“I am within, Jean-Louis.”
I followed, feet first, and with my toes just touching bottom, reached out and pulled the trap upon us. Then, with a feeling as if I were wrenching off a blouse over my shoulders, I let myself back into the hole—upon a carpet of muffling dust—and ma bonne amie caught at me, and we stood to hear our own hearts beating. Like the thick throb of a clock in an under-room—thus, I swear, our pulses sounded to us in that black and horrible stillness. The box had, it appeared, been very compactly built in at the first—and before the superincumbent litter of rubbish had been discharged over and around it—with the strongest bones, for that these were calculated to endure, without shifting, the onset of one hurriedly concealing himself; yet this necessary precaution went near to stultifying itself by so helping to exclude the air as to make breathing a labour to one confined within. Fortunately, however, no long strain upon our endurance was demanded of us.
Now the hunters came upon us so silently, that there, in our ghastly prison, a spray of light, scattered through the chinks of the trap, was our first intimation of their presence. Then, as we maddened to see the glint withdrawn, a low voice came to our ears.
“Stop, then! What is this?”
“The dust of the Innocents, citizen.” (Gusman’s voice.)
“It is with the dust of the depraved in breeding fat maggots, is it not?”
“Ay, so long as they can find flesh food.”
“But what if such food were concealed herein? That little babouin of St Pélagie—peste! a big thigh-bone would afford him cover.”
I felt my hand carried to Carinne’s lips in the darkness.
Gusman kicked at the mound with his sabot.