I had started with the best of good intentions to avoid all unseemly brawls, but somehow or other I found myself throwing my reins to one of the men and following John into the dark blood-smeared gate with Payindah and some of my archers behind me. We followed a long, dark, winding passage, smooth with the passing of centuries, grimy with the soot of torches. Now and then we tripped over huddled forms, and here and there passed wounded men making their painful way back to the daylight outside. At one corner, looking into some windowless cells, lit now by the red glow of torches, we saw some of Andros’s men. They were standing silent with grim faces, while two of their number were freeing an almost unrecognizable thing that had once been a man--Blue Sakae by the tattoo-marks on his shoulders--from a contraption of rusty iron bands and chains that bound him to the wall. Sightless and mutilated, if ever anything cried aloud for vengeance that poor human rag, that still just breathed, did so. I was nearly sick as I came out and went on up the passage, and I could hear John’s teeth gritting. Then, in an open circular space like a great well, still all hewn from the solid rock, we came upon the vanguard of our people, Andros and Alec directing, where, clustered upon a flight of rock-hewn steps, several men strove with hammer and crow to prize open an enormous circular iron door which closed the top of the shaft as a trapdoor does a well. The air was hot, and I could see the sweat on the men’s faces as they worked in the torches’ smoky glare. Alec came down the steps when he saw us, his mail scarred and dirty, blood down one leg from a scratch across the thigh, and a baresark light in his blue eyes. “Come on, John; for God’s sake, lend a hand! They’ve shut that trapdoor down and got a fire going on top!” Wrexham went up the steps where the men beat ineffectually upon the iron door, the clanging echoes of their blows ringing dully in the well-like shaft. He laid his hand on the iron and drew it away with an oath. Then he studied the trapdoor and the wall around it for a while before coming down to where Andros had joined Alec and me at the foot of the shaft. “They’ve stimied us all right for the moment,” he said, sucking his burnt hand. “You could hammer on that all day without making any impression. And before long the whole thing will be red-hot. Powder’s our only chance, though I don’t know if I can get it into place without being pushed off ourselves in the process. Luckily the bags are tarred, so we can wrap wet blankets round them as a precaution against sparks from the torches. Here, Alec; you can go quicker than Harry. Cut along and get up my sapper blokes.” He gave the doctor a long list of gear to bring up. Then he turned and explained his plan to Andros, who hurried off to improvise another storming party.