a chance of our
getting out of this terrible tomb into the free air and sunshine once
more? However it was to be managed I could not make out. I trusted
mostly to Starlight, who seemed to know everything, and to be quite easy
about the way it would all turn out.

All that I could get out of him afterwards was that on a certain night a
man would be waiting with two horses outside of the gaol wall; and that
if we had the luck to get out safe, and he thought we should, we would
be on their backs in three minutes, and all the police in New South
Wales wouldn't catch us once we got five minutes' start.

This was all very well if it came out right; but there was an awful lot
to be done before we were even near it. The more I began to think over
it the worse it looked; sometimes I quite lost heart, and believed we
should never have half a chance of carrying out our plan.

We knew from the other prisoners that men had tried from time to time
to get away. Three had been caught. One had been shot dead--he was
lucky--another had fallen off the wall and broke his leg. Two had got
clear off, and had never been heard of since.

We were all locked up in our cells every evening, and at five o'clock,
too. We didn't get out till six in the morning; a long, long time. Cold
enough in the bitter winter weather, that had then come in, and a long,
weary, wretched time to wait and watch for daylight.

Well, first of all, we had to get the cell door open. That was the
easiest part of the lot. There's always men in a big gaol that all kinds
of keys and locks are like large print to. They can make most locks fly
open like magic; what's more, they're willing to do it for anybody
else, or show them how. It keeps their hand in; they have a pleasure in
spiting those above them whenever they can do it.

The getting out of the cell was easy enough, but there was a lot of
danger after you had got out. A passage to cross, where the warder,
with his rifle, walked up and down every half-hour all night; then a big
courtyard; then another smaller door in the wall; then the outer
yard for those prisoners who are allowed to work at stone-cutting or
out-of-door trades.

After all this there was the great outer wall to climb up and drop down
from on the other side.

We managed to pick our night well. A French convict, who liked that
sort of thing, gave me the means of undoing the cell door. It was three
o'clock in the morning, when in winter most peopl