They all came crowding about Curdie.
He must get them into the cellar as quickly as ever he could. But
when he looked at the size of some of them, he feared it would be
a long business to enlarge the hole sufficiently to let them
through. At it he rushed, hitting vigorously at the edge with his
mattock. At the very first blow came a splash from the water
beneath, but ere he could heave a third, a creature like a tapir,
only that the grasping point of its proboscis was hard as the steel
of Curdie's hammer, pushed him gently aside, making room for
another creature, with a head like a great club, which it began
banging upon the floor with terrible force and noise. After about
a minute of this battery, the tapir came up again, shoved Clubhead
aside, and putting its own head into the hole began gnawing at the
sides of it with the finger of its nose, in such a fashion that the
fragments fell in a continuous gravelly shower into the water. In
a few minutes the opening was large enough for the biggest creature
among them to get through it.
Next came the difficulty of letting them down: some were quite
light, but the half of them were too heavy for the rope, not to say
for his arms. The creatures themselves seemed to be puzzling where
or how they were to go. One after another of them came up, looked
down through the hole, and drew back.
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