wrenched the rim off; then, tearing along the solder, got the cylinder
separated from the bottom; and, opening it out, had a sheet of tin.
And now, by the help of his fragments of cup, he set to hack-sawing,
breaking, tearing this into strips, no easy thing, in spite of the
thin-worn condition of the can: but finally had six strips.
The edge of one strip he inserted under an end of the bar of iron on the
beam; then connected that strip with another by loops, slid again to the
window, and there lay connecting the six strips by a smith's-trick, with
skew loops, non-slipping, getting a tin string five feet long. He
then took the leap to the laundry coping, and thence the spring to the
conductor, this being all the more ticklishly perilous because he could
barely see it.
Hanging away now from the conductor by the left elbow, he reached out
the right arm across the corner to catch the tin, which stuck toward him
from the window: and he wound its end round the conductor, electrically
connecting the bell with the conductor.
And now, standing with one foot on a staple below the tin, he twice
sawed the conductor's soft metal with the fragments of cup, cutting and
tugging out three inches of it, thus isolating the conductor's point
atop from its earthing; then he tossed the piece cut out behind the
laundry-coping.
This done, he listened, cast a searching eye below, slid down the rod.
The yard was at present silent, but as he moved to give himself up in
the prison-hall, five night-warders with bull's-eyes fell out, still
seeking him.
And as he knelt with clasped hands of supplication and bent bare back,
like a captured slave, they fell savagely upon him, and cried one:
“Well, of all the idiots...!”
XIX
THE GREAT BELL
The next morning Hogarth was not marched out, and near dinner-time was
summoned before the Governor. Here he stood in a cage of bars in a
room of “No.1” prison, devoted to prison-offences; and before him, at a
littered table, sat governor and chief warder, with the witnesses of the
outbreak near.
The case was gone into, the report made: whereupon the Governor looked
up and down the length of Hogarth, and suddenly gave vent to a laugh.
“So, No. 76”, said he, “this was the threatened escape?”
Hogarth was now all contrition and hanging head.
“I beg for mercy”, he said, with a little smile.
“Oh, I am not your judge...Where were you when the officers were looking
for you in the yard?”
“I was hiding in that little nook”.
“Confounded carelessness on someone's part...And what cut and swelled
your mouth?”
“I bashed into the wall in the nook” (The can had cut him!).
“You must have been mad!”
“Yes, sir”.
During the next two weeks he had round his ankles a chain which, rising
in two loops, was fastened to a band round his waist; and he was set to
turn “the crank”.
Finally, he was led forth to stand before the periodic Director, who,
after reading the report, turned to a volume of writing in which was
Hogarth's record: good--till lately; and the Director addressed him with
sternness, which yet was paternal: he would sentence him to one month in
a punishment cell, to two months in chains, and to one dozen lashes.
And two days later he was led to the flogging-hall, which, as he
approached it, sent forth screams; the doctor looked at him and
consented; the Governor said: “Get it over”.
Hogarth stripped to the waist, his teeth chattering: but not with fear.
On the contrary, he felt a touch of exultation.
The wrists of his outstretched arms having been bound to “the triangle”,
the Governor gave the sign, the cat rose, and sang, and fell.
Slowly up, and whistlingly down, rasping, reaping. At the seventh shock
he fainted: and thence onward had a long dream, in which he saw Rebekah
Frankl in Hindoo dress and jewellery, and she threw at him a red rose
black at heart with passion, and her body balanced in dance, and her
hands clapped at him.
During the next month he tholed the cold of that same punishment-cell;
and during the next was in his old cell, but in chains, picking oakum.
All this time, if he was aware of high winds by night, he was in an
agony, till the next day the great bell rang its treble.
About the middle of February he was once more trenching in the open air.
But a fear had stolen into his mind: for the string of tin was not
strong, and the winds of the last month may have dislocated it. In any
case, he might have to wait a year, two, ten....
Occasionally he would redden with suppressed and turbulent energy.
But on the 17th of March, toward evening, England was visited by a storm
long remembered, lasting three days, during which the poor prisoners
were comforted with rations of hot soup and cocoa.
On the morning of the fourth day when the gangs were once more taken out
Hogarth was hardly conscious of frigid winds or agued limbs: for three
days the great bell of Colmoor had not rung; and his ears were open.
Of the prisoners, who, by practised instinct, get to know the moment at
which it should sound, three presently straightened up, spade in hand,
to glance at the prison: and suddenly heard--a sound.
A dull something somewhere--from the prison? unless it was some shock
of the wind...Hogarth gazed piteously into the faces near him...No one
seemed to have heard.
A few seconds, like eternities...Then he saw a warder look at his watch;
then--another! and--they glanced at the prison; and--they approached
each other; and--they laid whispering heads together.
Then--joy!--came five officers, wildly running from the prison gates,
calling, waving....
And now he knew, and smiled: the babble of that lalling tongue was dumb.
And the very next day, when the afternoon-gangs were marching out, they
saw descending from a carriage before the Deputy Governor's house a
gentleman with a roll of diagram-paper--a bell-foundry expert, summoned
by telegraph from Cardiff.
Hogarth resolved to act that night.
XX
THE INFIRMARY
As soon as the cell-door clicked upon him, he commenced to work: first
took off his boots; then felt over the doorshelf for the chloroform;
wet his handkerchief with some of it: then inserted the vials across the
toes of his boots, which were a succession of wrinkles, far too large;
then put on the boots again.
He then lay on the floor, close to the low shelf; and, pressing the
handkerchief over his mouth and nose, breathed deep, knowing that in
four minutes, when he did not obey the order of “brooms out”, his cell
would be opened.
As he sank deeper and deeper into dream, it was with a concentration of
his will upon one point--the handkerchief, which, if smelled by anyone,
would ruin all; and finally, as he drew the last gasp of consciousness,
he waved it languidly from him under the shelf; then, with a sigh, was
gone.
He had known that he must have about his body the unmistakable signs of
an abnormal condition in order to sleep a night in the infirmary--which
was what he wanted. And thither, when shakings and the bull's-eye had
sufficiently tested him, he was swung away, and the doctor's assistant
summoned.
Hogarth's pupils were hurriedly examined, his heartbeat tested; and the
freshman frowned, smelling an odour which, in another place, might have
been chloroform, but here was pharyngitis; and he muttered, “Digitalis,
perhaps....”
From a table Hogarth was swung to a bed by two of those well-behaved
convicts who act as hospital-orderlies, and there two hours later had
all his wits about him, and a racking headache.
His first thought was his boots--expecting to find them under his
stretcher, and himself in flannels; but he had them still on, and also
his work-clothes, humanity to the sick in the first stages not being in
the Colmoor code.
He spent half an hour in stealthily tearing a square foot from his
shirt-tail; then, weary and sick, went to sleep.
When, soon after 3 A.M. his eyes again opened, all was still. He lay in
a long room, rather dim, in the midst of a row of stretchers which were
shut in by bars containing locks and gates, and on the other side of the
room a row of stretchers, shut in by bars. At a table in the middle,
on which were bottles, lint, graduated glasses, sat a warder, with
outstretched legs and fallen head: near him, standing listless, a
convict hospital-orderly, who continually edged nearer the stove; and,
half-way down the room, another.
Occasionally there were calls from the sick-beds--whispered
shouts--apologetic and stealthy, as of men guiltily conscious of the
luxury of being ill; but neither night-warder nor orderlies made undue
haste to hear these summonses. There was, beside, an octagonal clock,
which ticked excessively in the stillness, as though the whole place
belonged to it.
Hogarth took off his boots under his blanket, and from them took out the
vials; then, sitting up, commenced to call the warder, at the same time
wetting the torn piece of shirt with some of the fluid.
“All right, I'm coming--shut up!” said the warder, but did not come.
So Hogarth grew loud; and the warder, presently rousing his drowsy bulk,
unlocked the gate of that compartment, as Hogarth said to himself: “Do
it handy...”
And as the warder stooped, Hogarth clapped the rag upon his mouth and
nose. A struggle followed a muffled sob, both standing upright now, till
the warder began to paw the air, sank, toppled upon the bed, whereupon
Hogarth slipped into the blanket again, and called out in the voice of
the warder: “Come here, Barrows--see if this man is dead “.
He had now drawn the warder over him, holding up his chest with one arm,
had also poured chloroform upon the rag, and when the convict-orderly
came, Hogarth, by means of a short struggle, had him asleep, then seized
the warder's truncheon and keys, and ran out in his stockinged feet.
At that sight, the sick, the dying, the two rows of stretchers, were
up on elbow, gazing with grins. To the second convict-orderly who came
running to meet him Hogarth hissed: “Not a word--or I brain you with
this! If I tie your feet, you won't have to answer for anything. Come
along....”
He was an old fellow, and when he realized the impending truncheon, the
menace of Hogarth's eyes, and the silence of the warder, he permitted
himself to be dragged toward Hogarth's stretcher; and his feet were
quickly knotted in his own stockings.
Now again Hogarth ran: but not many steps, when he felt himself tapped
on the back, and, glancing in a horror of alarm, saw one of the two
patients who had occupied with him his cage of bars--a wiry, long-faced
Cockney shop-boy, who had had his ankle crushed by a rock at the quarry.
“Are you off?” he asked.
“That's _my_ business--”
“No, you don't. Part, or I give the alarm”.
“What is it? Do you want to come with me?”
“That's about it”.
“But--your foot's sick, you fool”.
“You'll carry me in your awms, as a father beareth his children....”
“You are cool! What are you in for?”
“Murder, my son-red, grim, gory murder!”
“Guilty?”
“Guilty, ya'as. What do _you_ think?”
“Then you may go to hell”.
“_'Ell_ is it? I'm _there_: and if I linger longer loo in it, you
linger, too, swelp me Gawd!”
Hogarth was nonplussed.
“But the foot...”
“Never mind the _foot_. Foot's still good for a run. Do we go shares?”
“Come along, then”.
“But you ain't 'alf up to snuff, I can see, though you are pretty smart
in your own way: I'd 'ave felt the confidence of a son in you, if you
'adn't overlooked that wine--”
To Hogarth's dismay, he turned back to the table, put a black bottle,
half full, to his lips, and with tilts anc stoppages set to gulp it,
while eager jokes, touched with jealousy, began to jeer from the beds.
“Lawd Gawd, that was good!” said the Cockney with upturned eyes, “and
what do I behold?--broth, ye gawds!”
Now a saucepan of cold broth was at his lips; and not till he had drunk
all did he run after Hogarth into the other arm of the ward, where one
of the keys unlocked the door at its end, and they passed out into the
infirmary exercise-hall, now dark, Hogarth dragging the Cockney, who
limped, and kept up a prattle of tipsy ribaldries.
Then, emerging upon a platform of slabs, from which the jump into the
infirmary exercise-yard is twenty feet, Hogarth leapt. The Cockney stood
hesitating on the brink.
“As sure as my name's 'Arris, you'll be the bloomin' ruin of me...” he
said aloud.
“_Sh-h-h_”, went Hogarth, “one more word, and I leave or knock you
speechless”.
Now at last Harris jumped, Hogarth catching him, and they ran across the
yard northerly, Harris complaining of cold, being in hospital flannels,
his feet bare, Hogarth bitterly regretting the burden of this companion,
meditating on deserting him. Accordingly, when they had run down a
passage, and were confronted by a great gate, spiked a-top, Hogarth
said: “I'll get up first”, and, forcing the small end of the truncheon
into the space at the hinges, he got foot-hold from which he caught the
top hinge and scaled, a feat of which he considered Harris incapable;
and, instead of helping him up, leapt down with a new feeling of
lightness, hearing from the other side “Dastardly treachery...!”
Again he ran through dark night wild with winds wheeling snowflakes;
and, seeing in the unpaved court in which he now was a clothes-line
supported on stakes, he seized both, to run with them to where the court
is bounded by the great outer wall: for though it is thirty feet of
sheer rock, the mere fact of stakes being found there, and of a vanished
rope, would furnish grounds for the belief that he had scaled it: he
therefore leant the stakes against it, and kept the rope.
About to turn, he felt his back touched; and, spinning round, saw Harris
panting.
“There's a friend that sticketh closer than any bloomin' brother, Mr.
76”, Harris said. “Try that game on again, and I give myself up; and
where will _you_ be then?”
“You silly wretch!” said Hogarth: “before I am free, there'll be a
hundred difficulties and pains. Are you prepared to undergo them? You
couldn't, if you tried”.
“Bear ye one another's burdens, it _is_”, said Harris: “with thee by me
what need I fear? Lawd Gawd, that wine was good! it's got into my poor
'ead, I believe. On, general; where thou leadest, I will follow”.
Hogarth looked at him, half inclined to knock him down, and half to
shelter, and save.
“All right”, said he. “Can you climb?”
“Climb, yes, like a bag of monkeys”.
“Come, then”.
He mounted three low steps before four doors at the north end of the
infirmary buildings, where, as he had observed from the moor, a spout
runs up the wall at its east end; and up this he began to climb.
“'Old on!” called Harris: “I can't do that lot”.
“_Sh-h-h!_--you must!--come--”
Harris made three attempts before he reached the first footrest, and
there stuck, vowing in loud whispers that he would no further go, and
Hogarth had to come back, and encourage him up. Finally, they went
running southward on the leads between the infirmary roof and its
coping, and had hardly reached the south end when a whistle shrilled,
and they saw a warder run across the exercise-yard with a lantern.
“Stoop!” whispered Hogarth.
Crouching, they stole along the south coping, and thence dropped to a
flat cistern-top, Hogarth, with a painful “_Sh-h-h_”, catching Harris as
he fell, for the signs of alarm and activity every moment increased.
Up a series of little brick steps, the base of a chimney over the
kitchen--then across another stretch of leads beneath which is the
tailor's shop--then, stealing in shadow under the beams of overhanging
eaves by a garret window, behind which was a light, and someone
moving--then a spring of three feet between two cornices--then a running
walk at a height of a hundred feet along a beading four inches wide,
holding on with the upstretched arms--then, with course changed from
south to east, along more leads--then a climb of ten feet up a glazed
main--and now they were skulking behind the coping of the great No. 2
prison.
Now, contiguous with the back of the bath-house is a wall which runs
from No. 2 prison to the bell-tower, dividing the bath-house yard
from the bell-yard; but the top is not horizontal, being lower at the
bell-tower end, neither is it broad, and to reach it from the prison
coping a drop of seven feet is necessary: this Harris refused to do.
“Not for Joe”, said he: “I've already run my 'ead into enough perils
by land and sea on your account. If this is what you've brought me out
moonlighting here for....”
Hogarth did not wait, but disappeared over the side: and Harris, after
five minutes' pleadings, followed. They then drew on the belly to the
bell-tower; and here again Harris refused the leap to the conductor.
When finally he dared, and Hogarth sought to steady him, as he came
sprawling upon the rod, both went gliding down, till checked by a
staple.
But they climbed again; Hogarth undid the half-fused string of tin from
the conductor, swung to the laundry coping, caught Harris, leapt to
the window, drew up Harris; and was ensconced far up among the beams in
thick darkness in the belfry an hour before daybreak.
At this time the great gates were open, and the moor being scoured for
the two.
XXI
IN THE DEEP
They had not been ten minutes in the tower when Harris began to whine of
the cold; whereupon Hogarth took off his slop-jacket and waistcoat, and
put them upon the Cockney.
As from two sound-escapes far down near the bell some twilight came in,
near eight Hogarth descended, working from beam to beam, to find that
on one side the bell-metal had been melted into a lumpish mass, its rim
shrivelled up, leaving an empty space under the motto _Laudate Domino_
(mistake for _Dominum_) _omnes gentes_; and on the opposite side ran a
crack from top to rim. Sliding still lower on a slanting beam, he could
look obliquely upward into the bell's interior, and see the clapper, a
mass weighing eight hundredweight, and so long, that quite down at the
bell's rim were two hollows where it had constantly struck. It, too, had
been blasted; but the bell-rope hung intact from a short beam at right
angles to the swing beam; and, having found this much, he searched where
he had left the bottom of his tin can, and clambered back with it into
the upper regions.
About eleven, lying along two beams, they could see the portal below
opened, and four men came in, looking unreal and small; whereupon the
leverage wheel was pulled, the swing-beam swung, the bell struck the
clapper, and throughout the tower growled grum sounds: after which the
four stood talking half an hour, and went away.
A little later--it must have been after the forty minutes'
dinner-interval--about twenty convicts entered with two warders, bearing
three ladders. When these had been fastened together and set up, and the
leverage wheel removed, they went away.
It was evidently to be slow work. Not till about four did a solitary man
mount the ladder, and take stand, far down under the bell, gazing up a
long while, with stoops, and changes of posture. Hogarth thought that it
was the bell-foundry expert whom he had seen; but could only guess: for
all here was dim and remote.
By now he had sawed the clothes-line into two pieces with the tin,
one piece eight feet, the other much longer--had intended tearing his
clothes into strips for ropes, but the clothes-line was still better. In
both ropes he made knots for hand-hold, a large knot at one end of
the short one, and he attached the string of tin to the other end.
Descending now, he tied the longer rope round the swingbeam, let himself
down to the rim of the bell, and with the right hand pushed the tin
into the hole in which the clapper swung, reaching up, until the tin
over-balanced, ran, and toppled down beside the clapper; drawing the tin
now, he brought the rope down till it was stopped by the knot; and now,
by a swing off from rope to rope, could climb into the bell. He then
reascended, taking the longer rope, and the tin, with him.
As night fell, he judged that by the next he would succumb. Happily,
Harris, who had eaten later than he, was snoring in a nook; but toward
morning began to whine again, and sulk, and kept it up all the day. Not
a soul now entered, and as the blackness of night once more filled the
place, Harris threw up the sponge, with “Here goes for this child....!”
Hogarth flew across the space which divided them, and a quarrel of
cats ensued, both being under the influence of the fury called
“hunger-madness”. It was only when Harris felt the grip of Hogarth
at his windpipe that he squealed submission, whereupon Hogarth threw
himself away; and half the night they sat, nothing but four eyes, eyeing
each other.
That night what was a revival of the great gale took place, belling like
bucks about their heads, and noising through the tower in many a voice.
This so increased their sense of desolation, that even the heart of
Hogarth fainted, they like castaways on some ocean whose glooms no
sunrise ever goldens; and now a doubt arose whether, even if the bell
were removed on the morrow, Harris would have strength to cling on
during the descent.
However, early the next day hope revived when five men entered, four
mounting among the beams to the swing-beam with tools, one at the
ladder-head shouting up orders; and Hogarth, when they had gone,
whispered Harris: “They have been unscrewing the sockets in which the
bell-beam swings”.
“Let them unscrew away”, said Harris, his chin shivering on his hand.
Five more hours; during which only once did three men enter, seeming to
do nothing but talk, with upward glances.
But at three it was evident that there was considerable to-do, though
above there the row of the winds drowned all sound. A crowd, chiefly of
convicts, passed in and out; then twelve men, one after the other, ran
up the ladder, and thence climbed among the beams, with six cables. Half
went to the east, half to the west, side of the bell; and three of the
cables were fastened round the swing-beam near one end, three near
the other end; one three were then cast over a beam higher than the
swing-beam, to the north of it; the other three cast over a beam to the
south of it; and the six ends lowered--operations which Hogarth, lying
on his face, could just see; and the twelve had hardly begun to descend,
when he saw a lorry backed into the gateway, filling half 1 the area
of the tower; whereupon over a hundred convicts were swarming over and
round it.
“Now”, said Hogarth; and he hurried down, tacking his way with slides
and runs among the intricate beams, tied the rope to a beam above the
swing-beam, and let himself down to the bell's rim; reached out then,
caught the knotted rope that was within the bell, and climbed, the
clapper now so rough, that hand and knee found grip; and he spent a
minute in estimating his power of holding on with one arm, and with
both, to its support-shaft.
And now he whispered Harris, and caught and half-sustained the Cockney.
Now they could hear echoes of the tongues below; and now Harris,
clinging alternate with Hogarth, arms and legs, face to face, by rope
and shaft and clapper, whispered: “But-good Lord-look 'ere-there are
some people coming up!”
Four convicts were indeed climbing: but even directly beneath the bell,
where it was impossible to come, they would hardly have distinguished
the forms huddled in its dark cavern, and their aim was higher, to stand
ready, when the beam should lift, to swing it diagonally across the
square of beams which had supported it, so that it might find space to
descend. And soon the bell-beam stirred at the tightening ropes: the
fugitives felt themselves swinging, rising, poised--descending.
They were dizzily aware of shouted orders, the creaking of the toiling,
slipping ropes, little jolts and stoppages, two hundred eyes blinking
up, not seeing their cringed-up limbs--unnecessary cautious: for the
nearer they descended to-ward the half-light, the surer did the area
of the lorry make their invisibility. At last they were near; the bell
lingered, swinging; babel was around them; the Governor's voice; a
cheer: the bell was on the lorry.