"Nikka, old chap! Pull yourself together. Can you get me unfastened? I'll see what I can do for—"
But I promptly lost interest in Nikka's plight. For my ear, that I could not lift from the floor, registered once more that peculiar clinking underground, this time more pronounced and nearer. I peered idly along the floor, watched a rat flit from hole to hole, and then stiffened with amazement as the grating in the middle of the room lifted two or three inches. It thudded into place again with a shower of dust, but at once the clinking was resumed, and the heavy stonework was pried upward.
"Hugh!" I whispered. "Nikka! My God, look at the grating! Do you see what I see?"
Nikka was still too sick to understand, but Hugh stared at the grating, and his eyes popped from his head as he perceived its unsteady progress upward.
We were both afraid to speak, afraid to guess what it might mean. And while we still watched, uncertainly, wondering whether to hope or to fear, we heard a loud grunt, the grating rose into the air, tottered and fell out of place, leaving the drain only half-covered. The end of a steel crowbar appeared in this opening, there was another grunt, and the grating was levered aside.
"Where's that 'ere dratted box?" muttered a familiar voice. "If the Servants' 'All could see me now!"
Two hands clutched the sides of the drain opening, the grunt was repeated for the third time—and Watkins clambered laboriously into the dungeon.
"If your ludship will pardon me a minute," he puffed. "This work does fair do me up—at my time of life and all, Mister Hugh, sir—and the rats down there are as big as old Tom the mouser in the dairy at Chesby."
We could only stare at him. Even poor Nikka forgot his agony and peered unbelievingly at this extraordinary apparition.
"'As that Tootoo gone, your ludship?" continued Watkins, looking around.