"Help! Help!" cried the voice again, and
then "Gerard! Colonel Gerard!" It was my poor captain of
infantry whom they were slaughtering.
"Murderers! Murderers!" I yelled, and I kicked at my door, but
again I heard him shout and then everything was silent. A minute
later there was a heavy splash, and I knew that no human eye
would ever see Auret again. He had gone as a hundred others had
gone whose names were missing from the roll-calls of their
regiments during that winter in Venice.
The steps returned along the passage, and I thought that they
were coming for me. Instead of that they opened the door of the
cell next to mine and they took someone out of it. I heard the
steps die away up the stair.
At once I renewed my work upon the planks, and within a very few
minutes I had loosened them in such a way that I could remove and
replace them at pleasure. Passing through the aperture I found
myself in the farther cell, which, as I expected, was the other
half of the one in which I had been confined.
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