HOW WE SAID GOOD-BYE TO AMPERDOO
We were well into the summer by the time Le Marchant was fully fit to
travel, and we had planned and pondered over that outer stockade till our
brains ached with such unusual exercise, and still we did not see our way.
For the outer sentries were too thickly posted to offer any hopes of
overcoming them, and even if we succeeded in getting past any certain one,
the time occupied in scaling the outer palisades would be fatal to us.
Then our chance came without a moment's warning, and we took it on the
wing.
It was a black oppressive night after a dull hot day. We had been duly
counted into our long sleeping-room, and were lying panting in our
hammocks, when the storm broke right above us. There came a blinding blue
glare which lit up every corner of the room, and then a crash so close and
awful that some of us, I trow, thought it the last crash of all. For
myself, I know, I lay dazed and breathless, wondering what the next minute
would bring.
It brought wild shouts from outside and the rush of many feet, the hurried
clanging of a bell, the beating of a drum, and then everything was drowned
in a furious downpour of rain which beat on the roof like whips and flails.
What was happening I could not tell, but there was confusion without, and
confusion meant chances.
I slipped out of my hammock, unhitched it, and stole across to Le Marchant.
"Come! Bring your hammock!" I whispered, and within a minute we were
outside in the storm, drenched to the skin but full of hope.
One of the long wooden houses on the other side of the enclosure was
ablaze, but whether from the lightning or as cover to some larger attempt
at escape we could not tell. Very likely the latter, I have since thought,
for the soldiers were gathering there in numbers, and the bell still rang
and the drum still beat.
Without a word, for all this we had discussed and arranged long since, we
crept to the palisade nearest to us. I took my place solidly against it. Le
Marchant climbed up onto my shoulders, flung the end of his hammock over
the spiked top till it caught with its cordage, and in a moment he was
sitting among the teeth up above. Another moment, and I was alongside him,
peering down into the danger ring below, while the rain thrashed down upon
us so furiously that it was all we could do to see or hear. We could,
indeed, see nothing save what was right under our hands, for the dead
blackness of the night was a thing to be felt.
There was no sound or sign of wardership. It seemed as though what I had
hardly dared to hope had come to pass,--as though, in a word, that urgent
call to the other side of the enclosure, to forestall an escape or assist
at the fire, had bared this side of guards.
We crouched there among the sharp points, listening intently; then, taking
our lives in our hands, we dropped the hammock on the outside of the
palisade and slipped gently down.
My heart was beating a tattoo as loud as that in the soldiers' quarters, as
we sped across the black space which had baffled us so long, and not
another sound did we hear save the splashing of the rain.
My hammock helped us over the outer palisade in the same way as the other,
and we stood for a moment in the rain and darkness, panting and
shaking,--free men.
We made for the void in front, with no thought but of placing the greatest
possible distance between ourselves and the prison in the shortest possible
time. We plunged into bogs and scrambled through to the farther side, eager
bundles of dripping slime, and sped on and on through the rain and
darkness--free men, and where we went we knew not, only that it was from
prison.
For a time the flicker of the burning house showed us where the prison lay,
and directed us from it. But this soon died down, and we were left to make
our own course, with no guide but the drenching rain. We had headed into it
when we loosed from the palisade, and we continued to breast it.
No smaller prize than freedom, no weaker spur than the prison behind would
have carried men through what we underwent that night. We ran till our
breath came sorely, and then we trudged doggedly, with set teeth, and hands
clenched, as though by them we clung to desperate hope. Twice when we
plunged into black waters we had to swim, and Le Marchant was not much of a
swimmer. But there I was able to help him, and when we touched ground we
scrambled straight up high banks and went on. And the darkness, if it gave
us many a fall, was still our friend.
But my recollections of that night are confused and shadowy. It was one
long plunge through stormy blackness, water above, water below, with
tightened breath and shaking limbs, and the one great glowing thought
inside that we were free of the cramping prison, and that now everything
depended on ourselves.
Scarce one word did we speak, every breath was of consequence. Hand in hand
we went, lest in that blackness of darkness we should lose one another and
never come together again. For the thick streaming blackness of that night
was a thing to be felt and not to be forgotten. Never had I felt so like a
lost soul condemned to endless struggle for it knew not what. For whether
we were keeping a straight course, or were wandering round and round, we
had no smallest idea, and we had not a single star to guide us.
It was terribly hard travelling. When we struck on tussocks of the wiry
grass we were grateful, but for the most part we were falling with
bone-breaking jerks into miry pitfalls, or tumbling into space as we ran,
and coming up with a splash and a struggle in some deep pool or
wide-flowing ditch.
There is a limit, however, to human endurance, even where liberty is at
stake. We trod air one time, in that disconcerting way which jarred one
more than many a mile of travel, and landed heavily in the slime below, and
Le Marchant lay and made no attempt to rise. I groped till I found him, and
hauled him to solider ground, and he lay there coughing and choking, and at
last sobbing angrily, not with weakness of soul but from sheer lack of
strength to move.
"Go on! Go on!" he gasped, as soon as he could speak. "I'm done. Get you
along!"
"I'm done too," I said, and in truth I could not have gone much farther.
"We'll rest here till daybreak, then we can see where we are."
He had no breath for argument, and we lay in the muddy sedge till our
hearts had settled to a more reasonable beat, and we had breath for speech.
"How far have we come, do you think?" Le Marchant asked.
"It felt like fifty miles, but it was such rough work that it's probably
nearer five. But it can't be long to daylight. Then we shall know better."
We struggled to a drier hummock and lay down again. The rain had ceased,
and presently, while we lay watching for the first flicker of dawn in front
or on our left, an exclamation from Le Marchant brought me round with a
jerk, to find the sky softening and lightening right behind us. The ditches
and the darkness and our many falls had led us astray. Instead of going due
east we had fetched a compass and bent round to the north; instead of
leaving our prison we had circled round it. And as the shadows lightened on
the long dim flats, we saw in the distance the black ring of the stockade
on its little elevation.
"Let us get on," said Le Marchant, with a groan at the wasted energies of
the night.
"I believe we're safer here. If they seek us it will be farther away.
They'd never think we'd be such fools as to stop within a couple of miles
of the prison."
And, indeed, before I had done speaking, we could make out the tiny black
figures of patrols setting off along the various roads that led through the
swamps, and so we lay still, and watched the black figures disappear to the
east and south and north.
So long as we kept hidden I had no great fear of them, for the swamps were
honeycombed with hiding-places, and to beat them thoroughly would have
required one hundred men to every one they could spare.
"I'm not at all sure it's us they're after," I said, by way of cheer for us
both. "All that turmoil last night and the fire makes me think some of the
others in Number Three were on the same job."
"Like enough, but I don't see that it helps us much. Can we find anything
to eat?"
But we had come away too hurriedly to make any provision, and we knew too
little of the roots among which we lay to venture any of them. So we lay,
hungry and sodden, in spite of the sun which presently set the flats
steaming, and did not dare to move lest some sharp eye should spy us. We
could only hope for night and stars, and then sooner or later to come
across some place where food could be got, if it was only green grain out
of a field, for our stomachs were calling uneasily.
Twice during the day we heard guns at a distance, and that confirmed my
idea that others besides ourselves had escaped, and by widening the chase
it gave me greater hopes. But it was weary work lying there, and more and
more painful as regards our stomachs, which from crying came to clamour,
and from clamour to painful groanings, and a hollow clapping together of
their empty linings.
Not till nightfall did we dare to move, and very grateful we were that the
night was fine with a glorious show of stars. By them we steered due east,
but still had to keep to the marsh-lands and away from the roads. And now,
from lack of food, our hearts were not so stout, and the going seemed
heavier and more trying. It brought back to me the times we had in the
Everglades of Florida, and I told Le Marchant the story, but it did not
greatly cheer him.
Once that night, in our blind travelling, we stumbled out into a road, and
while we stood doubtful whether we might not dare to use it for the
easement of our bodies, there came along it the tramp of men and the click
of arms, and we were barely in the ditch, with only our noses above water,
when they went noisily past us in the direction of the prison.
We made a better course that night, in the matter of direction at all
events, but our progress was slow, for we were both feeling sorely the lack
of food, and our way across the flats was still full of pitfalls, into
which we fell dully and dragged ourselves out doggedly. We had been thirty
hours without a bite, and suffered severe pains, probably from the marsh
water we had drunk and had to drink.
"Two hundred kegs of fine French cognac we dropped overboard outside Poole
Harbour," groaned Le Marchant one time, "and a mouthful of it now--!" Ay, a
mouthful of it just then would have been new life to us. We stumbled on
like machines because our spirits willed it so, but truly at times the
weariness of the body was like to master the spirit.
"We must come across something in time," I tried to cheer him with--feeling
little cheer myself.
"If it's only the hole they'll find our bodies in," he said down-heartedly.
And a very short while after that, as though to point his words, we fell
together into a slimy ditch, and it seemed to me that Le Marchant lay
unable to rise.
I put my arms under him, and strove to lift him, and felt a shock of horror
as another man's arms round him on the other side touched mine, and I found
another man trying to lift him also.
"Bon Dieu!" I gasped in my fright, and let the body go, as the other jerked
out the same words, and released his hold also, and the body fell between
us.
"Dieu-de-dieu, Carré! But I thought this was you," panted Le Marchant in a
shaky voice.
"And I thought it was you."
We bent together and lifted the fallen one to solid ground, but it was too
dark to see his face.
"Is he dead?"
"He is dead," I said, for I had laid my hand against his heart, and it was
still, and his flesh was clammy cold, and when we found him he was lying
face down in the mud.
"He escaped as we did, and wandered till he fell in here and was too weak
to rise. Let us go on;" and we joined hands, for the comfort of the living
touch, and went on our way more heavily than before.
We kept anxious look-out for lights or any sign of humanity. And lights
indeed we saw at times that night, and cowered shivering in ditches and
mudholes as they flitted to and fro about the marshes. For these, we knew,
were no earthly lights, but ghost flares tempting us to
destruction--stealthy pale flames of greenish-blue which hovered like
ghostly butterflies, and danced on the darkness, and fluttered from place
to place as though blown by unfelt winds. And one time, after we had left
the dead man behind, one such came dancing straight towards us, and we
turned and ran for our lives till we fell into a hole. For Le Marchant
vowed it was the dead man's spirit, and that the others were the spirits of
those who had died in similar fashion. But for myself I was not sure, for I
had seen similar lights on our masts at sea in the West Indies, though
indeed there was nothing to prove that they also were not the spirits of
drowned mariners.