His position was desperate, and they judged, and rightly judged, that he was a man not likely to stick at a trifle.
The men looked at their officer, and the latter, a man of intelligence and prudence, albeit no coward, reflected seriously.
Several terrible calamities, accidental and intentional, had of late opened the eyes of the public to the destructive properties of dynamite, and to that his thoughts flew.
He wavered.
The coiner saw his chance, and quick to act as to think, he made for the exit.
"Stand back!" he cried, fiercely, to the men who made a faint show of barring his passage. "I'll finish you all off at a stroke if you attempt to oppose me?"
They fell back alarmed.
Lenoir darted on through the inner vault, and so on until he gained the flight of steps.
Reaching the top, he darted through the cottage, and reaching the open, suddenly found himself in the midst of about a dozen men.
The first person upon whom his glance rested, was the doubly-dyed traitor who had betrayed him solely to serve his own ends, by entrapping Jack Harkaway—the Englishman, who must have been recognized by the reader, in spite of his assumed name, as Herbert Murray.