"We die for success, we die for failure! It is all one!" The next morning, after a sleepless night, Truxton King made his first determined attempt to escape.

All night long he had lain there thinking of the horrid thing that was to happen on the black 26th.

He counted the days, the hours, the minutes.

Morning brought the 23d.

Only three days more! Oh, if he could but get one word to John Tullis, the man Marlanx feared; if he could only break away from these fiends long enough to utter one cry of warning to the world, even with his dying gasp! Marlanx feared the Americans! He even feared him, a helpless captive! The thrill of exultation that ran through his veins was but the genesis of an impulse that mastered him later on.
He knew that two armed men stood guard in the outer room day and night.
The door to the stairway leading into the armourer's shop was of iron and heavily barred; the door opening into the sewer was even more securely bolted; besides, there was a great stone door at the foot of the passage.