e was talking to me, and in his frenzy he
was imploring that some one should let him out.

While still endeavoring to move the man, I was seized by the arm, and
turning, beheld the pallid face of the shoemaker. They had let him down
so that he reached the floor. He tried to fall on his knees before me,
but the rope was so short that he was able to go only part of the way
down, and presented a most ludicrous appearance, with his toes scraping
the icy floor and his arms thrown out as if he were paddling like a
tadpole. "Oh, have mercy upon me, sir," he said, "and help me get out
of this dreadful place. If you go to the hole and call up it's you, they
will pull me up; but if they get you out first they will never think of
me. I am a poor pauper, sir, but I never did nothin' to be packed in ice
before I am dead."

Noticing that the Italian had left the end of the aperture in the block
of ice, and that he was now shouting up the open shaft, I ran to the
channel of communication which my Agnes had opened for me, and called
through it; but the dear girl had gone.

The end of a ladder now appeared at the opening in the roof, and this
was let down until it reached the floor. I started toward it, but before
I had gone half the distance the frightened shoemaker and the maniac
Italian sprang upon it, and, with shrieks and oaths, began a maddening
fight for possession of the ladder. They might quickly have gone up one
after the other, but each had no thought but to be first; and as one
seized the rounds he was pulled away by the other, until I feared the
ladder would be torn to pieces. The shoemaker finally pushed his way up
a little distance, when the Italian sprang upon his back, endeavoring
to climb over him; and so on they went up the shaft, fighting, swearing,
kicking, scratching, shaking and wrenching the ladder, which had been
tied to another one in order to increase its length, so that it was in
danger of breaking, and tearing at each other in a fashion which made it
wonderful that they did not both tumble headlong downward. They went
on up, so completely filling the shaft with their struggling forms and
their wild cries that I could not see or hear anything, and was afraid,
in fact, to look up toward the outer air.

As I was afterward informed, the Italian, who had slipped into the hole
by accident, ran away like a frightened hare the moment he got his
feet on firm ground, and the shoemaker sat down and swooned. By this