A Night of Toil
FOUR days passed. Hamerton's jailers, in spite of the monotonous
"Ja's", had neither brought the promised writing materials nor taken
any steps to help the prisoner to recover his money.
The work of loosening the refractory stone made steady progress. Once
or twice the Sub fancied that it was shaking in its hard setting. He
even went so far as to break off the tip of his steel instrument in a
vain attempt to prise up the slab. The experiment was almost a
disastrous one, for Hamerton had to regrind the steel ere he could
start afresh. Luckily it was still long enough for the purpose, and
also more rigid, while he had still the broken part as a
supplementary tool.
"Hans," remarked Hamerton to one of the jailers in quite a casual
tone, when the fellow brought a basin of soup to the prisoner, "could
you let me have a little pepper?"
The man eyed Hamerton suspiciously; then, instead of the monotonous
"Ja ", he demanded:
"What for? I suppose you would like to have some? It would come in
useful to throw in my eyes, and you would try to break out of prison,
eh?"
"No," replied the Sub coolly. "I can assure you that I would not use
it for that purpose. I have a cold in my head."
"Better, then, apply to see the doctor."
"It's not worth that. I have always found pepper an excellent remedy
when nothing better is to hand. Can't you get me a little?"
"I'll see," replied Hans.
A quarter of an hour later he re-entered the cell.
"Here you are, Englishman," he said, handing Hamerton a small paper
parcel. "It's strong enough to blow your head off."
"Thank you, Hans!" said the Sub.
Directly the man went out Hamerton placed the packet of pepper in the
only pocket of his coat, in which there was already a couple of
handkerchiefs and his watch.
"I didn't think I should obtain the pepper so easily," he
soliloquized. "It will come in very handy before many days are past."
Hamerton made a late start that evening. Detroit was in a very
communicative mood, tapping out messages with tremendous zeal, till
his friend had to caution him not to make so much noise, through fear
of being overheard.
It was just twelve when Hamerton, using the steel as a lever, found
to his great delight that the stone was actually loose. For the next
half-hour he worked like one possessed, with the result that the slab
was displaced. Half-dreading the outcome of his investigations,
Hamerton groped cautiously with his hand into the deep cavity. Almost
at arm's length his fingers touched a mass of rubble. The floor was
hollow.
Now, for the first time since his incarceration, the Sub wedged the
door of his cell by means of the stool. Thus he was fairly safe from
interruption, and in the event of a nightly visitation he might be
able to replace the stone and hide the traces of his handiwork before
admitting his jailers.
This done, he attacked the slab adjoining the hole in the floor. By
dint of much heaving he succeeded in displacing it without having
recourse to the tedious process of chiselling out the cement.
"I wish I had a box of matches," he muttered. "Only a mole could find
its way about in that hole. Well, here goes!"
So saying, he lowered himself into the pit, so black that by contrast
his cell was fairly illuminated, for the searchlights were constantly
flashing skywards.
Between the under side of the stone floor and the rubble on which he
stood was a space of about eighteen inches in height. It was like
sitting on the summit of a mound, for the surface descended on all
sides. Hamerton was standing on the crown of one of the vaulted
arches of the store under the prison cells. During his exercise hour
in the courtyard he had made the discovery that the room on the
ground floor was vaulted.
"Easy ahead!" he muttered between his closed teeth, for the dust rose
in clouds in the confined space. Before he had crawled very far the
height increased sufficiently for him to be able to kneel upright.
Then his hands came in contact with a wall--the division between his
cell and that occupied by the American.
"Rough luck!" he ejaculated. "More miniature pick-and-shovel work, I
suppose. Ah, there's Detroit tapping again! Sorry I can't attend to
you, old man."
Groping with his left hand Hamerton followed the course of the
parting wall, hoping that he might find an opening into the space
beneath Detroit's cell. His hopes were realized, for almost at the
junction with the outer wall of the building was a gap in the
stonework.
"It will be a tight squeeze, by Jove!" he ejaculated. "I'll risk it;
but what a mess I'll be in!"
He had not before taken into consideration the fact that the state of
his clothes would "give the show away" to his jailers. Retracing his
steps he regained his cell, and promptly stripped off his hideous
prison garb, shook out the dust, and laid the garment on the bed.
Once more he dropped into the hole, and with more confidence crawled
to the corner of the space where he had located a means of
communication with the corresponding cavity on the other side of the
dividing wall.
It was a dangerous performance wriggling through the narrow aperture.
More than once Hamerton had to stop through sheer exhaustion. The
rough stonework grazed his ribs and lacerated his elbows and thighs.
It seemed as if he stood a great chance of becoming jammed, for,
having succeeded in forcing his shoulders through, his hips
obstinately refused to scrape between the sides of the opening. To
add to his discomfort, the air was far from pure, and he was seized
by an attack of dizziness.
Temporarily panic-stricken, he struggled furiously and contrived to
back out of his dangerous predicament.
"It will mean enlarging that hole," he thought. "I've done enough for
the time being. To-morrow night I'll have another shot at it."
With this resolution he returned to his cell, washed off the dirt,
and turned in, glad to rest the bruised angularities of his aching
body.
Presently he began to ponder over the difficulties that had beset
him. "Either I'll have to make that hole larger or I'll have to
reduce my fat," he said to himself, with a laugh. "Talk about a
square peg in a round hole, or a round peg in a square hole. By Jove!
I'm an ass. The hole is square right enough, but my midship section
isn't round--it's oval. If I had only kept my hips in two opposite
corners instead of trying to squeeze through on my stomach I could
have done it hands down. I wonder what the time is?"
He sat up and pulled out his watch. There was too much gloom to see
the hands.
Even as he looked a brilliant beam of light flashed straight in
through the window. It was a quarter to one. For a few seconds only
the searchlight rays played upon the building; then all was darkness,
rendered the more opaque by reason of the sudden change.
"A searchlight from an airship," exclaimed the Sub. He knew perfectly
well that since from his window he could see nothing of the
searchlight apparatus placed on the fortifications, it was conversely
impossible for one of those searchlights to throw a direct beam
through the window of his cell.
In a trice he was out of bed. Propping the partially dismembered
stool against the wall, he climbed up to the window and looked out.
He was just in time to see a large Zeppelin in the act of descending
somewhere to the left of his prison. By the arrangement of the cars
he knew that it was not the same craft that he had seen recharging
her petrol tanks on the morning of his arrest.
"I wonder whether they are stationed here?" he asked himself. "An
airship of that size must need an enormous shed, yet I'll swear I
never saw one when I was being taken ashore. And they would never
risk mooring a lubberly craft like that in the open."
As there was nothing more to be seen, the Sub clambered down from his
insecure perch and prepared once more to turn in. Suddenly he felt
inclined to put his theory to the test. It was not yet one o'clock,
four precious hours yet remained ere dawn. He would make another
attempt to squeeze through that baffling hole in the wall.
This time he succeeded with comparative ease, although his bruised
hips gave him a bad time of it during the operation. In his sense of
elation pain and discomfort were forgotten, for he was now underneath
the cell occupied by his comrade, with only six inches of stone floor
to separate them.
It puzzled Hamerton considerably to know how the stone flags were
supported, since there was a cavity underneath the floor, but now he
made a discovery that he had hitherto overlooked. The floor had been
constructed at a fairly recent date, and was supported by slight iron
girders, spaced about eighteen inches apart, which were in turn
supported by small brick piers rising from the upper side of the
vaulting. Fortunately the Sub had by chance decided to remove a stone
that was only partly resting on a girder and held in position by a
wedge-shaped stone--the second one that he had removed.
"It's about time I gave Detroit a hint," he thought. "I'll tap out a
message as lightly as possible, in case the sound travels to another
part of the building."
"Am crawling under the floor of your cell," he announced. "Will try
and join you either to-night or to-morrow. Have you anything you can
use to help shift one of the stones?"
"Nothing," came the reply. "But hustle some; I'm right keen on seeing
you."
Considering Hamerton had been "hustling" like a nigger for hours this
request struck him as being a cool one; but, guessing rightly that it
was owing solely to Detroit's enthusiasm at the prospect of being
joined by his chum, the Sub began to tackle the new phase of his
arduous task.
Feeling for a stone that projected farther than the rest, Hamerton
began to tug at it with his hands. It was seemingly immovable. He
realized that the only way to shift it was to dig out the cement, as
he had done in the case of the one in his cell. But there was a
difference. He had to be on his back; the dust fell upon him, getting
into his eyes, nose, and mouth, and causing him acute discomfort.
Only by his sense of touch could he determine whether he was
attacking the cement or merely the hard stone.
At length his physical strength began to fail; his arms refused to
obey the dictates of his active mind. Reluctantly he abandoned his
task for that night and painfully crawled back to his bed. It was
then a quarter-past three. For close on two hours and a half he had
toiled under adverse conditions, yet the result of his labours was
satisfactory. He had almost established a direct communication with
his friend without having recourse only to conversation in Morse.
With this solace to act as balm to his wearied body the Sub was soon
fast asleep, nor did he awake till his jailers appeared with his
breakfast.