The plan was simplicity itself. It merely provided for Max and Dale to enter the workshop during the night and to work as much mischief among the machines as they could, consistently with the need for silence and the avoidance or silencing of the watchmen. For some days they had kept the place under close observation, and noted the hours and habits of the watchmen and the sentinels at either end of the building until they knew them as well as the men themselves. Dubec they would not bring with them. He was eager to come, but the work required alertness and lightness of hand and foot rather than strength, and for this he would have been of no use. Besides, the two lads, keen as they were on their self-imposed tasks, were not unmindful of the fact that he had a wife and children to mourn him should the venture come to grief. All, however, seemed to go well. Max and Dale succeeded in effecting an entrance into the ground floor of the workshop after they had seen the watchman, by the glint of his lamp, make his midnight round. The two soldiers--one at each end of the building--saw nothing and heard nothing, of that they were assured. Without delay, therefore, for in a little over an hour the watchman would be back from his rounds upon the upper floors, they proceeded to put out of action the more valuable and more complicated machines in the building. It was necessary, of course, that they should be almost silent; so their mode of procedure was to muffle up in an old blanket the most delicate and fragile parts of the machines before smashing them with a heavy hammer well swathed in flannel wrappings. The machines dealt with first were those farthest from the route that would be taken by the watchman on his next round. Consequently, when he came, he passed along swinging his lantern in utter ignorance that anything was amiss, or that two men lay in ambush close at hand, ready to spring upon him should he suspect anything wrong and pause to investigate. As soon as he had passed out of ear-shot the two recommenced their work with redoubled energy, and some two and a half hours were thus consumed in work that utterly spoiled a large proportion of the valuable machines which filled the great workshop.