They climbed a staircase. Simon was dragged up by the cords that bound him. A violent hand ransacked his pockets and relieved him of his arms and his papers. He felt himself again lifted; and then he dropped into a void. It was no great fall and was softened by the dense layer of captives already swarming at the bottom of the hold, who began to swear behind their gags. Using his knees and elbows, Simon made room for himself as best he could on the floor. It must have been about nine o'clock in the morning. From that moment, time no longer counted for him, for he thought of nothing but how to defend the place which he had won against any who might seek to take it from him, whether former occupants or new-comers. Voices muffled by gags uttered furious snarls, or groaned, breathless and exhausted. It was really hell. There were dying men and dead bodies, the death-rattle of Frenchmen mingling with Englishmen, blood, sticky rags and a loathsome stench of carrion. During the course of the afternoon, or it might have been in the evening, a tremendous noise broke out, like the sound of a great sheaf of rockets, and forthwith the numberless crowd roared at the top of its voice, with the frenzied fury of an insurgent mob. Then, suddenly, through it all, came orders shouted in a strident voice, more powerful than the tumult. Then a profound silence. And then a crack of sharp, hurried explosions, followed by the frightful rattle of a machine-gun. This lasted for at least two or three minutes. The uproar had recommenced; and it continued until Simon could no longer hear the fizzing of the fireworks and the din of the shooting. They seemed still to be fighting. They were dispatching the wounded amid curses and shrieks of pain; and a batch of dying men was flung into the hold. The evening and the night wore through. Simon, who had not touched food since his meal with Dolores beside the lake, was also suffering cruelly from the lack of air, the weight of the dead and the living on his chest, the gag which bruised his jaw and the blanket which wrapped his head like a blind, air-tight hood. Were they going to leave him to die of starvation and asphyxia, in this huddle of sticky, decomposing flesh, above which floated the inarticulate plaint of death? His bandaged eyes received a feeling as though the day were breaking. His torpid neighbours were swarming like slimy reptiles in a tub. Then, from above, a voice growled: "No easy job to find him! . . . Queer notions the chief has! As well try and pick a worm out of the mud!" "Take my boat-hook," said another voice. "You can use it to turn the stiffs over like a scavenger sorting a heap of muck. . . . Lower down than that, old man! Since yesterday morning, the bloke must be at the bottom. . . ." And the first voice cried: "That's him! There, look, to the left! That's him! I know my rope around his waist. . . . Patience a moment, while I hook him!"