"Then I'll go first," said Agathemer. "You are, even yet, far more impaired in strength by your beating than I by my flogging. If I came second you might not be able to hold on to the opening of the drain. I know I can hold on, no matter how much filth is plastered over my head as you crawl over me. I should not like the idea of defiling your head with filth in crawling over you. Jump so that your clutching hands just reach my shoulders; so that your weight will come on me gradually as you sink into the ooze. Take your time about crawling over me. Be sure to pass back to me one cylinder." Then he drilled me as to the signals he would give me by pinching my feet. When he was sure we both knew them he grinned a wry grin, and made a whimsical boyish gesture with his uplifted right hand, took a careful stand on the sill, balanced himself and jumped. "I'm all right," he called back, "and ready for you." Three times I tried to slam that door and failed to shut it. The fourth time I found myself, my back against the shut door, my toes sticking out over the edge of the stone sill, balanced in the pitch dark on a too narrow ledge. "Lean back against the door," Agathemer called, thickly. "If it gives it is not shut." It did not give. I said so. "Then no one will ever know how we got out," said Agathemer; adding: "Jump when you are ready, but say 'now.'" I jumped and my fingers caught his shoulders. He held on. My body sank slowly through the ooze, which gave way with a sickening sliminess, until I was in contact with Agathemer all the way to my toes. Then I began to try to crawl up over him. I found it far harder than either of us had anticipated. All slippery as we were with the foul ooze it was a fearful struggle for me to scramble up over him, I slipped back so often. After what seemed an hour of effort and apprehension I had my head, shoulders and most of my body in the drain and knew I had succeeded. I wriggled forward till I felt my feet beyond the opening, then about as far ahead, pushing before me the cylinders. When Agathemer touched my foot I pushed a cylinder past my body and felt, with my ankle, that he pulled it back. After that, escape was a matter of wriggling on down the drain. And wriggling was not impossible, though excessively difficult and exhausting. The drain was nowhere choked with silt, but all along was furred with ooze and there was more than an inch of ooze along its bottom. In this, hitching myself forward on my elbows by violent contortions, I slipped back almost as much as I heaved forward. Agathemer seemed to have as much trouble as I had and to find the effort as exhausting. For he had instructed me that I was not to crawl forward until he pinched my foot. One pinch was to mean "advance," two pinches "rest." More than once he had signalled me to rest.