feeling tired all over because he had something to do and did not yet
know how to do it. He lay awake a long time, listening to the faint
sounds which now and then disturbed the silence. No kind of rules could
prevent some stirring until all the boys were asleep, but one sound
that Jim waited for was that of the feet of the watchman, patrolling
the corridor. He heard it come and go, more than once, before he
cautiously arose and went to his steel-barred gate.
He had been studying that matter and he did not bang himself against
it, this time. He folded his coverlet and poked it in among the middle
bars, so that it covered three of them. Then he put on his stockings
and his shoes, pulled his bedstead nearer, lay down on his back and
drove both feet against the padded spot, with all his might. The
coverlet had prevented any noise, but he had to try again and again.
“There!” he whispered, at last. “I’ve done it! The door’s open!”
Off came his shoes and in an instant he was out in the corridor, but
there he paused, for a strange, guilty feeling came over him. He almost
felt as if he were stealing something. He did not quite understand it,
but he mustered all his resolution and went on. In less than three
minutes he had his four friends, in their stocking feet, out of their
cells.
“Come on!” he whispered. “All we can do, to-night, is to find out how.”
They only dared to nod at him, in reply, as they followed him to the
large door, leading out of the dormitory. It was not grated but made
solidly, of wood, and it had a stern, forbidding look. Jim leaned
forward and felt of the lock.
“There!” he said. “Hush--sh!--They only turned the key once, when they
locked it. If they’d turned it twice I couldn’t have opened it.”
Slowly, heavily, reluctantly, the massive door came open, as he pulled,
and he could peep out. O, how his heart was beating! The other boys
stood and watched him as if he were a kind of hero, but he suddenly
closed the door.
“He’s coming!” he whispered. “We’ve got to wait for some night when the
watchman’s asleep. Get back to bed!”
There was a swift flitting along the corridor, a careful pulling to of
five grated doors, and the patrol who went by them a minute or so later
discovered no sign of anything unusual.
Jim lay awake for a while. There was a glow of exultation all over
him, for he felt that he had gained one point now. Then he thought of
the great world of freedom he hoped to escape into.
“Spring is here,” he thought. “Pretty soon things’ll be green and
growing. I want to go up and see our place, but I won’t go in. I want
to see Aunt Betty, but I don’t want to see Uncle John. He’d say I did
wrong to get out. I don’t believe she would. There’s a farm here and
lots o’ greenhouses, but only a few boys can work in them. I mean to be
out in the country when summer comes.”
Between him and the country, however, lay the great city, and between
Randall’s Island and that ran the deep, swift tides of the East River.
It made him shiver to think of that, but he could see, in his mind’s
eye, not only the river, with the wharves and buildings on the opposite
side, but the one little wharf on this side, where the little tug that
belonged to the House of Refuge was sure to be moored, each night,
after all its trips to and fro were ended. He knew she was there,
now, a tight little craft, mostly chimney and cabin, and just then he
suddenly sat up in bed.
“That’s it!” he said, almost aloud. “I remember! There’s a little
lifeboat on top,--on the roof deck. If we could get her! There might be
a watchman on the wharf.--There might not.--I guess we could get her
into the water. O!”
There seemed to be really less water in the East River, now he had
thought of that boat, but he sank back on his pillow and went to sleep
while he went over and over the obstacles that lay between him and the
wharf where the tug was moored. His boy associates, curiously enough,
were long since sleeping soundly, as if they had been contented to
leave all the required thinking and all the anxiety to their busy
minded and daring young captain.
VII
ONE PLAN THAT FAILED
Early hours were the rule of the dormitory, but general conversation
could not begin at once on getting up. Jim did not feel like speaking
to anybody. His first strong impression was that any officer who looked
him in the face might see there that something was going on. His next,
as he met his confederates, one by one, was that he could see by their
faces that they were trying to keep a secret.
After that, he was little surprised to find himself making the same
remark concerning some of the smaller boys. He thought no more about
that, for they were very apt to get into scrapes, but they did indeed
have something on their minds, every inch as heavy, for them, as was
the load he carried himself.
He had already learned over again one thing that he had known before.
This was that all his hopes and plans must wait awhile. He would have
to go along and let things turn up, one after another. Nobody can ever
tell what is coming next or how their plans will unexpectedly run into
those of other people.
Mrs. Nelson and Rodney, for instance, could hardly say that they had
any plans, beyond hoping to sell one of their town lots for enough to
pay the taxes and assessments on the rest; and having a door put in;
and having a garden. She could not afford to keep Rodney any longer at
school. He was old enough to earn something, and, besides, what if she
should get sick or be out of work?
“I’ve got to do something,” he said, as he was carrying a chair
upstairs. “Millie Kirby can set type. I wish I could. But she learned
how in her father’s shop.”
She was a stirring kind of girl, anyhow, and he was a little afraid of
her, but when he came downstairs again, she was in the back doorway,
calling out:
“Rodney! Rodney!--You must come over to our house, right away! Billy’s
down in our cellar and we can’t get him out. He’s drank up all the milk
and he’s eaten all the vegetables. He tried to butt me and mother, too.”
“How did he get there!” exclaimed Rodney, setting out at once. “The old
rascal!”
“The cellar was shut up, all night,” she said, “and the things were put
into it to keep them safe, and when we went down, this morning, there
was Billy, ready to fight us.”
“He’s the worst old goat!” said Rodney, “and he doesn’t belong to me,
anyhow.”
He went in a hurry, however, and in a few minutes he began to
understand the matter. The cellar stairs went down from a door opening
into the hall.
“That was open when you and I went through, yesterday,” said Rodney to
Millie. “He just followed us. Why, it’s through this hall he gets out
into the street, sometimes. He watches till the door’s open. I guess he
got into my room through that front window.”
That was not all, if Rodney had but known the working of the mind of a
goat. Having once gone downstairs successfully, in his own house, the
next time he saw stairs before him, they seemed to promise to let him
out into liberty, and so he was now down in the Kirby cellar, a very
much bewildered goat. His plans had all gone wrong and he was glad to
have his own best friend take him by the horns and lead him upstairs
again.
“There he goes!” shouted Millie, but Rodney was just then listening
ruefully to Mrs. Kirby’s energetic account of all the robbery and other
mischief Billy had accomplished in her cellar.
He was glad enough to get away homeward and carry an account of
Billy’s transactions to Pat the carpenter, up on the new avenue.
“The baste!” exclaimed Patrick. “But thim will climb anywhere.--Luk at
that? It’s a big hole for wan dure but it’s the good job I’m makin.”
“I can paint it,” said Rod. “I guess I can paint all the side of the
house. ’Twon’t take much, all that’s above the street.--Then if I could
get the garden ploughed----”
“Why not?” exclaimed Pat. “Sure, I know a man wid a small horse and a
plough of his own. If Billy can come through Kirby’s hall, why can’t a
pony? I’ll see to that same.”
It was a ray of hope for Rod, although he doubted if Mrs. Kirby would
let a horse of any kind go through her house. He said he would see her
about it, but what he really meant was that he would speak to Millie.
That was a long day to quite a number of people. Nowhere, however, was
there more of it than among some of the boys who spent part of its
afternoon in a long, hard drill on the House of Refuge parade-ground.
Most of them marched pretty well, but there were several middle-sized
boys, in the third company from the front, who had to be spoken to,
several times, for the way they missed step.
Jim was not near enough to them, when the line halted before the wall
and faced about, to notice how they craned their heads around and
stared at it. What could they have been thinking about, in or on that
gray, stony face?
Jim himself had thought of it and had studied it, and it seemed to him
to be all the while coming between him and the island wharf. Still, he
paid particular attention to his orders and his marching, just as he
had, in the earlier part of the day, to his type-setting tasks.
The close of the day came, at last, in a dim, foggy kind of dusk that
promised darkness much earlier than usual. The parade-ground, and all
the rest of the wide enclosure, outside of the buildings, seemed to be
deserted. Inside of the buildings, however, there suddenly arose a kind
of buzz, that quickly amounted to something like an excitement. A rumor
whispered its way around among the boys that three of their number were
missing and could not be found.
They did not know that the first difficulty which troubled their
officers, just then, was that there was not a sufficient number of
themselves for indoor duty and, at the same time, to spare searchers
for stray boys over so large a space and in so many places. Nearly a
score of the older and more trustworthy boys were therefore picked
out as helpers, and they were quickly scurrying hither and thither,
in all directions. Jim felt especially gratified that the Assistant
Superintendent, a handsome young naval officer whom he could not help
liking, chose him for one of the hunters. He knew that neither of the
fellows were missing whom he intended as the crew of his boat, and he
went out into the dim, gloomy parade-ground with a perfect fever of
curiosity to discover what any other fellows were up to.
“They can’t get away,” he said to his blue uniformed friend, “but what
can they be trying to do?”
“We’ll see,” said the officer, “but we can’t find a trace of them.”
It was indeed a pretty long time before they did so. Every nook and
cranny of the shops and other buildings and of all the walled-in ground
had been gone over and it was, fast getting into the shape of a mystery.
Jim was carrying a lantern, but the officer held in his hand a
different kind of light, a reflector, a “bull’s-eye,” that would
throw a stream of light ahead like a small locomotive headlight. He
was busily throwing it in all directions and just now, as if by mere
accident, he sent it up to the roof of the large building next to the
engine building. It was not so very high, but was much higher than the
latter and it had several chimneys, coming out just above its eaves.
“Hullo!” exclaimed Jim.
“There they are!” said the officer, almost laughing; and then he
shouted, commandingly:
“Come down, boys! We’ll put up a ladder.”
They had not gone up there by a ladder, but, with wonderful pluck and
agility, by way of the water-pipe at one end of the building. They had
then intended to have remained hidden, each behind a chimney, until all
should be quiet within the enclosure.
After that they would have had to come down into the parade-ground
again and hunt for some means of scaling the wall. As for anything
beyond that, when they came down and were questioned, it seemed that
all their small plot went no further. They did not know what they meant
to do after getting over the wall.
“They might have known they’d be missed, right away,” thought Jim.
“Glad they didn’t fall and break their necks. Best thing for ’em that
they got caught. But I’ve learned one thing. That high building has
water pipes on this side but the engine building hasn’t any. It’s a low
building, too. I wish there was some way for getting on the roof of it
and down the other side, but there isn’t any.”
So there his own plan broke down again, just as had the thoughtless
undertaking of smaller boys. Nevertheless, an hour or so after they
were all safely locked up in the dormitory, he was out of his own cell
and in four others, one after another, telling his friends he believed
he had discovered a pathway which might lead them all to the wharf on
the bank of the river.
VIII
NEW IDEAS THAT CAME
It is not always pleasant to have to wait, but there are a great many
things to be learned, sometimes, while one is waiting.
Jim was now studying the House of Refuge, all over, all the while, and
at first even the officers seemed like a part of the barrier he would
have to break through in order to get out. Then, as he thought of them,
he found himself wishing he could tell them he was not intending to run
away from them, not at all, but only from the idea of being shut up. He
longed for freedom. The House had been a sort of home, for a long time,
but he wanted to escape from its unchanging routine of work and school
and drill, and firm, though kindly discipline. No such thing was known
there as corporal punishment, but all the rules were rigidly enforced,
and Jim wanted to get away from them. Most of all, however, he wanted
to escape from the sting and shame of being in prison, and from the
injustice of being there for something he did not do. More than once
he half wished he could explain himself to one of the Managers, a
gentleman who used to come and sit down with the boys and talk with
them. They told that man everything, somehow, as if he were an older
brother.
Not only Jim but his confederates grew a little feverish, as the days
went by. They even ran risks of discovery, for night after night they
were out in the corridor, minutes at a time, trying the lock of the
great door and peering furtively into the passage-way beyond to see
what the watchman was doing. Jim knew more, now, about the tug and the
wharf, and he had had opportunities for examining both sides of the
engine house.
“It’s too high to climb,” he said, “unless we can get something to
climb with. They never leave out a ladder, anywhere. It’s nothing but
walls, walls, walls!”
He could not solve that problem, yet, but one of Rodney Nelson’s had
been solved for him. Mrs. Kirby had permitted Pat’s friend to take his
pony and plow through her hall, and the garden had been thoroughly
ploughed and harrowed. Rodney was having plenty of work, therefore,
although he would rather have been learning a trade. Most of the ground
was to be planted in potatoes, but Millie Kirby told Rodney that if it
were hers she would make every inch of it grow something.
She was over there, at the house, one evening, just after supper and
they were all out on the sidewalk, looking at the new door. Billy the
goat was standing with his forefeet on the edge of the wall, near them,
looking down as if he were anxious to see his new vegetables begin to
come up in that garden.
“Mrs. Nelson,” came from behind them, “I want to spake to ye about
another job.”
[Illustration: THEY ALL STOOD STILL WHILE THE DRUM BEAT.]
“Pat,” she said, “but what a big door!”
“Isn’t it fine, ma’am?” replied Pat. “Now he’s painted it green, with
red siding, and all the rest of the hoose white. It’s the good painter
he is, for a b’ye----”
“But the doors big enough for the biggest kind of house----” began
Millie.
“That’s it,” said Pat. “It kem out of an owld grocery-sthore front.
It’s a sthore dure and not a hoose dure at all. What yez want, Mrs.
Nelson, is to put a sthore behind that dure. The front room there is
for that. Sure, the big, bay windy is there to show things in. Ye could
sell all that comes from the garden, and hooks and eyes, and tay and
coffee and sugar, and mebbe onything.”
“That’s it, mother,” shouted Rodney, but Pat had more to say and he
went on:
“What yez want, now, is a counter and some shelvin’, and a whole lot of
thim was thrown away from a place I know of, yisther-day. It’ll all go
in, there, aisy, and the b’ye could paint it----”
“Fetch it right along,” said Rodney, and his mother repeated it.
“Fetch it along,” she said. “Why, we could keep a thread-needle store,
and no rent to pay.”
“I’ll come and ’tend counter, too,” said Millie: “while you’re out and
Rodney’s at work in the garden. Besides, he could carry newspapers----”
“I must go, now,” interrupted Pat, “but I’ll do that, at wanst, and
by-and-bye yez can take out the middle partition, and have the whole
flure in wan, and there’s your big sthore.”
He was off, leaving them to consider the matter, but the next remark
was from Billy and it had a doubtful sound.
“Ba-a-ah-eh-beh!” he remarked.
The making of the new avenue and the laying of its neat, stone
sidewalk, went rapidly on. It was already a thoroughfare, with wagons
and foot passengers using it all the while. Only a few days later, Pat
and Rodney spent an evening putting in the shelves and the counters.
They would look shabby enough until they were painted, but there was a
kind of promise in them.
“It’s the fine sthore ye’ll have,” said Pat, “and no trouble with ony
landlord. Many’s the sthore’d do well, if it wasn’t for havin’ rint to
pay.”
“It’ll be long before it pays us anything, I’m afraid,” said Mrs.
Nelson. “We mustn’t wait till Rodney can gather potatoes from that
garden, though. I must see about getting something else.”
“I’m going to do that, myself,” remarked Rodney.
The bright, spring days were doing all they could for the gardens in
the city and everywhere else, and there came one very bright day to
Randall’s Island. The very water of the East River, on either side of
the island, seemed to dance in the sunlight, and the mad rush of the
tide through Little Hellgate channel, between that and Ward’s Island,
northerly, was all one glitter. The great city of New York, over on
Manhattan Island, was looking its very best, but the boys in the House
of Refuge parade-ground could not see it. They could see nothing
outside of their stone walled enclosure, but one boy saw something
inside of it, just after the battalion broke ranks, which made him
stand still and almost turn pale. The drums had ceased their beating,
but his heart took up the business and went on, beating hard, for a
full minute. He looked, he looked again, he stared earnestly at the
roof of the engine house, and he exclaimed, aloud:
“That’s it!--That’ll do!”
Then he stooped and picked up a clutter of rope that lay upon the
ground and threw it into a large, empty box, like a dry goods case,
which stood near the corner of the base ball ground.
“I guess they won’t take it in,” he said, “and if they don’t, it’ll be
there. I won’t say anything to the boys, yet.”
Precisely what he meant, he did not explain, but there was a flush on
his face and a bright light in his eyes, all supper time.
Everything went on as usual, and in due season the long column of gray
uniformed youngsters, larger and smaller, tramped into the dormitory
and they were toled off to their sleeping cages. Not one was missing,
for those who were still detained outside, on various duties, were all
considered accounted for.
Jim was not one of these, and all he seemed to have to do was to get
into bed and go to sleep. He got into his bed, indeed, in the most
orderly way, but he did not go to sleep. No boy could do more than shut
his eyes, by main force, when all the rest of him was in such a tingle.
Jim had a curious sensation of feeling very brave, himself, but of not
being exactly sure of the pluck and steadiness of his comrades that
were to be. His next idea was that he had enough and to spare for the
whole party and that he could and would see them through.
He was their captain and the whole responsibility of success or failure
rested upon him. It grew heavier, too, during three long hours that he
deemed it well to wait, before he arranged his bed-battering ram and
began to try his heels upon the springing steel rods of his grating.
The door seemed to open harder than usual, and he was afraid he was
making a noise that would be heard by the wrong persons, but at that
moment the lock-bolt clicked.
“It’s open!” he said to himself. “Now for the big door, before I stir
’em up. I must see how things are.”
O, how carefully he fingered the lock of that strong, wooden portal!
“They only turned it once!” he said. “It’s a slipping!”
It slipped silently back and he turned the knob and pulled. Then, as he
peered furtively out, he drew a very long breath and wheeled around
and darted along the corridor.
He opened one of the doors, but just behind it stood a boy, fully
dressed, with a pair of shoes in one hand.
“How is it, Jim?”
“Murphy’s asleep! Come!”
Another door was visited and another boy stepped forth to hear the same
news, with the order:
“Follow Joe! Wait at the door.”
Two more cages let out their actually trembling boys, and now all five
of them stood in line at the main doorway.
Jim looked out and turned and raised his hand. In a moment more, that
door was shut behind them and four of them had made their silent,
stocking-footed way, to another, similar barrier, at the end of the
hall. Their captain was leaning over the slumbering watchman, for in
his relaxed hand, almost let go of, was a bunch of keys, and to take
them away without waking him was a delicate piece of work. It was more
than that, for Jim felt that it was something very like stealing. He
would not have had one of the Managers see him do it for the world. He
felt mean, even after he got the keys, but he seemed to get over it
while he was opening the outer door with one of them. Then the hardest
thing to do was to carry back the Whole bunch and put it silently down
by the watchman, so that he need not miss them.
Jim did it, and he felt less like a thief after giving back those
keys, but in a half minute more he and his friends were out on the
parade-ground, clustering close to the shadowy wall of the engine
house. They had accomplished a great deal, but they had not yet
escaped, by any means.
IX
GETTING OVER THE WALL
There were lights, here and there, in some of the windows of the House
of Refuge buildings and there were others, like street-lamps, outside,
but all was silence.
The boys themselves had hardly dared to whisper, but now one of them
asked:
“Jim, how are we to climb the wall?”
“We won’t climb it,” said Jim. “See! right here! Three empty boxes and
a board! We are going over the roof.”
“But we can’t get down on the other side,” whispered another boy.
“Yes, we can,” replied Jim triumphantly, as he held up a coil of small
rope that he pulled out of a box. “Wait and see. Let’s pile up these
things.”
It was easy work for five strong, active boys, to put those boxes one
on top of another, but even then the board only reached from the
topmost box to a little above the eaves of the building.
“Now, boys,” said Jim, “soon as I’m up, throw me the end of the rope.”
Not many young fellows could have gone up that board as he did, or,
afterward, up the steep, slippery slates of the roof, with a coil of
rope in one hand. It was first-rate gymnastics, with a chance for a
slide and a heavy fall, but Jim reached the ridge, just as one of his
followers came up over the eaves, after making several small failures
to climb the board.
“Now for the rope,” said Jim, as he passed it around a chimney that
came up through the ridge, tied it at the ends and threw the loop
down toward the head of the board. He could hold it steady and it was
all they needed. Very quickly, all five were perched in a row, like
blackbirds on a fence.
“What’s next?” they asked.
“Glad we all had so much practice on the training ship,” replied Jim.
“It takes a sailor to go down by a rope. This one’s long enough to hang
down, double, almost to the ground. It won’t be much of a drop, then.
I’ll go first. Hold hard! Steady, now!”
Even yet, he had not told them the whole of his plan, but they were
learning to trust him and they were eager enough to do just as he said.
On the whole, they had at least learned soldierly obedience and good
discipline in the school they were escaping from.