ellis glared full at the lamp, as though it were no more than a taper, with his face working with passion and his eyes staring out of his head.
Suddenly he laid hold of the bars and wrenched them this way and that, screaming, like some animal with rage; and, when they would not yield to his frenzy, he clapped his face up against them and spat like any demoniac, lending the whole force of his body to this disgusting act. Then he started, as one who recovers his presence of mind, and I saw a hand fly to his hip.
At that moment Mansel fired, and the fellow fell suddenly forward against the bars. As he did so, the other man turned, and Mansel fired again. But, when the noise had subsided, we could hear him descending the shaft.
Then Ellis’s body slipped sideways, till the head was against the wall, which held it up at an angle which was different to that of the trunk.
“God forgive me,” said Mansel, “but I’d do it again.”
With that, I climbed into the chamber, and Mansel followed me in.
With the hammer and crow-bar, we soon had three more stones out, and Hanbury made his way in.
Then Mansel told Rowley to give him the canvas bags.
“And Quick’s the motto,” said he. “I missed the tanner, and now he’ll give the alarm. But, once we’re beyond the postern, they can have the oubliette.”
Rowley had brought the bags and was standing without the chamber, looking in, with his hands on the wall, when I heard a rustle behind him and saw him drop suddenly forward across the breach we had made.
A mass of soil had broken away from the “window” and had fallen on the back of his legs.
He was not hurt, but was pinned; and, whilst I supported his body, Mansel and Hanbury climbed back int
o the tunnel and shifted the fallen earth.
They worked feverishly; but two or three minutes went by before he was free and I was able to help him into the chamber.
“And that,” breathed Mansel, brushing the dirt from his hands, “is about as clear a time-signal as ever there was.”
I held one canvas bag open and Rowley the other, while Mansel and Hanbury shovelled the stuff within. There was gold and stones and jewels and all manner of lovely things, but I think we were thinking of safety and the way to the oubliette.
Then Mansel lifted his head and touched Hanbury on the arm.
For a moment we knelt there, listening.
Then, something faint, but clear, came Tester’s vigorous bark.
And that was the only time we heard him give tongue that night, for the next instant came a shuffling and then a rumbling sound; and, when we had brought the search-light up to the breach in the wall, had we not known its angle, we could not have told where the shaft we had driven had been.
“Where’s the pickaxe?” said Mansel quietly.
I told him it had lain in the shaft.
Then came another rumble and the search-light went out.
9. Out of the Eater
Had our doom been set forth upon paper and submitted to Rose Noble himself, for his approval, I cannot believe that he would have altered one particular.
We were entombed alive; this, by our own act, with the treasure under our hand, in the knowledge of an attack upon one man and a dog, who would count in vain upon our succour.
Had we had the tools, we had no longer the strength to hew our way back; indeed, to judge from the sound, it seemed likely that ten or more yards of our tunnel had fallen in. Yet, could we have performed this unthinkable task, it would only have been to fall into the enemy’s hands.
And the other way out was barred; and beyond the bars was the shaft, the mouth of which would be sealed in less than an hour; and beyond the shaft was the well, some ninety feet deep.
Mansel was speaking.
Blind Corner and Perishable Goods Page 18