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Condensed Novels: New Burlesques by Bret Harte
page 17 of 123 (13%)
floor of the donjon keep. I surmised that the King was imprisoned
on that floor. Examining the pipe closely, I saw that it was
really a pneumatic dispatch tube, for secretly conveying letters
and dispatches from the castle through the moat beyond the castle
walls. Its extraordinary size, however, gave me the horrible
conviction that it was to be used to convey the dead body of the
King to the moat. I grew cold with horror--but I was determined.

I crept up the pipe. As I expected, it opened funnel-wise into a
room where the poor King was playing poker with Black Michael. It
took me but a moment to dash through the window into the room, push
the King aside, gag and bind Black Michael, and lower him by a
stout rope into the pipe he had destined for another. Having him
in my power, I lowered him until I heard his body splash in the
water in the lower part of the pipe. Then I proceeded to draw him
up again, intending to question him in regard to Rupert of Glasgow.
But this was difficult, as his saturated clothing made him fit the
smooth pipe closely. At last I had him partly up, when I was
amazed at a rush of water from the pipe which flooded the room. I
dropped him and pulled him up again with the same result. Then in
a flash I saw it all. His body, acting like a piston in the pipe,
had converted it into a powerful pump. Mad with joy, I rapidly
lowered and pulled him up again and again, until the castle was
flooded--and the moat completely drained! I had created the
diversion I wished; the tenants of the castle were disorganized and
bewildered in trying to escape from the deluge, and the moat was
accessible to my friends. Placing the poor King on a table to be
out of the water, and tying up his head in my handkerchief to
disguise him from Michael's guards, I drew my sword and plunged
downstairs with the cataract in search of the miscreant Rupert. I
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