But he would learn when he should dash his horse’s skull and his own against the shell that remained. He saddled Demijohn, filled an empty jar with the soft earth of his excavations, and waited. His dramatic appearance at the instant of the door’s opening was not a coincidence. It was minute calculation. Already mounted, he faced the wall, with the heavy jar poised over his head in both hands, his spurs drawn back to strike. He waited until sentinels and shooting squad had gathered at the door. He waited to draw their fire, to 206empty their muskets. But he did not wait until the door should open enough to give them unimpeded aim. In the second of its opening he drove back the spurs, hurled the jar against the wall, and–crashed through his dungeon as easily as breaking a sucked egg.
“But,” demanded Jacqueline eagerly, “how is it you did feel?” She was disappointed that the personal equation had had so little prominence.
“I don’t recollect,” said Driscoll, puzzled, “there was nothing hurting especially.”
“No, no! Your sensations facing death, then escaping?”
He brightened. “W’y yes,” he replied, happy to catch her meaning. “I felt toler’ble busy.”
She sighed despairingly. Yet there was plenty left her for wonderment, and in it she revelled.
“Ingenuity!” she mused. “I declare, I believe the first human being to stand up on his hind legs must have been an American. It simply occurred to him one day that he didn’t need all fours for walking, and that he might as well use his before-feet for something else.”
“And a Frenchman, Miss Jack-leen?”
She flung up her hands.
“He!” she exclaimed. “If ever a compatriot of mine had gotten that idea into his–how you say?–pate, would he not carry it out to the idiotic limit, yes? He? He would try to walk without any feet whatever, and use all of them for other things. Already you have seen him doing the, the pugilat–the box–with every one of his fours. Voilà!”