"Yes, confound it! I looked for a safety-lamp, but there wasn't one to be found in the place. We must do the best we can with the ordinary lantern; and to make sure, we'll only use it in the main gallery. If the air in the others is too foul for a light, it will be too foul for life."
The waiting fugitives heard the click of the lantern as the warder opened it, and silently retreated into the side gallery, raising their make-shift respirators to their mouths. They saw a feeble light at the junction of the two passages. The search party continued their progress and halted where the galleries branched, being now in full view of the three within.
"This is the dangerous passage—this one to the right," said the prisoner. "Better take the light away."
The warder retreated some paces with the lantern.
"Go in, Scuratoff, as far as you can. Foul air be hanged! You'll be well rewarded, remember, if you find the runaways—a year off your sentence, at any rate."
The man groped his way in, while Jack and the others quietly drew back to the little platform, where they took their stand. Nearer and nearer drew the Russian; it seemed as though he must discover them, and Jack's hand instinctively went to one of the two pistols he had had the forethought to bring from the junk. Then the voice of the warder, sounding hollow in the vaulted passage, was heard calling.
"Do you find anything?"
"Neither man nor beast," replied the prisoner in a shout. Hitherto he had held his breath, but after speaking he took a mouthful of the foul air. Instantly he turned, rushed down the passage, and stumbled gasping at the opening into the main gallery.
His companions dragged him out into the purer air, and the warder retreated still farther with the lantern. Jack and the others stepped down from the platform, and hurried towards the main gallery, to get the much-needed air while the man was being revived.
"That's enough for that one," they heard the warder say. "We'll push on."