"Gagged and insensible," replied the voice. "Quick, while there is yet time."
Perhaps it was rather venturesome thus to trust myself in the hands of an unknown man, but I slipped on my clothes, and keeping touch of his arm, accompanied him into the dimly-lighted corridor.
Turning to the left, we glided along close to the wall. At the end of this passage the body of the sentry lay on the ground, while near at hand crouched an Indian, keeping watch.
This man joined us, and my guide immediately led the way into an empty room, the door of which was open. As soon as we were inside he closed it softly.
"Keep close to me," he whispered, and then said something to an unseen person in a patois I did not understand.
Presently he stopped, and I could just distinguish the figure of a third man, who, grasping my hand, whispered, "The silver key has unlocked the door, señor."
Before I could recover from my astonishment—for the man who spoke was the sick jailer—my guide let himself down through a trap-door, and called to me to follow. I found myself on a flight of steep steps in a kind of shaft, very narrow, and so foul that breathing was difficult. At the bottom was a fair-sized chamber, with a lofty roof—at least I judged it so by the greater purity of the air—and here the guide stopped until his companion caught up with us. The jailer, to my surprise, had remained in the fort, but there was no time for explanation.
The exit from the chamber was by means of an aperture so low that we had to lie flat on the ground, and so narrow that even I found it hard work to wriggle through.
Of all my adventures, this one impressed itself most strongly on my mind. People are apt to smile when I speak of what one man called "crawling along a passage;" yet had the terrors of the journey been known beforehand, I think I could hardly have summoned the courage to face them.
We went in Indian file, I being second, and my shoulders brushed the sides of what was apparently a stonework tube. There was not a glimmer of light, and the foul air threatened suffocation at every yard. I could breathe only with great difficulty, my throat seemed choked, I was bathed in perspiration, while loathsome creatures crawled or scampered over every part of me.