The others agreed to stand by the barrels and answer our knocking on the door if we ever got there.
"But I daresay we shall perish on the way," said Oswald hopefully.
So we started. The other cellar was easily found by the ingenious and geography-b.u.mp-headed Oswald. It opened straight on to the moat, and we think it was a boathouse in middle-aged times.
Denny made a back for Oswald, who led the way, and then he turned round and hauled up his inexperienced, but rapidly improving, follower on to the top of the wall that did not go quite up to the roof.
"It is like coal mines," he said, beginning to crawl on hands and knees over what felt like very p.r.i.c.kly beach, "only we"ve no picks or shovels."
"And no Sir Humphry Davy safety lamps," said Denny in sadness.
"They wouldn"t be any good," said Oswald; "they"re only to protect the hard-working mining men against fire-damp and choke-damp. And there"s none of those kinds here."
"No," said Denny, "the damp here is only just the common kind."
"Well, then," said Oswald, and they crawled a bit further still on their furtive and una.s.suming stomachs.
"This is a very glorious adventure. It is, isn"t it?" inquired the Dentist in breathlessness, when the young stomachs of the young explorers had bitten the dust for some yards further.
"Yes," said Oswald, encouraging the boy, "and it"s _your_ find, too," he added, with admirable fairness and justice, unusual in one so young. "I only hope we shan"t find a mouldering skeleton buried alive behind that door when we get to it. Come on. What are you stopping for now?" he added kindly.
"It"s--it"s only cobwebs in my throat," Denny remarked, and he came on, though slower than before.
Oswald, with his customary intrepid caution, was leading the way, and he paused every now and then to strike a match because it was pitch dark, and at any moment the courageous leader might have tumbled into a well or a dungeon, or knocked his dauntless nose against something in the dark.
"It"s all right for you," he said to Denny, when he had happened to kick his follower in the eye. "You"ve nothing to fear except my boots, and whatever they do is accidental, and so it doesn"t count, but _I_ may be going straight into some trap that has been yawning for me for countless ages."
"I won"t come on so fast, thank you," said the Dentist. "I don"t think you"ve kicked my eye out yet."
So they went on and on, crampedly crawling on what I have mentioned before, and at last Oswald did not strike the next match carefully enough, and with the suddenness of a falling star his hands, which, with his knees, he was crawling on, went over the edge into infinite s.p.a.ce, and his chest alone, catching sharply on the edge of the precipice, saved him from being hurled to the bottom of it.
"Halt!" he cried, as soon as he had any breath again. But, alas! it was too late! The Dentist"s nose had been too rapid, and had caught up the boot-heel of the daring leader. This was very annoying to Oswald, and was not in the least his fault.
"Do keep your nose off my boots half a sec.," he remarked, but not crossly. "I"ll strike a match."
And he did, and by its weird and unscrutatious light looked down into the precipice.
Its bottom transpired to be not much more than six feet below, so Oswald turned the other end of himself first, hung by his hands, and dropped with fearless promptness, uninjured, in another cellar. He then helped Denny down. The cornery thing Denny happened to fall on could not have hurt him so much as he said.
The light of the torch, I mean match, now revealed to the two bold and youthful youths another cellar, with _things_ in it--very dirty indeed, but of thrilling interest and unusual shapes, but the match went out before we could see exactly what the things were.
[Ill.u.s.tration: OSWALD DID NOT STRIKE THE NEXT MATCH CAREFULLY ENOUGH.]
The next match was the last but one, but Oswald was undismayed, whatever Denny may have been. He lighted it and looked hastily round. There was a door.
"Bang on that door--over there, silly!" he cried, in cheering accents, to his trusty lieutenant; "behind that thing that looks like a _chevaux de frize_."
Denny had never been to Woolwich, and while Oswald was explaining what a _chevaux de frize_ is, the match burnt his fingers almost to the bone, and he had to feel his way to the door and hammer on it yourself.
The blows of the others from the other side were deafening.
All was saved.
It was the right door.
"Go and ask for candles and matches," shouted the brave Oswald. "Tell them there are all sorts of things in here--a _chevaux de frize_ of chair-legs, and----"
"A shovel of _what_?" asked d.i.c.ky"s voice hollowly from the other side of the door.
"Freeze," shouted Denny. "I don"t know what it means, but do get a candle and make them unbarricade the door. I don"t want to go back the way we came." He said something about Oswald"s boots that he was sorry for afterwards, so I will not repeat it, and I don"t think the others heard, because of the noise the barrels made while they were being climbed over.
This noise, however, was like balmy zephyrs compared to the noise the barrels insisted on making when d.i.c.ky had collected some grown-ups and the barrels were being rolled away. During this thunder-like interval Denny and Oswald were all the time in the pitch dark. They had lighted their last match, and by its flickering gleam we saw a long, large mangle.
"It"s like a double coffin," said Oswald, as the match went out. "You can take my arm if you like, Dentist."
The Dentist did--and then afterwards he said he only did it because he thought Oswald was frightened of the dark.
"It"s only for a little while," said Oswald in the pauses of the barrel-thunder, "and I once read about two brothers confined for life in a cage so constructed that the unfortunate prisoners could neither sit, lie, nor stand in comfort. We can do all those things."
"Yes," said Denny; "but I"d rather keep on standing if it"s the same to you, Oswald. I don"t like spiders--not much, that is."
"You are right," said Oswald with affable gentleness; "and there might be toads perhaps in a vault like this--or serpents guarding the treasure like in the Cold Lairs. But of course they couldn"t have cobras in England. They"d have to put up with vipers, I suppose."
Denny shivered, and Oswald could feel him stand first on one leg and then on the other.
"I wish I could stand on neither of my legs for a bit," he said, but Oswald answered firmly that this could not be.
And then the door opened with a crack-crash, and we saw lights and faces through it, and something fell from the top of the door that Oswald really did think for one awful instant was a hideous ma.s.s of writhing serpents put there to guard the entrance.
"Like a sort of live b.o.o.by-trap," he explained; "just the sort of thing a magician or a witch would have thought of doing."
But it was only dust and cobwebs--a thick, damp mat of them.
Then the others surged in, in light-hearted misunderstanding of the perils Oswald had led Denny into--I mean through, with Mr. Red House and another gentleman, and loud voices and candles that dripped all over everybody"s hands, as well as their clothes, and the solitary confinement of the gallant Oswald was at an end. Denny"s solitary confinement was at an end, too--and he was now able to stand on both legs and to let go the arm of his leader who was so full of fort.i.tude.
"This _is_ a find," said the pleased voice of Mr. Red House. "Do you know, we"ve been in this house six whole months and a bit, and _we_ never thought of there being a door here."
"Perhaps you don"t often play "King of the Castle,"" said Dora politely; "it _is_ rather a rough game, I always think."
"Well, curiously enough, we never have," said Mr. Red House, beginning to lift out the chairs, in which avocation we all helped, of course.
"Nansen is nothing to you! You ought to have a medal for daring explorations," said the other gentleman, but n.o.body gave us one, and, of course, we did not want any reward for doing our duty, however tight and cobwebby.
The cellars proved to be well stocked with spiders and old furniture, but no toads or snakes, which few, if any, regretted. Snakes are outcasts from human affection. Oswald pities them, of course.
There was a great lumpish thing in four parts that Mr. Red House said was a press, and a ripping settle--besides the chairs, and some carved wood that Mr. Red House and his friend made out to be part of an old four-post bed. There was also a wooden thing like a box with another box on it at one end, and H.O. said--
"You could make a ripping rabbit-hutch out of that."