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Updated: June 11, 2025
They shouted, called, and beat furiously with the butts of their muskets against the rigid trap-door of the cellar. Then they fired shots through the vent-hole, hoping, no doubt, to be heard by any German detachment which chanced to be passing that way. The forester's daughter did not stir, but the noise irritated and unnerved her.
It was pretty evident that a rigorous confinement would breed discontent; which in its turn would be bound to escape through the vent-hole which the power of appeal provided; thus bringing about a state of anarchy within the house, and the tightening of the hold of the civil authority upon the Religious.
Soon a dark mass loomed up under the trees; the advance guard, composed of ten men. "Don't go in front of the vent-hole!" repeated Long-legs at intervals. And the first arrivals pointed out the much-dreaded vent-hole to those who came after. At last the main body of the troop arrived, in all two hundred men, each carrying two hundred cartridges.
One is set thinking in the presence of this layer of clay, which protects the fresh provisions, and this vent-hole stopped with a truss of straw, which admits the air freely, while defending the entrance. There is the eternal question, if we do not rise above the commonplace: how did the insect acquire so wise an art?
Then, about eight o'clock in the morning, a voice came from the vent-hole "I want to speak to the French officer." Lavigne replied from the window, taking care not to put his head out too far: "Do you surrender?" "I surrender." "Then put your rifles outside." A rifle immediately protruded from the hole, and fell into the snow, then another and another, until all were disposed of.
This, it seems, was necessary, or so I understood, lest the expanding gases, following the line of least resistance, should blow back, as it were, through the vent-hole. What made that task the more difficult was the need of cutting a little channel in the rock to contain the wires, and thereby lessen the risk of the fracture of these wires in the course of the building-up process.
The iron grating which served to close the oven, being raised at that moment, allowed only a view at the mouth of the flaming vent-hole in the dark wall, the lower extremity of its bars, like a row of black and pointed teeth, set flat apart; which made the furnace resemble one of those mouths of dragons which spout forth flames in ancient legends.
They made no sound, inclosed in the cellar as in a strong-box, obtaining air only from a small, iron-barred vent-hole. Berthine lighted her fire again, hung the pot over it, and prepared more soup, saying to herself: "Father will be tired to-night." Then she sat and waited. The heavy pendulum of the clock swung to and fro with a monotonous tick.
A fourth companion in captivity was unfortunately too large to pass through the vent-hole of the prison, and was shot by the English. It was August 31, 1813, after the passage of the Bidassoa, that Lieutenant Achille Guynemer was decorated with the Cross of the Legion of Honor. He was then twenty-one years of age.
A Russian discovery-ship which had been in this port a few years before, had built a large oven for baking bread, and went away, leaving it standing. This, the Sandwich Islanders took possession of, and had kept, ever since, undisturbed. It was big enough to hold six or eight men that is, it was as large as a ship's forecastle; had a door at the side, and a vent-hole at top.
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