got a wink from the fireman, climbed on the tender, crept beneath a
tarpaulin, and rooted down in the coal. There, tired out, I fell asleep.
I was awakened by the whistle of the locomotive, and then came the slow
wheeze of the cylinder head, and we were off. Sleeping on a hard plank
under a car going thirty miles an hour is a spring mattress to lying in
a pile of coal with lumps as big as your head grinding into your back.
Now and then the fireman--not my particular friend, but a man who had
replaced him as I discovered when we whizzed past the light of a
station--would ram his shovel within reach of my ribs--just missing me.
But I didn't mind--every mile meant that much nearer home and less
tramping in the heat and dust to get there. If I could manage to keep
hidden until we reached Sydney I should gain one hundred--maybe two
hundred--miles before morning.
"About midnight we came to a halt, followed by a lot of backing and
filling--shunting here and there. The safety-valve was thrown wide
open, or the exhaust, or something else, and suddenly the steam went out
of her. Then came a dead silence--not a sound of any kind. Sore as I
was--and every bone in my body ached--I wrenched myself loose, lifted
the edge of the tarpaulin, and peeped out. The engine and tender were
backed up against a building which looked like a round-house; not a soul
was in sight. I slid to the ground and began to peer around. After a
moment I caught the swing of a lantern and heard the steps of a man. It
was a watchman going his rounds.
"'Warm night,' he hollered when he came abreast of me. He evidently took
me for a fireman, and I didn't blame him, for I was black as
soot--clothes, face, hands, and hair.
"'Yes,' I said, and stopped. It wouldn't do to undeceive him. Then I
remembered the name of the station where I had boarded the tender. 'Been
hot all the way from Merton. How far is that from Sydney?'
"'Oh, a devil of a way!' He lifted his lantern and held it to my face.
'Say, you ain't no fireman--you're a hobo, ain't ye?'
"I nodded.
"'And you're p'inted for Sydney? Well, it serves ye right for stealin' a
ride; you're eighty-two miles further away than when ye started. That
locomotive is a special and got return orders.'"
The Engineer threw back his head and roared.
"Yes, that's it, Herbert. I remember just how you looked when we ran
against each other in Sydney."
"Not barefooted, were you, old fellow?" remarked Louis in a sympathetic
tone. "That was tough."
"Barefooted? Not much!" exclaimed The Engineer. "He was quite a nob.
That's why I made up to him; he was so much better dressed than I. And
do you know, Herbert, I never heard a word of you from that time on
until I struck one of your statues in the Royal Academy the other day. I
never thought you'd turn out sculptor with medals and things. Thought
you wanted more room to swing around in. This is something new, isn't
it?"
Herbert took his freshly lighted cigar from his mouth long enough to
say, "About as new as your building dams. You were trying to get into
the real-estate business when I bid you good-by in Sydney. Did it work?"
"No, I got into jail instead."
Everybody stared.
"What was it all about?" asked Herbert, unperturbed.
"Stealing!"
"_Stealing!_" exclaimed Le Blanc.
"Yes. That was about it," he answered. "Only this time I tried to bag a
government and got locked up for my pains. One of your countrymen"--and
he nodded toward me--"was mixed up in it. By the way"--and he rose from
his chair--"you don't mind my taking this candle, do you?--I've been
looking at something in that cabinet over there all the evening and I
can't stand it any longer. I may be wrong, but they look awfully like
it."
He had reached the carved triptych, and was holding the flame of the
candle within a few inches of a group of tiny figures--some of Lemois'
most precious carvings--one the figure of a man with a gun.
"Just as I thought. Prison work, isn't it, Monsieur Lemois? Yes--of
course it is--I see the tool marks. Made of soup bones. Oh, very good
indeed--best I have ever seen. Where did you get this?"
"They were made by the French prisoners in Moscow," answered Lemois, who
had also risen from his seat and was now standing beside him. "But how
did you know?" he asked in astonishment. "Most of my visitors, if they
look at them at all, think they are Chinese."
"Because no one, if he can get ivory, makes a thing like this of
bone"--and he held it up to our gaze--"and everybody out of jail who has
this skill _can_ get ivory. I've made a lot myself--never as fine as
these--this man must have been an expert. I used to keep from going
crazy by doing this sort of thing--that and the old dodge of taming
fleas so they'd eat out of my hand. What a pile of good stuff you have
here--regular museum"--and with a searching, comprehensive glance he
replaced the candle and regained his chair.
I bent forward and touched his elbow.
"We've entertained all sorts of people here," I said with a laugh, "but
I think this is the first time we have ever had an out-and-out
ticket-of-leave man. Do you mind telling us how it happened?"
"No; but it wouldn't interest you. Just one of those fool scrapes a
fellow gets into when he is chucked out neck and heels into the world."
Brierley drew his chair closer--so did Louis and Le Blanc.
Herbert glanced toward his friend. "Let them have it, old man. We
promise not to set the dogs on you."
"Thanks. But it wouldn't be the first time. Well, all right if it won't
bore you. Now let me think"--and he lifted his weather-bronzed face,
made richer by the glow of the candles overhead, and began scratching
his grizzly beard with his forefinger.
"It was after you left Borneo, Herbert, that I came across two
fellows--Englishmen--who told me of some new gold diggings on the west
coast, and I was fool enough to join them, working my passage on one of
the home-going tramp steamers. Well, we thrashed about for six months
and landed on one of the small islands in the Caribbean Sea--the name of
which I forget--where we left the ship and hid until she disappeared.
The gold fever was well out of us by that time, and, besides, I had
gotten tired of scrubbing decks and my two fellow tramps of washing
dishes. The port was a regular coaling station and some other craft
would come along; if not, we could stay where we were. The climate was
warm, bananas were cheap and plenty; we were entirely fit, and--like
many another lot of young chaps out for a lark--did not care a tinker's
continental what happened. That, if you think about it, is the
high-water mark of happiness--to be perfectly well, strong, twenty-five
years of age, and ready for anything that bobs up.
"This time it was a small schooner with a crew of about one hundred men,
instead of the customary ten or twelve. A third of them came ashore,
bought provisions and water, and were about to shove off to the vessel
again, when one of my comrades recognized the mate as an old friend. He
offered to take us with them, and in half an hour we had gathered
together our duds and had pushed off with the others. The following week
we ran into a sheltered cove, where we began landing our cargo. Then it
all came out: we were loaded to the scuppers with old muskets in cases,
some thousand rounds of ammunition, and two small, muzzle-loading
field-guns. There was a revolution in Boccador--one of the small South
American republics--they have them every year or so--and we were part of
the insurgent navy! If we were caught we were shot; if we got a new flag
on top of Government House in the capital of San Josepho, we would have
a plantation apiece and negroes enough to run it. It sounded pleasant,
didn't it?
"I'm not going into all the details--it's the story of the jail you
want, not the revolution. Well, we had two weeks of tramping up to our
waists in the swamps; three days of fighting, in which one of the
field-guns blew off its nose, killing the mate; and the next thing I
knew, my two companions and I were looking down the muzzles of a dozen
rifles held within three feet of our heads. That ended it and we were
marched into town and locked up in the common jail--and rightly named, I
tell you, for a filthier or more deadly hole I never got into. It was a
square, two-story building--all four sides to the town--with a patio, or
court, in the centre. Outside was a line of sentries and inside were
more sentries and a couple of big dogs.
"They put us on the ground floor with a murderous-looking chap for
guard. As the place was packed with prisoners, we three were shoved into
one cell. Every morning at daylight one or two--once six--poor devils
were led out; the big gate was opened, and then there would come a
rattling of rifle-shots, and when the six came back they were on planks
with sheets over them. All this we could see by standing on each other's
shoulders and looking over the grating.
"Our turn came the morning of the seventh day. The door was unlocked and
we were ordered to fall in. But we didn't go through the big outer gate;
we were led to a door across the yard and into a bare room where another
murderous-looking chap, in a dirty uniform with shoulder-straps and a
sword, sat at a table. On either side of him were two more ruffians, one
with an inkstand. Not a man Friday of them spoke anything but Spanish.
When we were pushed in front of his highness in shoulder-straps, he
looked us over keenly and began whispering to the man with the ink. Then
to my surprise--and before either I or my two friends--one of whom spoke
a little Spanish--could utter a protest--right-about-face, and we were
hustled back into our cell and locked up again.
"For three days and nights the usual jail things happened: We had two
meals a day--bone soup and a hunk of mouldy bread; the guard tramped in
the dust outside our cell, while at night another took his place--the
dogs prowling or sniffing at the crack of our door; at daylight the
rifle-shots!
"We had started to work for our release by that time, and by persistent
begging got a sheet of paper, and, with the help of my companion, I
wrote a letter to 'his Excellenza,' as the guard called his nibs,
informing him that we were English tourists who had taken passage for
sheer love of adventure, and demanding that our case be brought to the
attention of the English consul.
"One week passed and then a second before we were informed by the head
jailer that there _was_ no English consul, and that if there had been it
would have made no difference, as we had been taken with arms in our
hands, and that but for some inquiries put on foot by his Excellenza we
would have been shot long ago.
"So the hours and days dragged on and we had about started in to make
our wills when, one morning after our slop coffee had been pushed in to
us, the bolts were slid back and the nattiest-looking young fellow you
ever laid your eyes on stepped inside. He was about twenty-four, was
dressed from head to foot in a suit of white duck, and looked as if he
had just cleared the deck of the royal yacht. With him were two
slovenly looking functionaries, one of whom carried a note-book. The
young fellow eyed us all three, sizing us up with the air of a man
accustomed to that sort of thing, and said with an air of authority:
"'I am the American consul. Your communication was brought to me because
your government is not represented here. You're in a bad fix, but I'll
help you out if I can. Now tell me all about it.'
"Tell him about it! Why, we nearly fell on his neck, and before he left
he had our whole story in his head and a lot of our letters and cards in
his clothes. They might be of use, he said, in proving that we had not,
by any means, started out to undermine his Supreme Highness's
government. But that under fear of death--and he winked meaningly--we
had been compelled to take up arms against the most illustrious republic
of Boccador.
"Nine long, weary months passed after this and not another human being
crossed our threshold except the head jailer. When we bombarded him with
questions about the fellow who had passed himself off as the American
consul, and who had stolen our letters and had never shown up
since--damn him!--we had all learned to speak a little Spanish by this
time--he pretended not to hear and, his inspection over, locked the door
behind him. Pretty soon we fell into the ways of all disheartened
prisoners--each man following the bent of his nature. I warded off
sickening despair by carving with my pocket-knife--which they let me
keep as being too small to do them any harm--little figures out of the
beef bones I found in my soup. That's how I came to recognize those in
Monsieur Lemois' cabinet. When I was lucky enough to get hold of a
knuckle bone with a rounded knob at the end, I made a friar with a bald
head, the smooth knob answering for his pate. Other bones were turned
into grotesque figures of men, women, and animals. These I gave to the
sentry, who sent them to his children. Often he brought me small pieces
of calico and I made dresses and trousers for them. When I got tired of
that I trained two fleas--and they were plenty--to play leap-frog up my
arm.
"When these little diversions failed to drive dull care away, we passed
the time cursing the gentleman in the immaculate cotton ducks. He had
either lied to us, or was dead, or had been transferred--anyway, he had
gone back on us and left us to rot in jail.
"At last we determined to escape.
"We had made that same resolution every day for months and had planned
out half a dozen schemes, some of which might have been successful but
for two difficulties--the double guard on the outside of the building
and the two dogs in the jail-yard. There was now but one chance of
success. We would dig a hole in the dirt floor clear under the wall,
watch for a stormy night, and make a break for the town and the coast,
where we might be able to signal some trading craft and so get away.
"So we started to digging, beginning on the side opposite the door--our
utensils being a sharpened bone, my pocket-knife, and a bayonet which
had dropped from a sentry's scabbard, and which I managed to pick up on
our exercise walk in the court-yard and conceal in the straw on which we
slept. This straw too helped hide the dirt. We rammed the wisps up into
each end of the pallets, put the excavated earth in the middle with a
dusting of loose straw over it, and so hid our work from view. At the
end of a month we had a hole under the wall large enough to wriggle in.
I could see the daylight through the loose earth on the other side.
Then we waited for a storm, the rainy season being on and thunder
showers frequent. Two, three, four nights went by without a cloud; then
it began to pour. We determined to try it just before the guards were
changed. This was at 2 A. M. by the church clock. The outgoing sentry
would be tired then and the new man not thoroughly awake.
"When the hour came I crawled in head first, worked myself to the end of
the tunnel, and, putting out my hands to break away the remaining clods
of earth, came bump up against a piece of heavy board. There I lay
trembling. The board could never have rolled down from anywhere, nor
could our opening have been detected from the outside.
"Somebody had placed it there on purpose!
"I wriggled back feet foremost, whispered in my companions' ears what I
had found, and we all three sat up the rest of the night wondering what
the devil it meant. When morning broke, the head jailer came in. I
noticed instantly a change in his manner. Instead of a few perfunctory
questions, he gave a cursory glance around the cell, his eyes resting on
the pile of straw, and turning short on his heel left without a word.
"There was no question now but we were suspected, so we held a council
of war and determined to keep quiet--at least for some nights. What was
up we didn't know, but at all events it was best to go slow. So we
stuffed most of the dirt back in the hole and waited--our ears open to
every sound, our teeth chattering. You get pretty nervous in
jail--especially when you have about made up your mind that the next
hour is your last.
"We didn't wait long.
"That afternoon the bolts were slid back and the head jailer, who had
never before appeared at that hour, stood in the doorway.
"I thought right away that it was all over with us; that we were
discovered and that we were either to be shot or moved to another
cell--I really didn't care which, for instant death could not be much
worse than lingering in a South American prison until we were
gray-bearded and forgotten.
"The jailer stepped inside, half closed the door, and made this
announcement:
"'The American consul is outside and wants to see you.' Then he stepped
out, leaving the door open.
"They have a way of coaxing you to escape down in that country and then
filling you full of lead. It's justifiable murder when sometimes a trial
and conviction might raise unpleasant international questions. We all
three looked at each other and instantly decided not to swallow the
bait. The American consul dodge had been tried when they wanted to get
legal possession of our letters. So it isn't surprising that we didn't
believe him. Then, to my astonishment, I caught through the crack of the
door a suit of white duck, and the natty young man stepped in.
"'I've been down the coast,' he began as chipper as if he was
apologizing for not having called after we had invited him to dinner,
'or I should have been here before. I have a permit from the governor to
come as often as I like, or as often as you would be glad to see me. I
must tell you, however, that I am pledged to keep faith with the
authorities, and it is their confidence in me which has gained me this
privilege. I can bring you nothing to eat or drink, no tools or
knickknacks or any bodily comforts. I can only bring myself. This I have
told his Excellenza, who has his orders, and who understands.' Then he
turned to the jailer. 'Get me a stool and I will stay a while with
them. You can leave the door open; I will be responsible that none of
them attempts to escape.'
"When the jailer was out of hearing, he passed around cigarettes,
lighted his own, and started in to tell us the news of the day: what was
going on in town and country; how the revolution had been put down; how
many insurgents had been shot, exiled, or sent to horrible
prisons--worse than ours, which, he informed us, was really only a sort
of police station and unsafe except for the dogs and the guards, who
were picked men and who had never been known to neglect their duty. Only
the year before five men had attempted to dig their way out and had been
shot as they were climbing the outside wall--rather dispiriting talk for
us, to say the least, but it was talk, and that was what we hungered
for, especially as his spirits never flagged.
"All this was more or less entertaining, and he would have had our
entire confidence but for two things which followed, and which we could
not understand. One was that he always chose rainy or stormy nights for
his subsequent visits, dropping in on us at all hours, when we least
expected him; and the other that he never referred to what was being
done for our release. That he would not discuss.
"By and by we began to grow uneasy and suspect him. One of the men
insisted that he was too damned polite to be honest, and that the
American consul yarn was a put-up job. Anyway, he was getting tired of
it all. It would take him but half an hour to dig the loose earth out of
the tunnel, and he was going to begin right away if he went at it alone.
"We at once fell to, working like beavers, digging with everything we
had--our fingers bleeding--until we had cleaned out the dirt to the
plank. Then we crawled back and waited for the consul's customary visit.
After that was over--no matter how long it lasted--we'd make the dash.
"He came on the minute; and this time, to our intense disgust, brought
his guitar--said he thought we might like a little music--and without so
much as by-your-leave opened up with negro melodies and native songs,
the instrument resting in the hollow of his knee, one leg crooked over
the other, a cigarette stuck tight to his lower lip.
"Hour after hour went by and still he sang on--French, German,
Italian--anything and everything--rolling out the songs as if we had
been so many classmates at a college supper. Charming, of course, had we
not had a hole behind us and freedom within sight.
"Hints, yawns, even blunt proposals to let us go to bed, had no effect.
Further than these we dared not go. We were afraid to turn him out
bodily lest we should be suspected of trying to get rid of him for a
purpose. To have let him into the secret was also out of the question.
Better wait until he was gone.
"Would you believe it, he never left until broad daybreak, his
confounded irritating cheerfulness keeping up to the last, even to his
tossing his fingers to us in good-by, quite as he might have done to his
sweetheart.
"At eight o'clock on that same morning, not more than two hours after he
had left, there came a bang at the door with a sword-hilt, the bolts
were drawn, and we were marched into the court-yard between five
soldiers in command of a sergeant. Then came the orders to fall in, and
we were pushed into the same room where, nearly a year before, we had
been examined by the ruffian in shoulder-straps and sent back to our
cell.
"And here I must say that, for the first time since our capture, I lost
all hope. Five men for three of us, and two of the cartridges blank!
"The squad closed in and we were lined up in front of a table before
another black-haired, greasy, villanous-looking reptile who read the
death-warrant, as near as I could make out--he spoke so fast. Then he
rose from his seat, bowed stiffly, and left the room. Next the sergeant
saluted us, ordered his men to fall in, and left the room. Then the
jailer stepped forward, shook our hands all around, and left the room.
"We were free!
"Outside, in the broad glare of the scorching sun, his boyish face in a
broad grin, stood the consul, looking as if he had just stepped out of a
bandbox.
"'I am sorry you found me such a bore last night,' he said, gay and
debonair as an old beau at a wedding, 'but there was nothing else to do.
If I'd gone home earlier and let you crawl out of that hole, you would
have been shot to a dead certainty. I knew a month ago you were at work
on it, and when it was nearly finished I got permission to drop in on
you. The plank that you ran up against I had put there with the help of
the jailer. It was meant to keep you quiet until my mail got in. I was
helpless, of course, to assist you until it did, being my government's
representative. It arrived yesterday, informing me that our State
Department has taken up your cases with your government and has entered
a formal protest. Now all of you come over to the consulate, and let me
see what I can do to fix you out with some clothes and things.
"'After that we'll have breakfast.'"
XI
IN WHICH THE HABITS OF CERTAIN GHOSTS, GOBLINS, BANDITS, AND OTHER
OBJECTIONABLE PERSONS ARE DULY SET FORTH
The Engineer's story whetted every one's appetite for more. Lemois,
hoping to further inspire him, left his chair, crossed the room, and
began searching through the old fifteenth-century triptych to find some
object of interest which would start him to talking again as
entertainingly as had the carved soup bones from the Moscow prison. When
he reoccupied his seat he held in his hand a small statuette in
terra-cotta. This he placed on the table where the light fell full upon
it.
"You overlooked this, I am afraid," he said, addressing The Engineer.
"It is one of the most precious things I own. It is a portrait of Madame
de Rabutin-Chantal, the grandmother of Madame de Sévigné." The Sévigné
family were a favorite topic with the old gentleman, and anything
pertaining to them of peculiar interest to him. "You will note, I am
sure, Monsieur Herbert, the marvellous carving especially in the dress
and about the neck."
[Illustration: Lemois crossed the room and began searching through the
old fifteenth-century triptych]
Before Herbert could answer, Louis craned his head and a disgusted look
overspread his face. "I hope," he said, "she didn't look like that,
Lemois--squatty old party with a snub nose."
Herbert, ignoring Louis' aside, reached over and took the little image
in his fingers.
"Squatty or not, Louis, it is an exquisite bit--modern Tanagra, really.
Seventeenth century, isn't it, Lemois?"
Lemois nodded. If he had heard Louis' remark he gave no sign of the
fact.