Suddenly a great calm descended upon him. His coolness and clear judgment returned.
"To struggle! Yes—but how?"
At this moment the roar of the Nord-Sud shook his prison walls. An idea took root in his mind.
Might it not be possible to burrow his way through the soil directly to the tunnel! Examining the ground, he decided that it would be simpler to tunnel his way like a mole, skirting the concrete base of the statue and reaching the pavement beyond. It would not be hard work to dislodge one of the paving stones and reach the open air. No sooner was the plan conceived than he broke several of the bottles until he obtained a piece of the thick glass sufficiently jagged to form a trowel.
With this rough implement he then set to work, scooping up the earth and piling it on one side of his cell. Patiently and ceaselessly he continued, hour after hour, until suddenly the hiss of escaping gas could be faintly heard.
"I'm done for this time," he cried in despair. "I shall be asphyxiated!" But a gleam of hope quickly set him to work again.
"Gas is lighter than air. It may percolate through the chinks of the masonry. In any case I'd rather die that way than be starved to death."
It was a race between the escaping gas and the tunnel.
Very soon Fandor began to feel a dizziness in his head, and the air became more difficult to breathe; suddenly, he had the sensation of being enveloped in an extraordinary blue flame, and then a loud report deafened him.
Fandor's prison, saturated with gas, had suddenly blown up!