He picked up the rod again and resolved to be more careful. He pushed ahead, going slower this time. The tunnel grew wider and higher and was pitch black. He went forward cautiously and his head bumped into a low-hanging obstruction. He felt upwards and encountered an iron pipe and he followed it to a wall and felt that the bricks that surrounded it were loose. He reasoned that this pipe ran back into the dirt and entered some basement. Suppose he tunneled forward around it? He took out his crowbar, pried the bricks out, and hewed at the dirt, racking out lumps with his bare hands; it was slow work and sweat dripped from his chin. He longed for a shovel, for that would have made the digging easier. Should he go back into one of those basements and get one? No; that meant wading again in that foul and dangerous sewer. He dug on some five feet, lying flat on his stomach, pushing clods of earth behind him into the sewer. At last he came to a brick wall; his muscles were aching. Despite the fact that the bricks were damp, they were much harder than the ones he had tried before. An hour’s toiling in the darkness loosened two bricks; the others came easier then and soon he made a wide hole. He heard the faint, distant sound of voices. The tone and accent were those of white men.

“Where’re you going tonight, Bob?”

“I think the wife and I’ll get into the old bus and drive up somewhere along the seashore.”

“Yeah. My old lady and I were up there Sunday. It’s beautiful.”

“I’ll say it is. Where’re you going?”

“Aw, I don’t know. I was thinking of taking in a movie.”

The voices stopped; he lay a long time, listening, staring into the black rectangular hole from which the brick had come. Working again in silent slow-motion, he proceeded to take out the other brick and soon had a hole large enough for his body to crawl through. Then, accidentally, a brick slid from his grasp and dropped with a clatter to an invisible floor. He waited to hear a challenging shout, but nothing happened. He climbed out of the hole and stood up in a dark space; he struck a match and found that he was in a storage locker. He found a door, pried the lock, and entered a basement and was surprised to see at the far end of the room faint streaks of daylight. His muscles jerked taut as he heard a heavy door banging shut. From somewhere above him came the echo of footsteps. He grabbed the iron pipe and hoisted himself upward and waited to see if anyone was coming. The footsteps died away in the distance and he swung down again to the floor and looked around. Near him was a huge furnace and a coal bin. He walked forward and saw high up in a wall an open window through which fresh air and dingy light came.