THE CASTLE DUNGEON.
For some time after Hugh John was thus imprisoned, he stood looking up
with a face of set defiance through the narrow aperture above, where
he had last seen the triumphant countenances of his foes.
"Who's afraid? They shan't say Hugh John Picton Smith is afraid!" were
the words in his proud and angry heart, which kept him from feeling
insult and pain, kicks and buffetings. Gradually, however, as the
sound of retreating footsteps died away, the rigid attitude of the
hero relaxed. He began to be conscious that he was all one great ache,
that the ropes were drawn exceedingly tight about his wrists, that
the gag in his mouth hurt his cheeks, that he was very tired--and, oh!
shame for a hero of battles and martyr in secret torture-chambers,
that he wanted badly to sit down and cry.
"But I won't cry--even to myself!" said Hugh John. Yet all the same he
sat mournfully down to consider his position. He did not doubt that he
had been left there for altogether, and he began at once (perhaps to
keep himself from crying) to argue out the chances.
"First," he said, "I must wriggle my hands loose, then I can get the
gag out of my mouth easy enough. After that I've got to count my
stores, and see if I can find a rusty nail to write my name on the
wall and the date of my captivity."
(Hugh John wanted to do everything decently and in order.)
"Then I must find a pin or a needle (a needle if possible--a pin is
poisonous, and besides it is so much more easy to prick blood from
your thumb with a needle), and then I have got to write an account of
my sufferings on linen like the abbe, or on tablets of bread like
Latude. As I have no bread, except the lump that was left over at
breakfast, I suppose it will need to be written on linen; but bread
tablets are much the more interesting. Of course I could make one or
two tablets, write secret messages on them, and eat them after."
General Smith would have gone on to make still further arrangements
for the future, but the present pain of the blood in his hands and
the tightness of the rope at his wrists warned him that he had better
begin the practical work of effecting his release.
Now General Smith was not one of that somewhat numerous class of
persons who take all day to do nothing, and as soon as he was
convinced by indisputable logic of the wisdom of any course, he threw
himself heart and soul into the accomplishment of it. On his hands and
knees he went half round the circuit of the wall of his prison, but
encountered nothing save the bare clammy stones--with the mortar loose
and crumbly in the joints, and the moist exudations of the lime
congealed into little stony blobs upon the surface which tasted
brackish when he put his lips to them.
So Hugh John stood up and began a new search on another level. This
time he did find something to the purpose.
About three feet from the ground was a strong nail driven firmly into
a joint of the masonry. Probably it owed its position to one of the
Highland prisoners of the Forty-five, who had used it to hang his
spare clothes on, or for some other purpose. But in his heart Hugh
John dated it from the days of the Black Douglas at least.
Either way it proved most useful.
Standing with his back to the wall, the boy could just reach it with
his wrists. He had long thin hands with bones which, when squeezed,
seemed to have a capacity for fitting still more closely into one
another. So it was not difficult for him to open the palms
sufficiently to let the head of the nail in. Then biting his teeth
upon his lip to keep the pain at a bearable point, he bent the weight
of his body this way and that upon the iron pin, so that in five or
six minutes he had worked Nipper Donnan's inartistic knots
sufficiently loose to slip over his wrists. His hands were free.
[Illustration: "HE BENT THE WEIGHT OF HIS BODY THIS WAY AND THAT."]
His first act was to take the red cravat out of his mouth, and the
next after that to lie down with all his weight upon his hands,
holding them between the floor of the dungeon and his breast, for the
tingling pain of the blood returning into the fingers came nearer to
making the hero cry than all that had happened that day. But he still
refrained.
"No, I won't, I am a Napoleon--Smith!" he added as an afterthought, as
if in loyalty to the father, whose legal and territorial claims he had
that day so manfully upheld.
But suddenly what was due to his dignified position as a state
prisoner occurred to him. Casanova had struck at the wall till his
fingers bled. Latude had gnashed his teeth, howled with anguish, and
gnawed the earth.
"I have not done any of these things," said Hugh John; "I don't like
it. But I suppose I've got to try!"
However, one solid rap of his knuckles upon the hard limestone of the
dungeon wall persuaded him that there were things more amusing in the
world than to imitate Casanova in that. And as at the first gnaw his
mouth encountered a tiny nettle, he leaped to his feet and declared at
the pitch of his voice that both Latude and Casanova were certainly
"dasht fools!"
The sound of his own words reminded him that after all he was within a
mile of home. He wondered what time it might be. He began to feel
hungry, and the cubic capacity of his internal emptiness persuaded him
that it must be at least quite his usual dinner-time.
So Hugh John decided that, all things being considered, it would be
nothing against his manhood if he called for help, and took his chance
of any coming. But he remembered that the mouth of the dungeon was in
a very retired part of the castle, in the wing nearest to the river,
and shut off from the road across the island by a flanking tower and
a thirteen-foot wall. So he was not very sanguine of success. Still he
felt that in his perilous position he could not afford to neglect any
chance, however slight.
So he shouted manfully, "Help! Help! Murder! Police! Fire!" as loud as
he could bawl.
Then he tried the "Coo-ee" which Sergeant Steel had taught him, under
the impression that it would carry farther. But the keep of a
fourteenth century castle and thirteen feet of shell lime and rubble
masonry are proof against the most willing boyish voice in the world.
So General Napoleon made no more impression upon his friends than his
great original would have done had he summoned the Old Guard from the
cliffs of St. Helena.
But the younger warrior was not discouraged. He had tried one plan and
it had failed. He sat down again to think what was the next thing to
be done.
He remembered the thick "hunk" of bread he had put in the pocket of
his jacket in the morning. He could not eat it at breakfast, so
greatly had he been excited by the impending conflict; so, to prevent
waste, and to make all safe, he had put it in his pocket. Besides, in
the absence of his father, it was not always possible to be in for
meals. And--well, one never knew what might happen. It was best to be
prepared for all emergencies.
With trembling hand he felt for the "hunk." Alas! the jacket pocket
was empty, and hung flat and limp against his side. The staff of life
must have fallen out in the progress of the fray, or else one of the
enemy had despoiled him of his treasure.
A quick thought struck his military mind, accustomed before all else
to deal with questions of commissariat. It was just possible that the
bread might have fallen out of his pocket when the Smoutchies were
letting him down so roughly into the dungeon of the castle.
He went directly underneath the aperture, from which a faint light was
distributed over the uneven floor of hard trampled earth whereon a
century's dry dust lay ankle deep.
There--there, almost under his feet, was his piece of bread!
Hugh John picked it up, blew the dust carefully off, and wiped the
surface with his handkerchief. It was a good solid piece of bread, and
would have served Caesar the Potwalloper for at least two mouthfuls.
With care it might sustain life for an indefinite period--perhaps as
much as twenty-four hours.
So, in accordance with the best traditions, the prisoner divided his
provision with his pocketknife, as accurately as possible under the
circumstances. He cut it into cubes of about an inch square, exactly
as if he had been going to lay down rat poison.
Napoleon Smith was decidedly beginning to recover his spirits. For one
thing, he thought how very few boys had ever had his chances. A Latude
of twelve was somewhat unusual in the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, and even in the adjacent islands. He began at once to
write his memoirs in his head, but found that he could not get on very
well, because he could not remember which one of his various
great-grandmothers had danced with Bonny Prince Charlie at Edinburgh.
This for a loyal prisoner was insuperable, so he gave the memoirs up.