“If we’re hanging by that thread to eternity, God help us,” I replied bitterly, for the grim humour of my brother’s speech chilled my marrow.

“It is a slim chance, but—­hang it—­a slim chance is better than none.”

So we hugged that sorry comfort to our hearts and fell again into silence.

* * * * *

I remember that the folly, the fatuity of what we had done, oppressed me like an iron band around the skull.  Common sense told me that the man who had decoyed us into Chinatown would not be satisfied with robbery.  And what were the lives of two “white devils” to the owner of this den?  Suffered to escape, we might inform the police.  The logical conclusion of my reflections is not worth recording.

“When that scoundrel emptied the till into his pocket he made up his mind there and then never to come back,” said Ajax in my ear.  His thoughts had been travelling along the same lines as mine, and at about the same pace.  I was convinced of this when he added slowly:  “Starvation may be their game.  It would be the safest to play.”

Then the mad, riotous desire to fight got hold of both of us.  We began to search for a weapon:  anything—­a stick, a stone, a bit of iron.  But we found nothing.

We had never carried pistols, and our pocket knives were hardly keen or strong enough to sharpen a pencil.

Despair was again gripping me when Ajax touched my arm.  We had examined the filthy floor of the room very systematically, kneeling side by side in the darkness and groping with eager fingers in the dirty sand, for there was no floor.

“I have something,” he murmured.  Then he seized my right hand in his left and guided it to some solid object lying deep in the sand.

The object proved to be a log.  San Francisco is built on sand dunes, and in early days the houses were log-cabins for the most part, constructed of logs that two stout men could handle.  After many minutes of silent but most vigorous excavation we joyfully decided that one of these very logs had come into our possession.

We worked steadily for about half an hour, pausing now and again to listen.  We were practically certain that the opium fiend had gone to his pipe, and it was more than probable that the fat Mongol was no longer on guard, knowing that we were safe in a strong-box to which he alone held the key.  Events proved we were wrong in both conjectures.

When the log was ready for use as a battering-ram we held a council of war, which lasted about half a minute.  If there is obviously only one thing to be done, the sooner it is done the better.  I grasped the forward end of our weapon, Ajax, being the heavier, took the other, and we charged that door with such hearty goodwill that at the first assault it yielded, lock and hinges being torn from the woodwork, and the door itself falling flat with a crash like the crack o’ doom.  Ajax, the log, and I