Read Online The Great Escape by Paul Brickhill - Free Book Online

the engineers peeled off the bottoms, leaving a clean metal cylinder. Where the lids had fitted, the tins were a shade smaller in circumference, and this section fitted very neatly into the base of the next tin. The joint was wrapped tightly with paper and was strong and airtight enough because once the pipe lines were laid they were never touched. They made yards and yards of the piping and smuggled it down the shafts.
    The intake pipes for the three tunnels led from airbricks in the foundations well under the huts and camouflaged so the ferrets crawling under there wouldn’t notice. To get to an airbrick for “Dick,” Floody tunneled about ten feet through rubble under the washroom floor. The pipes then led down to the intake valves on the pumps, and another pipe led from each exhaust valve to the spot where each tunnel was to start. Above in the shaft an outlet pipe led off underground to the nearest chimney.
    Crump and Floody tested every pump by holding a piece of smoldering rag in front of the airbrick were the inlet pipes started. The man down below kept pumping, and after a while the black fumes came puffing from the outlet pipe. They examined the piping in between but there was no trace of any leaking fumes.
    From that moment on, the trapfuehrers shut the traps on top as soon as the diggers went down. They could work indefinitely below then, sealed and safe from prying eyes above. As the pumper worked, fresh cool air from under the hut flowed into the bottom of the shaft, and the stale air, rising as hot air always does, drifted up through the outlet pipe into the chimney, drawn beautifully by the chimney whenever there was a breeze on top.
    Sometime about the third anniversary of the day he was shot down, Roger Bushell was sitting on his window sill, leaning against the frame with his hands in his pockets, staring moodily across the hot compound when Valenta came in.
    “You’re early,” said Roger. “The others won’t be here for half an hour.”
    “They’ll be here in a few minutes,” said Valenta. “That new ferret’s in again.”
    “What’s he doing?”
    A little grimly Valenta said, “He dived straight under 122 with a torch.”
    “Christ!” Roger got sharply to his feet. “They’re testing ‘Dick’s’ pump.”
    “It’s all right,” said Valenta. “George got everyone in the block stamping around their rooms. There’ll be so much noise underneath the ferret won’t hear a thing. George signaled the boys to pack up just in case. They’re coming across.”
    “We’ll have to watch that,” Roger said frowning. “You can hear the pumps under the hut sometimes through the inlet pipes. This new ferret’s a pretty keen type. What’s his name?”
    “Don’t know yet. Haven’t made contact.”
    “He’d better go on the danger list with Glemnitz and Rubberneck,” Roger said. “I’ll spread the word. We might as well christen him ‘Keen Type.’”
    Floody and the others drifted in in twos and threes, and after a while Block “X” stuck his head around the door, gave the all clear, and the committee was in session. Floody reported that all the pumps were working.
    “All set to go,” he said. “We’ve got over thirty good underground men in three teams for each hole. Marshall’s taking ‘Tom,’ Johnny Bull’ll be on ‘Dick,’ and Crump and Muckle Muir will have ‘Harry.’”
    “How much can you do a day?” Roger asked.
    Floody said he thought they could dig ten feet in each tunnel, and Roger turned to Fanshawe.
    “What can you disperse, Hornblower?” he asked.
    “Not that much,” Fanshawe said bluntly. “For all three we might manage six feet a day each…that’s without too many risks.”
    “We don’t want
any
risks,” Roger said.
    “I don’t think we have to be rigid about it just yet,” said Floody. “We can dig what we can and store it in the dispersal chambers. The penguins can get rid of what they can, and then we’ll know how much we can dig next