第79章 Barrels!...Barrels!..(4)

I knew why the iron tree had returned, in this third change of scene!...

The iron tree was waiting for me!...

But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start so violently that M.de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide.

I took his arm.And then I caught the pistol from him...and then I dragged myself on my knees toward what I had seen.

I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a black-headed nail of which I knew the use.At last I had discovered the spring! I felt the nail....I lifted a radiant face to M.de Chagny....The black-headed nail yielded to my pressure....

And then....

And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap released in the floor.Cool air came up to us from the black hole below.We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid well.With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in.

And we bent lower and lower over the trap-door.What could there be in that cellar which opened before us? Water? Water to drink?

I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another stone...a staircase...a dark staircase leading into the cellar.

The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a new trick of the monster's, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and went down first.

The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness.

But oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs?

The lake could not be far away.

We soon reached the bottom.Our eyes were beginning to accustom themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us...

circular shapes...on which I turned the light of my lantern.

Barrels!

We were in Erik's cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine and perhaps his drinking-water.I knew that Erik was a great lover of good wine.Ah, there was plenty to drink here!

M.de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying:

"Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels!..."Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two rows, one on either side of us.They were small barrels and I thought that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their carriage to the house on the lake.

We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel, showing that it had been tapped at some time or another.

But all the barrels were hermetically closed.

Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared to stave in the bung-hole.

At that moment, I seemed to hear, coming from very far, a sort of monotonous chant which I knew well, from often hearing it in the streets of Paris:

"Barrels!...Barrels!...Any barrels to sell?

My hand desisted from its work.M.de Chagny had also heard.

He said:

"That's funny! It sounds as if the barrel were singing!"The song was renewed, farther away:

"Barrels!...Barrels!...Any barrels to sell?...""Oh, I swear," said the viscount, "that the tune dies away in the barrel!..."We stood up and went to look behind the barrel.

"It's inside," said M.de Chagny, "it's inside!"But we heard nothing there and were driven to accuse the bad condition of our senses.And we returned to the bung-hole.M.de Chagny put his two hands together underneath it and, with a last effort, I burst the bung.

"What's this?" cried the viscount."This isn't water!"The viscount put his two full hands close to my lantern....Istooped to look...and at once threw away the lantern with such violence that it broke and went out, leaving us in utter darkness.

What I had seen in M.de Chagny's hands...was gun-powder!