"Things may cost more than he expects. At any rate, please hand these to him. I can arrange matters with him when I see him. "Then at about a quarter past twelve we will sally out. We will walk on now, lest any of the warders should happen to notice that we have been a long time on this part of the wall." Ryan had understood but little of what was happening and, when Terence told him what had been arranged, he exclaimed: "Well, after this, Terence, I will never say a word against a Frenchman. Here are these soldiers going to run a lot of risk, and a certainty of getting into a row for us, merely because we did the best we could against those wretched Spaniards; and without getting any reward whatever, for they must know that prisoners are not likely to have any money to spare about them." "Quite so, Ryan; and what is more, if I had a hundred pounds in my pocket, I would not offer them a penny; for certainly they would take it as an insult if I did so. They would feel that it would be a sort of bribe and, though they are ready to help us as comrades, I am sure they would not do it for money. I sincerely hope they won't get into any serious row. As he said, authorities won't be able to tell which party was on guard at the time we went, and they could hardly put the whole of them under arrest--at least, not keep them under arrest. No doubt there will be a close search in the town for us, but there is little fear of our being discovered. "Our dangers won't begin until we are fairly afloat. I know nothing about sailing. I have rowed a boat many a time, at Athlone; but as for sailing, I have never once tried it." "Nor have I," Ryan said. "But I suppose there is no difficulty about it. You put up the sail, and you take hold of the rope at the corner, and off you go." "It sounds all right, Dicky, and I dare say we shall manage to get along, somehow; but these things are not half as easy as they look. Now we had better have four or five hours' sleep this afternoon, for I expect it will take us the best part of the night to file through the bars. You must not cut quite through them, but just leave them so that we can finish them off in a short time, tomorrow night." "But the warder might notice them?" "He is not likely to look very sharply, Dicky; but at the same time, it is just as well not to put too great a strain on his loyalty. We will keep a piece of bread over from our supper, work it up into a sort of paste, fill up any cuts we make, and rub it over with dirt till it well matches the bars. Certainly they have planned the affair capitally, so as to throw doubt as to which way we descended, and so divide the blame between as many of the sentries as possible."