"Can't get any farther . . . . It's as if there had been a fall of earth."
"Impossible!" Vorski protested. "However, wait a bit, I was forgetting: I have my pocket-lighter."
He struck a light; and the same cry of anger escaped all three of them: the whole of the top of the staircase and half the room was buried under a heap of stones and sand, with the trunk of the dead oak fallen in the middle. Not a chance of escape remained.
Vorski gave way to a fit of despair and collapsed on the stairs:
"We're tricked. It's that old brute who has played us this trick . . . which shows that he's not alone."
He bewailed his fate, raving, lacking the strength to continue the unequal struggle. But Conrad grew angry:
"I say, Vorski, this isn't like you, you know."
"There's nothing to be done against that fellow."
"Nothing to be done! In the first place, there's this, as I've told you twenty times: wring his neck. Oh, why did I restrain myself?"
"You couldn't even have laid a hand on him. Did any of our bullets touch him?"