Joey flung herself upon the great stone. "All right—I'll get it open," she shouted; but there was no answer. That faint choked call was not repeated.
She pushed at the stone with all her strength, but it did not budge. She pushed again, with a terrible nightmare feeling that Gabrielle, her friend, could not keep her footing in the water, and was drowning while she wasted time. She took a deep breath, and pushed, with cracking muscles, for the third time, and the stone rolled over with a loud splash, and the trap was free.
"Can you push?" she shouted. When she had seen him before the young man had come up a ladder propped against the side, and pushed the trap up from below. But now there was no sound or answer. Joey thought of Gabrielle's story of the man who had been drowned in the room below the Round Tower in just such another flood, and hunted desperately for something she could catch at and pull the trap-door up.
She found a ring at last, and tugged with all her might. The trap raised, and water sluiced down into the opening, water that was washing in through the open door. The water from above met the water from below with a great splash. There was no other sound.
Joey peered down the wide trap. Two groping hands and a dead white face with staring eyes showing dimly through the darkness. Black water, of an unknown depth, washed to and fro.
She flung herself face downwards on the edge, and dropped her braid sash straight between the groping hands. "Catch hold!"
The hands fumbled blindly, and then gripped. There was a fierce tug on the impromptu rope. Joey dug her toes into the floor, in the effort to escape being pulled in.
"That's right, hold on, and get to the ladder," she shouted. "Make haste."
She looked at the side where the ladder had been; it was gone! And the water below was still a good long way below the level of the floor, and the trickle washing in would not raise it till too late for Gabrielle and Noreen.
Joey looked round desperately for something to which she could secure one end of her sash. At all costs she must hurry to the help of the other two. But there was nothing at all, nothing except the ladder on the farther side of the tower, fixed to the wall; and to reach that would require a sash of treble the length. No, there was only one thing to be done, unless she meant to abandon the young man to his fate—and one couldn't let an enemy drown when one was a soldier's daughter.