WE ATTEMPT AN ESCAPE
Father Hamilton was not aware of the extent of it, but he knew I was in
a correspondence with the sous-officer. More than once he had seen us in
the _salle dépreuve_ in a manifest understanding of each other,
though he had no suspicion that the gentleman was a Mercury for Miss
Walkinshaw, whose name seldom, if ever, entered into our conversation
in the cell. From her I had got but one other letter--a brief
acknowledgment of some of my fullest budgets, but 'twas enough to keep
me at my diurnal on every occasion almost on which the priest slept. I
sent her (with the strictest injunction to secrecy upon so important a
matter) a great deal of the tale the priest had told me--not so much
for her entertainment as for the purpose of moving in the poor man's
interests. Especially was I anxious that she should use her influence
to have some one communicate to Father Fleuriau, who was at the time in
Bruges, how hazardous was the position of his unhappy cat's-paw, whose
state I pictured in the most moving colours I could command. There was,
it must be allowed, a risk in entrusting a document so damnatory to
any one in Bicêtre, but that the packet was duly forwarded to its
destination I had every satisfaction of from the sous-officer, who
brought me an acknowledgment to that effect from Bernard the Swiss.
The priest knew, then, as I say, that I was on certain terms with this
sous-officer, and so it was with no hesitation I informed him that,
through the favour of the latter, I had a very fair conception of
the character and plan of this building of Bicêtre in which we were
interned. What I had learned of most importance to us was that the block
of which our cell was a part had a face to the main road of Paris, from
which thoroughfare it was separated by a spacious court and a long range
of iron palisades. If ever we were to make our way out of the place
it must be in this direction, for on two sides of our building we were
overlooked by buildings vastly more throng than our own, and bordered by
yards in which were constant sentinels. Our block jutted out at an angle
from one very much longer, but lower by two storeys, and the disposition
of both made it clear that to enter into this larger edifice, and
towards the gable end of it that overlooked the palisades of the Paris
road, was our most feasible method of essay.
I drew a plan of the prison and grounds on paper, estimating as best I
might all the possible checks we were like to meet with, and leaving a
balance of chances in our favour that we could effect our purpose in a
night.
The priest leaned his chin upon his arms as he lolled over the table on
which I eagerly explained my diagram, and sighed at one or two of the
feats of agility it assumed. There was, for example, a roof to walk
upon--the roof of the building we occupied--though how we were to get
there in the first place was still to be decided. Also there was a
descent from that roof on to the lower building at right angles, though
where the ladder or rope for this was to come from I must meanwhile
airily leave to fortune. Finally, there was--assuming we got into the
larger building, and in some unforeseeable way along its roof and clear
to the gable end--a part of the yard to cross, and the palisade to
escalade.
“Oh, lad! thou takest me for a bird,” cried his reverence, aghast at
all this. “Is thy poor fellow prisoner a sparrow? A little after this I
might do't with my own wings--the saints guide me!--but figure you that
at present I am not Philetas, the dwarf, who had to wear leaden shoes
lest the wind should blow him away. 'Twould take a wind indeed to stir
this amplitude of good humours, this sepulchre of twenty thousand good
dinners and incomputible tuns of liquid merriment. Pray, Paul, make
an account of my physical infirmities, and mitigate thy transport of
vaultings and soarings and leapings and divings, unless, indeed, thou
meditatest sewing me up in a sheet, and dragging me through the realms
of space.”
“We shall manage! we shall manage!” I insisted, now quite uplifted in a
fanciful occupation that was all to my tastes, even if nothing came
of it, and I plunged more boldly into my plans. They were favoured
by several circumstances--the first, namely, that we were not in the
uniform of the prison, and, once outside the prison, could mingle with
the world without attracting attention. Furthermore, by postponing the
attempt till the morrow night I could communicate with the Swiss, and
secure his cooperation outside in the matter of a horse or a vehicle, if
the same were called for. I did not, however, say so much as that to his
reverence, whom I did not wish as yet to know of my correspondence
with Bernard. Finally, we had an auspicious fact at the outset of our
attempt, inasmuch as the cell we were in was in the corridor next to
that of which the sous-officer had some surveillance, and I knew his
mind well enough now to feel sure he would help in anything that did not
directly involve his own position and duties. In other words, he was to
procure a copy of the key of our cell, and find a means of leaving it
unlocked when the occasion arose.
“A copy of the key, Paul!” said Father Hamilton; “sure there are no
bounds to thy cheerful mad expectancy! But go on! go on! art sure he
could not be prevailed on--this fairy godfather--to give us an escort of
cavalry and trumpeters?”
“This is not much of a backing-up, Father Hamilton,” I said, annoyed at
his skeptic comments upon an affair that involved so much and agitated
myself so profoundly.
“Pardon! Paul,” he said hastily, confused and vexed himself at the
reproof. “Art quite right, I'm no more than a croaker, and for penance I
shall compel myself to do the wildest feat thou proposest.”
We determined to put off the attempt at escape till I had communicated
with the sous-officer (in truth, though Father Hamilton did not know
it, till I had communicated with Bernard the Swiss), and it was the
following afternoon I had not only an assurance of the unlocked door,
but in my hand a more trustworthy plan of the prison than my own, and
the promise that the Swiss would be waiting with a carriage outside the
palisades when we broke through, any time between midnight and five in
the morning.
Next day, then, we were in a considerable agitation; to that extent
indeed that I clean forgot that we had no aid to our descent of twenty
or thirty feet (as the sous-sergeant's diagram made it) from the roof of
our block on to that of the one adjoining. We had had our minds so much
on bolted doors and armed sentinels that this detail had quite escaped
us until almost on the eve of setting out at midnight, the priest began
again to sigh about his bulk and swear no rope short of a ship's cable
would serve to bear him.
“Rope!” I cried, in a tremendous chagrin at my stupidity. “Lord! if I
have not quite forgot it. We have none.”
“Ah!” he said, “perhaps it is not necessary. Perhaps my heart is so
light at parting with my _croque-mort_ that I can drop upon the tiles
like a pigeon.”
“Parting,” I repeated, eyeing him suspiciously, for I thought perhaps he
had changed his mind again. “Who thinks of parting?”
“Not I indeed,” says he, “unless the rope do when thou hast got it.”
There was no rope, however, and I cursed my own folly that I had not
asked one from the sous-officer whose complaisance might have gone the
length of a fathom or two, though it did not, as the priest suggested,
go so far as an armed convoy and a brace of trumpeters. It was too late
now to repair the overlook, and to the making of rope the two of us had
there and then to apply ourselves, finding the sheets and blankets-of
our beds scanty enough for our purpose, and by no means of an assuring
elegance or strength when finished. But we had thirty feet of some sort
of cord at the last, and whether it was elegant or not it had to do for
our purpose.
Luckily the night was dark as pitch and a high wind roared in the
chimneys, and in the numerous corners of the prison. There was a sting
in the air that drew many of the sentinels round the braziers flaming
in the larger yard between the main entrance and the buildings, and that
further helped our prospects; so that it was with some hope, in spite
of a heart that beat like a flail in my breast, I unlocked the door and
crept out into the dimly-lighted corridor with the priest close behind
me.
Midway down this gallery there was a stair of which our plan apprised
us, leading to another gallery--the highest of the block--from which a
few steps led to a cock-loft where the sous-officer told us there was
one chance in a score of finding a blind window leading to the roof.
No one, luckily, appeared as we hurried down the long gallery. I darted
like a fawn up the stair to the next flat, Father Hamilton grievously
puffing behind me, and we had just got into the shadow of the steps
leading to the cock-loft when a warder's step and the clank of his
chained keys came sounding down the corridor. He passed within three
feet of us and I felt the blood of all my body chill with fear!
“I told thee, lad,” whispered the priest, mopping the sweat from his
face, “I told thee 'twas an error to burden thyself with such a useless
carcase. Another moment or two--a gasp for the wind that seems so cursed
ill to come by at my years, and I had brought thee into trouble.”
I paid no heed to him, but crept up the steps and into the cock-loft
that smelt villainously of bats.
The window was unfastened! I stuck out my head upon the tiles and
sniffed the fine fresh air of freedom as it had been a rare perfume.
Luckily the window was scarcely any height, and it proved easy to aid
his reverence into the open air. Luckily, further, it was too dark
for him to realise the jeopardies of his situation for whether his
precarious gropings along the tiles were ten feet or thirty from the
yard below was indiscoverable in the darkness. He slid his weighty body
along with an honest effort that was wholly due to his regard for my
interests, because 'twas done with groans and whispered protestations
that 'twas the maddest thing for a man to leave a place where he was
happy and risk his neck in an effort to discover misery. A rime of frost
was on the tiles, and they were bitter cold to the touch. One fell,
too, below me as I slid along, and rattled loudly over its fellows and
plunged into the yard.
Naturally we stopped dead and listened breathless, a foolish action for
one reason because in any case we had been moving silently at a great
height above the place where the tile should fall so that there was no
risk of our being heard or seen, but our listening discovered so great
an interval between the loosening of the tile and its dull shattering
on the stones below that the height on which we were perched in the
darkness was made more plain--more dreadful to the instincts than if
we could actually measure it with the eye. I confess I felt a touch
of nausea, but nothing compared with the priest, whose teeth began to
chitter in an ague of horror.
“Good Lord, Paul!” he whispered to me, clutching my leg as I moved in
front of him, “it is the bottomless pit.”
“Not unless we drop,” said I. And to cheer him up I made some foolish
joke.
If the falling tile attracted any attention in the yard it was not
apparent to us, and five minutes later we had to brace ourselves to a
matter that sent the tile out of our minds.
For we were come to the end of the high building, and twenty feet below
us, at right angles, we could plainly see the glow of several skylights
in the long prison to which it was attached. It was now the moment for
our descent on the extemporised rope.