The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day, when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale, a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south, we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll begin tonight."
"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there—and a sentry."
"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose answered, "when we get to them. The thing now is to get there. We have fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."
It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed, he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight. Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.
"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"
Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and wriggled back. That morning at sunrise, when they peeked down from their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance would detect it. Of that they were sure.
Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned to the new captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him. Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time, but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more confidential. His talk was on various natural enough themes, but it kept veering back to the chances of escape.
"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on, son?"
The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him, perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret. Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.