So saying, he turned his head and Raoul also turned his head; and they
again saw the head of fire behind their two heads. It had followed
them. And it must have run also, and perhaps faster than they, for it
seemed to be nearer to them. At the same time, they began to perceive a certain noise of which they
could not guess the nature. They simply noticed that the sound seemed
to move and to approach with the fiery face. It was a noise as though
thousands of nails had been scraped against a blackboard, the perfectly
unendurable noise that is sometimes made by a little stone inside the
chalk that grates on the blackboard. They continued to retreat, but the fiery face came on, came on, gaining
on them. They could see its features clearly now. The eyes were round
and staring, the nose a little crooked and the mouth large, with a
hanging lower lip, very like the eyes, nose and lip of the moon, when
the moon is quite red, bright red. How did that red moon manage to glide through the darkness, at a man's
height, with nothing to support it, at least apparently? And how did
it go so fast, so straight ahead, with such staring, staring eyes? And
what was that scratching, scraping, grating sound which it brought with
it? The Persian and Raoul could retreat no farther and flattened themselves
against the wall, not knowing what was going to happen because of that
incomprehensible head of fire, and especially now, because of the more
intense, swarming, living, "numerous" sound, for the sound was
certainly made up of hundreds of little sounds that moved in the
darkness, under the fiery face. And the fiery face came on ... with its noise ... came level with them! ...

And the two companions, flat against their wall, felt their hair stand
on end with horror, for they now knew what the thousand noises meant. They came in a troop, hustled along in the shadow by innumerable little
hurried waves, swifter than the waves that rush over the sands at high
tide, little night-waves foaming under the moon, under the fiery head
that was like a moon. And the little waves passed between their legs,
climbing up their legs, irresistibly, and Raoul and the Persian could
no longer restrain their cries of horror, dismay and pain. Nor could
they continue to hold their hands at the level of their eyes: their
hands went down to their legs to push back the waves, which were full
of little legs and nails and claws and teeth. Yes, Raoul and the Persian were ready to faint, like Pampin the
fireman. But the head of fire turned round in answer to their cries,
and spoke to them:

"Don't move! Don't move! ... Whatever you do, don't come after me! ... I am the rat-catcher! ... Let me pass, with my rats! ..."

And the head of fire disappeared, vanished in the darkness, while the
passage in front of it lit up, as the result of the change which the
rat-catcher had made in his dark lantern. Before, so as not to scare
the rats in front of him, he had turned his dark lantern on himself,
lighting up his own head; now, to hasten their flight, he lit the dark
space in front of him. And he jumped along, dragging with him the
waves of scratching rats, all the thousand sounds. Raoul and the Persian breathed again, though still trembling. "I ought to have remembered that Erik talked to me about the
rat-catcher," said the Persian. "But he never told me that he looked
like that ...  and it's funny that I should never have met him before
...  Of course, Erik never comes to this part!" [Illustration: two page color illustration]

"Are we very far from the lake, sir?" asked Raoul. "When shall we get
there? ... Take me to the lake, oh, take me to the lake! ... When we
are at the lake, we will call out! ... Christine will hear us! ... And
HE will hear us, too! ... And, as you know him, we shall talk to him!" "Baby!" said the Persian. "We shall never enter the house on the lake
by the lake! ... I myself have never landed on the other bank ... the
bank on which the house stands. ... You have to cross the lake first
... and it is well guarded! ... I fear that more than one of those
men--old scene-shifters, old door-shutters--who have never been seen
again were simply tempted to cross the lake ... It is terrible ... I
myself would have been nearly killed there ... if the monster had not
recognized me in time! ... One piece of advice, sir; never go near the
lake... And, above all, shut your ears if you hear the voice singing
under the water, the siren's voice!" "But then, what are we here for?" asked Raoul, in a transport of fever,
impatience and rage. "If you can do nothing for Christine, at least
let me die for her!" The Persian tried to calm the young man. "We have only one means of saving Christine Daae, believe me, which is
to enter the house unperceived by the monster." "And is there any hope of that, sir?" "Ah, if I had not that hope, I would not have come to fetch you!" "And how can one enter the house on the lake without crossing the lake?" "From the third cellar, from which we were so unluckily driven away. We will go back there now ... I will tell you," said the Persian, with
a sudden change in his voice, "I will tell you the exact place, sir: it
is between a set piece and a discarded scene from ROI DE LAHORE,
exactly at the spot where Joseph Buquet died...  Come, sir, take
courage and follow me! And hold your hand at the level of your eyes! ... But where are we?" The Persian lit his lamp again and flung its rays down two enormous
corridors that crossed each other at right angles. "We must be," he said, "in the part used more particularly for the
waterworks. I see no fire coming from the furnaces." He went in front of Raoul, seeking his road, stopping abruptly when he
was afraid of meeting some waterman. Then they had to protect
themselves against the glow of a sort of underground forge, which the
men were extinguishing, and at which Raoul recognized the demons whom
Christine had seen at the time of her first captivity. In this way, they gradually arrived beneath the huge cellars below the
stage. They must at this time have been at the very bottom of the
"tub" and at an extremely great depth, when we remember that the earth
was dug out at fifty feet below the water that lay under the whole of
that part of Paris. [4]

The Persian touched a partition-wall and said:

"If I am not mistaken, this is a wall that might easily belong to the
house on the lake." He was striking a partition-wall of the "tub," and perhaps it would be
as well for the reader to know how the bottom and the partition-walls
of the tub were built. In order to prevent the water surrounding the
building-operations from remaining in immediate contact with the walls
supporting the whole of the theatrical machinery, the architect was
obliged to build a double case in every direction. The work of
constructing this double case took a whole year. It was the wall of
the first inner case that the Persian struck when speaking to Raoul of
the house on the lake.