The gaoler laughed.

“I will give you something to drink first.”

“That’s right,” three voices shouted.  “Vodka, vodka!”

Then the door clanged shut again, and he heard the murmur of voices in Russian, but could not make out what was said.  One of the new prisoners, groping round, appeared to have struck the stone bench, as he himself had done.  The man in the next cell swore coarsely, and Lermontoff, judging from such snatches of their conversation as he could hear that they were persons of a low order, felt no desire to make their more intimate acquaintance, and so did not shout to them, as he had intended to do.  And now he missed something that had become familiar; thought it was a cigarette he desired, for the one he had lit had been smoked to his very lips, then he recognized it was the murmur of the stream that had ceased.

“Ah, they can shut it off,” he said.  “That’s interesting.  I must investigate, and learn whether or no there is communication between the cells.  Not very likely, though.”

He crawled on hands and knees until he came to the bed of the stream, which was now damp, but empty.  Kneeling down in its course, he worked his way toward the lower cell, and, as he expected, came to stout iron bars.  Crouching thus he sacrificed a second match, and estimated that the distance between the two cells was as much as ten feet of solid rock, and saw also that behind the perpendicular iron bars were another horizontal set, then another perpendicular, then a fourth horizontal.

While in this position he was startled by a piercing scream to the rear.  He backed out from the tunnel and stood upright once more.  He heard the sound of people splashing round in water.  The screamer began to jabber like a maniac, punctuating his ravings with shrieks.  Another was cursing vehemently, and a third appealing to the saints.  Lermontoff quickly knelt down in the watercourse, this time facing the upper cell, and struck his third match.  He saw that a steel shield, reminding him of the thin shutter between the lenses of a camera, had been shot across the tunnel behind the second group of cross bars, and as an engineer be could not but admire the skill of the practical expert who had constructed this diabolical device, for in spite of the pressure on the other side, hardly a drop of water oozed through.  He tried to reach this shield, but could not.  It was just beyond the touch of his fingers, with his arm thrust through the two sets of bars, but if he could have stretched that far, with the first bar retarding his shoulder, he knew his hand would be helpless even if he had some weapon to puncture the steel shield.  The men would be drowned before he could accomplish anything unless he was at the lever in the passage outside.

Crawling into his cell again he heard no more of the chatter and cries of the maniac, and he surmised that the other two were fighting for places on bench or shelf, which was amply large enough to have supported both, had they not been too demented with fear to recognize that fact.  The cursing man was victorious, and now he stood alone on the shelf, roaring maledictions.  Then there was the sound of a plunge, and Lermontoff, standing there, helpless and shivering, heard the prisoner swim round and round his cell like a furious animal, muttering and swearing.