funnel-shape of the breach made it like driving a pin into an auger-hole, for the deeper we went, the closer the fit. The smallest of us having gone through first, for fear that the largest might hang in the hole and stop it up, it now came to Stone's turn, who was a large man.

He hung fast, and could neither get backward nor forward. In this situation, being wedged in as fast [324] as his giant strength could force him, our friends on the inside of the room, who had been assisting us, had to reach in the hole, tie ropes to his hands, and draw him back. This operation was very like drawing his arms out of his body, but did not satisfy him. "I have a wife and children at home," says he, "and I would rather die than stay here longer: I will go through, or leave no skin upon my bones." So saying, he disrobed himself: his very great exertion, causing him to perspire freely, answered nearly as well for the second effort as if he had been greased, and he went through after the most powerful labour, leaving both skin and flesh behind.

John Young, if anything, was a larger man than Stone, but was much his junior in years: he was as supple as a snake, and no Roman gladiator ever exhibited more perfectly-formed muscles: nor was his determined temper in bad keeping with his physical conformation. He was the last that came out; and while the balance of us sat under the side of the wall, we feared that it would be impossible for him to get through. Presently, with the aid of a dim sky above us, we saw his feet slowly protruding, then his knees, and when he came to his hip joints, here for many minutes he hung fast. When this part of his body was cleared, the angular use of his knees gave him additional purchase to work by; but still our boys said, "Poor fellow! it will be impossible to get his muscular arms and shoulders through." We sat under him with an agony of feeling not to [325] be described, while he ceased not his efforts. His body was now cleared to his shoulders, but still he hung fast. Having the full purchase of his legs, he would writhe, first up and down, and then from side to side, with Herculean strength; and when he disengaged himself, if it was not like the drawing of a cork from a porter-bottle, it was with the low, sullen, determined growl of a lion. [see plate facing page 160]

Being now through our greatest difficulty about the castle, we adjusted carefully, though silently, our knapsacks and blankets, passing orders from one to another in low whispers, which were interrupted alone by the almost perpetual cry of "centinela alerta"12 of the sentinels above us, both upon the right and left bastions, and between which we had now to pass. The moon had gone down at 8 o'clock; and being favoured by the darkness in the bottom of the moat, through which the sentinels overhead could not penetrate, we slowly crossed over to the outer wall in Indian file, then felt along the wall until we came to a flight of narrow steps eighteen inches wide, up which we crawled upon all-fours. When we reached the top of the wall, which formed the outer side of the moat,