He
pursued his employment with perfect impunity; the darkness covered him
from observation; no one disturbed him by approaching the solitary scene
of his operations; and of the two sentinels who were placed near the
part of the wall which was the centre of all his exertions, one remained
motionless at the most distant extremity of his post, and the other
paced restlessly backwards and forwards on the rampart, singing a wild,
rambling son about war, and women, and wine, which, whatever liberty it
might allow to his organs of perception, effectually hindered the
vigilant exercise of his faculties of hearing.
Brick after brick yielded to the vigorous and well-timed efforts of
Ulpius. He had already made a cavity, in an oblique direction, large
enough to creep through, and was preparing to penetrate still further,
when a portion of the rotten material of the interior of the wall
suddenly yielded in a mass to a chance pressure of his iron bar, and
slowly sunk down inwards into a bed which, judging by such faint sounds
as were audible at the moment, must have been partly water, and partly
marshy earth and rotten brick-work.
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