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From all the adjacent streets constables proceeded and, holding their scabbards with their left hands, they went at full speed in front of the pursuers. They were on the point of grabbing Colomban in their huge hands when he suddenly escaped them by falling through an open man-hole to the bottom of a sewer.

"I see your game. Let me look, Maclean! This is my trade." He bent forward, wrenched at a shoot-bolt, and with a cry of satisfaction threw back a plate. The Saigon's company crowded round the man-hole thus revealed, muttering with excitement. "One moment, Sievers!" cried Maclean, for the engineer had one leg already in the tunnel. Then he turned to the men.

Almost dead ahead was a big berg. He quickly shut off the engine, and narrowly avoided a collision. Then happening to glance back he saw, standing near the companionway leading down into the man-hole a ghostly white shape. "I'll find out what you are this time, or go overboard with you," said Jack to himself, clenching his teeth.

Occasionally, it is true, he produced a small piece of perfectly vulcanized India-rubber; but upon subjecting other pieces to precisely the same process, they would blister or char. Then we see him resorting to the shops and factories in the neighborhood of Woburn, asking the privilege of using an oven after working hours, or of hanging a piece of India-rubber in the "man-hole" of the boiler.

The next instant the ship quivered from stem to stern. There was a terrible shock, followed by a grinding, crashing sound. Then the craft seemed to be pressed down by some great weight. It heeled over to one side, and the water began to pour down the open man-hole. "Quick! Clamp on the covers!" shouted Mr. Henderson as he felt the sea dashing into the interior of the boat.

This ladder leads to a man-hole made in the hull of the Nautilus, that corresponds with a similar hole made in the side of the boat. By this double opening I get into the small vessel. They shut the one belonging to the Nautilus; I shut the other by means of screw pressure. I undo the bolts, and the little boat goes up to the surface of the sea with prodigious rapidity.

The cover of the man-hole was loosened and, one after another, the adventurers crawled out on the small deck or platform. It took them a little while to become accustomed to the darkness, but soon they were able to make out that they had run on the muddy bank of the ocean beach. The tide was low and the Porpoise had rammed her nose well into the soft muck, which accounted for the lack of damage.

After the lapse of a few minutes, he was no longer blind. A little light fell through the man-hole through which he had descended, and his eyes became accustomed to this cavern. He began to distinguish something. The passage in which he had burrowed no other word can better express the situation was walled in behind him. It was one of those blind alleys, which the special jargon terms branches.

When you covered the man-hole between the platform-edge and the chimney-wall with the sooty board and the old sack, it was impossible for anyone below to see anything. The inside of the old chimney was as black as hell. The inquisition ended. The khâki-clad figures came hurrying out of the house, pursued by the Dutchwoman's shrill recriminations.

One day, about 1816, a little girl who was carrying a case of diamonds to an actress at the Ambigu, for her part as queen, was overtaken by a shower and so nearly washed down the great drainhole in the rue du Temple that she would have disappeared had it not been for a passer who heard her cries. Unluckily, she had let go the diamonds, which were, however, recovered later at a man-hole.