Part 40 (2/2)
”I can not--in here. I am coing out. I haf hat enough of this.”
”We must take him out, too.”
”You can tek him, then, John Trevna. I haf hat enough of him and this hole.”
”Don't be a fool, Evan Morgan. If it wa.s.s a man, and he got that load in him as close as that, he iss deader than Tom Hamon.”
”Well, you can go an' see. I am coing out,” and he began to wriggle backwards, and Trevna was fain to go too.
But presently they came to one of the somewhat wider places where the wall had fallen away, and Trevna squeezed himself tightly into this.
”You go on, then, Evan Morgan,” he said, ”if you can get past, and I will go back and bring him out.”
”You are a fool, John Trevna, to meddle with him any more. Iff the man iss dead, he iss just as well left there.”
”If he iss dead he cannot harm me, and I would like to see the man I have killed.”
”Ugh!” grunted Morgan, and crawled on, legs first.
Trevna wormed along up the tunnel, groping cautiously in front of him at each forward lurch, and at last his hands fell on what he sought, and at the same moment he began sneezing again.
It would be no easy job dragging a dead man all down that tunnel, he thought. But when, after cautious feeling here and there, he got a grip of the man's coat collar, to his surprise it came away in his hand, but at the same time it seemed to him that the body was extraordinarily light.
He tried again with a fresh grip on the coat, but it tore like paper, and, after thinking it over, he unstrapped his leather belt and got it round the man below the armpits, and so was able to haul him slowly along.
When Evan Morgan's wriggling legs came slowly out of the tunnel, John Drillot and Peter Vaudin were almost dancing with excitement, and their first surprise was the sight of him when, by rights, John Trevna should have been the one to come out first.
”Well then? What have you done? And where is John Trevna?” cried John Drillot.
”Ach! He iss a fool. He ha.s.s shot the man and now he will pring him out when he woult pe much petter buried where he iss.”
”He's quite right. What was all the noise about?”
”That wa.s.s the shooting.”
”Before that. You all seemed to be howling at once.”
”That wa.s.s the sneezing. It iss full of sneezing down there,” and his red eyes still showed the effect of it.
It was a long time before they heard the laboured sounds of Trevna's coming. But at last his legs wriggled out, then his body, then with a lurch he hauled up to the mouth of the tunnel that which he had brought with him. And at sight of it they all started back against the sides of the well, with various cries but equal amazement.
”O mon Gyu!” cried Peter Vaudin.
”Thousand devils!” cried John Drillot.
”Heavens an' earth!” gasped Evan Morgan.
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