deputations and prominent individuals
urged us to expedite.

Better still, the untoward accidents such as those I have mentioned,
ceased. Our dogs, for we had obtained some others, were no longer
poisoned; rocks that appeared fixed did not fall; no arrows whistled
among us when we went out riding. We even found it safe occasionally to
dispense with our guards, since it was every one's interest to keep us
alive--for the present. Still, I for one was not deceived for a single
moment, and in season and out of season warned the others that the wind
would soon blow again from a less favourable quarter.

We worked, we worked, we worked! Heaven alone knows how we did work.
Think of the task, which, after all, was only one of several. A tunnel
must be bored, for I forget how far, through virgin rock, with the
help of inadequate tools and unskilled labour, and this tunnel must be
finished by a certain date. A hundred unexpected difficulties arose, and
one by one were conquered. Great dangers must be run, and were avoided,
while the responsibility of this tremendous engineering feat lay upon
the shoulders of a single individual, Oliver Orme, who, although he had
been educated as an engineer, had no great practical experience of such
enterprises.

Truly the occasion makes the man, for Orme rose to it in a way that
I can only call heroic. When he was not actually in the tunnel he was
labouring at his calculations, of which many must be made, or taking
levels with such instruments as he had. For if there proved to be the
slightest error all this toil would be in vain, and result only in the
blowing of a useless hole through a mass of rock. Then there was a
great question as to the effect which would be produced by the amount of
explosive at his disposal, since terrible as might be the force of the
stuff, unless it were scientifically placed and distributed it would
assuredly fail to accomplish the desired end.

At last, after superhuman efforts, the mine was finished. Our stock of
concentrated explosive, about four full camel loads of it, was set in
as many separate chambers, each of them just large enough to receive the
charge, hollowed in the primaeval rock from which the idol had been hewn.

These chambers were about twenty feet from each other, although if there
had been time to prolong the tunnel, the distance should have been
at least forty in order to give the stuff a wider range of action.
According to Oliver's mathema