“So much the better,” said Di; “now I’m going to do something desperate.”
Therewith, seizing the hammer, Diana wrapt her handkerchief carefully round the head.
“That’ll deaden the sound,” she said. Then taking one of the knives, she stuck the point into the panel, upon which she had already been operating, and then dealt a blow with the hammer on the handle of the knife with all her might.
“Hurrah! Andrew, the wood is beginning to give,” she said, “with another blow or two, we’ll do it.”
“Oh! dear,” gasped Andrew. “I wonder what we shall find.”
“We shall know very soon now,” returned Di, “I hope this will settle the business!”
Therewith she dealt another furious blow with the hammer.
There came a noise of splintering wood,—Di remembered that afterwards, clearly enough, but what followed besides, she could never recall.
Her first impulse on feeling the panel yield to her blows, was to thrust her hand and arm through the gaping slit, with a view to laying hands on the gold or precious stones or stores of sweet-stuff, which must surely be within her reach; her next was to draw her arm back again with all speed and to rend, not the door but the air with piercing, frantic shrieks.
And these shrieks were echoed by Andrew.