The gaoler, recovering from his amaze, whipped out one of the revolvers he wore in his belt.  But Jack, leaping forward, knocked it from his hand before he could fire; and, with one hand clapped across the fellow’s bearded lips, wound his other arm about the stalwart body so as to prevent for the instant the drawing of the second pistol.

Alan’s first blow had missed clean; but his second did not.  Following up his right-hand blow with all a trained boxer’s swift dexterity, he sent a straight left hander flush on the angle of the light-bearer’s jaw.  The man dropped his lantern and collapsed into a senseless heap on the floor, while Alan, with no further delay, rushed toward the gaoler.

The fall of the lantern extinguished the light.  The cell was again plunged in dense blackness, through which could be heard the panting and scuffing of the Prince and the gaoler.

Barely a second of time had elapsed since first Jack had seized the man, but that second had sufficed for the latter to summon his great brute strength and shake off his less gigantic opponent and to draw his pistol.

“Quick, Alan!” gasped Jack.  “He’s got away from me.  He’ll—­”

Drummond, guided by his friend’s voice, darted forward through the darkness, caught his foot against the sprawling body of the lantern-bearer and fell heavily, his arms thrown out in an instinctive gesture of self-preservation.  Even as he lost his balance he heard a sharp click, directly in front of him.  The gaoler had pulled the trigger, and his pistol—­ contract-made and out of order, like many of the weapons of common soldiers in Russia’s frontier posts—­ had missed fire.

To that luckiest of mishaps, the failure of a defective cartridge to explode, the friends owed their momentary safety.

As Alan pitched forward, one of his outing arms struck against an obstacle.  It was a human figure, and from the feel of the leather straps, which his fingers touched in the impact, he knew it was the gaoler and not Lamont.

Old football tactics coming to memory, Alan clung to the man his arm had chanced upon, and bore him along to the ground; Jack, who had pressed forward in the darkness, being carried down as well by the other’s fall.

Gaoler, Prince and Englishman thus struggled on the stone floor in one indistinguishable heap.  It was no ordinary combat of two to one, for neither of the prisoners could say which was the gaoler and which his friend.  The gaoler, troubled by no such doubts, laid about him lustily, and was only prevented from crying out by the fact that his heavy fur cap had, in the fall, become jammed down over his face as far as the chin and could not for the moment be dislodged.

He reached for and drew the sword-bayonet that hung at his side (for his second pistol had become lost in the scrimmage), and thrust blindly about him.  Once, twice his blade met resistance and struck into flesh.