What was yet worse, we had agreed to do without signals: every so many minutes by Laclas' watch another man was to be started from the battlements.

Now, I had seemed to myself to be about half an hour in my descent, and it seemed near as long again that I waited, straining on the rope for my next comrade to begin.

I began to be afraid that our conspiracy was out, that my friends were all secured, and that I should pass the remainder of the night, and be discovered in the morning, vainly clinging to the rope's end like a hooked fish upon an angle.

I could not refrain, at this ridiculous image, from a chuckle of laughter.

And the next moment I knew, by the jerking of the rope, that my friend had crawled out of the tunnel and was fairly launched on his descent.