"How is it," I asked, "that you managed to escape?"
"At night, when cleaning the pools, we would be unchained, in order to protect the chain from dampness and rust—we were then only roped together by the neck—I had not been put on the rope until the age of fourteen, at which time I suppose my master adjudged it wise—prior to that I had been free a bit to sport in the pools before they were drained and sometimes to run errands for the Master of the Baths—it was during those years that I learned how to swim and also became familiar with the streets of Turia—one night in my seventeenth year I found myself last man on the rope and I chewed through it and ran—I hid by seizing a well rope and descending to the waters below—there was movement in the water at the foot of the well and I dove to the bottom and found a cleft, through which I swam underwater and emerged in a shallow pool, the well's feed basin—I again swam underwater and this time emerged in a rocky tunnel, through which flowed an underground stream—fortunately in most places there were a few inches between the level of the water and the roof of the tunnel—it was very long—I followed it."
"And where did you follow it to?" I asked.
"Here," said Harold, pointing to a cut between two rocks, only about eight inches wide, through which from some underground source a flow of water was emerging, entering and adding to the small stream at which, some four pasangs from the wagons, Aphris and Elizabeth had often drawn water for the wagon bosk.