Grunt looked in at another orderlies' room above the exit, and asked them to blow out their lamp and make a noise. The six then crept quietly into the prearranged room, and waited breathlessly by the door.
Sentries were changed, and once again all became still. One lived every second of that waiting.
Their plan now depended on the aid of Pat. Although debarred from escaping himself, he was willing to help others to liberty at considerable risk to himself. Punctually at 9.15, the hour at which the parties in the different houses were allowed to start, Pat's clear tones could be heard calling to the sentry on the alley-way—
"Nebuchi, nebuchi, jigara dushdu." ("Sentry, sentry, I've dropped my cigarettes.")
And indeed he had: a hundred scattered about a cabbage-bed should keep the sentry busy for some time. But the wretched man nearly upset all calculations. Wearied with a quarter of an hour's duty, he was already almost asleep.
It was a moment of terrible suspense for the six officers waiting, ready loaded up with their kits, in the ground-floor room opposite to the kitchen. The door of this led on to the alley-way; normally it was disused and kept locked, but the lock had now been picked and the door could be opened in a moment.
Would the sentry hear Pat calling? And would he desert his post even if he did hear?
They had heard Pat's first sentence. No reply.
It was repeated, then again and again.