At this time, I too was overcome, and was forced to sit down
by the doorway, and content myself with directing operations.
The girls brought the block, while Kara and Nyleptha built them
up across the six-foot-wide doorway, a triple row of them, for
less would be useless. But the marble had to be brought forty
yards and then there were forty yards to run back, and though
the girls laboured gloriously, even staggering along alone, each
with a block in her arms, it was slow work, dreadfully slow.
The light was growing now, and presently, in the silence, we
heard a commotion at the far-bottom of the stair, and the faint
clinking of armed men. As yet the wall was only two feet high,
and we had been eight minutes at the building of it. So they
had come. Alphonse had heard aright.
The clanking sound came nearer, and in the ghostly grey of the
dawning we could make out long files of men, some fifty or so
in all, slowly creeping up the stair. They were now at the half-way
standing place that rested on the great flying arch; and here,
perceiving that something was going on above, they, to our great
gain, halted for three or four minutes and consulted, then slowly
and cautiously advanced again.
We had been nearly a quarter of an hour at the work now, and
it was almost three feet high.
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