Connell, Macklin, myself--we three had faced in our time perils and risks enough, but so overwhelming was the doom that hung over us and over our nation now that it stunned us, held us in stupefied despair. But one of us there was that was not so stunned, and that was Hilliard, my young second officer. His eager, restive nature, chafing at our imprisonment and at the thing that was looming for our land, resisted stubbornly the deep hopelessness that had settled upon the rest of us, and hour after hour he spent in pacing about the little cell, or in striving to devise some means for escaping from it. And at last, upon the fourth day of our imprisonment there in the tower, he turned suddenly toward us with an eager cry upon his lips. CHAPTER VI A Daring Venture "I have it!" he exclaimed. "A way that two of us can win free with--and maybe all! A chance out of millions, with death at the end of it, maybe, but a chance to get Connell and his secret back!" "But how?" I questioned. "How can two of us, even, get clear of this cell?" "The guards!" he exclaimed excitedly. "The two guards that bring our food each dawn and dusk--if we can overpower them--" "It's useless, Hilliard," I said. "Even if we did overpower them we could not pass the score of other guards in the corridor outside, or the scores of others on its lower floors." "But listen," he appealed, and then, as he went on to detail to us the plan that he had devised, I felt some slight measure of hope rising within me, saw that dawning hope reflected in the faces of Connell and Macklin. "It _is_ a chance!" he exclaimed. "And if we can do it, if I can get back to our own land, it means a chance still for the American Federation! For the European and Asiatic Federations won't be starting their attack for another ten days or more, their preparations not finished till then, and in that time by bending every effort toward it our own engineers could put the new tube-propellers in all our American air-cities! Could make those cities able to meet the enemy cities, attack when it comes!" So, with that foremost in mind, we swiftly decided that upon that very evening, when our guards brought our food at dusk, we would put the plan into operation, would stake everything upon it. For even if but two of us could escape by it, if Connell could be one of those two, and could get back across the Atlantic with his tremendous secret, it meant a fighting-chance for our Federation. And with that in mind the rest of us were willing to take all chances, to dare all risks. Risky enough the thing would be, we knew, all depending upon what occurred in one moment of rushing action, and numberless were the features of it that might go entirely wrong and ruin us. But we steeled ourselves with the thought of what would become of our Federation if we failed. And so ready and tense with resolution we waited for the coming of dusk.