There was a little silence. He took a deep breath, a sigh almost, and said carefully, a schoolmaster explaining to a not-too-bright schoolboy: “Look, the world I live in we don’t worry too much about risks, we just take them. You’d probably call me a very careless fellow, but in my language that just means that if a chance has got to be taken, then by God I’ll take it. If I bring the roof down on us we’re close enough to the door to make it. Now, get down there, I won’t tell you again.”

It was all a question of likelihoods, and likelihood is stronger than truth. There was a look on his face, not a temporary expression but a strange set to the line of the mouth, a composure in the eyes that told me he was not exaggerating. I suppose an old-fashioned term for it would be a kind of guts written all over his face, a look of casual determination that said this man would take the most extraordinary chances and think nothing of them at all. You meet that kind of man sometimes; and it’s mostly in wartime; they make the best soldiers.

I looked at the other two, and I suppose I was unconsciously calculating their capacity. The thin man with the shotgun did not stir; he was chewing a piece of tobacco nonchalantly. But the other man, the one with the bow, suddenly made a move. He pulled back the string and let fly with a shaft, and then, so fast that I literally did not see the movement, another arrow left the bow and a third was there, drawn back, in its place. I heard the thump as the arrows struck home; they’d both passed between Astrid and me, and we were standing close together, so close that our bodies were almost touching. And he hadn’t even aimed—just the instinctive aim that a boy uses with a slingshot. I looked back over my shoulder and found that both the shafts had found a mark in a heavy wooden spar that supported the winch to the lobster trap.

And then he laughed again. With his wild eyes and his tousled fair hair, he looked like Harpo Marx; but only temporarily. In a moment, the madness in his eyes was a violent fanaticism. He stood there now with his feet apart, his body loose and controlled, and remained immobile and placid and...expectant. I looked at the two arrows again; they were buried deep in the oak, two inches deep or more.

I shrugged. I moved over to the edge of the pit and jumped down in. I’m six feet seven, and the water came up to my waist, and the massive concrete closure was a foot above my head. The smell of lobster was ripe in the air now, and I was standing on them, feeling them wriggle as some of them crushed under the weight of my two hundred and ten pounds; they must have been packed tight down there, five or six deep. I held out my arms for Astrid as she stood looking down at me, the harsh light showing up the terrible fear on her face.

I said gently: “It’s not as bad as it seems.”

The cadaverous man moved in swiftly behind her and put out a straight arm and shoved, and she fell into my arms with a strangled sort of a sob, and I held her there and watched them reaching up for the rope on the winch, staring up into the light and waiting. In a moment, the concrete slab swung into place with an oddly metallic ring, and there was only absolute darkness,

I heard Astrid sob. She said, her voice low: “Oh, God...” I held her tight for a moment or two, clear off the bottom, listening; but there was only silence to hear. Her body was wet and cold and frail, and I thought: it’s going to be a lot worse.

I said to her, very quietly: “I’m going to put you down. The water will come up to your shoulders and you’ll be standing on a mass of lobsters, but they won’t hurt you.”

There was silence again. And then, inexplicably—and something which pleased me enormously—she said with almost a grunt: “Then I’d better pull myself together, hadn’t I?”

I said: “Yes, you had indeed.” I put her down at once, and she squealed and hung on to me, and said, not quite so fearfully as before: “Lobsters with claws?”

“Crawfish.” I said callously: “If we die, they’ll eat us, but we’re not going to do that. We’ve got an hour or so to get out of here.”

“An hour?”

“High tide.”

There was a long pause. She said at last, whispering: “The water may reach the roof before high tide.”

“No. The floor above was dry, and down here it wouldn’t dry off in twelve hours if any spilled up onto the concrete. And there still might be an inch or two of air even when the tide’s at its highest, so there’s plenty of hope.”

It wasn’t very true; one of the tunnels had sloped upward and there were concrete manholes up there too, which meant we were in one of the lower ones. And the floor had been thoroughly wet, only I hoped she might not have noticed or might have forgotten. Anyway, she seemed to take my word for it, which argued a nice sensibility.

The water was freezing, and those dammed crustaceans were squiggling and writhing under our feet, paying us back for eating their brothers and sisters.

I said: “We’ll give those men five minutes to get clear.”

“And then?”

“Then I’m going to shift that cover.”

“You’ll never move it.”

“I can, and I will.”

“It took two men on a winch to move it, and even if you could...they might still be there, waiting.”

I said: “No. With a dead body hanging up there, they’ll get clear as soon as they can. At a guess, if we’d arrived five minutes later, we’d have missed them. And I wouldn’t have liked that at all.”

“What? For God’s sake!”

I said: “That was Major Loveless, the man I came here to find. Well, now I’ve found him, haven’t I?”

I knew that her silence was a rebuke. I said: “Well, at least I know what he looks like now. Don’t worry too much, we’re not going to stay here forever.”

She thought for a while. I heard her squeal when the mass under her feet heaved, and she clutched at me tightly. She said: “That cover must weigh a ton.”

“It was roughly five feet by three, and about eight inches thick. Say, eleven cubic feet. If it’s reinforced Portland, which it probably is, then a cubic foot weighs a hundred and forty pounds. So we have a matter of fifteen hundred and forty pounds to worry about. Not easy. Not impossible either.”

There was still time to wait out. I said: “Or look at it like this—the rope was on a standard sheave pulley, which has a mechanical advantage of a trifle under one to six. If an average man can comfortably move two hundred pounds, then the pulley system presupposes about twelve hundred pounds total weight. You noticed that the two men were hauling on it with no effort at all, so that makes our reckoning probably about right, wouldn’t you say?”

She shrugged. “No man alive can lift that much.”

I said: “We don’t have to lift it. I need a six-inch rock and maybe a stick if we can find one.”

My casual tone was having the right effect. She began to laugh suddenly, then stopped and squealed again, the squeal turning into a shriek. I felt her trying to climb all over me, and she said, aghast: “They’re biting me.”

“It’s your imagination. There’s too much good food down there for them. They’re not going to bother with your feet. Now, hold still and wait for me.”

“Wait for you?”

I took a deep breath and ducked under the water. My hands clutched at lobsters, dozens of them, feeling the powerful flap of their tails as they shot out of my way, forcing their way through the crowd, thrashing about madly in their fear. I groped around for a big enough stone, and couldn’t find exactly what I wanted, so I had to make do with something a trifle smaller than I would have liked. But I turned up a stone at last about the size of my fist, came up for air and handed it to her.

“Hold this. Step one,” I said.

Then I went back under and groped around for a stick, a piece of old lumber, anything that might serve the purpose I had in mind; there was nothing. I came up again at last and said:

“Well, we’ll manage without.”

I put my feet wide apart, kicking aside lobsters to get a firm footing, and reached up with both hands flat and widespread dead center on the underside of the cover; and I pushed.

The slab was absolutely immobile. I pushed until my arms were aching from the effort, and then shifted my position and tried again. I put my palms at the extreme edge of the slab, knowing that here there’d be the question of leverage to help me; one edge of twelve hundred pounds weighs less than its whole. It would not budge, even though all I had to do was tip it a trifle.

I relaxed and took a breather, the sweat running down my body and mixing with the salt water, and then I went under again and groped around with both hands among those damned shellfish till I found a large boulder that was loose and seemed to be about the right size. It was flattish, and about two feet thick, and not impossible to lever into position under the water. I got my shoulder under it and shoved, and felt it move. And then, slowly, laboriously, I rolled it over on its side, feeling Astrid’s long slim legs in the way (her feet hopping now and then among the lobsters). I came up and said:

“Move over a bit, well to the left, I’m rolling a rock around down there.”

When she’d moved away, squealing again, I went down once more and rolled the rock heavily over onto its side. It settled into place with a rumble, and I came up, gasping for air, and stood on it. And now, I was eighteen inches or so higher, and the slab above was close enough to make me bend my shoulders. Just what I wanted; with my shoulders I can move the earth itself.

I bent my legs, put my hands on my knees, put my right shoulder under the edge of the slab, and slowly straightened my legs. I felt the slab move, just a trifle. I let it fall into place again, eased my position, and said to Astrid, quite happily now:

“Now it’s up to you. Climb up round my waist, put your arms round my neck, wrap your legs tight around me, and hang onto that rock I gave you. When I tell you, shove the stone into the opening—it’ll wedge the slab open just enough.”

She reached up and clambered up me, holding her- self tight in the position I had given her. I felt long legs locking themselves at my waist. I said: “Keep your head out of my way, twist over to the side a little”

She did as I told her, and I put my shoulder back under the edge of the slab and once more began to straighten up. The edge tilted slightly and hung there; I pushed some more, laboring against it. And then the damned rock down there heeled over and slipped, and we both fell, foundering, into the water. Above our heads, the slab thundered home again with a roar to wake the dead.

She waited, Astrid, while I submerged again and set the boulder once more into position; the smell of crushed lobster was overpowering now, and I fancied I could hear them tearing at the dead flesh of their fellows down there; well, at least it would keep them away from Astrid’s toes.