Ch. 12 - The Passage of the Wall - Page 2

determination, Ulpius, with part of the wages which he had
hoarded in Numerian's service, had procured a small lantern from a shop
in one of the distant quarters of Rome; and veiling its light in a piece
of coarse, thick cloth, had proceeded by the solitary pathway to his
second night's labour at the wall. He arrived at the breach, at the
commencement of the dialogue above related, and heard with delight the
sentinel's noisy resolution to amuse his companion in spite of himself.
The louder and the longer the man talked, the less probable was the
chance that the Pagan's labours in the interior of the wall would be
suspected or overheard.

Softly clearing away the brushwood at the entrance of the hole that he
had made the night before, Ulpius crept in as far as he had penetrated
on that occasion; and then, with mingled emotions of expectation and
apprehension which affected him so powerfully, that he was for the
moment hardly master of his actions, he slowly and cautiously uncovered
his light.

His first glance was intuitively directed to the cavity that opened
beneath him. He saw immediately that it was less important, both in
size and depth, than he had imagined it to be. The earth at this
particular place had given way beneath the foundations of the wall,
which had sunk down, deepening the chasm by their weight, into the
yielding ground beneath them. A small spring of water (probably the
first cause of the sinking in the earth) had bubbled up into the space
in the brick-work, which bit by bit, and year by year, it had gradually
undermined. Nor did it remain stagnant at this place. It trickled
merrily and quietly onward--a tiny rivulet, emancipated from one prison
in the ground only to enter another in the wall, bounded by no grassy
banks, brightened by no cheerful light, admired by no human eye,
followed in its small course through the inner fissures in the brick by
no living thing but a bloated toad, or a solitary lizard: yet wending
as happily on its way through darkness and ruin, as its sisters who were
basking in the sunlight of the meadows, or leaping in the fresh breezes
of the open mountain side.

Raising his eyes from the little spring, Ulpius next directed his
attention to the prospect above him.

Immediately over his head, the material of the interior of the wall
presented a smooth, flat, hard surface, which seemed capable of
resisting the most vigorous attempts at its destruction; but on looking
round, he perceived at one side of him and further inwards, an
appearance of dark, dimly-defined irregularity, which promised
encouragingly for his intended efforts. He descended into the chasm of
the rivulet, crawled up on a heap of crumbling brick-work, and gained a
hole above it,