"So we started to digging, beginning on the side opposite the door--our utensils being a sharpened bone, my pocket-knife, and a bayonet which had dropped from a sentry's scabbard, and which I managed to pick up on our exercise walk in the court-yard and conceal in the straw on which we slept. This straw too helped hide the dirt. We rammed the wisps up into each end of the pallets, put the excavated earth in the middle with a dusting of loose straw over it, and so hid our work from view. At the end of a month we had a hole under the wall large enough to wriggle in. I could see the daylight through the loose earth on the other side. Then we waited for a storm, the rainy season being on and thunder showers frequent. Two, three, four nights went by without a cloud; then it began to pour. We determined to try it just before the guards were changed. This was at 2 A. M. by the church clock. The outgoing sentry would be tired then and the new man not thoroughly awake. "When the hour came I crawled in head first, worked myself to the end of the tunnel, and, putting out my hands to break away the remaining clods of earth, came bump up against a piece of heavy board. There I lay trembling. The board could never have rolled down from anywhere, nor could our opening have been detected from the outside. "Somebody had placed it there on purpose! "I wriggled back feet foremost, whispered in my companions' ears what I had found, and we all three sat up the rest of the night wondering what the devil it meant. When morning broke, the head jailer came in. I noticed instantly a change in his manner. Instead of a few perfunctory questions, he gave a cursory glance around the cell, his eyes resting on the pile of straw, and turning short on his heel left without a word. "There was no question now but we were suspected, so we held a council of war and determined to keep quiet--at least for some nights. What was up we didn't know, but at all events it was best to go slow. So we stuffed most of the dirt back in the hole and waited--our ears open to every sound, our teeth chattering. You get pretty nervous in jail--especially when you have about made up your mind that the next hour is your last. "We didn't wait long. "That afternoon the bolts were slid back and the head jailer, who had never before appeared at that hour, stood in the doorway. "I thought right away that it was all over with us; that we were discovered and that we were either to be shot or moved to another cell--I really didn't care which, for instant death could not be much worse than lingering in a South American prison until we were gray-bearded and forgotten. "The jailer stepped inside, half closed the door, and made this announcement: "'The American consul is outside and wants to see you.' Then he stepped out, leaving the door open.