Where one leads, others are sure to follow. It was wonderful how
many of the prisoners discovered a talent for music after Punchard
and Runnles had thus led the way. Our jailers encouraged this
pastime; it was not merely harmless in itself, but it had a
quietening effect on the temper of the men, and the squabbles and
brawls among them notably diminished. One of the Frenchmen
unearthed an old fiddle, and though one of its strings was wanting,
a man named Ben Tolliday contrived to scrape very passable melody
out of it. Old John Dilly announced that he had played the cornet
in his youth, and before very long an instrument was found for him,
and after a few days' practice (during which we had to suffer a
variety of discordant and ear-splitting noises) he recovered
something of his former skill. An old drum with a very loose
membrane was found in the lumber room of the keep, and this the
bosun appropriated, though being quite destitute of a sense of
rhythm he made but an indifferent performer. Some of the men
fashioned original instruments for themselves, one of these, a
mouth organ, being a real triumph of ingenuity.
I, alas, had no singing voice, and was totally ignorant of music;
but Joe kindly informed me that any fool could play the bones, and
made two pairs of castanets for me out of beef bones supplied by
the soldiers (we had no joints ourselves, but only a bullock's
cheek now and then) so that I too was able to bear my part in the
concerts which now became of daily occurrence.
The soldiers of the guard often came and listened to our
performances, and even the sour-faced commandant once condescended
to form part of our audience, and smiled broadly when Dilly, who
was a Devon man, sang with much expressive pantomime the pleasant
ditty of Widdicombe Fair, though the Frenchman did not understand a
word of it.
This condescension on the part of the commandant emboldened me to
proffer a request which I had been meditating for some days. I had
by no means given up the hope of escaping from the castle, but the
more I thought of it, the less likely it appeared that I could
succeed without assistance. Of course, Joe Punchard should
accompany me, and when I talked the matter over with him, neither
of us had the heart to scheme for our own freedom without regard to
those of our fellow prisoners with whom we had become more closely
connected through our musical interests.
"There is old John Dilly," I said one day, when we were discussing
the subject, "he was good to me aboard the Dolphin; I shouldn't
like to leave him behind."
"True," says Punchard, "and Runnles is a quiet, good soul; besides
his name is Joe."
"And the bosun, he's as strong as an ox, and might be a useful
man."
"And Tolliday, he's for ever sighing about Molly, his sweetheart;
'twould make two folks happy (maybe) if he got away among us."
Thus we ran over the list of our friends very seriously, though it
tickled my sense of humor when I remembered that we had not as yet
the ghost of a notion how this escape we talked of was to be
contrived. But having thus selected our partners in the attempt we
were resolved to make some day, we decided that it would be a step
in the right direction if we all shared the same dormitory. We
might then talk over the matter without the danger of it being
blabbed among the whole body of prisoners.
Accordingly I took advantage of the commandant's gracious
appearance among our audience to ask him (having now picked up
enough French to make myself understood) to allow all the members
of the band to sleep together, explaining that we should attain to
greater efficiency if, after the lower doors were locked for the
night, we could practice for an hour or so together before the sun
went down. His grim face relaxed into a smile at the serious manner
in which we took our diversion, and he readily granted the
permission we desired. By this change we got rid of Vetch, who was
glad enough to leave us, I doubt not.
The first step having thus been gained, I began to devote myself
earnestly to the problem of escape. I did not make light of the
difficulties. The only entrance to the castle precincts was, as I
have said, the gateway at the end of the drawbridge, and this was
so stoutly guarded that escape in daylight was impossible. At night
we were locked in the dormitory nearly thirty feet above ground,
with a thick stone wall between us and freedom, and supposing we
could make a hole in the wall, which seemed unlikely, there was
still the moat to be reckoned with. It was not only too far below
for any one to dive into it with safety, but it was, as I had
learned from the soldiers, choked with mud to within a very little
of the surface, so that I could not but doubt whether it were
possible even to swim across. But I did not despair of crossing it
if we could only get down: that was the difficulty, and for long
tedious weeks it seemed to me insuperable.
Before we had hit upon a plan, we were thrown into a great
excitement by the disappearance of Vetch. I had missed him for a
day or two from the courtyard, but thought little of it, supposing
that he was confined to his dormitory by a touch of fever, as
happened not infrequently among the prisoners. But on Punchard's
remarking one day that he believed Vetch was malingering, it came
out that he had not been seen by his roommates for nearly a week.
Was it possible that while we had been merely thinking of escape,
Vetch had found a means of escaping? It seemed impossible, and when
I was having my daily conversation with the soldiers of the guard,
I asked point blank what had become of him. They laughed and
chuckled, and amused themselves for some time by giving all manner
of fantastic explanations, which improved my knowledge of French,
but were mightily vexatious. At last I made out, from hints and
half statements, that the commandant had been discreetly inquiring
among some of the prisoners for a man who was well acquainted with
the river Avon. Since these inquiries ceased and Vetch disappeared
about the same time, I was free to conclude that in Vetch the
commandant had found his man. Had he purchased his freedom at the
price of treason to his country? Were the French meditating an
attack on Bristowe? These were questions I could not answer; but
you may be sure the knowledge that Vetch was gone acted as a whip
to my determination, and I was more than ever resolved to find some
way of leaving these walls behind.
We had concluded, Punchard and I, that our only course must be to
pierce the castle wall and let ourselves down to the moat by means
of a rope. The latter portion of this scheme being manifestly the
more likely, we decided to secure our rope first. This was easier
said than done. Our coverlets were of such thin and rotten
material, we should need to tear up several of them before, even
carefully knotted, they would serve our purpose, and we could not
risk the detection that would surely follow if any of them were
missed by our guards. When I went next to take my turn at drawing
water from the well I carefully examined the rope by which the
bucket was let down, thinking it might be possible to cut this one
night at an hour when its loss would not be discovered till next
day and the birds had flown. But a close inspection showed that it
was very rotten; evidently it had seen long service; and while it
was still strong enough to stand the strain of a bucketful of
water, I could not flatter myself it would safely bear my weight,
to say nothing of the bosun, who was a deal heavier.
But since a rope we must have, I pleased myself with the fancy that
if I should succeed in procuring that it might be taken as a good
augury for success in the more difficult feat, the piercing of the
wall. Could we make a rope, I wondered? We had a fair quantity of
bast, in the mats that formed the only covering of the floor of our
barracks, but not near enough to form a rope sufficiently stout to
bear the weight of even the lightest of us; besides the tearing up
of the mats could not fail to be discovered.
Racking my brains for some means of overcoming the difficulty, I
suddenly bethought myself of trying a ruse. I said nothing of my
intention to Punchard (to the others I had as yet not breathed a
word of our purpose) but the next time I went to the well I took a
knife with me, and, choosing a portion of the rope where it was
much frayed, I carefully sawed through one or two of the strands
with the blunt edge. The result was that when I was drawing the
full bucket up, the rope snapped, the bucket fell to the bottom
with a clatter, and I (to make the accident more convincing)
toppled over on my back. Up came one of the guard, and rated me
soundly for my clumsiness, employing a succession of abusive terms
which I stored in my memory for use in case of need.
I picked myself up slowly, rubbing my back, and, putting on the
most innocent air in the world, I pointed to the frayed rope and
asked whether my corrector could expect such a thing as that to
last for ever. The man grumbled a good deal, but the condition of
the rope admitted no answer to my question, and I had the
satisfaction next day of seeing a brand new rope attached to a
brand new bucket. I even had the pleasure of using it for the first
time, for the old rope having broken when I was on duty, I was
condemned to the punishment of drawing water for a week afterwards,
an extension of my task which I bore with wonderful cheerfulness.
When I told Punchard of what I had done he laughed with great
delight, but immediately became very sober.
"'Tis all no use, sir," says he gloomily. "For why? I can't swim."
This was a difficulty I had not foreseen. How is it, I wonder, that
so many men who go down to the sea in ships do not master that most
useful art--the very first, one would think, that should engage
their attention? 'Twas true, the depth of water above the mud in
the moat was so little that even the best swimmer would be at a bad
pass; but I hoped that with the coming of the spring rains this
would be remedied. Yet if Punchard and any of the others were
unable to swim, the moat would be impassable were it dredged to the
bottom; and since we must descend the rope singly, and the water
came right up to the wall, I could not see for the life of me how
this disability could be got over.
Finding our purpose thus stopped in this direction (though but for
a time, for my resolution was in nowise weakened), I began to
devote myself earnestly to what I had felt all along was the
crux--the breaking through the wall. So deeply was I preoccupied
with this baffling problem that I fear I clattered my bones but
half heartedly in our musical concerts. Yet it was during one of
these concerts that some good genie flashed upon my invention a
plan which promised (if it could be carried out) to solve the very
difficulty I had almost given up as insoluble. I say it was a good
genie that suggested the idea to me, for, looking back upon it, I
can account for it in no other way.
I was watching Tolliday sawing away at his fiddle, and marveling
(being ignorant of music) at the loud tones which he produced from
so small an instrument. 'Twas clear that the hollow belly of the
fiddle had some part in the effect, and then I remembered the big
bass viols I had seen used in the church at home, and reflected
that the larger the instrument the deeper and more powerful the
tones.
And here came in the genie to supply the link which led to the
formation of my plan. In my mind's eye I saw a big hollow vessel
shaped like a bass viol floating on the water of the moat, and Joe
Punchard clinging to it, and I wished with all my heart that one of
our jailers would discover such an instrument, and hand it to us
for the use of our band. 'Twas but a step from wishing to devising.
We had no bass viol; could we not make one? No one would oppose us;
the band was highly popular with the garrison, and I was sure that
they would willingly provide us with material for the construction
of yet another instrument.
Accordingly, next morning I suggested that we should ask the
commandant to give us some planks of wood with which to make an
instrument of a new model. The men were amused at the notion, never
suspecting that I had any other design than to enrich the harmony
of our ensemble. 'Twould be good fun, they agreed, though they had
great doubt (as I had myself) whether our unskilled workmanship
would produce anything but a useless monstrosity so far as music
was concerned. They were willing to try, however, the attempt would
help us to kill time; and the commandant proving perfectly
agreeable to humor us, we gut the planks, borrowed some tools from
the soldiers, and set to work.
The next following days saw half a dozen of us busily employed in
the courtyard in knocking together a long shallow box, in the upper
side of which we pierced S-shaped holes like those of the fiddle,
with a notched bridge at about one-third of its length for holding
four strings, and wooden screws at the other end for stretching
them taut. Joe Punchard, good fellow, was the most ardent of the
artificers, plying the tools with a dexterity born of his work for
master cooper Matthew Mark years before. We got from the soldiers,
who showed a great interest in our task, cords of different
thickness, and several lengths of iron wire which we twisted
together somewhat after the manner of the thickest string of the
fiddle. We then stretched this and three cords over the bridge on
the top of the box, screwed them to a high tension, and plucked
them to see if they emitted notes that could be called musical.
The result surpassed my expectations. Tolliday, our fiddler,
declared that the notes were true music, though to be sure not very
resonant, and he undertook to tune the strings in fifths, so that
it might be able to take a proper part in our next symphony. Having
no bow with which to scrape the strings, he said that they could
only be strummed with the finger and thumb, and when he offered to
teach one of us thus to handle it, there were many candidates for
the place, which in the end fell to a man named Winslow. The men
were all mightily pleased with the success of our work, and I was
secretly delighted, not with the instrument as a producer of music,
but at knowing that we had a box which might serve those of us who
could not swim as a raft.
We had now at command (if we could secretly purloin it) a rope to
let us down, and a raft to ferry us over the moat, but we had still
to find a means of getting beyond the wall, and to this I bent all
my energy of mind. In this, too, I took Joe Punchard into
consultation, and we discussed all kinds of plans. With the sentry
on guard throughout the night in the courtyard there was no hope of
escape by the gate and drawbridge. There was no opening in the
wall. The only possible means of exit was to cut a hole in it, and
this would be a matter of great toil, the wall being, as some one
had told us, ten feet thick. It consisted, so far as we could tell
from the inside, of solid blocks of stone cemented together, and
when, at an odd moment when no one was looking, I tried to scrape
away some of the cement between two of the stones, I found that it
was almost as hard as the stone itself.
To cut through ten feet of such solid material was a task that
might have caused any one to despair. Still, it was the only course
open to us, and I have never known any task too hard for patience
and determination. Joe and I decided that we must gradually scrape
away the cement around one of the blocks until we could remove this
altogether, and then work at the next one, and the next, until we
had pierced right through to the open air.
Apart from the toilsomeness of the task, there were risks to be
feared and provided against. First; one or another of the soldiers
inspected our dormitory every day. This inspection, 'tis true, had
become somewhat perfunctory, the man being content, as a rule, to
mount the ladder until his head was a foot or two above the level
of the floor, throw a hasty glance around, and descend again. The
second risk was more serious. Since we could hear at night the
tramp of the sentry going his round of the battlements, it was
probable that, however quietly we might work, the sentry would hear
the sound of scraping as he passed above. If the wall had been
wainscotted, he might suppose such sounds to be caused by the
gnawing of mice; but there was no likelihood of mice making their
habitat in a thick stone wall. Further, even if we should so
contrive that our task of scraping was interrupted when the sentry
passed, there was still the danger that the sound might attract the
attention of the men in the adjoining dormitory. If they should get
any suspicion of what was toward, it would soon be common talk
among the whole body of prisoners, and some whisper of it would
certainly reach the ears of the guard.
In order to lessen this risk, Joe and I decided to begin our work
at a stone measuring three feet by two, in the right-hand corner of
the dormitory, farthest removed from the partition dividing us from
the next, and a foot or two above the floor, so that a bed could be
pushed against the wall and hide all signs of our operations in
case a sudden visit of inspection was made.
These preliminaries having been settled by Joe and myself, the time
was come for taking our roommates into our confidence. I did not
disguise from myself that we were staking a great deal on their
loyalty, and even more on their silence, for the slightest whisper
of the plot outside our own little company would be fatal. There
were ten of us bandsmen altogether. At first I thought of speaking
to the men individually, and thus testing their courage and
enterprise. But on reflection I decided that what was most
requisite to our success was a corporate spirit, which could be
best engendered by opening the matter to them as a body.
Accordingly, one evening, when we were assembled in the dormitory
for a practice, I took the fateful plunge.
I am not an orator, and I shall not set down here the words in
which I addressed them. Suffice it to say that they listened very
attentively, not at first perceiving the full drift of my meaning,
so careful was I to feel my way with them. They held me in some
special consideration, which I no doubt owed partly to Joe
Punchard, who had told them something of my story, and when at
length I declared plainly our intention to escape, asked them if
they would join hands with us, and impressed on them the necessity
of maintaining silence about it, they one and all promised that
never a word should pass their lips.
As to the scheme itself, when I unfolded its details, they were
somewhat dubious, and, strangely enough, the most enthusiastic in
its favor was little Runnles, the melancholy flute player, and the
most doubtful was the bosun, whose physical courage was equal to
anything, but who was daunted by what appealed more particularly to
the moral qualities of patience and endurance. He dwelt
lugubriously on the difficulties I have already mentioned, and
shook his head when I combated his objections; but he agreed to
throw in his lot with the rest of us, and said that if we once got
clear of the walls, and there was any fighting to do, he would
break any Frenchman's head as soon as look at him.
Nothing remained now but to begin operations, and I soon found that
the demands upon our patience would be even more exacting than I
had supposed. We divided our company of ten into five watches, each
to take a spell of two hours' work. One night, as soon as all was
quiet, Joe and I set to work, he with a chisel which he had used in
making our new instrument, I with my clasp knife. Very gently, so
as to avoid noise, we began to scrape away at the mortar between
the block of stone we had selected for removal and the one below
it.
Runnles hit upon a capital way of warning us of the approach of the
sentry within earshot. He tied a string to Joe's leg, and gave it a
tug when he heard the tramp of footsteps above. Then we desisted
for a minute or two, resuming our work when the footsteps had died
away.
At the end of our two hours' spell we were disappointed at the
little we had been able to do. Two small heaps of dust lay at the
foot of the wall, but the impression on the hard mortar or cement
had been but slight, and I was appalled to think of the weeks that
must elapse before we had cut completely round the stone. But I
professed myself well satisfied with the start we had made, and we
handed over our tools to Dilly and Tolliday, the next couple, with
encouraging words.