His form was just visible as he passed by a small iron-barred window, and now was the opportunity. They could cross unobserved to the kitchen. An open door, three steps across the alley-way, a fumble with the kitchen door staple; another open door, a turn to the left, bend down or you'll knock your head off getting into the fowl-house, starlight showing in a black wall, through head first and almost on your face into long grass, and there you are--a free man. Meanwhile Pat was no doubt explaining to the delighted old sentry from the upper window how he could have a few cigarettes himself and return the remainder next morning. We sometimes wonder whether the sentry was foolish enough to mention to his relief about the cigarettes he had been given. At the time of writing we are still ignorant how long it was before our departure was discovered.[9] Looney and Old Man, being already on the spot, had been granted the privilege of leading through the hole, the remainder following in an order arranged by lot, since ours was not the only party represented. It so happened that the two of the other party were sandwiched between the other four of ours. This caused a temporary separation; for at the best it took an appreciable time to crawl through the wall and pick oneself up on the other side, but these two were especially slow. Grunt too had lost time when it came to his turn. Impatiently waiting to see the starry sky once more when the then broad form of Johnny should have ceased to obscure the hole, he eventually discovered that the cause of the darkness was not that Johnny had jammed, but that the canvas flap had fallen, and was covering the hole all too effectively. Our main object at this stage was to avoid disturbing the garden chowkidars, and therefore each as he emerged lost no time in creeping along the high garden wall, and dropping down into the friendly shelter of the river bed. For all its "hundred springs"--the meaning of the name "Yozgad"--the river for the greater part of the year consisted merely of a shallow and dirty stream, not more than ten feet broad, although its banks were as many yards apart, and from five to eight feet in height. It was along this that we all turned down-stream, Johnny now taking the lead. A few days previously he had suddenly developed a passionate interest in natural history. A polite letter, in which the word "ornithological" played a great part, was written to the commandant, and Johnny was permitted to join two real naturalists in an expedition starting at 4 A.M. on our last Sunday morning at Yozgad.