But he had little time for reflection when a strange thing happened in the great barn below. The men stood silent all round, each holding a rope, which he had hastily untied from a post driven into the ground. At a signal from Robin, who directed the proceedings, the boat was slowly lowered until she had sunk below the level of the floor into the ancient crypt beneath. For one moment the torches flashed and flared, as the men looked down at the unfinished hull of their boat. Then, just as Tregenna was wondering why the soldiers had not taken up the flooring-boards to look beneath them, he witnessed what he could not but confess was a very clever contrivance. A row of boards were placed, side by side, on high trestles across the boat, at a distance of some five feet below the chapel floor, which was then boarded over in the same way. On raising one of these upper boards, therefore, a stranger would have seen the false floor below, with a rough canvas thrown down upon it, which would have looked, in the imperfect light of the barn, like the bare ground. So quickly, so quietly was this carried out, that it took but a few minutes to transform the busy workshop into a bare, deserted place, when the men extinguished their torches and filed out quietly by the west door into the darkness and the drizzling rain. The last of them had gone; the great key had turned in the rusty lock; and Tregenna was asking himself by which way it would be safest to descend, so that he might get away undetected by any of the smugglers, when he felt his left ankle gripped by a strong hand. CHAPTER XI. IN THE LION’S MOUTH. It was impossible for Tregenna to see the face of the man who had seized him by the leg; for his own body was thrust through the hole between the boards which filled up the great east window. He kicked out, however, with all his might; and after a silent struggle of a few moments’ duration, he managed to get rid of his assailant: and the next minute he heard him drop with a thud to the ground. Tregenna saw on the left the smoldering torch of one of the men who had been at work inside the barn: he dared not, therefore, get down and cross the farmyard. Having withdrawn his shoulders from the hold in which he had wedged himself, he saw that the roof of the nearest outhouse was only some four feet away. He contrived, by a risky spring, to reach the thatch; and then it was easy to cross by the roofs of the outhouses to an open window of the farmhouse, through which he peeped. It was dark outside, with the rain-clouds and the falling drizzle; it was pitch dark within, so that he could not even tell whether the window opened from a room or a passage. He listened; but at first there was nothing to be heard but the wind among the tree-tops on the hill above, and the sound of the tread of footsteps in the soft straw of the farmyard.