Nevertheless, though he greatly feared that the search would prove
fruitless, for those who had discovered the passage must also have
found its contents, Rene determined to keep on and explore it to the
end.
Lighting their way with torches, and with Rene in the lead, the party
entered the tunnel. De Gourges lamented that he had not known of its
existence sooner, in which case he would have used it as a mine, in
which to place powder and blow the walls of the fort about the ears of
the Spaniards.
When they reached the point at which Rene had left the books and
papers, they found that, even as he feared, they had been removed, so
that no trace of them remained. Rene bethought himself, however, of
the small iron box which he had buried in the earth at one side of the
tunnel. After thus burying it he had stopped the place again with
clay, and now he hoped that this box at least might have escaped
discovery. So they prodded the earthen wall of the tunnel for some
distance with their daggers, and at length the point of Rene's weapon
struck against metal. Here they dug, and directly he had recovered the
box much rusted, but still sound, in which he felt sure his uncle had
kept his most important papers.
While they had thus obtained all that they could now hope for in this
search, both Rene and De Gourges were anxious to explore the passage to
its extreme end, and so they continued on through it.
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