The lift from the steps was clearly impossible. Only one of us could stand to shoulder the door at once, and when we had both tried and failed, we rolled a cask under the opening and so got the double heave. “Lift, Captain!” grunted Champe; “lift till your eyes hang out!” and so I did, and so did he; but the loaded door never stirred. The Dutchman had done his work faithfully and well. The sergeant came down from the steps with the veins in his forehead swelled to great whipcords. “I’ve put three hundred pounds of tobacco to the height of my shoulder with less wind-cutting,” he panted, scraping the sweat from his face with a crooked forefinger. And then: “I’ll never trap a rat again while I live, Captain Dick. I know now how it feels.” “We won’t give up yet,” I cut in. “There must be some way out of this hole. If it were a common house-cellar, there would be no need; but as a store-house for smugglers ... they’d never leave themselves without a back door for emergencies. Take that side first, and we’ll sound every stone in the walls, if need be.” This time we were made to know how carelessly we had searched in the former instance. Behind a tier of casks, which were ranked so closely against the wall as completely to conceal it, was a low arched opening closed by a stout door with neither lock nor hinges. With no tools heavier than our swords, we could not force it; and when we drummed upon it, it gave back the blows solidly, as if it were backed by a bank of earth or another wall. “That is why our Dutchman hid in the cask and waited for his chance,” said Champe, when the low door had baffled us completely. “He couldn’t open this dodge-way, himself.” After that, we left nothing untried for the time we had at our disposal. The walls were carefully sounded, stone by stone, the straw on the floor was swept aside and the flagging received the same unsparing scrutiny. Failing all else, we meant to try digging out the mortar joints around a stone in that part of the wall which Champe remembered as the highest above ground on the outside--this with our swords’ points. But we put that off until the last for the best of reasons. It was not unlikely that we should need the weapons for another purpose before long, and it would be an ill thing to have either of them broken or dulled. We were facing this last resort in silence, with the misshapen candle guttering down to its final two inches, when the suspense ended in the crash of a rudely opened door in the room overhead, the trampling of many feet and a hoarse murmur of voices. Our devil of a boat-builder had returned, bringing other devils with him. I held my watch to the flickering light. “Ten o’clock, Sergeant; and we have only two hours before midnight,” said I. “How long will it take us to pull the boat you speak of around to Arnold’s garden, if so be we are lucky enough to have a chance to man the oars?” “An hour, maybe, if we don’t have to go too far a-sea to dodge the guard boats.”