A tremendous chattering noise arose from inside the throne. The second 
soldier caught the end of the chain as it was emerging from his side and fed it 
into the opening in his visor. A moment later it popped out of a hatch on his 
chest. In this fashion, the entire length of the chain, some twenty or thirty 
feet in all, was slowly and noisily drawn out of the basket, into the noisy 
mechanism hidden beneath the throne, down the second soldier's throat, out the 
hatch in his chest, and down to the floor, where it gradually accumulated into 
a greasy heap. The process went on for much longer than Princess Nell first 
anticipated, because the chain frequently changed direction; more than once, 
when the basket was nearly empty, the chain began to spew back into it until it 
was nearly full again. But on the whole it was more apt to go forward than 
backward, and eventually the last link lifted free from the basket and 
disappeared into the throne. A few seconds later, the din from the throne 
stopped; now Nell could only hear a somewhat lesser chattering from the second 
soldier. Finally that stopped as well, and the chain fell from his chest. The 
soldier scooped it up in his arms and deposited it in an empty basket that was 
sitting handily nearby. Then he strode toward Nell, bent forward at the waist, 
put his hard cold shoulder rather uncomfortably into the pit of her stomach, 
and picked her up off the floor like a sack of corn. He carried her for some 
minutes through the castle, most of that time spent descending endless stone 
staircases, and finally brought her to a very deep, dark, and cold dungeon, 
where he deposited her in a small and perfectly dark cell.