The place was familiar, but Malipieri looked about him carefully,
while Masin was climbing down. Along the base of the straight wall
there was a channel about two feet wide, through which the dark water
flowed rapidly. It entered from the right-hand corner, by a low,
arched aperture, through which it seemed out of the question that a
man could crawl, or even an ordinary boy of twelve. When they had
first come to this place Masin had succeeded in poking in a long stick
with a bit of lighted wax taper fastened to it, and both men had seen
that the channel ran on as far as it could be seen, with no widening.
At the other end of the chamber it ran out again by a similar conduit.
What had at first surprised Malipieri had been that the water did not
enter from the side of the foundations near the Vicolo dei Soldati,
but ran out that way. He had also been astonished at the quantity and
speed of the current. A channel a foot deep and two feet wide carries
a large quantity of water if the velocity be great, and Malipieri had
made a calculation which had convinced him that if the outflow were
suddenly closed, the small space in which he now stood would in a few
minutes be full up to within three or four feet of the vault. He would
have given much to know whence the water came and whither it went, and
what devilry had made it rise suddenly and drown a man when the
excavations had been made under Gregory Sixteenth.
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