HOW I LAY AMONG LOST SOULS
The ship we were on was the 48-gun frigate _Swiftsure_, and of our
treatment we had no reason to complain. We were landed at Portsmouth two
days later, drafted from one full prison to another, from Forton to the Old
Mill at Plymouth, from Plymouth to Stapleton near Bristol, separated by
degrees and circumstances, till at last I found myself one more lost soul
in the great company that filled the temporary war prison, known among its
inmates and the people of that countryside as Amperdoo.
It lay apart from humanity, in a district of fens and marshes, across
which, in the winter time, the east wind swept furiously in from the North
Sea, some thirty miles away. It cut like a knife--to the very bone. I hear
it still of a night in my dreams, and wake up and thank God that after all
it is only our own gallant south-wester, which, if somewhat unreasonably
boisterous at times, and over fond of showing what it can do, is still an
honest wind, and devoid of treachery. For we were but ill-clad at best, and
were always lacking in the matter of fuel, and many other things that make
for comfort. Whatever we might be at other times, when the east wind blew
in from the sea we were, every man of us, _âmes perdues_ in very truth,
and I marvel sometimes that any of us saw the winter through.
The prison was a huge enclosure surrounded by a high wooden stockade.
Inside this was another stockade, and between the two armed guards paced
day and night. In the inner ring were a number of long wooden houses in
which we lived, if that could be called living which for most was but a
weary dragging on of existence bare of hope and love, and sorely trying at
times to one's faith in one's fellows and almost in God Himself. For the
misery and suffering enclosed within that sharp-toothed circle of unbarked
posts were enough to crush a man's spirit and sicken his heart.
In the summer pestilential fevers and agues crept out of the marshes and
wasted us. In the winter the east winds wrung our bones and our hearts. And
summer and winter alike, the Government contractors, or those employed by
them, waxed fat on their contracts, which, if honestly carried out, would
have kept us in reasonable content.
How some among my fellow-prisoners managed to keep up their hearts, and to
maintain even fairly cheerful faces, was a source of constant amazement to
me. They had, I think, a genius for turning to account the little things of
life and making the most of them, outwardly at all events. But the
cheerfulness of those who refused to break down, even though it might be
but skin-deep and subject to sudden blight, was still better than the utter
misery and despair which prevailed elsewhere.
Outwardly, then, when the sun shone and one's bones were warm, our company
might seem almost gay at times, joking, laughing, singing, gambling. But
these things covered many a sick heart, and there were times when the
heart-sickness prevailed over all else, and we lay in corners apart, and
loathed our fellows and wished we were dead.
I say we, but, in truth, in these, and all other matters, except the
regular routine of living, I was for a considerable time kept apart from my
fellows by the deafness brought on by the explosion. I lived in a little
soundless world of my own with those dearest to me,--Carette, and my
mother, and my grandfather, and Krok, and Jeanne Falla, and George Hamon.
And if I needed further company, I could people the grim stockade with old
friends out of those four most wonderful books of my grandfather's. And
very grateful was I now for the insistence which had made me read them
times without number, and for the scarcity which had limited me to them
till I knew parts of them almost by heart.
Outwardly, indeed, I might seem loneliest of the company, for cards and
dice had never greatly attracted me, and to risk upon a turn of the one or
a throw of the other the absolute necessaries of life, which were the only
things of value we possessed as a rule, seemed to me most incredible folly.
Possibly the personal value of the stakes added zest to the game, for they
wrangled bitterly at times, and more than once fought to the death over the
proper ownership of articles which would have been dearly bought for an
English shilling. But the loss of even these trifling things, since they
meant starvation, inside or out, made all the difference in the world to
the losers, and cut them to the quick, and led to hot disputations.
And, though I strove to maintain a cheerful demeanour, which was not always
easy when the wind blew from the east, my deafness relieved me of any
necessity of joining in that mask of merriment, which, as I have said, as
often as not covered very sick hearts. For though a merry face is better
than a sad one, I take it to be the part of an honest man to bear himself
simply as he is, and the honest sad faces drew me more than the merry
masked ones through which the bones of our skeletons peeped grisly enough
at times.
Thoughts of escape occupied some of us, but for most it was out of the
question. For, even if they could have got out of the enclosure and passed
the sentries, their foreign speech and faces must have betrayed them at
once outside.
To myself, however, that did not so fully apply. In appearance I might
easily pass as an English sailor, and the English speech came almost as
readily to my tongue as my own. It was with vague hopes in that direction,
and also as a means of passing the long dull days, that I began carving
bits of bone into odd shapes, and, when suitable pieces offered, into
snuffboxes, which I sold to the country-folk who came in with provisions.
At first my rough attempts produced but pence, and then, as greater skill
came with practice, shillings, and so I began to accumulate a small store
of money against the time I should need it outside.
In building the prison in so marshy a district, advantage had been taken of
a piece of rising ground. The enclosure was built round it, so that the
middle stood somewhat higher than the sides, and standing on that highest
part one could see over the sharp teeth of the stockade and all round the
countryside.
That wide view was not without a charm of its own, though its long dull
levels grew wearisome to eyes accustomed only to the bold headlands and
sharp scarps of Sercq, or to the ever-changing sea. For miles all round
were marshes where nothing seemed to grow but tussocks of long wiry grass,
with great pools and channels of dark water in between. Far away beyond
them there were clumps of trees in places, and farther away still one saw
here and there the spire of a church a great way off.
When we came there the wiry grass was yellow and drooping, like bent and
rusted bayonets, and the pools were black and sullen, and the sky was gray
and lowering and very dismal. And in Sercq the rocks were golden in the
sunshine, the headlands were great soft cushions of velvet turf, the
heather purpled all the hillsides, and the tall bracken billowed under the
west wind. And on the gray rocks below, the long waves flung themselves in
a wild abandon of delight, and shouted aloud because they were free.
Then the east winds came, and all the face of things blanched like the face
of death, with coarse hairs sticking up out of it here and there. The pools
and ditches were white with ice, and all the countryside lay stiff and
stark, a prisoner bound in chains and iron. To stand there looking at it
for even five minutes made one's backbone rattle for half a day. And yet,
even then, in Sercq the sun shone soft and warm, the sky and sea were blue,
the fouaille was golden-brown on the hillside, the young gorse was showing
pale on the Eperquerie, and the Butcher's Broom on Tintageu was brilliant
with scarlet berries.
To any man--even to our warders--Amperdoo was a desolation akin to death.
To many a weary prisoner it proved death itself and so the gate to wider
life. To one man it was purgatory but short removed from hell, and that he
came through it unscathed was due to that which he had at first regarded as
a misfortune, but which, by shutting him into a world of his own with those
he loved, kept his heart sweet and fresh and unassoiled.
In time, indeed, my hearing gradually returned, and long before I left the
prison it was quite recovered. But before it came back the habit of
loneliness had grown upon me, and there was little temptation to break
through it, and I lived much within myself.
Many the nights I sought my hammock as soon as the daylight faded, and lay
there thinking of them all at home. To open my eyes was to look on a mob of
crouching figures by the distant fire, wrangling as it seemed--for I could
not hear them--over their cards and dice. But--close my eyes, and in a
moment I was in Jeanne Falla's great kitchen at Beaumanoir, with Carette
perched up on the side of the green-bed, swinging her feet and knitting
blue wool, and Aunt Jeanne herself, kneeling in the wide hearth in the glow
of the flaming gorse, seeing to her cooking and flashing her merry wisdom
at us with twinkling eyes. Or--in the glimmer of the dawn, my eyes would
open drearily on the rows and rows of hammocks in the long wooden room,
every single hammock a stark bundle of misery and suffering. And I would
close them again and draw the blanket tight over my head, and--we were boy
and girl again, splashing barefoot in the warm pools under the Autelets;
or--we were lying in the sunshine in the sweet short herbs of the
headlands, with kicking heels and light hair all mixed up with dark, as we
laid our heads together and plotted mischiefs; or, side by side, with
gleaming brown faces, and free unfettered limbs as white as our thoughts,
we slipped through the writhing coils of the Gouliot, and hung panting to
the honeycombed rocks while the tide hissed and whispered in the long
tresses of the seaweed.
My clearest and dearest recollections were of those earlier days, before
any fixed hopes and ideas had brought with them other possibilities. But I
thought too of Jeanne Falla's party, and of young Torode, and I wondered
and wondered what might be happening over there, with me given up for dead
and Torode free to work his will so far as he was able.
Some comfort I found in thought of Aunt Jeanne, in whose wisdom I had much
faith; and in George Hamon, who knew my hopes and hated Torode; and in my
mother and my grandfather and Krok, who would render my love every help she
might ask, but were not so much in the way of it as the others. But, if
they all deemed me dead,--as by this time I feared they must, though,
indeed, they had refused to do so before,--my time might already be past,
and that which I cherished as hope might be even now but dead ashes.
At times I wondered if Jean Le Marchant had not had his suspicions of
Torode's treacheries, and how he would regard the young Torode as suitor
for Carette in that case. I was sure in my own mind that her father and
brothers would never yield her to anything but what they deemed the best
for her. But their ideas on that head might differ widely from my own, and
I drew small comfort from the thought.
And Carette herself? I hugged to myself the remembrance of her last
farewell. I lived on it. It might mean nothing more than the memory of our
old friendship. It might mean everything. I chose to believe it meant
everything. And I knew that even if I were dead she would never listen to
young Torode if a glimmer of the truth came to her ears, for she was the
soul of honour.
Then came a matter which at once added to my anxieties, and set work to my
hands which kept my mind from dwelling too darkly on its own troubles.
So crowded were all the war prisons up and down the land, and so continuous
was the stream of captives brought in by the war-ships, that death no
sooner made a vacancy amongst us than it was filled at once from the
overflowing quarters elsewhere.
We had fevers and agues constantly with us, and one time so sharp an
epidemic of small-pox that every man of us, will he nil he, had to submit
to the inoculation then newly introduced as a preventive against that most
horrible disease. Some of us believed, and rightly I think, that as good a
preventive as any against this or any ailment was the keeping of the body
in the fittest possible condition, and to that end we subjected ourselves
to the hardest exercise in every way we could contrive, and suffered I
think less than the rest.
As the long hard winter drew slowly past, and spring brightened the land
and our hearts, and set new life in both, my mind turned again to thoughts
of escape. While that bleak country lay in the grip of ice and snow it had
seemed certain death to quit the hard hospitality of the prison. It was
better to be alive inside than dead outside. But now the stirrings of life
without stirred the life within towards freedom, and I began to plan my
way.