"Then no one will ever know how we got out," said Agathemer; adding: "Jump when you are ready, but say 'now.'"
I jumped and my fingers caught his shoulders. He held on. My body sank slowly through the ooze, which gave way with a sickening sliminess, until I was in contact with Agathemer all the way to my toes. Then I began to try to crawl up over him. I found it far harder than either of us had anticipated.
All slippery as we were with the foul ooze it was a fearful struggle for me to scramble up over him, I slipped back so often. After what seemed an hour of effort and apprehension I had my head, shoulders and most of my body in the drain and knew I had succeeded. I wriggled forward till I felt my feet beyond the opening, then about as far ahead, pushing before me the cylinders. When Agathemer touched my foot I pushed a cylinder past my body and felt, with my ankle, that he pulled it back.
After that, escape was a matter of wriggling on down the drain. And wriggling was not impossible, though excessively difficult and exhausting. The drain was nowhere choked with silt, but all along was furred with ooze and there was more than an inch of ooze along its bottom. In this, hitching myself forward on my elbows by violent contortions, I slipped back almost as much as I heaved forward.
Agathemer seemed to have as much trouble as I had and to find the effort as exhausting. For he had instructed me that I was not to crawl forward until he pinched my foot. One pinch was to mean "advance," two pinches "rest." More than once he had signalled me to rest.
Our worst moment came somewhere near half way down the sewer. There I encountered a cracked drain-pipe, the ragged edge of the broken terra- cotta projecting into the sewer, its point toward me. I wriggled my shoulders by it, though it gouged my shoulder-muscle on that side; but, at my hips, it stuck into me so that I could not get past it.
Agathemer, behind, kept pinching my foot, signalling for me to go forward. I bellowed explanations, but could not suppose that he could hear them in that horrible tube. But he either heard or guessed, he never could be sure which. Anyhow, he felt that we must get forward or perish. In desperation he sunk his teeth into the soft part of the inner side of the sole of my left foot. The pain made me give a convulsive wriggle and I scraped past the obstacle, tearing my hip badly in getting clear.
From there on we wriggled frantically till I could see ahead a round patch of light at the lower outfall of the drain.
It seemed an age before I reached the opening, but reach it I did. I lay there, my head just inside, panting and guzzling clean air in great gulping gasps. Agathemer pinched my foot. I slipped out into the oozy pool below the outfall, slid out as quietly as I could and kept myself submerged up to my chin, clutching my cylinder with one hand, pulling myself clear of the drain and keeping my head out of the drainage by holding to the stem of an alder bush growing by the brook's edge.
I came to rest, the sunlight dazzling my eyes, though the outfall was shaded by willows above the alders, and looked for Agathemer. He, his face purple, kept his head inside the sewer and I could see him suck in the clean air in long gasps as I had.