He felt like a Columbus. He wished he could patent such things. He began gingerly to lift the glass from the case of his watch. It broke, and I am sorry to say did what it had done before—it ran into his finger. He sucked the wound, but was willing to forget it in his new-found key to delivery. With a small fragment of the splintered thing he began very painfully sawing at a section of the rope that bound him. He might as well have tried to cut down a fifteen-year oak with a penknife. All things can be accomplished with labour at last, but the life of man is a flash.
He looked desperately at the window, and another dazzling conception struck him. Surely his brain was burgeoning under the heat of nourishing adversity! It occurred to him to break a window-pane!
He did so. The glass fell outward and crashed on the courtyard below. With desperate courage but infinite precautions, he pulled at a jagged piece that remained. Here was something much more like a knife! Triumphantly he began to saw away at the cords, and to his infinite relief the instrument made a rapid and increasing impression. A few seconds more at the most and he would
