"A British officer; broke out from Lille. Ah!" the Governor of
Loches said to himself, as he glanced over the royal order.
"Something else beyond that, I fancy. Prisoners of war who try to
break prison are not sent to Loches. I suppose he has been in
somebody's way very seriously. A fine young fellow, too--a really
splendid fellow. A pity really; however, it is not my business.
"Number four, in the south tower," he said, and Rupert was led
away.
Number four was a cell on the third story of the south tower. More
than that Rupert did not know. There was no looking out from the
loopholes that admitted light, for they were boarded up on the
outside. There was a fireplace, a table, a chair, and a bedstead.
Twice a day a gaoler entered with provisions; he made no reply to
Rupert's questions, but shook his head when spoken to.
For the first week Rupert bore his imprisonment with cheerfulness,
but the absolute silence, the absence of anything to break the
dreary monotony, the probability that he might remain a prisoner
all his life, was crushing even to the most active and energetic
temperament.
At the end of a month the gaoler made a motion for him to follow
him. Ascending the stairs to a great height, they reached the
platform on the top of the tower.
Rupert was delighted with the sight of the sky, and of the
wide-spreading fields--even though the latter was covered with
snow. For a half-an-hour he paced rapidly round and round the
limited walk. Presently the gaoler touched him, and pointing below,
said:
"Look!"
Rupert looked over the battlement, and saw a little party issue
from a small postern gate far below him, cross the broad fosse, and
pause in an open space formed by an outlying work beyond. They bore
with them a box.
"A funeral?" Rupert asked.
The man nodded.
"They all go out at last," he said, "but unless they tell what they
are wanted to tell, they go no other way."
Five minutes later Rupert was again locked up in his cell, when he
was, in the afternoon of the same day, visited by the governor, who
asked if he would say where he had taken Mademoiselle Pignerolles.
"You may as well answer," he said. "You will never go out alive
unless you do."
Rupert shook his head.
"I do not admit that I know aught concerning the lady you name; but
did I so, I should prefer death to betraying her."
"Ay," the governor said, "you might do that; but death is very
preferable to life at Loches."
In a day or two Rupert found himself again desponding.
"This will not do," he said earnestly. "I must arouse myself. Let
me think, what have I heard that prisoners do? In the first place
they try to escape; and some have escaped from places as difficult
as Loches. Well, that is one thing to be thought very seriously
about. In the next place, I have heard of their making pets of
spiders and all sorts of things. Well, I may come to that, but at
present I don't like spiders well enough to make pets of them;
besides I don't see any spiders to make pets of. Then some
prisoners have carved walls, but I have no taste for carving.
"I might keep my muscles in order and my health good by exercise
with the chair and table; get to hold them out at arm's length,
lift the table with one hand, and so on. Yes, all sorts of exercise
might be continued in that way, and the more I take exercise the
better I shall sleep at night and enjoy my meals. Yes, with nothing
else to do I might become almost a Samson here.
"There, now my whole time is marked out--escape from prison, and
exercise. I'll try the last first, and then think over the other."
For a long time Rupert worked away with his furniture until he had
quite exhausted himself; then feeling happier and better than he
had done since he was shut up, he began to think of plans of
escape. The easiest way would of course be to knock down and gag
the gaoler, and to escape in the clothes; but this plan he put
aside at once, as it was morally certain that he should be no
nearer to his escape after reaching the courtyard of the prison,
than he was in the cell. There remained then the chimney, the
loophole, and the solid wall.
The chimney was the first to disappear from the calculation.
Looking up it, Rupert saw that it was crossed by a dozen iron bars,
the height too was very great, and even when at the top the height
was immense to descend to the fosse.
The loophole was next examined. It was far too narrow to squeeze
through, and was crossed by three sets of bars. The chance of
widening the narrow loophole and removing the bars without
detection was extreme; besides, Rupert had a strong idea that the
loophole looked into the courtyard.
Finally he came to the conclusion, that if an escape was to be made
it must be by raising a flag of the floor, tunnelling between his
room and that underneath it, and working out through the solid
wall. It would be a tremendous work, for the loophole showed him
that the wall must be ten feet thick; still, as he said to himself,
it will be at least something to do and to think about, and even if
it takes five years and comes to nothing, it will have been useful.
Thus resolved, Rupert went to work, and laboured steadily. His
exercise with the chair and table succeeded admirably, and after
six months he was able to perform feats of strength with them that
surprised himself. With his scheme for escape he was less
fortunate. Either his tools were faulty, or the stones he had to
work upon were too compact and well built, but beyond getting up
the flag, making a hole below it in the hard cement which filled in
the space between the floor, large enough to bury a good sized cat,
Rupert achieved nothing.
He had gone into prison in November, it was now August, and he was
fast coming to the idea that Loches was not to be broken out of by
the way in which he was attempting to do it.
One circumstance gave him intense delight. Adele's hiding place had
not been discovered. This he was sure of by the urgency with which
the governor strove to extract from him the secret of her
whereabouts. Their demands were at the last meeting mingled with
threats, and Rupert felt that the governor had received stringent
orders to wring the truth from him. So serious did these menaces
become that Rupert ceased to labour at the floor of his cell, being
assured that ere long some change or other would take place. He was
not mistaken. One day the governor entered, attended, as usual, by
the gaoler and another official.
"Sir," he said to Rupert, "we can no longer be trifled with. I have
orders to obtain from you the name of the place to which you
escorted the young lady you went off with. If you refuse to answer
me, a different system to that which has hitherto been pursued will
be adopted. You will be removed from this comfortable room and
placed in the dungeons. Once there, you must either speak or die,
for few men are robust enough to exist there for many weeks.
"I am sorry, sir, but I have my duty to do. Will you speak, or will
you change your room?"
"I will change my room," Rupert said, quietly. "I may die; but if
by any chance I should ever see the light again, be assured that
all Europe shall know how officers taken in war are treated by the
King of France."
The governor shrugged his shoulders, made a sign to the gaoler, who
opened the door, and as the governor left four other warders
entered the room. Rupert smiled, he knew that this display of force
was occasioned by the fact that his gaoler, entering his room
suddenly, had several times caught him balancing the weighty table
on his arm or performing other feats which had astounded the
Frenchman. The work at the cell wall had always been done at night.
"I am ready to accompany you," Rupert said, and without another
word followed his conductor downstairs.
Arrived at a level with the yard, another door was unlocked, and
the party descended down some stairs, where the cold dampness of
the air struck a chill to Rupert's heart. Down some forty feet, and
then a door was unlocked, and Rupert saw his new abode. It was of
about the same size as the last, but was altogether without
furniture. In one corner, as he saw by the light of a lantern which
the gaoler carried, was a stone bench on which was a bundle of
straw. The walls streamed with moisture, and in some places the
water stood in shallow pools on the floor; the dungeon was some
twelve feet high; eight feet from the ground was a narrow loophole,
eighteen inches in height and about three inches wide. The gaoler
placed a pitcher of water and a piece of bread on the bench, and
then without a word the party left.
Rupert sat quiet on the bench for an hour or two before his eyes
became sufficiently accustomed to the darkness to see anything, for
but the feeblest ray of light made its way through so small a
loophole in a wall of such immense thickness.
"The governor was right," he muttered to himself. "A month or two
of this place would kill a dog."
It was not until the next day that the gaoler made his appearance.
He was not the same who had hitherto attended him, but a
powerful-looking ruffian who was evidently under no orders as to
silence such as those which had governed the conduct of the other.
"Well," he began, "and how does your worship like your new palace?"
"It is hardly cheerful," Rupert said; "but I do not know that
palaces are ever particularly cheerful."
"You are a fine fellow," the gaoler said, looking at Rupert by the
light of his lantern. "I noted you yesterday as you came down, and
I thought it a pity then that you would not say what they wanted
you to. I don't know what it is, and don't want to; but when a
prisoner comes down here, it is always because they want to get
something out of him, or they want to finish with him for good and
all. You see you are below the level of the moat here. The water
comes at ordinary times to within six inches of that slit up there.
And in wet weather it happens sometimes that the stream which feeds
the moat swells, and if it has been forgotten to open the sluice
gates of the moat, it will rise ten feet before morning. I once
knew a prisoner drowned in the cell above this."
"Well," Rupert said, calmly. "After all one may as well be drowned
as die by inches. I don't owe you any ill will, but I should be
almost glad if I did, for then I should dash your brains out
against the wall, and fight till they had to bring soldiers down to
kill me."
The man gave a surly growl.
"I have my knife," he said.
"Just so," Rupert answered; "and it may be, although I do not think
it likely, that you might kill me before I knocked your brains out;
but that would be just what I should like. I repeat, it is only
because I have no ill will towards you that I don't at once begin a
struggle which would end in my death one way or another."
The gaoler said no more; but it was clear that Rupert's words had
in no slight degree impressed him, for he was on all his future
visits as civil as it was within his nature to be.
"Whenever you wish to see the governor, he will come to you." he
said to Rupert one day.
"If the governor does not come till I send for him," Rupert
answered, "he will never come."
Even in this dungeon, where escape seemed hopeless, Rupert
determined to do his best to keep life and strength together.
Nothing but the death of the king seemed likely to bring relief,
and that event might be many years distant. When it took place, his
old friend would, he was sure, endeavour in every way to find out
where he was confined, and to obtain his release. At any rate he
determined to live as long as he could; and he kept up his spirits
by singing scraps of old songs, and his strength by such gymnastic
exercises as he could carry out without the aid of any movable
article. At first he struck out his arms as if fighting, so many
hundred of times; then he took to walking on his hands; and at last
he loosened one of the stones which formed the top of the bed, and
invented all sorts of exercises with it.
"What is the day and month?" he said one day to his gaoler.
"It is the 15th of October."
"It is very dark," Rupert said, "darker than usual."
"It is raining," the jailer said; "raining tremendously."
Late that night Rupert was awoke by the splashing of water. He
leaped to his feet. The cell was already a foot deep in water.
"Ha!" he exclaimed, "it is one thing or the other now."
Rupert had been hoping for a flood; it might bring death, but he
thought that it was possible that it might bring deliverance.
The top of the loophole was some two and a half feet from the
vaulted roof; the top of the door was about on the same level, or
some six inches lower. The roof arched some three feet above the
point whence it sprang.
Rupert had thought it all over, and concluded that it was possible,
nay almost certain, that even should the water outside rise ten
feet above the level of his roof, sufficient air would be pent up
there to prevent the water from rising inside, and to supply him
with sufficient to breathe for many hours. He was more afraid of
the effects of cold than of being drowned. He felt that in a flood
in October the water was likely to be fairly warm, and he
congratulated himself that it was now, instead of in December, that
he should have to pass through the ordeal.
Before commencing the struggle, he kneeled for some time in prayer
on his bed, and then, with a firm heart, rose to his feet and
awaited the rising of the water. This was rapid indeed. It was
already two feet over his bed, and minute by minute it rose higher.
When it reached his chin, which it did in less than a quarter of an
hour from the time when he had first awoke, he swam across to the
loophole, which was now but a few inches above the water, and
through which a stream of water still poured. Impossible as it was
for any human being to get through the narrow slit, an iron bar had
been placed across it. Of this Rupert took hold, and remained
quiescent as the water mounted higher and higher; presently it rose
above the top of the loophole, and Rupert now watched anxiously how
fast it ran. Floating on his back, and keeping a finger at the
water level against the wall, he could feel that the water still
rose. It seemed to him that the rise was slower and slower, and at
last his finger remained against a point in the stones for some
minutes without moving. The rise of the water inside the dungeon
had ceased.
That it continued outside he guessed by a slight but distinct
feeling of pressure in the air, showing that the column of water
outside was compressing it. He had no fear of any bad consequences
from this source, as even a height of twelve feet of water outside
would not give any unbearable pressure. He was more afraid that he
himself would exhaust the air, but he believed that there would be
sufficient; and as he knew that the less he exerted himself the
less air he required, he floated quietly on his back, with his feet
resting on the bar across the loophole, now two feet under water.
He scarcely felt the water cold. The rain had come from a warm
quarter; and the temperature of the water was actually higher than
that of the cold and humid dungeon.
Hour after hour passed. The night appeared interminable. From time
to time Rupert dived so as to look through the loophole, and at
last was rewarded by seeing a faint dull light. Day was beginning;
and Rupert had no doubt that with early morning the sluices would
be opened, and the moat entirely cleared of water.
He had, when talking with his gaoler one day, asked him how they
got rid of the water in the dungeon after a flood, and the man said
that there were pipes from the floor of each dungeon into the moat.
At ordinary times these pipes were closed by wooden plugs, as the
water outside was far above the floor; but that after a flood the
water was entirely let out of the moat, and the plugs removed from
the pipes, which thus emptied the dungeons.
From the way in which the fellow described the various
arrangements, Rupert had little doubt that the sluice gates were at
times purposely left closed, in order to clear off troublesome
prisoners who might otherwise have remained a care and expense to
the state for years to come.
Long as the night had seemed, it seemed even longer before Rupert
felt that the water was sinking. He knew that after the upper
sluice had opened the fosse might take some time to fall to the
level of the water inside the dungeon, and that until it did the
water inside would remain stationary.
He passed the hours by changing his position as much as possible;
sometimes he swam round and round, at other times he trod water,
then he would float quietly, then cling to the bar of the loophole.
The descent of the water came upon him at last as a surprise. He
was swimming round and round, and had not for some time touched the
wall, when suddenly a ray of light flashed in his face. He gave a
cry of joy. The water had fallen below the top of the loophole, and
swimming up to it, he could see across the fosse, and watch the
sunlight sparkling on the water. It was two months since he had
seen the light, and the feeling of joy overpowered him more than
the danger he had faced.
Rapidly the water fell, until it was level with the bottom of the
loophole. Then hours passed away; for the fosse would have to be
emptied before the drain leading from the dungeon could be opened.
However, Rupert hardly felt the time long. With his hands on the
bar and in the loophole, he remained gazing out at the sunlight.
The water in the fosse sank and sank, until he could no longer see
it; but he could see the sun glistening on the wet grass of the
bank, and he was satisfied. At last he was conscious of a strain on
his arm, and withdrawing his gaze from without, he saw that the
water had fallen six inches.
It now sank rapidly; and in an hour he could stand with his head
above it. Then he was able to sit down on his bed; but when the
water sank to a depth of two feet, he again lay on his back and
floated. He knew that a thick deposit of mud would be left, and
that it was essential for his plan that he should drift to the exit
hole of the water, and there be found, with the mud and slime
undisturbed by footsteps or movement. Another ten minutes, and he
lay on his back on the ground in a corner of the dungeon to which
the water had floated him, having taken care towards the end to
sink his head so that his hair floated partly over it, and as the
water drained off remained so. He guessed it to be about midday,
and he expected to be left undisturbed until night.
After a time he slept, and when he awoke it was dark, and soon
after he heard steps coming down the stairs. Now was the moment of
trial. Presently the door opened and four of the gaolers came in.
They bore between them a stretcher.
"This is the fifth," one said, and he recognized the voice of his
own attendant. "It is a pity, he was a fine fellow. Well, there's
one more, and then the job's done."
He bent over Rupert, who ceased breathing.
"He's the only one with his eyes closed," he said. "I expect
there's someone would break her heart if she knew he was lying
here. Well, lift him up, mates."
The two months' imprisonment in the dungeon had done one good
service for Rupert. The absence of light had blanched his face, and
even had he been dead he could hardly have looked more white than
he did. The long hours in the water had made his hands deadly cold,
and the hair matted on his face added to the deathlike aspect.
"Put the stretcher on the ground, and roll him over on to it," one
of the men said. "I don't mind a dead man, but these are so clammy
and slimy that they are horrible to touch. There, stand between him
and the wall, put a foot under him, roll him over. There, nothing
could be better! Now then, off we go with him. The weight's more
than twice as much as the others."
Rupert lay with his face down on the stretcher, and felt himself
carried upstairs, then along several long passages, then through a
door, and felt the fresh evening air. Now by the sound he knew that
he was being carried over the bridge across the moat to the burying
ground. Then the stretcher was laid down.
"Now then, roll him over into the hole," one said, "and let us go
back for the last. Peste! I am sick of this job, and shall need a
bottle of eau de vie to put me straight again."
One side of the stretcher was lifted, and Rupert was rolled over.
The fall was not deep, some three or four feet only, and he fell on
a soft mass, whose nature he could well guess at. A minute later he
heard the retreating footsteps of his gaolers, and leaping from the
grave, stood a free man by its side.
He knew that he was not only free, but safe from any active
pursuit, for he felt sure that the gaolers, when they returned with
their last load, would throw it in and fill up the grave, and that
no suspicion that it contained one short of the number would arise.
This in itself was an immense advantage to him, for on the escape
of a prisoner from Loches--an event which had happened but once or
twice in its records--a gun was fired and the whole country turned
out in pursuit of the prisoner.
Rupert paused for two minutes before commencing his flight, and
kneeling down, thanked God for his escape. Then he climbed the low
ramparts, dropped beyond them, and struck across country. The
exercise soon sent the blood dancing through his hands again, and
by the morning he was thirty-five miles from Loches.
He had stopped once, a mile or two after starting, when he came to
a stream. Into this he had waded, and had washed the muck stains
from his clothes, hair, and face.
With the morning dawn his clothes were dry, and he presented to the
eye an aspect similar to that which he wore when captured at Blois
nearly a year before, of a dilapidated and broken-down soldier, for
he had retained in prison the clothes he wore when captured; but
they had become infinitely more dingy from the wear and tear of
prison, and the soaking had destroyed all vestige of colour.
Presently he came to a mill by a stream.
"Hallo!" the miller said cheerily, from his door. "You seem to have
been in the wars, friend."
"I have in my way," Rupert said. "I was wounded in Flanders. I have
been home to Bordeaux, and got cured again. I started for the army
again, and some tramps who slept in the same room with me robbed me
of my last shilling. To complete my disaster, last night, not
having money to pay for a bed, I tramped on, fell into a stream,
and was nearly drowned."
"Come in," said the miller. "Wife, here is a poor fellow out of
luck. Give him a bowl of hot milk, and some bread."