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 soundings, 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 crowbar 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 crowbar 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
