Through all--the earth, the flints, the edges of rent rocks--there trickled innumerable water-drops. Was it the blood of the earth escaping from a deep wound? Or was it shedding tears over the hard lot of hundreds of men shut up in the eternal darkness of its mysterious kingdom? The tears fell thickly, one by one, forming threads of water, which in their turn formed rivulets. Now the old man heard something else beside the creaking of the rusted chain, every link of which seemed to be complaining of extreme weariness, the result of long service. His ear, accustomed to silence, caught the murmur of rivulets, and the noise of water-drops, falling one by one, resembling the sound of grains of lead falling on stone. Here is a spring which has escaped from its narrow prison in the heart of the mountain and which forms a wide stream, but which, finding on its escape from its long bondage only darkness as deep as that of its prison, seems to moan as it glides over the damp stones. The bucket continued its descent. He could no longer see above or below him and the journey appeared interminable. The light of the little lamp, which had nearly gone out, grew suddenly brighter. Around him innumerable springs were trickling, running and descending on all sides. Here and there uniting in large streams, they came down in cascades, splashing Ivan's clothes. The darkness was full of the babbling, rushing and noise of this water. The old man knew that for sixty years it had been ceaselessly undermining this shaft. Long ago, when he first went down it, only a few drops of water used to filter through its sides. Later on these became more numerous, and collecting together, finished by channelling for themselves convenient passages and by flowing in streams. By this time the work of destruction had become more and more threatening and the earth was everywhere like a sponge. It seemed as though the springs imprisoned in the mountain had found out the existence of this shaft and had united to flow into it. "They will certainly end by flooding the shaft," thought the old man. "What is to be done? One can only hope in God. As long as He wills, the shaft will exist, but as soon as He does not will it, it will be destroyed from top to bottom."