“‘First catch your hare,’” I quoted. “As matters stand now, we are the trapped ones, and it was very neatly done. I think we are likely to stay here until this boat-builder can go and find some of his smuggler friends to help him collect his bill for damages. And it will be a pretty long score, too, wouldn’t you say?”
“Long enough,” was the reply; “though I didn’t mishandle him any more than I had to, to make sure of the boat for to-night. A boat we must have, says you; and orders are orders, for Jack Champe. But let’s try a push on that trap—until we find out if he’s piled the whole oven a-top of us.”
The lift from the steps was clearly impossible. Only one of us could stand to shoulder the door at once, and when we had both tried and failed, we rolled a cask under the opening and so got the double heave.
“Lift, Captain!” grunted Champe; “lift till your eyes hang out!” and so I did, and so did he; but the loaded door never stirred. The Dutchman had done his work faithfully and well.
The sergeant came down from the steps with the veins in his forehead swelled to great whipcords.
“I’ve put three hundred pounds of tobacco to the height of my shoulder with less wind-cutting,” he panted, scraping the sweat from his face with a crooked forefinger. And then: “I’ll never trap a rat again while I live, Captain Dick. I know now how it feels.”
“We won’t give up yet,” I cut in. “There must be some way out of this hole. If it were a common house-cellar, there would be no need; but as a store-house for smugglers ... they’d never leave themselves without a back door for emergencies. Take that side first, and we’ll sound every stone in the walls, if need be.”
This time we were made to know how carelessly we had searched in the former instance. Behind a tier of casks, which were ranked so closely against the wall as completely to conceal it, was a low arched opening closed by a stout door with neither lock nor hinges. With no tools heavier than our swords, we could not force it; and when we drummed upon it, it gave back the blows solidly, as if it were backed by a bank of earth or another wall.
“That is why our Dutchman hid in the cask and waited for his chance,” said Champe, when the low door had baffled us completely. “He couldn’t open this dodge-way, himself.”
After that, we left nothing untried for the time we had at our disposal. The walls were carefully sounded, stone by stone, the straw on the floor was swept aside and the flagging received the same unsparing scrutiny. Failing all else, we meant to try digging out the mortar joints around a stone in that part of the wall which Champe remembered as the highest above ground on the outside—this with our swords’ points. But we put that off until the last for the best of reasons. It was not unlikely that we should need the weapons for another purpose before long, and it would be an ill thing to have either of them broken or dulled.