Tom managed to squirm to a sitting position. This made him feel better, but it sent the blood again rushing into his sore head, and for a moment or two he felt dizzy and sick. This passed, however, and he began to reason matters out. “I could shout my lungs out,” reasoned Tom, “and no one would hear me. But, wait! I remember something. The tunnel! It’s all right! I can get out if I can free myself!” With the further clearing of his brain it occurred to Tom that some years before he and his father had dug a tunnel, leading from a distant hillside into the cistern. The tunnel passed beneath the foundations of the old shop and the passage was used to conduct some experiments in the action of air currents. Aeroplane models, as one knows, are tested in what is called a wind tunnel, and the Swift underground tunnel was one of the first of these ever made. It had not been used for a long time, however, and the end, opening under the hill, had been boarded up. “But if I can get loose I can walk along the tunnel and I guess I can manage to kick down those boards,” thought Tom. “However, the question is, can I get loose?” At first it seemed that this must be answered in the negative. So firmly had Barsky made the bonds that Tom tugged and strained for some time, to his no small discomfort, without any effect. At last, however, he felt the ropes around his hands, which had been tied behind his back, giving a little. This encouraged him, and, gritting his teeth to keep back involuntary exclamations of pain, he strained harder. It was out of his power to break them, but the ropes stretched a little, and at last, after hard work, he managed to get his hands free. But such was the cruel force with which the cords had been knotted and so long had they been on the captive’s wrists that, even though his hands were now free, he had little use of them. They were numb and helpless. Like limbs “asleep” and, as Tom said afterward, they felt as big as sofa cushions. They soon, however, began to tingle as the blood resumed its circulation, and with the sensation of pins and needles pricking his fingers, Tom began to feel that he could use his hands. This he did in loosening the cords around his feet, and in a few minutes more he was able to stand up, free to move about and take up the matter of getting out of the cistern. It was as dark as a pocket in there, and Tom wished he had with him a small electric flashlight. Almost always he carried one, but this time, just when it was most needed, he was without it. “But I guess I can go by feeling,” he told himself. “This cistern isn’t so immense. It’s circular, and no matter where I start on the wall I’m bound to come to the tunnel opening some time or other. I guess it’s a mighty good thing,” grimly thought Tom, “that there’s no water in this place. No thanks to Barsky, I guess, that there isn’t. He’d have dropped me in just the same, I believe.”