CAPTAIN JACK AND OLD BATES ARE FUGITIVES—THEY FLY FROM LONDON AND
CONCEAL THEMSELVES IN HORNSEY WOOD—THEIR DEPREDATIONS.
With the arrest or dispersion of the principals of their gang the
greater part of Captain Jack’s anxieties and difficulties ceased.
The remainder of the vagabonds pursued through the villages and woods
soon fell into the hands of justice.
Beggars, sham hawkers, deserters, came in succession to swell the
list of prisoners in the London gaols.
Jack and his friend Bates had withdrawn to the country.
There, in almost inaccessible thicket, they constructed a hut of
branches and leaves, very skilfully contrived to deceive the eyes of
the passers by.
Only at night did they venture out into the neighbouring commons,
and the fears their audacity inspired prevented the peasants from
betraying their place of concealment.
Ned Warbeck and others undertook to effect this difficult capture.
Four of them, disguised as wood-cutters, with two others to assist
them, and who were well acquainted with every nook and corner of the
forest, determined to enter at nightfall under the trees of Hornsey
Wood, and bivouacked in silence.
At about four o’clock in the morning they surrounded the retreat of
the two outlaws.
Ned Warbeck and one of the wood-cutters, with musket in hand, and
finger on trigger, gently drew aside the leafy door, when they
perceived the terrible couple lying amid bundles of hay and picked
bones.
A gun, loaded and cocked, was lying between them.
Captain Jack opened his eyes, awoke less by the noise than by the
vague uneasiness that must ever haunt the guilty.
Seizing his gun he cried,
“Help! Bates, help!”
But Ned covered him with his musket, while one of the wood-cutters
seized the gun, and two others rushing in, in another moment both the
rascals were safely handcuffed.
“Ned Warbeck,” said Captain Jack, “it was not right of you to betray
your friends in this manner.”
“Thank you,” Ned laughingly replied, “but I prefer such friends as
you at a distance, anywhere except in our own neighbourhood.”
The Captain cast an evil glance at Ned, and followed on to prison.
No sooner did the law show itself stronger than Captain Jack’s
roguery than the tongues of the people loosened, and singular
revelations were made; the former related that several times during
the hot days of summer Jack and his friends used to arrive by dozens,
and shutting the gates of farms, they opened the doors leading into
the cellars, and helped themselves to the farmers’ cider.
Then stripping themselves of their clothing, converted thus the
yard into a ball-room, where they performed the wild antics of the
“beggar’s dance,” resembling some of the strange scenes described by
travellers of what they had witnessed among certain tribes of African
and South Sea Islanders.
In other places they would make themselves quite at home, especially
Captain Jack, for no sooner was his tall figure recognised, whether
he was alone or accompanied by any of his friends, immediately
all the servants, ploughmen, and shepherds assembled round their
dangerous guest to attend upon his wants for fear of being shot.
The tales told by these oppressed people revealed more than one
hidden crime.
To render his authority secure and to prevent desertion and
treachery, Captain Jack had established among his regular followers a
sort of bond of union secured by an oath of vengeance.
Every member of his new gang convicted of having betrayed their
associates, or of refusing an order issued by Captain Jack, was
pitilessly massacred, and the executioners selected from among
themselves.
It was in this manner that a poor lad suffered for a crime against
the association.
He gave, thoughtlessly, no doubt, some wrong information respecting
some farm they were going to attack.
He was seized, and carried to the camp of Captain Jack.
His accuser was no less than old Bates, who had stolen the sails of a
windmill for some purpose, and the boy had made known this trick to
Captain Jack.
Some time afterwards the boy spoke rather freely of the projects of
the gang upon the farm of a very poor man near by.
Thereupon it was resolved he should die.
Captain Jack pronounced sentence upon him, and he was beaten to death
with sticks.
The terror inspired by Captain Jack had hitherto deterred the
peasants from giving information to the magistrates of the murder of
this lad.
His bones lay bleaching on the ground where he had fallen, and no one
had ventured to inter them.
The remains of the poor boy were collected as evidence against Jack
and old Bates.
Another was murdered in the wood for having taken the part of an
innkeeper against his comrades, who wanted to cheat him at the
reckoning.
A third was also murdered for a similar offence.
They tied him to an oak-tree and burned him alive, first cutting off
his ears, and nailing them to a tree, as a terror to others of the
gang.
Several would have met with similar fates, and only escaped by a
miracle.
“Come here,” said Ned to Master Tim. “Have you not often said and
boasted that you would take Captain Jack as a deserter from the
king’s army?”
Poor Tim looked pale, and turned about anxiously for succour, and
trembled in every limb.
Several peasants whom Tim had not perceived at first, and several
others, formed a circle around him, which gradually grew narrower and
narrower, and of which Tim himself formed the centre.
“No, sir, I did not say so,” replied Tim, very modestly.
“You lie,” said Ned, laughing, at the same time striking a heavy blow
on the side of Tim’s head with his stick.
The poor groom cast a terrified glance around, and perceived a
fellow-servant who had more than once taken his part. But this
companion now gave him a very different reception; now, he smote him
a blow on the arm with a walking-cane which almost broke the bone.
Then Ned and others rained a shower of blows upon him until he fell
to the ground, well punished for all his past boasting.
The energetic and unwearied Ned kept up the pursuit of the gang for
one hundred and fifty days, without halting to rest, or scarcely ever
putting off his clothes and arms, or quitting his horse’s back.
He made captures almost every day.
The terror that had formerly possessed the neighbourhood had now
passed away, and two or three mounted men were quite sufficient to
send away any of the fugitives, and more than enough to secure many
vagabonds.
It was a truly grand affair the trial of those members of Captain
Jack’s band.
The mass of positive evidence was immense, but scarcely equal to the
suspicion that attached to the prisoners for other crimes in which it
was supposed they had taken a part.
To let light into this chaos, to collect all the scattered proofs,
to separate the facts from surmises, to complete imperfect cases by
evidence withdrawn from other cases, and to sift the truth out of
constantly varying testimony on the part of witnesses, was a most
difficult task.
Continual error and confusion arose from the various aliases assumed
by the more notorious members of the gang, while the differences in
the calendar between old and new style added to the difficulties that
beset the ministers of justice.
Nothing of the kind is more curious than the interminable questions
put by the patient counsel, repeated in each new trial month after
month with untiring perseverance, and which most frequently elicited
the same answers.
But at times the monotony was relieved by overwhelming proofs by the
evidence of some of the culprits themselves, or of others who seemed
to grow tired of the suspense of a trial, and convicted themselves to
put an end to it.
It was by a very narrow opening that night first entered, but day by
day it grew larger.
Confession followed confession.
One appeared to stimulate the other, and they seemed to pride
themselves as to who should outvie the other in recitals of the
atrocities they had committed.
Much exaggeration was, it is true, mixed up with these
communications, and it was only by close comparison and sifting, that
the truth could be elicited regarding the atrocious doings of Captain
Jack and his famous Baker’s Dozen.
But there they were in prison, through the instrumentality and
industry of Wildfire Ned and Lieutenant Garnet.
What became of most of them we shall quickly see.