With a desperate effort he managed to wriggle oblique, and in a moment we were standing together on the ledge. “That was give and take,” he panted. “Like being saved from drowning by a shark. Can’t say your bark’s worse than your bite.” I chuckled so that I was near falling off our perch, till a sudden thought sobered me. “Supposing, after all, we can’t get in, or up or down neither?” I said dismayed. “A pretty picture we shall make, stuck up here.” “Well, it’s too late to think of that now,” answered Harry, coolly. “Lend me a hand while I kick.” He let out on the wall of mud in front, which we had hoped was just a mask or screen hiding a cavity behind; but his foot only sunk to the ankle in it without effect. “So there!” he said. “We must look for a better place, that’s all.” We were standing, so far as we could judge, about midway up the groining of the vault, and right under the apex, a little above and to the right of us, gaped a small round fissure. “See?” said Harry, excitedly; “that’s the place. It don’t go perpendicular like the others, which means that it’s sunk away from some support above it. Hold me, now.” I clutched him the best I could, gripping a stone with my other hand, and he brought the big hammer from his jacket pocket, and poised himself, standing high on his toes. “Open sesame!” says he, and struck with all the force he could muster on the soil just under the hole. The result made him stagger, for he had expected some resistance, and there was none. The whole top of a mound of silt, which stopped the neck, it seemed, of the decapitated crypts, and into the thick base of which he had first struck his foot, broke away and fell inwards, revealing an aperture, already, under that one blow, large enough for a man to crawl through. Harry, recovering himself, quietly repocketed the tool, and turned to me. His face was a little white, but his mouth was set as grim as sin. “It’s my turn,” he said. “Think you can give me a leg up?” It was no use my disputing, as he was on the right side. Working with infinite caution and difficulty on that perilous eyrie, I managed to stoop, and, getting my hands under one of his feet, levered him slowly up, while he drew on every projection he could reach, until he was able to claw his arms into the hole and hang on. “Now,” came his voice out, muffled and hollow, “one shove, and----” I drove with the word; dig went his feet and knees; he sprawled convulsively a moment; got hold; the mound jerked and sunk a little under him, a clatter of _débris_ went down the cliff face, and he was in. Almost in the same instant his face, hot and staring, re-emerged, and then his arms. “Here,” he panted. “Can you reach?” Not by a couple of feet could I. “Hold tight and catch me,” I said. “I’m going to jump.” Fixing my eyes on him, and crouching to the lowest I dared, I sprang, and he snatched and gripped my wrists.