"Lie still now, or, by all the devils in the pit, I 'll shut down harder on your throat.

Ah, so you can keep quiet, friend?
Then I will let you go, for I would be free to explore this passage." I could perceive, by means of the faint light streaming through the narrow opening, that he was busily engaged in rubbing his sorely lacerated sides, and I noted his brown jerkin had been fairly wrenched off his shoulders.
"Where did you leave your coat ?" "Yonder in that accursed hole! It has store of provisions in its pockets.

Lord save me, but was there ever such a time!" He turned, groping anxiously about in the scene of his late adventure until he finally brought forth the missing garment.

Carefully testing the pockets to see their contents remained intact, a smile lit up his leathern face, and he flung it across his shoulders, like a pair of well-filled saddle-bags.

I reached in also, lowered the drapery, and then led down the dark tunnel as rapidly as the grim uncertainty of the way would permit.
The passage proved long and tedious; at least so it seemed to us compelled to grope slowly onward through the darkness.