The descent of the ladder was easily accomplished and they walked through the shrubberies to the fence which separated the garden from the yard containing the barracks. Here they handed the prince across to each other, like a parcel, and then, taking the same road as when they came, they reached the quarries. The night was bright enough to allow them to see their way; and, moreover, they had in front of them a diffused glow which seemed to rise from the guard-house at the entrance to the tunnel. And indeed all the lights there were burning; and the men were standing outside the shed, drinking coffee. A soldier was pacing up and down in front of the tunnel, with his rifle on his shoulder. "We are two," whispered Bernard. "There are six of them; and, at the first shot fired, they will be joined by some hundreds of Boches who are quartered five minutes away. It's a bit of an unequal struggle, what do you say?" What increased the difficulty to the point of making it insuperable was that they were not really two but three and that their prisoner hampered them most terribly. With him it was impossible to hurry, impossible to run away. They would have to think of some stratagem to help them. Slowly, cautiously, stealing along in such a way that not a stone rolled from under their footsteps or the prince's, they described a circle around the lighted space which brought them, after an hour, close to the tunnel, under the rocky slopes against which its first buttresses were built. "Stay there," said Paul to Bernard, speaking very low, but just loud enough for the prince to hear. "Stay where you are and remember my instructions. First of all, take charge of the prince, with your revolver in your right hand and with your left hand on his collar. If he struggles, break his head. That will be a bad business for us, but just as bad for him. I shall go back to a certain distance from the shed and draw off the five men on guard. Then the man doing sentry down there will either join the rest, in which case you go on with the prince, or else he will obey orders and remain at his post, in which case you fire at him and wound him . . . and go on with the prince." "Yes, I shall go on, but the Boches will come after me and catch us up." "No, they won't." "If you say so. . . ." "Very well, that's understood. And you, sir," said Paul to the prince, "do you understand? Absolute submission; if not, the least carelessness, a mere mistake may cost you your life." Bernard whispered in his brother-in-law's ear: "I've picked up a rope; I shall fasten it round his neck; and, if he jibs, he'll feel a sharp tug to recall him to the true state of things. Only, Paul, I warn you that, if he takes it into his head to struggle, I am incapable of killing him just like that, in cold blood."