14a History of Gutia-Percha Willie

 

present; he raised the sluice and let the water
escape again below. It was plain, from the force
with which the water struck the vault, that it would
yet rise much higher.

He scrambled now on the top of the vault, and,
examining the ruins, soon saw how a pipe brought
up through the breach in the vault could be led to
the hole in the wall of his room which he had
shown his father as a ventilator. But he would
not have a close pipe running through his room.
There would be little good in that. He could
have made a hole in it, with a stopper, to let the
water out when he wanted to use it, but that would
be awkward, while all the pleasure lay in seeing
the water as it ran. Therefore he got Mr Spelman
to find him a long small pine tree, which he first
sawed in two, lengthways, and hollowed into two
troughs; then, by laying the small end of one into
the wide end of the other, he had a spout long
enough to reach across the room, and go through
the wall on both sides.

The chief difficulty was to pierce the other wall,

for the mortar was very hard. The stones, how-
ever, just there were not very large, and, with
Sandy’s help, he managed it.

The large end of one trough was put through
the ventilator-hole, and the small end of the
other through the hole opposite; their second
ends met in the middle, the one lying into the