A hinge gave out a resentful
groan. One of the men stirred, and my heart stood still. I cursed
myself for a fool to have thus jeopardized our chances for escape; but
there was nothing for it now but to see the adventure through.

With a spring as swift and as noiseless as a tiger's I lit beside the
guardsman who had moved. My hands hovered about his throat awaiting
the moment that his eyes should open. For what seemed an eternity to
my overwrought nerves I remained poised thus. Then the fellow turned
again upon his side and resumed the even respiration of deep slumber.

Carefully I picked my way between and over the soldiers until I had
gained the rack at the far side of the room. Here I turned to survey
the sleeping men. All were quiet. Their regular breathing rose and
fell in a soothing rhythm that seemed to me the sweetest music I ever
had heard.

Gingerly I drew a long-sword from the rack. The scraping of the
scabbard against its holder as I withdrew it sounded like the filing of
cast iron with a great rasp, and I looked to see the room immediately
filled with alarmed and attacking guardsmen. But none stirred.

The second sword I withdrew noiselessly, but the third clanked in its
scabbard with a frightful din. I knew that it must awaken some of the
men at least, and was on the point of forestalling their attack by a
rapid charge for the doorway, when again, to my intense surprise, not a
black moved. Either they were wondrous heavy sleepers or else the
noises that I made were really much less than they seemed to me.

I was about to leave the rack when my attention was attracted by the
revolvers. I knew that I could not carry more than one away with me,
for I was already too heavily laden to move quietly with any degree of
safety or speed. As I took one of them from its pin my eye fell for
the first time on an open window beside the rack. Ah, here was a
splendid means of escape, for it let directly upon the dock, not twenty
feet from the water's edge.

And as I congratulated myself, I heard the door opposite me open, and
there looking me full in the face stood the officer of the guard. He
evidently took in the situation at a glance and appreciated the gravity
of it as quickly as I, for our revolvers came up simultaneously and the
sounds of the two reports were as one as we touched the buttons on the
grips that exploded the cartridges.

I felt the wind of his bullet as it whizzed past my ear, an