“Eh!” cried my uncle. “I can’t understand. It must have severed itself on a sharp stone, I suppose.”
“That was the case, without doubt,” said the clergyman, kindly. “Well, there’s nothing for us now but to take pick and shovel, and dig out the pith of the thing. It will take a little longer, that’s all.”
Indeed, we found the other two, once assured of our safety, already hard at the job. It proved a tough one, for the silt inside from long pressure was grown as compact as mortar, and every fragment of it had to be chipped off and pulled away—a difficult matter, when from the depth of our boring it was no longer possible to wield the pick. However, we got through it, taking turns at the tools, and working now by lantern light, for the end of the great trunk was turned from the face of the moon.
Suddenly Harry, when he and I were once more hammering and shovelling together, uttered a stifled sound, and scrambled up, so quickly as half to fracture his skull against the roof of the tube. Then, holding his head, and squatting out backwards, he gingerly raked after him a little white thing—a human bone.
I scuttled to join him, and we all looked at one another.
“We’re coming to it,” muttered Mr. Sant; and almost on the instant, as we plunged in again to resume our burrowing, the end was wrought. A slab of concreted stuff, falling detached to our renewed blows and tilting outwards, let down an avalanche of loosened sand, and, slipping on its torrent—what?
We did not wait to discriminate. The dead, it seemed to us only, had come sliding and chuckling to meet us half way, with his, “Here we are again!” like a clown.
“It’s there!” gasped Harry, as we stood up outside. “Some one else must fetch it—not me: I won’t.”
Joshua dived on the instant: we heard him scuffling and chattering inside. And then he emerged.
“The rope!” he cried like a madman. “Fetch it—a bit of it—anything!”