But, as I stared at the Punjab lasso, I saw a thing that made me start

so violently that M. de Chagny delayed his attempt at suicide. I took

his arm. And then I caught the pistol from him ... and then I dragged

myself on my knees toward what I had seen.

I had discovered, near the Punjab lasso, in a groove in the floor, a

black-headed nail of which I knew the use. At last I had discovered

the spring! I felt the nail ... I lifted a radiant face to M. de

Chagny ... The black-headed nail yielded to my pressure ...

And then ...

And then we saw not a door opened in the wall, but a cellar-flap

released in the floor. Cool air came up to us from the black hole

below. We stooped over that square of darkness as though over a limpid

well. With our chins in the cool shade, we drank it in. And we bent

lower and lower over the trap-door. What could there be in that cellar

which opened before us? Water? Water to drink?

I thrust my arm into the darkness and came upon a stone and another

stone ... a staircase ... a dark staircase leading into the cellar.

The viscount wanted to fling himself down the hole; but I, fearing a

new trick of the monster's, stopped him, turned on my dark lantern and

went down first.

The staircase was a winding one and led down into pitchy darkness. But

oh, how deliciously cool were the darkness and the stairs? The lake

could not be far away.

We soon reached the bottom. Our eyes were beginning to accustom

themselves to the dark, to distinguish shapes around us ... circular

shapes ... on which I turned the light of my lantern.

Barrels!

We were in Erik's cellar: it was here that he must keep his wine and

perhaps his drinking-water. I knew that Erik was a great lover of good

wine. Ah, there was plenty to drink here!

M. de Chagny patted the round shapes and kept on saying: "Barrels! Barrels! What a lot of barrels! ..."

Indeed, there was quite a number of them, symmetrically arranged in two

rows, one on either side of us. They were small barrels and I thought

that Erik must have selected them of that size to facilitate their

carriage to the house on the lake.

We examined them successively, to see if one of them had not a funnel,

showing that it had been tapped at some time or another. But all the

barrels were hermetically closed.

Then, after half lifting one to make sure it was full, we went on our

knees and, with the blade of a small knife which I carried, I prepared

to stave in the bung-hole.




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