THE BREWING STORM.
Friday was to be the last day of Warden Tapp's tenure, and Robert was
aware that the convicts had determined to celebrate his removal by some
demonstration of their joy. Everybody was dissatisfied with his
government--the public, his deputies, his charges, alike. Stalking about
with that inveterate preference for his own company which had won him
the nickname of "The Pelican," he gnawed his huge mustache in a manner
that seemed to betray that he was not oversatisfied with the results
himself.
The prison which he had taken from his predecessor, as orderly as any
barracks the world over, he left to his successor (a military man)
slovenly, rebellious and tunneled with secret avenues of communication
to the outside world. He had begun with leniency and a smiling face.
Vice, indolence and a thousand weedy growths flourished up under his
elevated chin. When he awoke at last his rigor in uprooting them was
intemperate and ineffectual. Several felons escaped. A riot broke out
and the warden had been helplessly holding the reins behind a runaway
horse ever since.
He had flogged men for not saluting when he passed, yet he was hooted at
every time he showed his head to the crowd. He had strung three
brushmakers up by the thumbs for idling, yet every shop except the
harness-makers, in spite of free labor, showed a deficit for the last
half-year. The cells were so littered with storage that it was almost
impossible to enter them. Contraband tobacco, gift books, tools, bird
cages, shirts and shoes smuggled from the workshops, even knives and
revolvers, were found in them.
The "block," or dark dungeon, was always full. If some dozen of the
conniving deputies had been sent there, Warden Tapp might have had less
to extenuate.
"It's quiet this evening," said Robert to Dobbs on Thursday.
"That's the lull before the storm, my boy," said the cracksman.
"You think we'll have trouble, then?"
"Keep your 'ead in, my boy, when it rains. These 'ere coves 'll get a
wetting that'll spoil their Sunday duds. They 'aven't no hart."
"No what?"
"No hart, no hingenuity. They hask first and then try to take it. We'll
take what we want first--honly a little fresh air, Bobbs--and then we'll
hask for it, as a matter of form. Hi'm horfully punctilious on forms,
Bobbs."
Dobbs chuckled at the prospect of writing a letter to the warden,
requesting his release from the safe distance of 3,000 miles.
"Hi ain't the fool of the family, ham Hi, Bobbs?"
"Who's that talking now, Dobbs?"
"The thick-mouthed cove wot gets choked with 'is hown Adam's happle?
That's Quirk."
"Quirk?" It was the familiar voice he had often tried to place, but
Floyd knew nobody named Quirk.
"What is he grumbling for? Is he a ring-leader among the men?"
"Ring-leader, ho, no. Ee lost 'is temper the first time ee saw 'is mug
in the quicksilver and ee's never found it since."
This conversation had been conducted face to face in the dark through
the aperture formed by the removal of four bricks on each side of the
partition. Dobbs had already outlined a general plan to Robert by which
they were to escape. He was only waiting, he said, for his "chummy" to
"drop the sweet hinnocence game and hown up ee wasn't a lamb."
"So you expect me to climb through that hole, Dobbs?"
"If you won't gnaw your hown bars, you must."
"It's too small."
"Then we'll stretch her till she fits, as the 'aberdasher said when 'is
royal 'ighness' trousers didn't meet round 'is royal 'ighness'
waistband."
"I doubt if even six will be wide enough. The bricks are only eight by
four apiece, and I think I'm more than sixteen by twelve."
"Can a cat jump through a keyhole? No-sirree. But a corpuscle can wiggle
through a capillary."
About 11 o'clock the next morning the entire prison force was summoned
to the rotunda to hear the farewell address of the warden. The rotunda
was a great round hall at one end of the bastile, or prison proper,
communicating through two double doors with the warden's office, from
which it was only a step to the street. Looking around at the desperate
gallery of 600 faces, all shaven, but ill-shaven, and most of them
brutal from the indulgence of hateful passions, Robert thought how small
a chance the forty keepers stood if that sullen herd should ever
stampede.
But the walls of the rotunda were undressed bowlders of granite and the
windows all around were double-barred with iron rods that looked strong
enough to hold up a mountain. Only the rear doors were vulnerable at
all, and these simply led through the kitchen to the cells, or right and
left into the yard, at the end of which, and all along one side,
abutting the rotunda, were the workshops, while the other side was
impregnable with its twenty-foot wall.
Flanked by Gradger and Longlegs, the Pelican rose to address his
mutineers. At his approach there was such a tremendous joggling in the
crowd, that for a time it looked as if the volcano would burst then and
there. But three spokesmen who had wriggled their way to the front
stepped forward with their hands clasped over their heads as a token of
peaceful intentions and requested the privilege of a word to the warden.
They were all marked men, undergoing long sentences and recognized as
dangerous criminals. The difference of type between them was conspicuous
as they stood in front of the surging crowd--Dickon Harvey, the Right
Spur and Minister Slick.
Dickon Harvey was a diamond thief, polished in person and of fluent
address. Like those madmen in asylums whom the casual visitor finds
perfectly rational and indeed delightful companions, Dickon Harvey never
failed to convince callers at the prison of his moral sanity. He
admitted past misuse of undeniable talents, though stoutly denying the
particular crime upon which he was sentenced. His legends of early
temptation and ambition to reform had softened the heart of many a
philanthropist to pity. But his cold eye glittered with a point of light
sharp enough to cut the Koh-i-noor, and a turnkey of exceptional ability
was assigned to the ward which contained Dickon Harvey.
The Right Spur derived his sobriquet from his position as head of the
rooster gang. There was little of what Dobbs called "hart" in his line
of work, which consisted simply in sandbagging and garroting picked-up
acquaintances or passers-by. But in the crude occupation of the footpad
he had displayed a brute daring that had surrounded his name with
associations of terror, and this diabolical halo had been brightened and
enlarged by his turbulence in jail. He was middle-sized and
barrel-built, with the complexion of a teamster, a wicked smile and a
scar.
Minister Slick's career would be pictured by a line more excursive than
the diagram with which Sterne represents the history of Tristram Shandy.
His criminal twist had begun just where most men's end. Up to the age of
forty he had been able to delude several congregations into a belief in
his fitness for the sacred ministry. His sermons had been noted no less
for unction than for orthodoxy, their only heresies being grammatical
ones. Then came a fall, sudden and irretrievable. In a few months he had
developed unusual skill as a confidence man, in which he was aided by a
certain oiliness of manner and insinuating ease of speech. He was tall
and dignified, with a long gray beard, which Tapp permitted him to wear
on account of a chronic quinsy, though his kennel-mates whispered this
was all in your eye--a strange location to be sure, for a clergyman's
sore throat--but minute veracity was never expected of Minister Slick.
"Mr. Warden," said Dickon Harvey, "I am desired, with my
fellow-spokesmen, by the entire community, to tender you our deepest
respect upon your retirement from the office whose duties you have so
conscientiously fulfilled."
Tapp's lips quivered. Was this irony or praise?
"If you have not always met with success, if our interests and yours
have seemed to clash at times, believe me there are few among us who do
not appreciate that the fault is in the system and not the man."
"The system, the system," there rose a murmur among the men, which died
away like a stifled cry when Longlegs raised his gun.
"We have read with interest the article on 'Prison Discipline,'
contributed by you to the last number of the Penological Quarterly, and
the petition we present is, we believe, in line with most of the reforms
you suggest."
"You desire to present me a petition. Of what value is that? Col.
Mainwaring enters to-morrow. It belongs to him."
"A recommendation from yourself, Mr. Warden," answered Minister Slick,
"would surely have great weight."
"What is the burden of your document?"
Dickon Harvey removed a paper from his "budge."
"A seriatim schedule of the reforms which we respectfully ask to be
enacted."
"Take the paper to your office," whispered Longlegs to the warden, but
the obstinate official only flushed angrily at his presumption.
"I will hear what you have to say," he said, weakly clutching at this
last hope of favor among the convicts. Dickon Harvey proceeded to read
his production.
"To the Warden of Georgetown State Prison: We, the undersigned,
being inmates of your institution and the chief sufferers by its
irregularities of government, hereby offer and present the
following schedule of reforms which we regard as necessary----"
"Necessary," emphasized the Right Spur, and nearly 500 heads wagged
approval.
"Necessary to the quiet and welfare of the community.
"1. That the grotesque, degrading, uncomfortable and unhealthful
striped garb which we are at present condemned to wear be exchanged
for a uniform of gray woolen goods.
"2. That the practice of shaving, designed to destroy our
self-respect and efface all evidences of our former and better
identity, be abolished, and each man allowed free choice in the
matter of his personal appearance, which concerns himself so deeply
and nobody else at all.
"3. That intervals of conversation be allowed among the whist
parties. (This was the local name of the shop-gang, who, under the
existing system, were compelled to work amid a silence as absolute
as that of a Trappist monastery.)
"4. That the dunce-cap rule be suspended and workers who happen to
be unemployed for a few moments be allowed to sit at their benches
instead of standing face to the wall.
"5. That the cat-o'-nine-tails and thumb-screw be abolished and
punishment limited to the block or extension of sentence, and that
the rules for shortening of sentence on account of good behavior be
made more liberal.
"6. That the tobacco rations and weekly prune stew be restored.
"7. That the cells be lighted until 9 o'clock with a gas-jet in
each, and reading or writing allowed.
"8. That Ezra C. Hawkins, Kenneth Douglas, Murtagh McMorrow and
Johann Koerber be discharged for inordinate and unnecessary
severity and cruelty."
This article was greeted with a swell of cheers and taunts which Tapp
seemed impotent to quell.
"9. That favoritism and privilege shall be a thing unknown."
Another bellow greeted this, and Floyd knew from the glance that the
clause was a blow at himself. The cell he occupied was known as "the
parlor" from its greater width, its ventilation and its possession of a
reading-table and cupboard. There was jealousy, moreover, because he had
been allowed to do light work about the greenhouse (which he was
entirely competent to supervise, from his botanical knowledge) instead
of being put at a bench. They forgot that his status was different from
theirs. The labor was quite voluntary.
"10. That the indeterminate sentence be put into effect, so that
through the specious pretext of punishing crime, the abominable
crime of depriving peaceable and perfectly harmless citizens, who
have bitterly atoned for some past peccadillo and earnestly desire
to demonstrate their change of spirit to the world, be not
committed under the sanction of law."
Harvey handed the petition to Tapp. It was, on the whole, an enlightened
document. Two of the men who prepared it were probably as able as any of
the officials of the prison. Robert could see the different hands at
work in its composition. The "past peccadilloes" were Dickon Harvey's
"flim-flam" adventures, while the demands for more tobacco, for Hawkins'
removal and the reduction of his own "privilege" were a concession to
the ruffian element, represented by the Right Spur of the Rooster gang.
Yet several of the recommendations were as wise and sound as though all
the prison associations in the country had indorsed them.
"Prisoners----" Tapp started to reply.
"No gammon," interrupted the Right Spur, scowling, while a hundred other
scowls immediately gathered on the foreheads of his particular
followers.
Tapp colored again. His obstinacy was aroused. He was not a timid man.
"It would be a breach of courtesy toward my successor to offer him such
suggestions. I do not propose to recommend the discharge of employes
whose only offense is their fidelity to duty; neither do I propose to
constitute myself the spokesman of a mob of law-breakers."
A hiss--the most hateful sound that issues from the human throat, with
its serpentine suggestions and its vagueness of origin--greeted this
challenge. The keepers gripped their guns, awaiting an order, but the
Pelican stood helpless, furious, perplexed.
"To the shops!" he cried at last, and the triumphant convicts were
driven like a herd of cattle to their tables and tools. There were
muffled yells from the offenders buried in the block when they passed
it; and at dinner, when the men filed up to the kitchen slide and
carried off their platters of bread and pork, a dozen unruly boarders
were only subdued to moderate quiet at the rifle's point.