Page:Randall Parrish--My Lady of the South.djvu/143

AN EFFORT TO ESCAPE was any way whatsoever of escape I must discover it alone, and with the smallest possible delay. I ate like a famished wolf, the abundance of food, together with the pot of steaming coffee, yielding me new courage and strength. There was no sound without, no evidence that I was under any special guard. Probably my captors, confident of the security of the room, felt that any escape therefrom was impossible. With heart rapidly beating 1 crept across to where I had previously been at work, fully determined now to test the efficiency of my improvised lever.

To my delight the board came up slowly, the only sound a slight rasping of the nails; by moving my apparatus I thus succeeded in releasing the entire length of the plank. Except for the joists I could feel nothing below, yet it was necessary to dislodge a second board before I could succeed in squeezing my body through the narrow opening. With the purchase I now had this was not a difficult operation, although the board selected snapped sharply under the strain. Apparently the sound was unheard, and, after waiting several minutes, I swung down through the opening thus made, and let go my hold. The fall could not have been more than a few feet, yet my knees doubled under as I struck, and I pitched forward upon my hands. I was in a cellar, the floor paved with irregular blocks of stone, the side walls of solid plaster. I felt my way cautiously around the three sides of the place before discovering the door, which stood ajar, opening forth into a second apartment, not greatly dissimilar, although more littered up with various odds and ends. It was with difficulty I found passage amid the [ 133 ]