When all is silence, I open my apparatus.

The captives, from first to last, are dead.

A vestige of sawdust, less than a pinch of snuff, represents all their work.
I expected more from those sturdy tools, their mandibles.

But, as I have said elsewhere, the tool does not make the workman.

In spite of their boring-implements, the hermits die in my cases for lack of skill.
I subject others to less arduous tests.