With groping hands I still continued feeling the wood, and suddenly I pricked my left thumb.  That slight pain roused me from my growing numbness.  I felt again and found a nail—­a nail which the undertaker’s men had driven in crookedly and which had not caught in the lower wood.  It was long and very sharp; the head was secured to the lid, but it moved.  Henceforth I had but one idea—­to possess myself of that nail—­and I slipped my right hand across my body and began to shake it.  I made but little progress, however; it was a difficult job, for my hands soon tired, and I had to use them alternately.  The left one, too, was of little use on account of the nail’s awkward position.

While I was obstinately persevering a plan dawned on my mind.  That nail meant salvation, and I must have it.  But should I get it in time?  Hunger was torturing me; my brain was swimming; my limbs were losing their strength; my mind was becoming confused.  I had sucked the drops that trickled from my punctured finger, and suddenly I bit my arm and drank my own blood!  Thereupon, spurred on by pain, revived by the tepid, acrid liquor that moistened my lips, I tore desperately at the nail and at last I wrenched it off!

I then believed in success.  My plan was a simple one; I pushed the point of the nail into the lid, dragging it along as far as I could in a straight line and working it so as to make a slit in the wood.  My fingers stiffened, but I doggedly persevered, and when I fancied that I had sufficiently cut into the board I turned on my stomach and, lifting myself on my knees and elbows thrust the whole strength of my back against the lid.  But although it creaked it did not yield; the notched line was not deep enough.  I had to resume my old position—­which I only managed to do with infinite trouble—­and work afresh.  At last after another supreme effort the lid was cleft from end to end.

I was not saved as yet, but my heart beat with renewed hope.  I had ceased pushing and remained motionless, lest a sudden fall of earth should bury me.  I intended to use the lid as a screen and, thus protected, to open a sort of shaft in the clayey soil.  Unfortunately I was assailed by unexpected difficulties.  Some heavy clods of earth weighed upon the boards and made them unmanageable; I foresaw that I should never reach the surface in that way, for the mass of soil was already bending my spine and crushing my face.

Once more I stopped, affrighted; then suddenly, while I was stretching my legs, trying to find something firm against which I might rest my feet, I felt the end board of the coffin yielding.  I at once gave a desperate kick with my heels in the faint hope that there might be a freshly dug grave in that direction.

It was so.  My feet abruptly forced their way into space.  An open grave was there; I had only a slight partition of earth to displace, and soon I rolled into the cavity.  I was saved!