Luckily, I was still cool enough and sane enough to be certain that I should never have time to enlarge the hole so that it would serve to let me out. I knew it must be only a matter of seconds until those in the powder-room would find the breach in the wall, and I should be like a trapped rat. But now my brain was working swiftly and clearly. The wooden bulkhead stopping the passage was merely covered with a bank of earth in the ravelin ditch to conceal it. Would my strength suffice to overturn it? Dropping the sword, I put my shoulder to the bulkhead and heaved. It gave--sprung outward at the top and let a little rain of loosened dirt trickle down upon my head. Again I heaved, lifting until the veins in my forehead seemed about to burst; and I could hear the men in the powder-room dragging the table aside, and pulling the loose bricks out of the breach. Another moment, and-- But that moment was mine. With the final heave the bulwark tilted outward and fell into the outworks ravelin with a smothered crash, carrying me with it. There was a shout from behind to follow me out, and a sentry, pacing his beat on the breast-high banquette beyond the ravelin, stopped, gave a great cry as if he had seen a ghost, and let his musket off. At the musket-fire and the shouts of those who were wriggling through the breach in the wall of the powder-room, there was a rush of the outworks sentinels from both directions. Seeing at once that my only way lay straight before me, I leaped afoot, dragged the dazed gun-firer from the banquette by his legs, and, with another bound, went over the breast-height and tumbled into the moat. Here the palisade, a closely set fence of upright stakes driven into the ditch-bottom, balked me, but only until I could spring and reach the top and clamber up. It was here that I nearly got my quittance. If I should drop into the V-shaped ditch beyond the palisade, there was an even chance that I should not be able to climb out to the top of the abattis breast beyond. But if I could balance on the stakes for the single instant necessary, the gulf could be leaped. I drew myself up, balancing precariously on the stake tops; there was a roar of musketry behind me, a sharp twinge in my right shoulder, and I hurled myself outward into space. I remember vaguely the fall among the sharpened tree-branch spines of the abattis, and, more dimly still, a frenzied effort to roll out of the tangle toward the edge of the sea-slope. After this I knew nothing till I came back to life at the bidding of a tossing and wrenching that seemed to be tearing me limb from limb. The figure was no figure, as I soon discovered. I was in the thick of a group of men who were running swiftly along the beach, four of them carrying me. Somewhere in the background of the night, other men were running, and now and then muskets barked and there came a whining of bullets overhead.