e was heard that
might indicate that Grimaud was discovered, and at the expiration of
that anxious interval the two men returned, closed the door after
them, and repeating their orders that the servants should go to bed and
extinguish their lights, disappeared.

"Shall we obey?" asked Blaisois. "All this looks suspicious."

"They said a quarter of an hour. We still have five minutes," replied
Mousqueton.

"Suppose we warn the masters."

"Let's wait for Grimaud."

"But perhaps they have killed him."

"Grimaud would have cried out."

"You know he is almost dumb."

"We should have heard the blow, then."

"But if he doesn't return?"

"Here he is."

At that very moment Grimaud drew back the cloak which hid the aperture
and came in with his face livid, his eyes staring wide open with terror,
so that the pupils were contracted almost to nothing, with a large
circle of white around them. He held in his hand a tankard full of a
dark substance, and approaching the gleam of light shed by the lamp
he uttered this single monosyllable: "Oh!" with such an expression of
extreme terror that Mousqueton started, alarmed, and Blaisois was near
fainting from fright.

Both, however, cast an inquisitive glance into the tankard--it was full
of gunpowder.

Convinced that the ship was full of powder instead of having a cargo of
wine, Grimaud hastened to awake D'Artagnan, who had no sooner beheld him
than he perceived that something extraordinary had taken place. Imposing
silence, Grimaud put out the little night lamp, then knelt down and
poured into the lieutenant's ear a recital melodramatic enough not to
require play of feature to give it pith.

This was the gist of his strange story:

The first barrel that Grimaud had found on passing into the compartment
he struck--it was empty. He passed on to another--it, also, was empty,
but the third which he tried was, from the dull sound it gave out,
evidently full. At this point Grimaud stopped and was preparing to make
a hole with his gimlet, when he found a spigot; he therefore placed his
tankard under it and turned the spout; something, whatever it was the
cask contained, fell silently into the tankard.

Whilst he was thinking that he should first taste the liquor which the
tankard contained before taking it to his companions, the door of the
cellar opened and a man with a lantern in his hands and enveloped in a
cloak, came and stood just before the hogshead, behind which Grim