“Is this where you got to, Barney?” I said.
“Where there’s a big crate thing, sir, as goes right up? That’s it.”
“Then we can’t get any farther?”
“I don’t think I can; but that tapping wouldn’t come so plain if there warn’t a way. It weer too tight for me; but you can try if you can’t get round the end of the stopper. It may be big enough for you.”
I would have given anything to get back now, feeling as I did that I had done enough; but I plucked up my courage, and began feeling about to make the discovery that while one end of the crate was closed solidly against the next package, the other end did not touch.
“There’s a way here,” I said to my companion, who was sitting up behind me, having found a place where he could let his legs go down.
“Well, sir, that’s what I thought,” said Barney. “But it’s too small for me, arn’t it?”
“Yes, far too small,” I said. “I don’t think I could get along. Is it any use to try?”
Tap, tap. Tap, tap, tap.
That knocking came so plainly and from so near now that I at once said—