Looking around them curiously when they stood in a group, they saw all manner of insects crawling about, startled by the light and this unwonted invasion of their domain. Many of them left shiny tracks behind them, while some insects, attracted by the lantern, flew against its horny sides.
It was an unpleasant sight, but they had other business on hand, and they went about it with that quick glance at their surroundings.
Handing the lantern to Herman, the ranger bent down and prodded the floor with his hunting-knife. At every prod there was an answering metallic sound.
"That's iron," said Herman, who was watching eagerly.
"Yes. Don't you remember what the plan showed you?" Engel replied. "Ha! This seems to be what I want."
He had driven his knife into a crevice, and, scraping the earth away, as he moved along, with the point, he marked out a square space. Driving in the point of the tempered steel, he raised an iron plate which worked on hinges, and, getting his hands to it when it had come a little way, he threw it back against the tree's side, and looked into a hole, the bottom of which was lost in blackness.
Here, again, were iron clamps by which Engel descended carefully, for some distance, until his foot touched solid ground. Herman followed and found himself in a cavernous space.
Gazing around, they found that it was what they expected according to the plan. Here was a great chamber, low-roofed, and narrowing down on one side to a passage whose walls gleamed in the light of the lantern.
The walls were veined in all directions, and the yellow colour suggested gold; but this was no time for close examination. The matter in hand was the finding of William Tyndale, to wrest him from Schouts' harsh keeping before he had time to sell him into the hands of those for whom Cochlaeus was acting.
"Yonder is the passage," said the ranger, walking the next moment across the floor with the others so close at his heels that, when he halted unexpectedly, they bundled against him.