Get a strong pair of wire-nippers. Let the rope be about eighteen feet long. There is nothing else I shall want to enable us to get away. If you can get another rifle and ammunition, and hide them some little distance from the prison, all the better. I shall save some food—enough, I hope, to last for two or three days. You had better bring some in your pocket too. There will be no moon on Monday next, and if you are on guard that night near my door we had better try then. At eleven o'clock I shall be listening for the sound of your file. If I do not hear it by half-past eleven I shall suppose that you are posted somewhere else, but I shall listen three or four nights before, and every night after that, at the same hour. I shall not write again. It is better that we should not be noticed speaking to each other, so pay no attention to me unless you have something particular to say.
As he gave the paper to Hans, the latter slipped into his hand a small tin oil-can, one of those used for oiling sewing-machines and bicycles, and also a paper of tobacco. "If I am asked why I was speaking to you," Hans muttered, "I can say you asked me to buy you a quarter of a pound of tobacco."
It was well the precaution had been taken, for a minute later one of the other guards came up and asked roughly, "What did that man give you?"
Yorke assumed a look of surprise, put his hand in his pocket, and took out the little parcel.
"There it is," he said. "It is a quarter of a pound of tobacco. I asked him to get the best he could buy. I hope that he has done so, but I have not tried it."
He opened it carelessly, and the guard glanced at it, and then went away satisfied with the explanation.
"It is just as well," Yorke said to himself, "that I told Hans not to come near me again. Evidently that fellow had some sort of suspicion, and must have seen him speak to me before, for there is nothing unusual in the guard fetching us little things we want. There is certainly nothing suspicious about Hans' appearance. He has evidently not washed his face for days, and looks as dirty as any of them."
The time passed as usual till three days before the date appointed. For four days Yorke had not seen Hans, who had been put on night guard. Each evening he had gone to the door at eleven, and listened for half an hour without hearing any sound. He had hidden away one of the table-knives. On the Monday evening he heard, to his delight, a low grating sound, and knocked gently three times to let Hans know that he heard him. In half an hour he heard the bar cautiously removed, and with his knife at once shot back the bolt and opened the door.
The night was pitch-dark, and after silently grasping his follower's hand, Yorke went on to his hands and knees, and began to crawl down the slope towards the palisade.
"Where are the sentries, Hans?" he asked, when they had nearly reached it.