“Let’s go down and begin work at once,” Evans proposed. “The sooner we get away the better our chances of escape will be.”
“We’ll need about eight or ten coats to blind the window with,” said Phil. “Here’s mine. Some of you pass over yours and I’ll go down and take care of that matter.”
A minute later the prison tunnel engineer had as big a load of coats on his arm as he wished to carry while descending into the cellar, and he was about to return below when Dan startled him a little by saying:
“We haven’t got the ventilation yet that we started out to get. And this place is growing stuffy already. How about it? We can’t work very long in such atmosphere as this, and the worst of it will settle into the cellar, where we’ll have to do all our hard work.”
“That’s so,” said Phil. “We can’t open that cellar window any easier probably than one of the windows up here, and if we could, we wouldn’t dare use it for ventilating while working down there with a light. Let’s go around and try the windows up here and see if we can’t get one of them open without making any noise.”
“Let’s try to open one on the north side,” Emmet suggested. “If the guards hear us, we’ll explain that we’ve got to have some fresh air. Then, too, they’ll probably watch that end of the house more closely and maybe neglect the south end if they know one of the north windows is open.”
This plan was adopted and Emmet was delegated to try the north windows. The general suspense was greatly relieved when he turned and whispered that he had raised the lower sash of the first window he tried and propped it up with a short piece of board. He had not made a sound audible to his companions while doing this.
“Now, nobody must talk above a whisper, and that as little as possible, while the window is open,” he cautioned.
Phil took this as a cue for him to descend into the cellar and blind the foundation window with his load of coats. In a few minutes, after accomplishing this, he returned and selected two aids, with whom he went below again to begin work on the proposed escape tunnel into the excavation to the south.