Half the night, though, had not passed, when a hand was laid upon my shoulder; and in an instant I was up, piece in hand, to find that it was Captain Dyer.
“Come here,” he said quietly; and following him into the room underneath where the women were placed, he told me to listen; and I did, to hear a low, grating, tearing noise, as of something scraping on stone. “That’s been going on,” he said, “for a good hour, and I can’t make it out, Smith.”
“Prisoners escaping,” I said quietly.
“But they are not so near as that. They were confined in the next room but one,” he said in a whisper.
“Broke through, then,” I said.
Then we went—Captain Dyer and I—quietly up on to the roof, answered the challenge, and then walked to the edge, where, leaning over, we could hear the doll grating noise once more; then a stone seemed to fall out on to the sandy way by the palace walls.
It was all plain enough: they had broken through from one room to another, where there was a window no bigger than a loophole, and they were widening this.
“Quick here, sentry,” says the captain.
The next minute the sentry hurried up, and we had a man posted as nearly over the window as we could guess; and then I had my orders in a minute:
“Take two men and the sentry at their door, rush in, and secure them at once. But if they have got out, join Sergeant Williams, and follow me to act as reserve; for I am going to make a sally by the gate to stop them from the outside.”