So we escaped from the chamber into the shaft, taking the bags with us.
There was a rope fastened to one of the bars. I suppose it had been bound there by the tanner, to enable Ellis to make the ascent of the shaft: but it stood us in very good stead, for the steps were very irregular and covered with slime.
It was at once arranged that we should descend one by one: for, rope or no, it was not a place to play tricks in, and, if two used the rope together, one, by slipping, might bring the other down.
I went first, dragging a bag behind me, and, when I had reached the water, Hanbury followed me down.
The water was roughly one foot from the top of the mouth of the shaft, and I could see a pale radiance which I knew for that of the moon. The air, too, was fresh, and, chill and dank as it was, because of the depth of the well, I can never describe the relief I found in breathing it, and I think it did more to refresh me body and soul, than anything that had happened since Mansel and I had found the water at the foot of the combe.
So it was, I think, with us all. And of such, I suppose, is the way of Providence; for, if ever four weary men had need of comfort, we needed it then.
Except for a plank, floating upon the water, the well was as empty of gear as a blown egg.
I do not think we had counted on anything else: we had, rather, deliberately refrained from leaping, so to speak, until we were come to the ditch. But we had hoped desperately to find something—some rope or scaffolding which would have given us a chance, if not of scaling the walls, at least of rising with the water and so avoiding the most miserable of deaths. But there was nothing at all: and, though I went out with the torch and, getting astride of the plank, recklessly raked the walls for as far as the torch would light them—and that was some thirty feet up—I might have spared my labour, for they were as bare as my hand.
“Nothing?” said Mansel, as I came back to the shaft.
I shook my head: and, as they helped me ashore Hanbury and I, between us, let fall the torch, and there was an end of that.
For perhaps two minutes we stood, with our eyes on the water, already full four inches higher than when I had seen it first ten minutes before.
Then I heard Mansel catch his breath.
“By thunder!” he cried. “We must be losing our minds. What was the use of this plank without two beams? They’re not afloat, because they’re locked in the niches, but I’ll lay a monkey we find them two feet down.”
With that, he dived and, after what seemed a long time, came up with one of the rafters which Carson and I had cut from the outhouse roof. In a moment I had the other, and together we set them in the niches which were now two inches above the water line. Then we laid the plank across them, and, five minutes later, the four of us were standing upon the stage.
We had had a struggle to bring the bags out of the shaft, for they were immensely heavy: indeed, we had almost lost one: and this made us so uneasy that Hanbury went back to the shaft and cut a length from the rope and, with this, lashed them loosely together, so that they could hang from a beam, as a pair of saddlebags slung on the back of a horse.
We did not sit down, for the plank was nearly awash and very soon we should be able to raise the stage: but, as I have said before, all the way up the well the niches lay two feet apart, and, the beams being heavy and we having nothing to stand on, but only the water itself to buoy us up, we could not raise the rafters as much as two feet at a time, but must wait till the water had risen and made this distance less.
So we stood in a row on the plank: and, when the water was halfway to the calf of my leg, we raised the stage.
Again we had a battle to save the bags, for to keep afloat ourselves during the transfer was almost as much as we could do, and swapping horses in midstream must be child’s play compared with the struggle we had to raise ourselves and our baggage twenty inches above the flood.
But at last it was over, and we were again on the plank, with nearly an hour before us before we must move again.
Enforced inaction, I suppose, never helped anyone. But, sitting there in the darkness, we had nothing to do but think. And, when I set down my thoughts, I think I am revealing more or less what was in each of our minds.
Our state was melancholy.
We were as cold now as, a short time before, we had been hot. We had to chafe our fingers, to prevent them from growing numb. Mansel was stripped to the waist, and we were all drenched and dripping and utterly worn out.
Of succour from without there was no hope at all. Carson was miles away, and Bell, if indeed he was not dead or captive, was holding the postern gate.
The water was rising at the rate of thirty inches an hour: but this pace would not last for long, and twenty-seven hours must elapse before we could climb above the high-water mark.
And, if by some miracle we could endure so long, if, before then, the thieves had not returned to the well, to find us waiting with the treasure, what then?
Then
