floor some forty feet deep, and tunnelling underneath the main wall so as to reach the bottom of the great moat upon the outside. Tremendous an undertaking as this was, these bold men completed it in forty nights, for they could not work upon it in the daytime.

This work, which was worthy of an experienced engineer, with all the implements for sapping, they commenced by sawing a trapdoor out of one of the boards upon the floor with a piece of tin, which fitted so exactly that the officers never discovered it, though they often stood directly upon the place. From this trapdoor they commenced digging the perpendicular shaft with sharp sticks and small knives, and as they proceeded downward, the disengaged earth was elevated by a hair rope being tied to one of their small provision baskets. This earth, when drawn up, was so nicely distributed under the board floor as to raise them all equally, and thereby not attract the notice of the guards.[375]

One great difficulty they had to encounter wellnigh defeated their enterprise. This was, that after they had descended to a considerable depth, the carbonic acid gas, which was generated from the coal fires used in the castle, being heavier than the atmosphere, descended into their pit, in which no one could labour but a very few minutes before he had to ascend to prevent suffocation. Notwithstanding this serious impediment, there was always a fresh hand to supply the place of the last labourer. Thus the work progressed for many nights, when the volume of this destructive gas became so deep that it would nearly exhaust one before he could reach the bottom of the shaft. In this situation, when the work progressed by fractional parts of inches, it would seem that a kind Providence directed the course of the tunnel so as to intersect with a gopher hole, which communicated with the bottom of the great moat upon the outside, and through which this deadly gas escaped, thus affording the sappers power to push the work with greater energy.

On the night of the 24th they were nearly through, and all their preparations being made, the following night they passed out and ascended the outer wall of the moat, and crossed over the chevaux de frize as we had previously done. Thus did these heroes celebrate the first anniversary of the "decimation," and make the 25th another memorable day of their captivity. On the 25th we had crossed the Rio Grande, and drove Ampudia's legions behind the [376] walls of Mier: on the 25th, the most cold-blooded murder of the nineteenth century was perpetrated upon our seventeen decimated countrymen: on the 25th we entered the gloomy cells of Perote; and on the 25th the noble Cameron was murdered.

The morning after the escape, the remainder of our prisoners, who looked upon it as another triumph of Texian prowess, did not wait for the guards to find it out, but ran to Guts, and said that "another sixteen of the Texians have gone, señor."7

"Hai Dios! Diez y seis falten? Carajo!"8 - My God! Sixteen missing? O villains!