He did wake up, and that so suddenly as to take the party by surprise. He sprang upright on the plank, nothing on but an attenuated prison shirt, and glared at the officials with looks of unmistakable surprise.
"Holloa! What's up! What's the meaning of this?"
Major Hardinge replied, suspicion peeping from his eyes:
"That is what we want to know, and what we intend to know--what does it mean? Why aren't you in your cell?"
The man seemed for the first time to perceive where he was.
"Strike me lucky, if I ain't outside! Somebody must have took me out when I was asleep." Then, realising in whose presence he was--"I beg your pardon, sir, but someone's took me out."
"The one who took you out took all the others too."
The Major gave a side glance at Warder Slater. That intelligent officer seemed to be suffering agonies. The prisoner glanced along the corridor. "If all the blessed lot of 'em ain't out too!"
They were not only all out, but they were all in the same curiously trance-like sleep. Each man had to be separately roused, and each woke with the same startling, sudden bound. No one seemed more surprised to find themselves where they were than the men themselves. And this was not the case in one ward only but in all the wards in the prison. No wonder the officials felt bewildered by the time they had gone the round.
"There's one thing certain," remarked Warder Slater to Warder Puffin, wiping the perspiration from his--Warder Slater's--brow, "if I let them out in one ward, I couldn't 'ardly let them out in all. Not to mention that I don't see how a man of my build's going to carry eight-and-forty men, bed, bedding, and all, out bodily, and that without disturbing one of them from sleep."