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.