As the hours wore on he fell into an uneasy slumber, despite the painfulness of his position, and during this time of unconsciousness the matter must have been settled.
It was yet dark when the steamer arrived at Albany, and, very much to the prisoner's surprise, the two men left the room, fastening the door behind them. Then Jet heard a noise as if something was being done to the lock, after which a deep silence reigned.
"They're going to leave me here, and have put something into the lock so the door can't be opened in a hurry," he said to himself, and during the next ten minutes he struggled desperately to free himself.
The bonds had been adjusted by an expert, and he might as well have tried to fly as to hope to remove them unaided.
He was both thirsty and hungry, and every limb ached from being so long in one position.
It seemed an almost endless time before the sounds of people moving proclaimed that the passengers were leaving the steamer.
Then another long interval, during which he could hear the noises of the city, and finally some one knocked on the door of the room.
If he could have cried out then his term of imprisonment would have been speedily ended.
"Some fool has broken the key in the lock," he heard one of the servants say after trying several times to open the door. "We may as well wait till the engineer can come up."
Jet was rapidly losing heart. He counted the minutes, as if such a course would make the time pass more rapidly, and was so thoroughly exhausted when, at nearly three o'clock in the afternoon, the work of picking the lock was begun, that he could not have made himself heard even had the gag been removed.