We longed for daylight to reveal the full extent of our success,
yet dared not wait for it, for the stone was heavy, and it would
take some time to replace it, and since we were always visited soon
after daybreak we feared to be intruded on before we had put it
back and removed the traces of our work. So we set it again in its
place and for the rest of the night slept the sound sleep of
contentment.
But this success spurred me on to devise some means of easing the
work yet to be done. The stone was two feet broad; if the wall was
ten feet thick there were four more like it still to be removed,
and at the same rate it would be three months before we could
tunnel through to the air. And thinking of this my heart fell, for
there was not room in the cavity left by the stone for two men to
work abreast, so that it might indeed be four months before we saw
the end of our toil. I determined, therefore, by some means or
other to procure a light, by whose aid I could explore the hole and
see if the next stone was cemented with the same care.
It chanced that that day we had for dinner a very fat piece of
beef. I took advantage of this to pocket some lumps of fat,
intending to make a candle with it and a wick composed of some
twisted threads from my shirt. The difficulty was to kindle the
candle when made, for none of us had a tinder box, though we had
steel in our chisel and could easily break a piece of stone from
the slab we had loosened.
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