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The top of the shapeless bay into which this door shut was masked by a narrow scantling in the centre of which a triangular hole had been sawed, which served both as wicket and air-hole when the door was closed.
In front of him there was another wall, a wall like night. The light of the air-hole died out ten or twelve paces from the point where Jean Valjean stood, and barely cast a wan pallor on a few metres of the damp walls of the sewer. Beyond, the opaqueness was massive; to penetrate thither seemed horrible, an entrance into it appeared like an engulfment.
He had arranged to conceal himself in a cask, which was to be borne out of the prison by his friends, but by an unfortunate chance one of his long, golden locks fell out of the air-hole which had been made in the side of the cask, and revealed the stratagem to his keepers.
There she was thrust into the store-room, which was half full of loose potatoes and mealies in sacks, and the door locked upon her. There was no window to this room, and the only light in it was such as found its way through the chinks of the door and an air-hole in the masonry of the back wall. Bessie sank on a half-emptied sack of mealies and tried to reflect.
She is only dying, not dead. But who is dying? The query cannot be answered up here. Let us go down and follow Mitsha. In the dingy room of an Indian home, where light and air penetrate through a single diminutive air-hole, sit and crouch half a dozen people. They surround at some distance a human being whose head rests on a bundle of skins, the body on a buffalo-robe.
And it's nice too, to skate into an air-hole into water about up to your neck, and have the whole mob around you whooping and "hollering" and slapping their legs with glee, because they know it isn't deep enough to drown you, and you look so comical trying to claw out.
No need of the terrible FOUET to lash him forward or to guide his course. A word was enough. "Hoc! Hoc! Hoc!" and he swung to the right, avoiding an air-hole. "Re-re! Re-re!" and he veered to the left, dodging a heap of broken ice. Past the mouth of the Ste.
Not satisfied with conducting him to the main or outer cellar, Manasseh's escort opened the iron door leading into an inner compartment, pushed him through it, and closed the portal upon him, after bidding him take a seat and make himself comfortable. Manasseh found himself in almost total darkness. Only an air-hole over his door admitted a very feeble light from the dimly illumined outer cellar.
So he had every inch of the treasury walls examined, and they came on the air-hole looking into the passage. Then they had only to break down the wall between, and there they were and I give you my word for it, Hal, I was thankful! When they were all busy watching what was being done, and the gold was being handed up through a shaft that they dug, I just dropped down and went to sleep.
A moment afterwards an explosion was heard; a bandit had thrown himself into the flames, and his cartridge box had blown up. At last the remainder of the unfortunate men being nearly suffocated, and seeing that escape was impossible, surrendered at discretion, were dragged through the air-hole, and immediately bound hand and foot, and conveyed to prison.
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