TOM IS HUNGRY--HE LEARNS TO "SPOON" BY SQUADS--THE BULLET AT THE
WINDOW--WORKING ON THE TUNNEL--"RAT HELL"--THE RISK OF THE
ROLL-CALL--WHAT HAPPENED TO JAKE JOHNSON, CONFEDERATE SPY--TOM IN
LIBBY PRISON--HANS ROLF ATTENDS HIM--HANS REFUSES TO ESCAPE--THE
FLIGHT THROUGH THE TUNNEL--FREE, BUT HOW TO STAY SO?
When the war between the States began, Libby & Son were a thriving firm
of merchants in Richmond. They owned a big warehouse, which fronted on
Carey Street and extended back over land that sloped down to another
street, which occupied all the space between the southern wall of the
warehouse and the canal that here bordered the James River. The building
was full before the war of that rich Virginia tobacco which Thackeray
praises in "The Virginians" and which the worn-out lands of the Old
Dominion can no longer produce.
[Illustration: LIBBY PRISON AFTER THE WAR]
The prisoners in Libby had painfully little to eat. The whole South was
hungry. When Confederate soldiers were starving, Confederate prisoners
could not expect to fatten. Nor was this the only evil thing. The prison
was indescribably unclean. The cellar and the lower floor, upon which no
prisoners were allowed except in the dining-room in the middle of the
floor and the hospital, swarmed with huge rats which climbed upstairs at
night and nipped mouthfuls of human flesh when they could. There was no
furniture. The prisoners slept on the floor, so crowded together that
they had to lie spoon fashion in order to lie down at all. They had
divided themselves into squads and had chosen commanders. Tom found
himself assigned to Squad Number Four. The first night, when he had at
last sunk into uncomfortable sleep upon the hard floor, he was awakened
by the sharp command of the captain of his group:
"Attention, Squad No. Four! Prepare to spoon! One, two, spoon!"
The squad flopped over, from one weary bruised side to another. It
seemed to the worn-out boy that he had just "spooned," when again he
waked to hear the queer command and again he flopped. This was a sample
of many nights.
On the following morning Tom had one of the narrow escapes of his life.
He was leaning against one of the barred windows, looking at the broad
valley of the James, when he was suddenly seized violently by the arm
and jerked to one side. His arm ached with the vice-like grip that had
been laid upon it and his knees, sticking through his torn trousers, had
been barked against the floor, as he was dragged back, but he turned to
the man who had laid hold of him, not with anger, but with thankfulness.
For, at the second he had been seized a bullet had whizzed through the
window just where his head had been. If he had not been jerked away, the
Chronicles of Tom Strong would have ended then and there.
If Tom was not angry, the man was. He glared at him.
"You little fool, don't you know better than that?"
When the boy heard himself called a fool, he did become angry, but after
all this big person had saved his life, even if he did call him names.
So he swallowed his wrath--which is an excellent thing to do with
wrath--and answered quite meekly:
"No, sir, I don't know better. Can't we look out of the windows?"
"Hasn't anybody told you that?"
"No, sir."
"Then I shouldn't have called you a fool." Tom smiled and nodded in
acceptance of the implied apology. "The sentries outside have orders to
fire whenever they see anybody at a window. Last week two men were
killed that way. I thought you were a goner, sure, when I saw you
looking out. Sorry if I hurt you, but it's better to be hurt than to be
killed. Shake."
The boy wrung the big man's hand and thanked him for his timely aid.
They strolled together up and down the big room now deserted by most of
its occupants, who had begun below their patient wait for dinner. The
man was Colonel Rose. He found Tom to his liking. And he needed an
intelligent boy in his business. Just then Colonel Rose's business was
to escape. This seemed hopeless, but the Colonel did not think so. Yet
it had been often tried and had always failed. When several hundred
intelligent Americans are shut up, through no fault of their own, in a
most unpleasant prison, with nothing to do, they are quite certain to
find something to do by planning an escape and by trying to make the
plan a reality. One trouble about the former plans at Libby had been
that the whole mass of prisoners had known about them. There must always
be leaders in such an enterprise, but hitherto the leaders had taken the
crowd into their confidence. Now there were Confederate spies in the
crowd, sham prisoners. The former plots had always been found out. Once
or twice they had been allowed to ripen and the first fugitives had
found their first free breath their last, for they had stumbled into a
trap and had been instantly shot down upon the threshold of freedom.
More often the ringleaders had disappeared, spirited away without
warning and probably shot, while their scared followers had been left to
despair. Rose had learned the history of all the past attempts. He
planned along new lines. He decided upon absolute secrecy, except for
the men who were actually to do the work. This work involved a good
deal of burrowing into holes that must be particularly narrow at first
and never very big. A strong, lithe boy could get into a hole where a
stout man could not go. Once in, he could enlarge it so that many men
could follow. Colonel Rose wanted a human mole. He had picked Tom Strong
for the job. Now, in whispered sentences, he told the boy of the plan
and asked his aid. Tom's shining eyes threatened to tell how important
the talk was.
"Act as though you were uninterested, my boy," Colonel Rose warned him.
"Keep your eyelids down. Yawn occasionally."
So Tom tried to look dull, which was not at all his natural appearance.
He studied the floor as if he expected to find diamonds upon it. He
yawned so prodigiously as to attract the attention he was trying to
escape. An amateur actor is apt to overact his part. And all the time he
was listening with a passionate interest to Colonel Rose's story of the
way to freedom. Of course he was glad to try to help make the hope a
fact.
That night the work began. The kitchen dining-hall was deserted from 10
P.M. to 4 A.M., so it was selected as the field of operation. Below the
kitchen was the carpenter-shop. No opening could be made into that
without instant detection. On the same floor with the kitchen and just
east of it was the hospital. That room must be avoided too. Below the
hospital was an unused cellar, half full of rotting straw and all full
of squealing rats. It was called "Rat Hell." Outside of it was a small
sewer that led to a larger one which passed under the canal and emptied
its contents into the James River. These sewers were to be the highway
to freedom. The first step must be to get from the kitchen to Rat Hell.
To do this it was necessary to dig through a solid stone wall a reversed
"S," like this:
[Illustration: Reverse S]
The upper end of the secret passage was to open into the kitchen
fireplace, the lower into Rat Hell. There were fourteen men in the
secret, besides Tom. Between them, they had just one tool, an old knife.
One of them owned a bit of burlap, used sometimes as a mattress and
sometimes as a bed-quilt. It had a new use now. It was spread upon the
kitchen hearth in the midnight darkness and a pile of soot was pulled
down upon it. Then the mortar between a dozen bricks at the back of the
fireplace was cut out with the knife and the bricks pried out of place.
This was done by Major A. G. Hamilton, Colonel Rose's chief assistant.
He carefully replaced the bricks and flung handfuls of soot over them.
He and Rose crept upstairs, carrying the sooty bit of burlap with them,
and slept through what was left of the night. The next day was an
anxious time for them. When they went down to the kitchen, where a
couple of hundred men were gathered, it seemed to them that the marks of
their toil by night were too plain not to be seen by some of them. Their
nervousness made them poor judges. Nobody saw what had been done. That
night, as soon as the last straggler left, Rose and Hamilton again
removed the bricks and attacked the stubborn stone behind the fireplace.
Fortunately the stones were not large. Bit by bit they were pried out of
the loosened mortar.
Now came Tom's chance to serve the good cause. He was a proud boy, a few
nights later, when he was permitted to go down to the kitchen with the
Colonel and the Major, in order that he might creep into the hole they
had made and enlarge it. His heels wiggled in the air. He laid upon his
stomach in the upper part of the reversed "S" and plied the old knife as
vigorously as it could be plied without making a tell-tale noise. When
he had widened the passage, one of the men took his place in it and
drove it downward. One night Colonel Rose in his eagerness got into the
opening before the lower part of it had been sufficiently enlarged and
stuck there. It was only by a terrible effort that Hamilton and Tom
finally dragged him out, bruised, bleeding and gasping for breath.
Finally, after many nights, Rat Hell was reached. A bit of rope, stolen
from about a box of food sent a prisoner, had been made into a rope
ladder. It was hung from the edge of the hole. The three crept
cautiously down to Rat Hell. This haven did not seem much like heaven.
With squeals of wrath, the rats attacked the intruders and the intruders
fled up their ladder. They were no match for a myriad rats. Moreover
they feared lest the noise would bring into the basement the sentry
whose steps they could hear on the sidewalk outside. So they fled,
taking their rope-ladder with them, and again, as ever, they replaced
the bricks and painted them with the friendly soot.
The next night, armed this time with sticks of wood, they fought it out
with the rats and made them understand their masters had come to stay.
Fortunately the fight was short. It was noisy and the sentry came. But
when he opened the door from the street and looked into the darkness of
the basement, the Union officers were safely hid under the straw and
only a few of the defeated rats still squealed. At last the tunnel to
the sewer could be begun. Colonel Rose had long since decided, by
forbidden, stealthy glances from an upper window, just where it was to
be. The measurement made above was now made below, the straw against
the eastern wall was rolled aside and the old knife, or what was left of
it after its battle with brick and stone, was put to the easier task of
digging dirt.
[Illustration: FIGHTING THE RATS
From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War."
The Century Co.]
Soon a new difficulty had to be met. Before the tunnel was five feet
long, the air in it became so foul that candles went out in it. So would
the lives of the diggers have gone out if they had stayed in it long.
Five of the fifteen now went down each night, so that everybody had two
nights' rest out of three. But the progress made was pitifully slow. Man
after man was hauled by his heels out of the poisonous pit, almost at
his last gasp. Once, when Hamilton had been brought out and was being
fanned back to life by Colonel Rose and Tom, the boy whispered:
"Why not fan air into the tunnel?"
Nobody had thought of that obvious plan. Like most great inventions it
was simple--when seen. Thereafter one or two men always sat at the end
of the tunnel fanning air into it with their hats. But even so, many a
candle went out and many a digger was pulled out, black in the face and
almost dead.
The tunnel sloped downwards, of course, to reach the sewer. It sloped
too far down. It got below the water-level of the canal. Hamilton was
caught in it by the rush of water and almost drowned. So much work had
to be done over again. Then came a crushing blow. When the small sewer
was finally reached, it proved to be too small for a man to pass through
it. But it had a wooden lining, which was bit by bit taken off. When
this had been done to within a few feet of the main sewer, two men were
detailed to cut their way through. The next night was set as the time
for the escape. None of the thirteen slept while the two were cutting
away the final obstacle. The thirteen did not sleep the next night
either, for it was 36 hours before the two came back with their
heartbreaking news. They had found the last few feet of the sewer-lining
made of seasoned oak, three inches thick and hard as stone. The poor
old knife that had served them so long and so well, could not even
scratch the toughened oak. Thirty-nine nights of grinding toil had ended
in failure.
Meanwhile the thirteen had had to face a new problem. There were two
roll-calls every day, at 9 A.M. and 4 P.M. How were the two absent men
to answer? At roll-call everybody stood in one long line and everybody
was counted. If the count were two short, there would be swift search
for the missing. And the beginning of the tunnel was hidden only by a
few bundles of straw. This was before they knew the tunnel was useless,
but had they known it they would have been scarcely less anxious, for
its discovery would have made all future attempts to escape more
dangerous and more doubtful. However, the roll-call problem was safely
solved. The thirteen crowded into the upper end of the line and two of
them, as soon as they had answered to their own names, dropped back,
crouched down, crept behind the backs of many men to the other end of
the line, slipped into place, and there answered for the missing men,
without detection. In the afternoon, they came very near being caught.
Some of the other prisoners thought this was being done just for fun, to
confuse the Confederate clerk who called the roll, and thought they
would take a hand in the fun too. There was so much dodging and double
answering that "Little Ross," the good-humored little clerk, lost his
temper and ordered the captives to stand in squads of ten to be counted.
By this time he had called the roll half a dozen times, with results
varying from minus one to plus fifteen. When he gave his order, an order
obedience to which would have certainly told the tale of two absentees,
he went on to explain why he gave it.
"Now, gentlemen, there's one thing sho'; there's eight or ten of you-uns
yere that ain't yere."
This remarkable statement brought a shout of laughter from the
Confederate guards. The prisoners joined in it. "Little Ross" himself
caught the contagion and also began to laugh.
[Illustration: From "Famous Adventures of the Civil War." The Century Co.
SECTIONAL VIEW OF LIBBY PRISON AND THE TUNNEL
1. Streight's room; 2. Milroy's room; 3. Commandant's office; 4.
Chickamauga room (upper); 5. Chickamauga room (lower); 6.
Dining-room; 7. Carpenter's shop (middle cellar); 8. Gettysburg
room (upper); 9. Gettysburg room (lower); 10. Hospital room; 11.
East or "Rat Hell" cellar; 12. South side Canal street, ten feet
lower than Carey street; 13. North side Carey street, ground
sloping toward Canal; 14. Open lot; 15. Tunnel; 16. Fence; 17.
Shed; 18. Kerr's warehouse; 19. Office James River Towing Co.; 20.
Gate; 21. Prisoners escaping; 22. West cellar.]
The dreaded order was laughed out of court and forgotten.
The two men crept upstairs early the next morning. The first night
daylight had caught them at work, so they had not dared to return, but
had stayed and had worked through the 36 hours. They brought back the
handle of the knife, with a mere stump of a blade, and the depressing
news of failure. But men who are fit for freedom do not cease to strive
for it. If one road to it is blocked, they seek another. That very day,
when the fifteen had gathered together and the two had told their tale,
a pallor of despair crept over some of the faces, but it was dispelled
by the flush of hope when Colonel Rose said: "If we can't go south,
we'll go east; we must tunnel to the yard beyond the vacant lot. We'll
begin tonight."
"But," objected one doubting Thomas, "from the yard we'd have to come
out on the street. There's a gas-lamp there--and a sentry."
"We can put out the lamp and if need be the sentry," Colonel Rose
answered, "when we get to them. The thing now is to get there. We have
fifty-three feet of tunnel to dig, if my figures are correct. That's a
job of a good many nights. This night will see the job begun."
It was begun with a broad chisel kind Fate had put in their way and with
a big wooden spittoon, tied to a rope. This, when filled with earth, was
pulled out, emptied, and returned for a fresh load. A fortnight
afterwards the officer who was digging that night made a mistake in
levels and came too near the surface, which broke above him. Dismayed,
he backed out and reported the blunder. The hole was in plain sight.
Discovery was certain if it were not hidden. The story was but half told
when Colonel Rose began stripping off his blouse.
"Here, Tom, take this. It's as dirty as the dirt and won't show. Stuff
it into the hole so it will lie flat on the surface. Quick!"
Tom wriggled along the tunnel to the hole. There he smeared some more
dirt on the dirty blouse, put it into the hole with cunning care, and
wriggled back. That morning at sunrise, when they peeked down from
their prison windows into the eastern lot, even their straining eyes
could scarcely see the tiny bit of blouse that showed. No casual glance
would detect it. Of that they were sure.
* * * * *
Every few days new prisoners were thrust into Libby. Whenever this
happened it was the custom that on the first evening they should tell
whatever news they could of the outside world and of their own capture
to the whole prison community. One morning the keeper of Libby receipted
for another captured Yankee and soon Captain Jacob Johnson appeared in
the grimy upper rooms. He responded very cordially, rather too
cordially, to the greetings he received. It soon became understood that
he was only a guerilla captain from Tennessee. Now neither side was
overproud of the guerillas who infested the borderland, who sometimes
called themselves Unionists and sometimes Confederates, and who did more
stealing than fighting. So a rather cold shoulder was turned to the new
captive, though the community's judgment upon him was deferred until
after he should have been heard that evening. He seemed to try to warm
the cold shoulder by a certain greasy sidling to and fro and by attempts
at too familiar conversation. He began to talk to Colonel Rose, who soon
shook him off, and to sundry other persons, among whom was Tom. The boy
was not mature enough in the ways of the world to get rid of him.
Johnson spent some hours with him and bored him to distraction. There
was a mean uneasiness about him that repelled Tom. His face, an
undeniably Yankee face, awoke some unpleasant memory, from time to time,
but the boy could not place him and finally decided that this was merely
a fancy, not a fact. None the less the man himself was an unpleasant
fact. He peered about and sidled about in a way that might be due only
to Yankee curiosity, but Tom didn't like it. He disliked Johnson more
and more as the newcomer kept returning to him and growing more
confidential. His talk was on various natural enough themes, but it
kept veering back to the chances of escape.
"I don't mean to stay in this hole long," Johnson whispered. "Pretty
mean-spirited in all these fellows to just hang around here, without
even trying to make a getaway. What d'ye say 'bout our trying it on,
son?"
The familiar address increased the boy's dislike of the man, but he was
too young to realize that he was being "sounded" by a spy. He was old
enough, however, to know how to keep his mouth shut about the pending
plan for an escape. He thought Johnson got nothing out of him, but in
the many half-confidential talks the unpleasant Yankee forced upon him,
perhaps he had revealed something after all. Perhaps, however, the
newcomer got such information as he did from other men in the secret.
Certainly he got somewhere an inkling of the plan of escape.
That evening, when he stood in a circle of sitting men to tell his
story,--a simple tale of Northern birth, of a Southern home, of belief
in the Union, of raising a guerilla company to fight for it, of capture
in a raid on a Confederate supply-depot,--the unpleasant memory which
had been troubling Tom came back and hammered at his head until
suddenly, as if a flashlight had been turned on the scene, he saw
himself sprawling on the hearth of Uncle Mose's slave-cabin, with this
man's hand clutching his ankle. He was sitting on the floor beside
Colonel Rose. He leant against him and whispered:
"That man didn't come from Tennessee. He was overseer on a plantation in
Alabama. He 'most captured me once. I b'lieve he's a spy."
Johnson caught the gleam of Colonel Rose's eye fixed upon him. He had
seen Tom whisper to him. He faltered, stopped speaking, and sat down.
Rose walked across the circle and sat beside him. He had snapped his
fingers as he walked and half a dozen men had answered the signal and
were now close at hand.
"What did you do before you turned guerilla?" asked Colonel Rose.
"I don't know that that's any of your darned business," said Johnson.
"Answer me."
The stronger man dominated the weaker. The spy sulkily said:
"I kept a general shop in Jonesboro', Tennessee."
"Ever live anywhere else in the South?"
"No."
"Ever do anything else in the South?"
"No, sirree. What's the good of asking such questions?"
The Colonel rose to his feet and said aloud:
"Major Hamilton."
"Here, sir," answered the Major.
"Didn't you live in Jonesboro', Tennessee, before the war?"
"Yes, sir."
"How long?"
"Seven years."
"Who kept the general store there?"
"Hezekiah Butterworth, from Maine."
"Did you know him?"
"Rather. We were chums. He and I left Jonesboro' together to join the
army."
"Is this man he?"
Rose pointed to where Jake Johnson sat at his feet, cowering, covering
his face with his hands. Other hands not too gently snatched Jake's
hands from his face. Hamilton looked at him.
"He's no more Hezekiah Butterworth than he's General Grant."
By this time the whole prison community was crowded about Colonel Rose.
The latter called again:
"Mr. Strong."
"Here, sir," Tom's voice piped up.
"Do you know this man?"
"Yes, sir." Tom told the story of Jake Johnson on the Izzard plantation.
There was an ominous low growl from the audience. Yankee overseers of
Southern plantations were not exactly popular in that crowd of Northern
officers. And evidently this particular overseer had been lying. But
Colonel Rose lifted his hand and said:
"Silence. No violence. What we do will be done decently and in order."
After this impressive speech, he suddenly yelled: "Ah, you would, would
you?" and choked Johnson with every pound of strength he could put into
the process. He had just seen him slip a bit of paper into his mouth and
he meant to know what that paper was. It was plucked out of the spy's
throat as he gasped for air. Upon it the spy's pencil had written:
"Plot to escape. Lieutenant Strong knows about it. Think Colonel Rose
heads it."
It was to have been Jake Johnson's first report in his new business of
being a spy. It put an end to all business on his part forever. Gagged
and tied, he was pushed across the big room, while Tom watched
uncomprehendingly, wondering what was to be done with the writhing man.
Suddenly he understood, for he saw it done. Johnson was pushed into a
window. Two kneeling men held his legs and another, standing beside him
but screened by the wall, pushed him in front of the window. The
Confederate sentry below obeyed his orders. There was no challenge, no
warning. He aimed and fired at the prisoner who was breaking the laws of
the prison by looking out of the window. What had been Jake Johnson,
Yankee, negro-overseer, Confederate conscript, volunteer spy, fell in a
dead heap to the floor of Libby. Gag and bonds were quickly removed, so
there was nothing to tell the Confederates the real cause of the man's
death when they came to remove the body. They had unwittingly executed
their own spy.
* * * * *
It was right that the man should die, but the shock of seeing him done
to death was too much for Tom. Weakened by the fatigues and hardship of
the long captivity during which he had been carried from Ohio to
Virginia and worn out by the sufferings of life in Libby and by the toil
of the tunnel, the boy collapsed when Jake Johnson did and for a few
moments seemed as dead as the man was. He was taken to the
hospital-room, but the hospital in Libby was usually only the anteroom
of the graveyard at Libby. One of the scarcest things in the
Confederacy, the home of scarcity, was a good doctor. The armies in the
field needed far more doctors than there were in the whole South, at the
outbreak of the war. Medical schools were quickly created, but the
demand for doctors so far outran the supply that by this time ignorant
country lads were being rushed through the schools, with reckless haste,
so that they were graduated when they knew but little more than when
they began. A so-called surgeon was handling his scalpel six months
after he had been handling a plow. Some of them barely knew how to read
and write. It was inevitable that the prison hospitals should be manned
by the poorest of the poor among the graduates of these wretched
schools. A fortunate chance, fortunate that is for Tom, gave him,
however, care that was both skilful and tender.
A few hours after the righteous execution of Jake Johnson there had been
thrust into Libby a fresh group of prisoners, captured but fortyeight
hours before. Among them towered a jovial, bearded giant, an army
surgeon, Major Hans Rolf. Libby was ringing of course with talk of what
had happened there that day. The new prisoners quickly heard of Johnson
and of Tom Strong. Within an hour, Hans Rolf had given his parole not to
try to escape and had been allowed to station himself beside Tom's bed.
Through that night and through the next day, he fought Tom's battle for
him, doing all that man could do. When the boy struggled out of his
delirium and saw Rolf's kind eyes beaming upon him, his first thought
was that he was still in the clutches of Wilkes Booth in the railroad
car. His right hand plucked feebly at his left side, where he had then
carried the dispatches Booth sought. Hans Rolf saw and understood the
movement.
"It's all right, Tom," he said. "Everything's all right. Go to sleep."
And Tom, still a bit stupefied, thought everything was all right and
that he was home in New York, with Rolf somehow or other there too. A
gracious and beautiful Richmond woman, who gave her days to caring for
her country's enemies, bent over him with a smile. The boy's eyes
gleamed with a mistaken belief.
* * * * *
"Oh, Mother!" gasped Tom. He smiled back and sank gently into a profound
sleep, from which he awoke to life and health. Again a Hans Rolf had
saved a Tom Strong's life.
Night after night passed, one night of work by each man followed by two
of such rest as lying spoon fashion upon a hard floor allowed. On the
seventeenth night of the new tunnel work, Colonel Rose was digging away
in it. It was over fifty feet long. His candle flickered and went out.
The foul air closed in upon him. Hats were fanning to and fro, back in
Rat Hell, fifty feet away, but the fresh air did not reach him. He felt
himself suffocating. With one last effort he thrust his strong fists
upward and broke through the surface. Soon revived by the rush of fresh
air into the tunnel, he dragged himself out and found himself in the
yard that had been their aim. The tunnel had reached its goal. He
climbed out and studied the situation. A high fence screened the yard
from Libby. A shed with an easily opened door screened it from the
street. At three A.M., February 6, 1864, Colonel Rose returned to
prison.
That morning he told his news. Most of the men wanted to try for freedom
the next night, but there was much to do to erase all traces of their
work, so that, if the tunnel were not forthwith discovered after their
flight, it could be used later by other fugitives. With a rare
unselfishness, they waited for sixty hours. Meanwhile each of the
fifteen had been authorized to tell one other man, so that thirty in all
could make their escape together. Colonel Rose felt that this was the
limit. A general prison-delivery would, he believed, result in a general
recapture. Such a secret, however, was too mighty to keep a whisper of
it spread through the prison.
When Hans Rolf had saved Tom's life, he had been at once taken into the
inner councils of the tunnel group. He had not expressed as much joy in
the plan as Tom had expected. The reason of this was now revealed. He
declined to go.
"You see," he explained to Colonel Rose and Tom, "I gave my parole not
to try to escape when Tom here was sick. I had to do so in order to be
allowed to take care of him. I made up my mind not to ask to be relieved
from it because if I had the Confeds. might have suspected some plan to
escape was on hand. And they seem to have forgotten all about it, for
they haven't cancelled it. So you see I'm bound in honor not to go.
Don't bother, Tom." The boy's face showed the agony he felt that Hans
Rolf's kindness to him should now bar Hans Rolf's way to freedom. "Don't
bother. 'Twon't be long before I'll be exchanged. And p'raps I can save
some lives here by staying. Don't bother. It's all right. I rather like
this boarding-house."
The giant's great laugh rang out. The heartiness of it amazed the weary
men scattered about the room. It brought smiles to lips that had not
smiled for many a day. Laughter that comes from a clean heart does good
to all who hear it.
It was clear that Rolf could not go. He was an officer and a gentleman.
Honor forbade it. Sadly, Tom left him.
On Tuesday evening, February 9, 1864, when the chosen thirty had crawled
down the inverted "S" and the rope-ladder to Rat Hell, Col. H. C.
Hobart, who knew the secret, but had gallantly offered to stay behind,
so that he could replace the tell-tale bricks in the fireplace, replaced
them. But before he could get upstairs, some hundreds of men had come
down. The secret was a secret no longer. There was a fierce struggle to
get to the fireplace, a struggle all the fiercer because it had to be
made in grim silence, for there was a sentry but a few feet away, on the
other side of the wall, in the hospital. The bricks were taken out
again. In all, one hundred and nine Union officers got through the hole.
Then, warned by approaching daylight, the less fortunate in the fight
for freedom put back the bricks and crept stealthily upstairs, resolved
to try their luck the next night, if the tunnel were not before that
discovered.
Tom had wormed his way through the inverted "S" among the first fifteen.
On the rope ladder he lost his hold and fell in a heap upon the floor of
Rat Hell. The huge rodents swarmed upon him, squealing and biting. He
almost shrieked with the horror of it, but he sprang to his feet, threw
off his tormentors, and ran across the room to the opening of the
tunnel. His ragged clothes were still more ragged and his face and hands
were bleeding from rat-bites, but he cared nothing for all this. Was he
not on his way to freedom? On his way, yes; but the way was a long one.
He might never reach the end. When he had pushed and pulled himself
through the tunnel; when he had come out into the yard and gone through
the shed; and when, at the moment the sentry in the canal street was at
the further end of his beat, he had slipped out of the doorway and
turned in the opposite direction,--when all this had happened, he was
out of prison, to be sure, but he was in the heart of the enemy's
country, with all the risks of recapture or of death still to be run.
The men had all been cautioned to stroll away in a leisurely fashion, on
no account to run or even to walk fast, and not to try to get away in
groups of more than two or three. It was hard to walk slowly to the next
corner. The boy made himself do so, however. Half a block ahead of him
on the side street, he saw a couple of men walking with a somewhat
faster stride. He hurried ahead to join them. A Confederate patrol
turned the corner of Carey Street. He heard the two men challenged and
he heard the little scuffle as they were seized. Their brief moment of
freedom had passed. He stepped to one side of the wooden sidewalk and
crawled under it. There was just space enough for him to lie at full
length. Hurrying feet, the feet of men hunting other men, trampled an
inch above his nose. His heart beat so that he thought it must be heard.
The patrol reached the street along the canal and peered into the
darkness there, a darkness feebly fought by one flickering gas-lamp.
Fortunately, nobody came out of the shed just then. The sentry happened
to be coming towards it and the men inside were waiting for him to turn.
The patrol had no thought of a general jail-delivery. It turned back
with its two prisoners, tramped back over Tom's head to Carey Street,
and took its captives to the prison. The boy crawled out from under the
sidewalk as the next batch of fugitives, three of them, reached the
corner. He ran down to them and warned them of the Carey Street patrol.
The three men turned with him and walked along the canal. It was just
after midnight. Not a soul was stirring. Not a light showed. As they
walked unquestioned, their spirits rose. How fine to be free.