While the light played about the inscription, I could see clearly, on the tunnel face, the ringlike marks left by individual revolutions of the cutting head of the Beaumont boring machine. After a few moments we moved on again, and eventually, after trudging over ground that became increasingly slippery, we came to a point where some of the chalk had given way, filling the tunnel about a quarter of the way up with debris. Adams said that the going got a bit better later on but that we were likely to find ourselves in water over our knee boots if we went any farther. At that point, impressed with the sight of all the fallen rock about and by the realization that we were in a seven-foot hole at least a quarter of a mile inside a huge cliff on a deserted stretch of coast, I felt as though I had seen enough. I suddenly realized what a smart idea Sir Edward Watkin had had in providing visitors with that champagne lift while they were well under the sea. So we turned back again and slowly, in silence, made our way out of Sir Edward's first tunnel. When I stepped through the tunnel entrance into the light, it seemed very noisy outside. Sea gulls were shrieking overhead, and the Channel waves were roaring and heaving insistently. I had a slight headache, and I mentioned this to Adams. "Oh, yes, I have the same thing," he said. "Although the air in the tunnel is remarkably fresh, considering the length of time it's been locked up and the fact that there's only one entrance, there isn't quite as much oxygen in it as one might want." Jim began to lock up the entrance again, and while he was doing so, Adams suggested that we might see if we could spot the entrance shaft on the plateau above us. We climbed up the cliffside, and after a while we located it, a filled-in depression resting in a mass of bramble bushes. We waded through the bushes and stood over the remains of Number One shaft, still feeling a bit headachy. As we stood there, we picked and ate a few blackberries still left on the bushes from summer. "They're quite good," Adams said. After we had had some lunch in Folkestone, Adams suggested that before I went back to London I might want to take a look at the site of the old Number Two shaft and the main tunnel at Shakespeare Cliff, even though the Number Two shaft and the Number Three ventilating shaft had been long ago closed up. I was agreeable to that, and Burgess drove us, by way of Dover, to a point along a back road, from which we could walk to the top of Shakespeare Cliff from the land side. While Burgess stayed in the little car, Adams and I set off up a long slope to the cliff head, walking along the edge of a harrowed field, the soil of which seemed to be riddled with the kind of large flints typical of the Upper Chalk layer.