Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/263

 to find a boat that might carry us to the French side of the river. This plan was approved by my companions.

While we were thus engaged in taking counsel, we heard above us a dull, rumbling noise as from the wheels of vehicles and the heavy tread of great masses of men, from which we concluded that the Prussians were now entering the fortress and occupying the gates and the ramparts. We also heard the striking of a church clock which gave the hour, our bench being near one of the manholes, so that the sounds of the upper world reached us without much difficulty. About nine o'clock in the evening it began to rain so heavily that we could clearly hear the splashing of the water as it poured down. At first it seemed to us that the bad weather would be favorable to our plan of escape. But before long the matter appeared in a different light. We felt that the water was rising in our sewer, and soon it began to shoot through it with great vehemence like a mountain stream. After a while it flooded the bench upon which we were sitting and reached up to our chests. We also perceived living creatures which suddenly, with great activity, rushed and crawled around us. They were undoubtedly rats. “We have to get out,” I said to my companions, “or we shall be drowned.” We left our bench and pushed forward. I had hardly advanced a few steps when in the darkness I ran my head against a hard object. I touched it with my hands and discovered that the obstacle was an iron railing. At once the thought came to me that this railing had been put there for the purpose of cutting off, in time of siege, communication through the sewer between the interior of the town and the outside. This thought, which I communicated at once to my companions, brought us almost to despair. But when I grasped the railing with both hands, as a prisoner may sometimes shake the iron rods of his dungeon window, I