“The bolt must have slipped when the door slammed,” the chief engineer decided, bringing his mechanical mind to bear on the problem. “Maybe we can shove it back with a thin strip of board.”
He found a bit that he thought might answer the purpose and went to the window with it, but one or two trials convinced him that the bolt could not be reached in that way.
“Don’t waste your strength on that idea,” the Captain said. “These heavy bolts cannot slip so easily. Indeed, I should be very sorry to think that it had slipped of itself, for in that case we might possibly be kept here for days, without sufficient provisions. Evidently some one has fastened the bolt. Either there was some one else on the island from the beginning, or the guardian of the castle has returned and shut us in. I hope that is the case, for whoever shut us in will let us out. At any rate, we will eat some breakfast before doing anything else. By that time it will be daylight.”
Somehow it did not seem quite so romantic to be encamped in Louis-Philippe’s cell when they were actually prisoners. Kit could not help making a mental picture of some visitor opening the door after weeks had passed, and finding them all lying starved to death. The coffee was comforting in the raw morning, but the breakfast was not as jolly a meal as the supper had been.
“Now,” said the Captain, when they were done eating, “we will see what we can do toward getting out. It is growing light outside. You reach a piece of board through the window, Haines, and pound it against the wall, and halloo at the same time. If there is any one in the castle, he will be pretty sure to hear it.”
Haines followed these directions, and made such a racket that it seemed as if it must have been heard across the water in Marseilles.
“Somebody’s coming!” he exclaimed, after a minute or two of pounding. “I hear a footstep on the stones below.”
“Halloo!” he shouted. “Halloo there! Come and unfasten the door! We want to get out!”
“Here he comes!” Haines cried, a moment later. “It’s a soldier. He’s coming up the stairs.”
“Then let me take your place,” the Captain said; “I will do the talking.”