“Proud’s a dog with two tails, sir. Now, sir, if you’ll give the orders, we’ll go up and see what can be done about making the place safe, and I’m afraid we’re going to have a job.”
Roy felt a slight sensation of shrinking, but he mastered it, and calling to the men to follow him, he turned in by the low arched door-way, and ascended to the first chamber of the gate tower, to pause where the great iron grating hung before him in its stone grooves formed in the wall, and with its spikes descending through the slit on the floor, below which the stone paving of the entrance could be seen.
To make sure of its not descending by any accident of the chains giving, three massive pieces of squared oak had been thrust through as many of the openings at the bottom, so that the portcullis rested upon them as these crossed the long narrow slit through which it descended, and a little examination showed that if the chains were tightened by turning the two capstans by means of the bars, and the chains drawn a little over the great wheels fixed in the ceiling, it would be easy enough to withdraw the three supports and let the grating down.
“Chains look terribly rusty,” said Roy. “Think they’ll bear it, Ben?”
“They’re rusty, sir, and a good deal eaten away; but they used to put good work into these sort o’ things, because if they hadn’t, they’d have come down and killed some one. Shall we try?”
“Yes; no one can be hurt if a watch is kept below. Go down, one of you, and see that no one passes under.”
One of the men ran down, the old capstan-bars were taken from the corners, and two men on each side inserted them into the holes, and waited for the order to tighten the chains round the rollers.
“Ready? All together!” cried Roy; and the men pulled the bars towards them with a will, the chains tightened, the pulleys creaked and groaned, and the grating rose an inch or two, sufficient for the pieces of oak crossing the narrow slit to have been drawn out, when crack—crack—two of the bars the men handled snapped short off, and their holders fell, while the portcullis sank back to its old place with a heavy jar.
“Hundred years, perhaps, since they’ve been used,” said Roy. “Any one hurt?”
“No, sir,” said the men, laughing in spite of a bruise or two; and the bars being examined, it was found that the tough oak of which they were composed was completely honeycombed by worms, and powdered away to dust.