After awhile he started to roll over slowly, painfully, upon his back. It was an almost impossible feat, considering that his hands were bound behind him and his ankles tied together so that every motion caused him almost unendurable agony.
But after an age of dogged trying, he accomplished it at last and lay on his back, straining his eyes in the attempt to distinguish the outlines of this prison.
There was a slit about big enough to allow a man’s hand to pass through, evidently a crevice in the rock. Phil figured that if he were standing the slit would be about on a level with his head. Through this make-believe window there flickered a faint red glow, probably a reflection of the glare from the fire without.
As Phil’s eyes became more accustomed to the darkness he distinguished a bulky object running along one side of the dungeon—probably belonging to that type of prison furniture which serves as a bench in the day time and a bed at night.
There was a damp, musty smell about the place, intolerably close and stifling and there was a scuffling over in one corner suggestive of rats.
If he could only get his feet free for a moment, thought Phil desperately. There must be some way out of the place if he could only find it.
For a moment he thought furiously of breaking his bonds by sheer strength, but his tortured flesh cried out so in protest that he was forced to give up the attempt.
Anyway, if he should break his bonds, what good would it do him? Here he was in what seemed to be a cavern hollowed out from the heart of the rock. There was one little aperture about big enough for his hand to go through. The only other exit was the door and that was bolted and padlocked securely.
“I’m caught and I might as well make up my mind to it,” he thought bitterly. Then, because it hurt his wrists still more to lie on his back, he began the slow and painful process of turning on his face again.
He was conscious suddenly of a new and overwhelming discomfort. He was hungry—ravenously hungry. For an hour, whose every minute seemed an age, he lay there, motionless while his feet and hands lost all sense of feeling. He wondered miserably if part of Espato’s plan of torture included starving him to death.