"You're sure of that?"
"Or mebbee, six foot!"
"Good Heavens! man, have you no clearer idea about it than that?"
"How on airth should I, Cap?"
"Don't you know that there's a good chance of our being smothered, like rats in a hole which has been stopped up?"
"Yow could I help it?"
There was no use in discussing the subject with the luckless engineer. That was evident. Something, however, had to be done, and very shortly. A rat in such a case would use its teeth without pausing to discuss how much or how little he had to gnaw through. My teeth were not exactly adapted to such an experiment. But my ramrod might be a good probe, and if it found bottom or top (which it was, it would have been difficult to say) the spade might save us.
In another instant I was working my ramrod through the earthen roof of our air-tight, although scarcely pregnable citadel.
The earth was soft, and in less than a minute I felt its end had reached fresh air, although none of that desirable commodity had yet reached us. In order to enlarge the hole I had made, I was working the slip of wrought-iron with which I had produced it, round and round, when a large piece of rock fell down from the side of it, with a quantity of loose soil.