engine house, and then he disappeared. They had hardly been able to see
him, anyhow, and now they waited, half shivering, till a warning tug
at the rope told them he had safely reached the ground. He had really
found little difficulty in doing that and the hardest share really fell
upon the last boy of all, for it seemed to him as if the other four had
taken all night for it.
“Wait, now,” said Jim, as he untied the ends of the rope.
“Leave it,” said one of the boys. “We don’t want it any more.”
“I’ll show you,” said Jim, as he drew down the full length of the
untied rope, coiled it and made a hank of it. “If they find it on the
other side, they won’t know how we got down.”
He threw it with all his might; it cleared the roof-ridge and down it
slid into the parade-ground to keep its own secret.
“What are we going to do, now, Jim?”
“Come on!” he said. “Follow me!--The lifeboat on the tug!”
“I just want to yell!” exclaimed the boy he had called Joe. “We’re
going to beat ’em, this time.”
“Glad it’s so dark,” said Jim. “Don’t you make a sound! Step carefully!”
Like so many young panthers, prowling in the woods, they went forward,
a step at a time, single file, until they had cleared the corner of
the main building and were in the broad, well kept grounds between that
and the East River. Jim himself wanted to shout when he saw the water
and, far beyond it, the glimmering midnight lamps of the city.
There, only a short distance from them, now, was the wharf at which the
tug was moored and over the wooden-railed walk leading down to it was a
bright gaslight burning.
“Down!” said Jim. “We must creep, now. Not on all fours.--Creep!”
So they did, and a watchman who was patrolling the entire front of the
House did not catch a glimpse of them. Head foremost, they followed
their leader, down the wooden-railed companion way to the wharf.
“There might have been a man on guard here,” said Jim, “but there
isn’t.”
There was a light in the cabin of the tug and another in the engine
room, but no living being was to be seen as they scurried up the bit
of ladder that took them to the upper deck, the roof, of the tug, where
the lifeboat lay.
“Quick, boys!” said Jim. “Over with her! There isn’t a minute to
spare!--Don’t you see? There’s a stir in the House! We are missed,
already!”
The lifeboat’s fastenings were good, but they were arranged for her
easy launching. She was loose in a moment. Then there was a shove, a
grating sound, a splash in the water,--but Jim’s exulting:
“Now, boys! Down we go! She’ll float. All we’ve got to do is to bail
her out--” was followed by a loud shout from the front door of the main
building and through all its corridors there were hurrying feet and
rapidly given orders, for the officers had found five sleeping cells
wide open and not a boy in one of them.
About the last place in the world where anyone would look for a missing
boy, at about two o’clock in the morning, would be in a lifeboat on
the outer side of a steam tug in the East River.
The startled officers of the House of Refuge were not at first thinking
of the river, but of things inside of their high, strong walls, which
no boy could climb over or get through.
Jim and his friends in the little lifeboat were baling her out rapidly.
Of course, it had filled on plunging in, but very quickly enough was
out for another boy to clamber down and help without sinking her
gunwale under. Then they all came down, and they seemed to be one
shiver of mingled fear, excitement and exultation. In a minute more,
the oars were out, and, just as two or three men with lanterns came
hurrying down toward the wharf, Jim exclaimed, under his breath:
“Pull, boys!--I’ll steer out into the dark. We’ll go with the tide.
They’ll come after us with the tug. It’s going to be a race!”
Four boys at the oars and one to steer made a fair crew for so small
a boat. She was swift, too, and so was the tide that swept her onward,
but her pursuers knew, now, that she was gone and steam was already up
on the tug. Only a minute or so more was wasted by them in waiting for
the engineer, and another minute in casting loose, but every second of
those minutes was made the most of by the runaways.
“There goes her whistle!” exclaimed one of the rowers. “She’s after
us----”
“She can go faster than we can.”
“We’ve a good start.”
“No talking, boys,” said Jim. “Our chance is good, yet,--Hullo!”
Not far ahead of him, as he sat in the stern of the boat, he could see
the lights on a great Sound steamer, as she came puffing along against
the tide, but it struck him that she had made her appearance, suddenly,
as if she had been hidden.
“Hurrah!” he shouted. “That saves us!”
“What is it, Jim?”
“Anything happened to the tug?”
“What’s coming?”
“Coming?” said Jim. “Why, we are pulling right into the thickest fog
you ever saw. It’ll cover us up so they can’t follow us. It isn’t the
tug I’m afraid of, now.”
“What then, Jim?”
“It’s the telegraph!” said Jim. “Our getting out’ll be known at every
police station in the city, inside of five minutes. We must get ashore
as quick as we can.”
“It’s an awful swift tide,” said Joe. “Why don’t you run right ashore?”
“You can’t tell where you’re going, in this fog,” said Jim, anxiously,
for it seemed to him that they had gone more than far enough to have
crossed the East River at that narrow place, even in a slanting
direction. So they had, and all the while they had heard the steam
whistles of all sorts of steamers answering each other through the fog.
On, on, they went, the four rowers pulling desperately, until Jim
asked, hoarsely, as he looked at something just beyond them:
“Boys!--What’s this?--I don’t know much about New York----”
He was from the country, but three of them were city boys and it was
one of these who now responded:
“Hush, Jim! If you haven’t steered right into the Harlem River! That’s
the Third Avenue swing-bridge. Go right under it. ’Twasn’t far to come,
either.”
Right over their heads, now, for a moment, was the vast shadow of the
bridge, and then, as they shot swiftly out beyond it, Joe whispered:
“North shore, Jim. We can get right in among the lumber yards. Best
kind of hiding place.--We’re safe!”
It was but a minute, after that, before all five of them were standing
on a wharf, looking back at the lifeboat, as she disappeared in the
fog, for Jim had shoved her off and the tide had caught her.
“I don’t care where it carries her,” he said. “When they find her, she
can’t tell them where she left us.”
X
A NEW HOUSE OF REFUGE
Jim had a very clear idea that the city of New York, with its thousands
of sharp-eyed policemen, was no place for him. His four friends,
however, were better acquainted with it and they now proposed to work
their way down town before daylight, to hiding places they said they
knew of. They urged him to come with them but he responded:
“Too many of us together, all in House of Refuge grey jackets. We’d
better scatter. I’m for the country!”
Then it was “Good-bye, Jim!” all around, and “O! If you haven’t done
it!”--“You’re the best kind of fellow!”--“Hope we’ll see you again,
some day.”
“Not in the House of Refuge,” said Jim. “I won’t let them catch
me. Now you’re out, keep out, but I tell you what, boys, we haven’t
anything to say against any of those officers.”
So they all said, and they were off, working their stealthy way along
among the huge piles of lumber. How the rest got out of the lumber
yard, Jim never knew, but he found a gap in its high, picket fence,
squeezed through it, and found himself in an open street. It was pretty
well lighted, except for the fog, and Jim saw something, at once, that
made him shiver, a little.
“Just what I was afraid of!” he said. “I must wait till he moves on. He
might pick me up, any way, for being here at this time o’ night.”
He did not know that the policeman he saw, standing under the lamp
at the street corner, was already warned and was on the lookout for
five boys who had escaped from Randall’s Island. He was a real danger,
therefore, and Jim did well to wait patiently until the officer marched
away into the mist. Jim went forward, then, and his main idea was to
get as far away as possible from the water-front.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed at the end of many minutes of brisk walking.
“What’s this?”
Before him seemed to be a vast hollow, and the street he was on ran
right across it, without any buildings on either side.
“New street,” he said. “It’s the new part of the city.--There!--That’s
the rap of a policeman’s club on the sidewalk. My only chance is to
hide!”
Down he went, over the wall-like side of that new street, clinging with
toes and fingers to rough projections. In a moment more he was at the
bottom, crouching close and looking up while a man in a blue uniform
strolled slowly along the sidewalk.
“It isn’t as high as the wall around the parade-ground,” thought Jim.
“That’s too smooth to climb.--I hope the other fellows’ll get away,
now they’re out. It wasn’t just right for me to let ’em out, but I
couldn’t help it. It’d be awful if all the boys in the House got away!
I don’t belong there, though. But what can I do? Where on earth can I
go?--Anyhow, I must keep hid till daylight.”
It was cold, it was foggy, and his heart sank within him as he crept
slowly along the base of the wall, on a kind of exploring expedition.
It was dreary waiting, but the time did wear away and the fog cleared
when the sun rose.
People were arising, also, and Rodney Nelson was among those who were
up and dressed very early. He had business on his hands, now, and he
stepped right out of his own room and across the entry, into what he
was beginning to call “the store.” It did indeed contain a great deal
of counter and some shelving, but nothing as yet, that looked like a
stock of goods.
“We’ll have some, I guess,” said Rodney. “I’ll go out and take a look
at the garden. Nothing has sprouted yet, but lettuce and radishes, but
it’s going to be the bulliest kind of garden.”
Downstairs he went, and his mother was busy around the stove when he
passed through the kitchen. Somebody seemed to be calling him, around
the corner of the house. He heard a loud:
“Ba a-a-beh?” like a question.
“Guess he’d like some breakfast,” said Rodney, as he stepped forward.
There was Billy, looking down from the edge of the sidewalk, but it was
not the goat that gave Rodney such a start of surprise. Right before
him stood a boy of about his own age and size, dressed from head to
foot in dark, grey cloth. He seemed a healthy enough boy, but just
now his face was very pale. He had been standing, for Rodney had seen
him, close to the wall, where the house came against it, as if he were
hiding. On the sidewalk above, and less than a hundred yards away, a
policeman was walking leisurely along toward the Nelson place.
“Hullo!” said Rodney. “Who are you? What are you down here for?”
It was all right to question him, but the stranger’s face flushed
suddenly and he breathed a long, choking kind of breath, before he
exclaimed:
“I say, were you ever in prison?” His voice had a husky, despairing
tone.
“No, I never was!” replied Rodney, with strong emphasis. “Was you?”
“Yes, I was,” came promptly back. “My name’s Jim Harris, and I didn’t
do a thing. Didn’t steal a cent. But I’ve been in the House of Refuge
for a good deal more’n a year----”
“And you got out?” shouted Rodney, enthusiastically. “Hurrah!”
“I got out last night,” said Jim, “and they’re after me, now----”
“Rodney!” exclaimed an excited voice behind him. “Don’t you let them
get him! I saw him, from our house, and I came over to tell you. If you
do let them get him!”
“Of course I won’t, Millie,” said Rodney, “but he must come right into
the house. They’d know him, right away, by his rig.”
Millie was thinking with all her might, and her eyes were dancing their
liveliest.
“Rod!” she said. “Take him in! Get him something to eat. I’ll go and
get some of Tom’s old clothes. Mother’d let him have ’em all, before
she’d see him sent to prison again. O, dear me! It was awful! And he
didn’t do anything to be sent there for, either.”
“I guess it was awful----” said Rodney, but she interrupted him:
“I’ll be back as quick as I can. Besides, I want to know how he got
out. He must be real hungry----” and away she went.
“Come on, Jim,” said Rodney. “You’ll be safe, in our house. I’m glad
you didn’t do it, though. Tell you what, if it had been me, I’d ha’
broke loose. How’d you ever manage to do it? Tell us----”
“I will,” said Jim, as he followed his new friend, but a sudden change
had come over him.
His step was light and springy, and his face was bright with new hope.
He had watched there in the raw, chilly morning until he had grown
almost desperate. Not that he had wished himself back in the House of
Refuge, but that he had felt very tired, very hungry, and altogether
uncertain what to do next, or where to go.
“Mother!” shouted Rodney, with a sort of effort not to shout quite so
loud:
“He’s from Randall’s Island! He got away last night, and the cops are
after him. Millie’s going to bring him some of Tom’s clothes----”
“Rodney!” she exclaimed. “Why, how did he get here?--~Now, you keep
still and let him tell me all about it.”
That was precisely what Rod was very willing to do, and Jim was glad
enough to tell them everything.
“O, Rod!” said his mother. “What if it had been you!--His uncle ought
to be put there, himself,--and what could his aunt have been thinking
of----”
“’Twasn’t her fault,” said Jim, “and the money was really gone.
Somebody took it, but I didn’t, and Uncle John may not have been so
much to blame. He never liked me anyhow----”
“He ought not to have sent you to jail,” said Mrs. Nelson, positively.
“And I suppose they treated you awfully. Did they flog you much?”
“No, they didn’t,” said Jim. “They never flog anybody. It’s the best
place in the world for loads of those boys. They get a chance to learn
something and they have to behave themselves. What I mean is that I
didn’t do anything to go there for, and I didn’t belong there. They’re
the best kind of men for the boys that ought to be there.”
He really came up with a good deal of energy to the defence of the
House of Refuge and its management, but he was tremendously in earnest
in his assertion that he would not go back there again. He had hardly
completed his wonderful story of escape, before the door of the kitchen
opened, half stealthily, and they heard the voice of Mrs. Kirby:
“Go right in, Millie. Don’t say a word. Don’t speak about him. Somebody
else might be there and hear you. Don’t you run any risk of anybody’s
knowing what they’re for. If they don’t fit him, I can alter them----”
“Come right in, Mrs. Kirby,” called out Mrs. Nelson, but Millie was in
first, with her arms full of coats, trousers and other matters, that
had nothing grey about them.
“That’s the checker!” shouted Rod. “That old blue. It’s patched, some,
but it’ll do first-rate. He won’t look like the same fellow. Come on,
Jim. Come into the front room and put ’em on. Mother, you tell ’em just
how it was.--Guess the cops won’t get him out of our house.”
There was plainly no danger that anybody now in it would help them,
and Jim’s possible peril from anybody else was certainly very much less
when, a few minutes later, he came back into the kitchen. Mrs. Nelson
had, meantime, been telling his story, as he told it, with sympathetic
additions of her own.
“It fits him!” shouted Millie, but her mother exclaimed:
“Rodney! What did you put on him that old red necktie for?”
“Guess there isn’t anything like it on Randall’s Island,” said Rodney.
“All he’s got to do, now, is to keep still till they stop hunting for
him.”
“They’re hunting, everywhere, just now,” remarked Jim. “I wish I knew
what had become of those other fellows.”
“Just you come and eat your breakfast,” said Mrs. Nelson. “Don’t mind
them----”
“We must go home,” said Millie, “and I can’t come right back. I’ve a
lot of type-setting to do----”
“I can set type,” said Jim. “I was in the printing office, all the
while.”
“That’s it!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby. “Come right over, after breakfast.
The last place they’d look into would be Mr. Kirby’s office. You can
earn something, too.”
XI
JIM’S HIDING PLACE
Jim enjoyed his breakfast, exceedingly. It was the first he had eaten,
for a long time, without any rules against talking. It seemed as if
everybody in the room talked all the while. After it was over, he and
Rodney went to the door and looked out.
The wide, bare space, in which the Nelson garden was beginning to grow,
was not much like the House of Refuge parade-ground, although it seemed
to have pretty high, stone walls on three of its sides and a row of
buildings on the other. These were different buildings and nearly in
the middle of the row was the Kirby place, instead of the Randall’s
Island printing office. It looked very much as if all this had been
getting ready to take Jim in, whenever he should get away from the
Island. He had a strong, oppressive feeling, however, that he had not
yet entirely escaped.
“They’ll think it was awful wrong for me to get away,” he thought.
“It’s just as if it was as bad as stealing to have ever been sent
there. How shall I get rid of it?”
He had all the while, month after month, been suffering under a sense
of terrible injustice, and now it stung him again, for it was following
him, and so, he knew, were men who deemed it their duty to catch him
and take him back.
Rodney, too, was thinking of that.
“Jim,” he said, “Kirby’s printing office is better than working in our
garden. They might see you, from the sidewalk, and ask where you came
from.”
“I guess I could tell ’em, with these clothes on,” laughed Jim, for his
spirits were improving and it seemed to him as if Randall’s Island were
drifting away.
At that very moment, in the Bronson farmhouse, away up the Hudson,
they were talking about Jim.
A man had come in, just at breakfast time, and had said something which
made everybody jump.
“What’s that, Squire? Did you say it was a telegraphic despatch from
Randall’s Island that Jim’s got out?”
“Thank God if he had!” exclaimed Aunt Betty, and it looked as if she
would have clapped her hands, or danced, if she had not been so anxious
to hear.
“Jim and four more of ’em,” said the Squire. “It doesn’t tell how they
did it, but they might come right here, or he might, and you’d ought to
know.”
“I’d like to know all about it,” said Uncle John Bronson, slowly. “If
you hear anything more, let me know. Jim may not come this way.”
“Perhaps not,” said the Squire, “but I just want to say one thing.
We’re old neighbors, and Jim’s a right likely young fellow. I can’t
guess how he beat ’em, but if he should get up this way, and you or his
aunt knew where he was, you needn’t say too much to me. You see, it
would be my duty to catch him, and I’d have to do my duty----”
“O, no! Never!” broke in Aunt Betty. “I wouldn’t say a word! I wouldn’t
be so mean as to put that on you. John wouldn’t either.”
“Why, Squire,” said Uncle John, “I don’t know a word about it----”
“No more do I,” said the Squire, turning to go out. “Good morning.--But
he’s a plucky young fellow, now, I tell you. How they did it, I don’t
see.--I’d have to take him. Of course I would. I’d do my duty.--But I
don’t really believe they need Jim Harris, much, on Randall’s Island.”
So different people, in places widely apart, were aware of Jim’s escape
and were taking their own peculiar view of the matter. Quite a number
were wishing they knew how he did it but they had not yet found out.
A sea tide ebbs with as much force and swiftness as it flowed in with,
and it will carry loads both ways. This was the reason why when the
House of Refuge lifeboat was found, some hours after it was shoved off
by Jim and his crew, it was found knocking against the side of a pier
away down, near the middle of the city. Therefore it gave no hint as to
where it had landed the runaways. Only an hour or so later, however,
the police knew a little more, for they managed to capture poor Joe. He
had been altogether too confident and had walked out into the street
too soon, without changing his grey uniform for every day clothes. He
was a little chopfallen, at first, but he really could not tell much
about the other boys. He was at once ferried over to the Island and
brought face to face with his old friends, the officers.
“What did you run away for, Joe?” asked the pleasant faced
Superintendent.
“I--I don’t know, sir,” replied Joe.
“Didn’t we treat you well?” asked the Military Instructor, for Joe had
been a lieutenant in one of the companies.
“Of course you did,” said Joe. “But, tell you what, I’d as lief come
back, but then, any fellow’d get away, if he had Jim to show him how.”
“Big adventure!” exclaimed another officer.
That was indeed a part of it, and there was no reason, now, why Joe
should conceal anything. He went with them to the dormitory and
explained about the locks. Then they walked out into the parade-ground,
where the empty boxes still lay at the machine shop wall.
“We went over the roof,” said Joe, and every man who heard him tell how
they did it agreed with the Superintendent.
“Jim is a genius!” he exclaimed. “Not one boy in a thousand could have
planned and carried out that escape.”
“He’s a captain!” added the skipper of the steam tug. “But we’d have
caught ’em, if it hadn’t been for that fog.”
“We shall get them all, before long,” said Jim’s friend, the naval
officer. “All but Jim. I’m afraid we’ve lost him. I’m sorry. I did want
to do something more for that boy.”
The very kindly man in charge of the House of Refuge printing office
also remarked that it was a pity Jim should run away, just when he was
learning his trade so fast and so well. He could hardly have guessed
that Jim was already at a case in another shop, setting type as busily
as usual.
Mr. Kirby himself, a grey-haired, silent man, with a queer kind of
smile on his face, was working at the press in another room, but Jim
was not the only type-setter. At the next case stood Millie, and
between them and the door were other ranges of cases, and two of
these were journeymen printers. All were seemingly absorbed in their
type-sticking when a man in a blue uniform opened the street door and
strolled in.
“Where’s Kirby?” he asked.
“In the press room,” said Millie, but her hand slipped, as she spoke,
and all the type in her half filled “stick” went rattling down on the
floor.
“That’s all pi,” laughed the policeman as he strode on to the press
room door.
“Kirby,” he said, “did you hear about the escape of those young
fellows, last night, from the House of Refuge?”
“Got out, did they?” asked Mr. Kirby. “I guess it isn’t in the papers.”
“Too soon,” said the officer. “I don’t believe they want it printed,
either. It’s no fault of theirs, but they want to catch the boys.
Smartest escape----” and then he went on with an account of it
which contained as many blunders as Jim was just then making in his
type-setting. At the end of it, however, the officer said:
“You see, two of ’em are printers, and one’s a pretty good one. They’re
likely to look for work in their own trade, soon as they can get off
their prison rig. If they should come to you, now----”
“A boy’d be just hidden away in one of the big printing houses, down
town,” said Mr. Kirby. “You couldn’t find him.”
“Yes, we could,” said the officer. “Every man and boy in each one
of them is already registered by the place itself and by the trades
unions. We could find out just where he came from.”
“Then why don’t you register my office?” asked Mr. Kirby. “You can take
down the name of every fellow here, this morning, so that if any new
fellow should come you could mark him. Register me.”
“I don’t need to,” said the officer. “Nor your daughter, nor the hands.
I’ll remember all of ’em, well enough. If I see a new boy here, any
time, I can ask about him.”
“Of course,” said Mr. Kirby, but Millie was picking up her scattered
type and the jour’ printers exchanged winks as the policeman walked
out.
Those very printers, that morning, had threatened to leave the shop if
Mr. Kirby took in a new boy who was not a member of their Printers’
Union.
“Just you listen to me, boys,” Mr. Kirby had said. “There isn’t one of
you mean enough----” and he told them the whole story.
He was right. Not one of them was mean enough to give up Jim. Their
very hearts went out to a fellow who had been shut up unjustly and who
had made so daring an escape. It was not at all, they said, as if he
had really deserved to be shut up.
XII
THE STOLEN MONEY