“Well, it’s too late to think of that now,” answered Harry, coolly. “Lend me a hand while I kick.”
He let out on the wall of mud in front, which we had hoped was just a mask or screen hiding a cavity behind; but his foot only sunk to the ankle in it without effect.
“So there!” he said. “We must look for a better place, that’s all.”
We were standing, so far as we could judge, about midway up the groining of the vault, and right under the apex, a little above and to the right of us, gaped a small round fissure.
“See?” said Harry, excitedly; “that’s the place. It don’t go perpendicular like the others, which means that it’s sunk away from some support above it. Hold me, now.”
I clutched him the best I could, gripping a stone with my other hand, and he brought the big hammer from his jacket pocket, and poised himself, standing high on his toes. “Open sesame!” says he, and struck with all the force he could muster on the soil just under the hole. The result made him stagger, for he had expected some resistance, and there was none. The whole top of a mound of silt, which stopped the neck, it seemed, of the decapitated crypts, and into the thick base of which he had first struck his foot, broke away and fell inwards, revealing an aperture, already, under that one blow, large enough for a man to crawl through.
Harry, recovering himself, quietly repocketed the tool, and turned to me. His face was a little white, but his mouth was set as grim as sin.
“It’s my turn,” he said. “Think you can give me a leg up?”
It was no use my disputing, as he was on the right side. Working with infinite caution and difficulty on that perilous eyrie, I managed to stoop, and, getting my hands under one of his feet, levered him slowly up, while he drew on every projection he could reach, until he was able to claw his arms into the hole and hang on.
“Now,” came his voice out, muffled and hollow, “one shove, and——”