Then followed a roar of acclamation. Then Black Pablo said:
"Patience a little while, amigos, until the chief comes. I go to make ready the fire!...."
I sprang to my feet. I heard no more of the talk outside, the cries, the laughter, the chaff. The time had come for action. I must decide at once between complete capitulation to Grundt or one last bid for liberty.
But what guarantees had I that Grundt, with the heliograph in his possession, would respect any promise he might give me as the price of surrender? None. I could not trust him and, as he had told me, he had an old score to pay off. And if anything should happen to me before the yacht returned what would become of Marjorie? Free I might help her; therefore any risk was justifiable to secure my escape.
Escape? But how?
The shed was solidly built of heavy logs, the door the only visible means of egress. The grating which admitted the air was a steel-bound frame too narrow, as I could see at a glance, to admit the passage of my body. I scrutinised the floor. It was of planking, well-made and seemingly in good condition. It struck hollow to the foot and I surmised that, as is generally the case with sheds of this kind, the structure was laid on a concrete foundation.
In the course of my examination of the boarding I moved the pile of sail-cloth. Beneath it was a plank in which an iron ring was sunk. The sheer unexpectedness of my discovery, the prospect of escape it opened to me, left me with brain numbed, irresolute. The talk and laughter had died down outside, but, from time to time, my ear caught a measured foot-tread as though a guard were walking up and down before the shed....
The plank came up easily enough. My heart sank within me. It revealed merely a shallow trough about three feet deep going down to the foundations of the shed which, as I had guessed, were set in concrete.
I got down into the hole and crawled in under the floor. It was pitch-dark and abominably hot down there under the boards with a strong smell of rats. Face downwards, my head frequently scraping the planks above me, I crawled along the concrete bed, hoping against hope that I might find some hole, where the outer wall of the shed rested on the concrete base, which would enable me to scramble through to freedom.
But I was doomed to disappointment. Here and there I found a cranny wide enough for the flat of my hand to pass. But nowhere was there an opening large enough to take anything bigger than a cat. I could only conclude that the trap I had found was made for the purpose of allowing repairs to be effected to the lower woodwork of the shed.