World War, 1914-1918 -- Aerial operations -- Juvenile fiction
"Let us have a look at it," Burton returned.
Scraping away the litter of hay, earth, and fragments of wood from a
corner of the floor, Marco disclosed a trap-door. They lifted this, and
Burton descended a short ladder, Marco following him with an improvised
torch. They found themselves in a shallow cellar, stuffy but dry.
"What is this?" exclaimed Marco, pointing to a number of small wooden
boxes ranged along one wall. "They were not here in my time."
The boxes were thickly covered with dust, and had evidently been long
undisturbed. Burton carefully prised up the lid of one of them.
"It is full of sticks of dynamite!" he said, astonished. "A strange
find, upon my word!"
[Illustration: "’A STRANGE FIND, UPON MY WORD!’"]
"And look!" added Marco. "There is a tunnel--that was not here either."
In one of the walls was an opening about four feet high. Entering this,
the two men groped their way along a straight tunnel just wide enough
for them to pass in single file.
"This must have been made by the Greeks when they held the tower," the
old man continued.
"For what purpose? There’s nothing in it."
"But there is the dynamite in the cellar behind. I think the tunnel
must have been intended for a mine."
"To blow up something outside? Let us see in what direction it goes."
A glance at his compass showed him that the tunnel ran towards the
north-east.
"It is plain," said Marco. "Here at the end we may be standing beneath
the track. The Greeks intended to blow it up. I suppose the necessity
passed when the Turks retreated, and the dynamite was left here and
forgotten. Perhaps the Greeks who made the tunnel were killed in the
fighting afterwards."
"Well, this may be a lucky find for us. We must see if it does end
beneath the track."
Measuring his paces as they returned to the cellar, he went up, and
counted an equal number from the doorway of the tower, following the
direction of the tunnel as nearly as he could judge it. The
thirty-second pace brought him to the wall; there were still nine more
to take. At the forty-first he arrived at the centre of the track.
"You were right," he said; "the intention was clearly to have a means of
blowing up the track. As you say, an explosion just there would make it
impassable. This may be a lucky find for us, my friend. We must remove
the dynamite to the end of the tunnel, and make some sort of fuse."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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