"Hullo!—hullo, there!" he cried, in a hoarse, quavering voice which no friend of his could have recognized. "Who are you, and what are you doing?"
Once more there was no reply. Another few moments of that suspense, and I verily believe I should have turned and rushed back along the way we had come, regardless whether I ended up by pitching head first down the shaft into the cavern beneath. Fortunately, George possessed a large stock of that dogged resolution peculiar to a Briton, which desperate circumstances tend only to harden; and now, recovering from the shock which the sound had given him, I believe he was ready to deal with a whole churchyardful of ghosts.
"Strike a light, Master Eden," he said shortly, "and I'll find the lamp."
Owing partly to the fright, and partly to my dazed condition, I struck a good many blows with the steel before I had a spark glowing in the tinder. In the meantime Woodley had recovered the lamp, and replenished the oil which had been spilt by pouring out a fresh supply from the bottle in his pocket. Just as we got the wick to burn, another weird, high-pitched howl rang through the darkness, continued for perhaps half a minute, and then ceased; but this time George remained undaunted.
"You carry the lamp, sir," he said. "Hold it well up, and I'll go in front."
He took something from his pocket, and I knew from the sharp click that he had cocked the pistol.
What we expected to see it would be hard to say. Certainly not the obstacle which, a few paces further on, we found blocking our path. This was nothing more or less than a heavy wooden door, dark with age like the beams of the tunnel, and studded with rusty iron nails. We stopped, and stood staring at it in the faint glimmer of our feeble lamp. What, then, could have become of the creature—goblin or human—that had terrified us with its unearthly music? Could it have retreated before our advance, and be now lying in wait for us behind that mass of ancient timber?
Woodley was the first to move. He walked up to the door, tried it with his shoulder, and finding it fast, rapped on it with his knuckles, as though he expected some ghostly porter to answer his summons.
Again we stood, waiting and listening; then, just as I was about to speak, a gust of air came sweeping down the passage, causing our lamp to flicker, and the ghostly music burst out again close to where we stood, as though the goblin minstrel were piping defiance at us from the farther side of the door. I grabbed Woodley by the arm; but to my surprise the man burst into a roar of laughter, which mingled strangely with the weird howl that rose and fell in total disregard of this audacious interruption.
"Ho, ho!" laughed George. "To think that we should have been scared by that! Bless me, nothing but the wind blowing through a keyhole!"