Now at that the sacristan gave a stifled groan of terror, and I clutched my axe, ready for need.
"All right, go down and see!" answered one or two, but more in jest than earnest.
Then one dropped a great stone in, and waited to hear it bubble from the bottom, that he might judge the depth. Now no bubbles came, or so soon that they were lost in the splash, and the prior took some of the crumbling mortar from the cell walls, and cast it in after a few moments. And that was a brave and crafty thing to do, for it wrought well.
"Hear the bubble," said the Dane; "the well must be many a fathom deep--how long it seemed before they came up!"
So they drank their fill, saying that it was useless to go down therefore, and anyhow there would be naught but a few silver vessels.
"I have seen the same before," said one; "and moreover no man has luck with those things from a church."
No man gainsaid him, so they kicked the bucket down the well and went away.
Now I breathed freely again, and was about to whisper to the prior that his thought of making what would pass for bubbling was good; but more Danes came. And they were men of Halfden's ship; so we must wait and listen, and this time I thought that surely we were to be found. For the men began to play with one another as they drank from the bucket; pushing each other's heads therein, and the helm of one fell off and fled past us to the bottom; and some words passed pretty roughly. And after they had done quarrelling they crowded over the trapdoor, as one might know by the darkening of the shaft. Then one saw the helm, for it was of leather, iron bound, and had fallen rim upward, so that it floated. Now one was going to swarm down the rope to get it, but as he swung the rope to him, the bucket swayed in the water under the helm, and he saw that it did so. Whereon he wound both up, and they too went away.
"That was a lucky chance!" I whispered.
"No chance at all, my son; that was surely done by the same Hand that sent you here to warn us," answered the prior. And I think that he was right.