But droop not; fortune at your time of life,
Although a female moderately fickle,
Will hardly leave you, as she's not your wife,
For any length of days in such a pickle.--_Don Juan_.
Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of the outer door
of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly pronouncing his name.
It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an official should
visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the tenant's attempting
to escape, or hold communication with neighboring prisoners. This duty
was commonly discharged by non-commissioned officers of certain corps
in the garrison. Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive
wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door, though much
less ponderous, was secured with equal care; but in the middle of it
was an oblong aperture, much like that of a post office letter box,
though shorter and wider. The visiting official opened the outer door,
and without opening the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his
eye to this aperture.
"What are you doing there?" demanded the voice, in the usual form of
the visitor's challenge.
The voice was different from that to which Morton had been accustomed;
and, as he gave the usual answer, he looked towards the opening. Here
he saw a full, clear, blue eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well
formed; altogether a different eye from that which had formerly
presented itself,--a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ,
furrowed round about with the wrinkles called "crow's
feet;"--altogether a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed,
to a rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been warranted
sabre-proof.
Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with great
intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then it disappeared,
but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for some moments longer.
"A new broom sweeps clean," thought Morton; "that fellow means to do
his duty."
The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step of the
retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.
Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself with his
usual masculine employment of stocking knitting, till seven in the
evening, when the visitor came on his second round, and the same voice
challenged him through the opening. He looked up, and saw the eye
again; when to his astonishment, the low, hissing
sound--"s--s--t"--used by Italians and some other Europeans when they
wish to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the
next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed him; for the
eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.
Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about this incident,
and had half persuaded himself that the whole was a cheat of the
fancy; when, on the next morning, as he was led back, under a guard,
from his walk on the rampart, he saw, on entering a long gallery of
the prison, a tall man approaching from the farther end. He recognized
him at once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before had
guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly whisper in his
cell had wakened in him a short gleam of hope. As the corporal passed,
his eye met Morton's for an instant, with, as the latter thought, a
glance of recognition.
In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in spite of
himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was sure; the
corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon him through the hole in
the door; and he felt assured, moreover, that, from whatever cause,
the corporal inclined to befriend him.
He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the next visit;
and at the stated hour, the outer door was opened, and the eye
appeared.
Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of friendly
recognition.
"You remember me, eh?" whispered a voice, in broken French; "be always
close to the door when I come. I shall have something to tell you."
The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were withdrawn from the
opening, and Morton was left to his reflections.
To have a friend near him, however humble, was much, and the hope,
slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid him, filled him with
a feverish excitement. Why the corporal should interest himself in his
behalf, he could not imagine; and he waited restlessly for his next
coming.
In due time, the eye appeared.
"Look here," whispered Max, and thrust a paper through the opening,
waiting only long enough to see Morton pick it up.
The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling; but Morton
at last deciphered words to the following purport.
"You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I can. Long live
America! Down with the emperor! Only be patient. Be sure to chew this
paper, and swallow it."
The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner compromised
the matter by tearing the paper into small pieces, and stuffing them
into the crevices of the floor.
At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid words,
expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal would help him to
escape, and go with him to America, he would make him rich for life.
The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case of Max it
was not needed. Though his tastes and habits savored of the barrack,
the corporal was one of the most simple-hearted and generous of men,
with, besides, much of that kind of enthusiasm of character which is
apt to be rather ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and
connections were not quite so low as might have been argued from his
mean station in the service, in which his life had been spent from
boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several of his brothers, and
others of his relatives, had been deeply compromised in the Polish
rising of 1831, and had suffered heavy and humiliating penalties in
consequence. His eldest brother, however, had escaped in time, and
gone to America, where, being very different in character from Max, he
had thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared,
travelling with a United States passport, as an American, inveighing
against European despotisms, and dilating on the glories of his
adopted country. Max, the only auditor of these declamations, was
greatly excited by them. He had long been tired of his thankless
position in the Austrian service; and listening to his brother's
persuasions, he agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the
seat, as he began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But
before he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm; and
seeing some indications that his identity was suspected by the police,
decamped with the promptness and alacrity which had always
distinguished him in times of danger. Max, therefore, was left alone;
his adviser, for fear of compromising him, not daring to attempt any
communication.
It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's
inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton, brought in for
examination, and learned from the questions and replies, that the
prisoner was an American. His interest was greatly stirred; for he had
never seen one of the favored race before; and, like the commissioner,
he had no doubt that Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His
interest was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard
Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the latter
faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was moved so
deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived the idea of
helping Morton to escape, and going with him to the land of promise.
It was an idea more easily conceived than executed; and before he
could find an opportunity, his corps was removed from the castle, and
sent on duty elsewhere.
Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a
prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though
brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly
let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day,
neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until,
after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old
disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his
mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him, thus bringing him in
contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the
same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme
into effect.
To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as
could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a
tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He
waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and
suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return,
some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.
Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read
as follows:--
"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in
a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."
Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the
sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart,
read,--
"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and
keep him with his back to the door. _I shall come._ Be cool and
steady. I shall tell you what to do."
Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a
manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which
the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet
this crisis of his fate.
The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him
in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on
which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of
Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had
received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his
cheek. In dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old
German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton
had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he
poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging,
sabres and bombshells, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring
to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own
mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.
At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared.
As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a
latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a
species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a
duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this,
during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.
Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile,
and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.
"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the
farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle
of Wagram."
"Eh!" grunted the jailer.
"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in
that battle at all."
"Eh!"
"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."
"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his
brain.
Morton nodded assent.
The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and
mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a
flood of denial, mixed with invective against his assailant, appealing
to his scar as proof positive of his valor.
"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in
his eloquence.
Jacob stared at him, speechless.
"You got it in a drunken row."
At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought
he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists,
and stamping on the pavement.
This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands
clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.
"Shut the door," whispered Max.
On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The
corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.
"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."
Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and
kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon
against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him
effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for
the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring
upward with glassy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and
astonishment.
"You must put on his clothes," said Max.
They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton
substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes.
Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings
of leather, which he took from his pocket.
"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if
there's any body in the way."
Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported
that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The
helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the
castle should come to his relief.
They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up
another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod
of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but
each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation
against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.
Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,--a Prussian
by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately
vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most
learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner
of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always
carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and
disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general butt of
his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood.
Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of
late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often
asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this
day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the
prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium,
mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of
simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of
circumstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.
As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took
off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther
on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no
very military gait.
Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.
"_Voila, monsieur_,"--he was now and hereafter very respectful in his
manner towards the man he was saving,--"_voila_; look at the old
booby; how he reels and staggers about--ah! do you see?"
Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall,
nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile
his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in
spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the butt struck on
the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook
himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped,
leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door,
let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding
and butting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the
wall.
Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged
sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were
now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one
side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear
of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness
of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no
living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along
under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her
mouth.
They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear
of the principal range of barracks.
"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.
Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the
barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a
German pipe between his moustached lips.
"To the village."
"Who gave you leave?"
"The lieutenant."
"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"
"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his
pipe?"
The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled
at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of
derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window,
under cover of which they passed out of the area, and reached a
pathway leading down the height.
A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the
side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse,
conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle
down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty
population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of
dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully
served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents
to the village.
Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels. The fresh
wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading mother earth,
wrought on him strangely; not, as on the wrestler of old, to nerve him
with renewed force. He grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he
staggered after his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison
had sapped away his strength.
In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their way past
the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety outhouses, broken
fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and other impediments. Most
of the men were absent; a few women only stared at them as they
passed. With one very pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of
appearances, exchanged a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood
looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a yellow
Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly from a heap
of rotten straw, on which he had been dozing, and made a fierce dash
at Max's leg; but the latter gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent
him off yelping, followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack
damsel.
Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs for a full
half mile; yet it was uneven,--not to say broken; and Max, who had
made a careful reconnaissance, knew that if they could but reach
unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods from the skirts of the hamlet, no
eye from the ramparts could see them. Towards this, therefore, he
walked, with an air of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart
in his throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to excite
suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow, they came upon a
spring at the foot of a rock, where three women were pounding clothes
on a stone with clubs, by way of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a
broad felt hat, lay on the ground listlessly watching the process.
In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them; and, to
Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eyeshot of the castle.
Max, however, with the skill of an old deer stalker, soon managed to
place, first, a large rock, then the rugged shoulder of a hill,
between themselves and the detested battlements. Next they gained the
partial shelter of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a
ragged outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments
more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and underwood.
Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of idle
strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight, than Max cried,
"Come on!" and set out at a run. When he turned, however, and saw the
pale face of Morton, already tired with unwonted effort, he took a
flask of brandy from his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's
sinews afresh. They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths
and brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense and
breathless as an American forest.
"Look!" said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and pointing back over
the woods. Three miles off, the rock of Ehrenberg rose in view,
bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements and towers. Morton gave it
one look, prayed it might be the last, and motioned his companion
forward again.
They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its
side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and
savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing
veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands;
the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop.
"Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?"
Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate;
and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton.
It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a
grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches,
oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a
fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and
placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed
with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off
small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf
which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more
solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for
drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook.
It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light
flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty
limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done
away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some
college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests
of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a
Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long,
waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk,
on the pile of evergreens.
As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt
he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his
gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max
himself had used as his medium of communication.
The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his
companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the
dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the
mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering
with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions,
suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos;
till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep
haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and
repose.
He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the half-dead
embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But, as the fresh odors of
the morning reached his senses, they brought so vividly upon him the
memory of his youthful health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits
rose almost to defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose
slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again on a
well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.
About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned breed of
the country, grazing very peacefully. Max looked about him, and began
to move with caution. The cow was wild, and would not let them pass
her, but walked before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great
number of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two men
watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen of this district,
little better than banditti. One of them sat on a rock, the other
lounged on the grass. Both were dressed in coarse linen shirts and
trousers, short, heavy woollen cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a
kind of rude sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a
club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served him for a
walking stick.
Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived through the bushes,
they suddenly appeared before the two men, much, as it seemed, to
their amazement. Max, in a language quite new to his companion,
desired them to change clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and
air of the applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the
breast pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish
could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more willingly
as they would be great gainers by the bargain. Max threw off his
uniform, and put on the dress of the taller herdsman. Morton satisfied
himself with the woollen cloak of the other, in exchange for the
jailer's coat.
The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the hatchet which
he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling very sullenly. Max
hastened to interpose, and offered a silver coin in return for the
hatchet, which its owner at once surrendered. It was by no means any
love of abstract justice which dictated this procedure; but a desire,
on Max's part, to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended,
they might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.
They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton betook themselves
again to the woods.