For seventeen days they had been working and the tunnel was now fifty-three feet long. In order to save time, Rose had made the last few feet so narrow that it was impossible for him to even turn over or shift his position. All day long he worked. Night came and he still toiled on, although his strokes were so feeble that he only advanced by inches each hour. Finally it was nearly midnight of the last day and Rose had reached the limit of his strength. The fanners were so exhausted that they could no longer push the air to the end of the tunnel. Rose felt himself dying of suffocation. He was too weak to crawl backward, nor had he strength to take another stroke. The air became fouler and thicker and he felt his senses leaving him and he gasped again and again in a struggle for one breath of pure air. In what he felt was his death agony, he finally forced himself over on his back and struck the earth above him with his fists as he unconsciously clutched at his throat in the throes of suffocation. Thrusting out his arms in one last convulsive struggle, he suddenly felt both fists go through the earth and a draught of pure, life-giving air came in. For a moment Rose had the terrible feeling that it was too late and that he was too sick to rally. Once again, however, his indomitable courage drove back death. For some minutes he lay slowly breathing the air of out-of-doors. It was like the elixir of life to him after long months of breathing the foul atmosphere of the prison and tunnel. Little by little his strength came back and he slowly enlarged the hole and finally thrust his head and shoulders cautiously out into the yard. The first thing that caught his eye was a star and he felt as if he had broken out of the grave and come back again to hope and life. He found that he was still on the prison side of the wall, but directly in front of him was a gate which was fastened only by a swinging bar. Rose spent some moments practicing raising this bar until he felt sure he could do it quietly and swiftly. Just outside was the sentry beat. Rose waited until the sentry's back was turned, opened the gate and peered out, convincing himself that there was plenty of time to pass out of the gate and into the darkness beyond before the sentry turned to come back. He then lowered himself again into the stifling tunnel, drew a plank which he found in the yard over the opening, after first carefully concealing the fresh earth, and crept back again into Rat Hell.