Without pausing to consider what he was doing, he dropped down through the hole.
Anything was preferable to the horrible danger above.
He landed upon his feet upon a hard bottom of the cellar into which he had leaped.
In a moment thereafter there was a crash, and a portion of the rear roof over the cellar fell in.
The light of the burning timbers now gave him a view of his situation.
The cellar ran in under the whole of the house, and was nearly filled with boxes. The only stairway had been covered by the caving in of the floor, thus closing this avenue of escape.
The caving in, in turn, had been mainly caused by the falling of a heavy girder, from the second floor.
Directly in front of where Fritz had landed was a large well-like hole in the ground, that looked as if it might be very deep, and his only wonder was that he had not stepped off into it, in the darkness that had prevailed immediately after he had struck into the cellar.
"I vonder off dot vas a well, or ish der hole vot leads down into der cavern," he muttered, peering over the edge. "If der latter vos der case, I'm all righd, providin' I can git down. But off id vos a well, den I vos a gone sucker sure. I don'd see anydings off der rope-ladder."
Looking above his head, he however, discovered where a staple had been recently drawn out of a joist, and this satisfied him that it had been where the ladder had been fastened to, and that the hole was the same that penetrated into the cavern in the bluff.