Sitting astride that opening, while Hilliard watched anxiously behind me, I placed the metal angle I carried upon the flat metal sill of the window, one end of its angle catching on the sill while the other end, to which my leather rope was fastened, pointed straight downward toward the great plaza a thousand feet beneath. Then, holding to that leather rope, I slid out of the window's opening; and hung by my hands from the slender rope with only empty air between me and the plaza far below. Tensely I swung there in that moment, but the metal angle caught in the sill held my weight. And so, sliding down the leather rope fastened to it, I felt my feet strike in a moment against the sill of the window below. Another moment and I stood upon that sill, crouching within that window's opening. The window in which I crouched opened into one of the great upper corridors of the electrostatic tower; but I knew that to venture back into the building, swarming now with guards, was to meet death, nor did I plan to do so. Giving my leather rope a twitch, I worked loose the angle resting on the sill above; and, when that dropped toward me, I placed it on the sill on which I stood, and the next moment was sliding down to the window below. And now above me Hilliard, using his own metal angle and leather rope in the same way, was following me, was sliding from window to window after me, down the smooth side of the mighty pinnacle to the street far below. Down--down--like two strange insects we crept downward from window to window. None in the streets below glimpsed the two tiny shapes crawling down the mighty tower's side; for the darkness had deepened now, and in the plaza directly beneath us there were none of the crowds that swirled elsewhere. Our greatest danger, indeed, was that we would be seen by someone inside the tower as we swung down from window to window; and twice I was forced to hang for a few seconds from my leather rope above a window inside which I could hear voices. Yet still down and down we swung, praying that the regular line of windows in the static-tower's side, extended unbroken clear to its base; for otherwise we were lost. Down and down we went, moving more hastily now despite the awful hazards of our progress; so hastily that once Hilliard's hook or angle slipped halfway out from the sill upon which it hung, and all but precipitated him down to death before he could slide into the window beneath him.