IT was midnight when Jack Sheppard reached the leads, wearied by his
magical achievement, and still fearful of discovery. The 'jolly pair of
handcuffs,' provided by the thoughtful Governor, lay discarded in his
distant cell; the chains which a few hours since had grappled him to the
floor encumbered the now useless staple. No trace of the ancient slavery
disgraced him save the iron anklets which clung about his legs; though
many a broken wall and shattered lock must serve for evidence of his
prowess on the morrow. The Stone-Jug was all be-chipped and shattered.
From the castle he had forced his way through a nine-foot wall into
the Red Room, whose bolts, bars, and hinges he had ruined to gain the
Chapel. The road thence to the roof and to freedom was hindered by three
stubborn iron doors; yet naught stood in the way of Sheppard's genius,
and he was sensible, at last, of the night air chill upon his cheek.
But liberty was not yet: there was still a fall of forty feet, and he
must needs repass the wreckage of his own making to filch the blankets
from his cell. In terror lest he should awaken the Master-Side Debtors,
he hastened back to the roof, lashed the coverlets together, and, as the
city clocks clashed twelve, he dropped noiselessly upon the leads of
a turner's house, built against the prison's outer wall. Behind him
Newgate was cut out a black mass against the sky; at his feet glimmered
the garret window of the turner's house, and behind the winking casement
he could see the turner's servant going to bed. Through her chamber lay
the road to glory and Clare Market, and breathlessly did Sheppard watch
till the candle should be extinguished and the maid silenced in sleep.
In his anxiety he must tarry--tarry; and for a weary hour he kicked his
heels upon the leads, ambition still too uncertain for quietude. Yet
he could not but catch a solace from his splendid craft. Said he to
himself: 'Am I not the most accomplished slip-string the world has
known? The broken wall of every round house in town attests my bravery.
Light-limbed though I be, have I not forced the impregnable Castle
itself? And my enemies--are they not to-day writhing in distress ? The
head of Blueskin, that pitiful thief, quivers in the noose; and Jonathan
Wild bleeds at the throat from the dregs of a coward's courage. What a
triumph shall be mine when the Keeper finds the stronghold tenantless!'
Now, unnumbered were the affronts he had suffered from the Keeper's
impertinence, and he chuckled aloud at his own witty rejoinder. Only two
days since the Gaoler had caught him tampering with his irons. 'Young
man,' he had said, 'I see what you have been doing, but the affair
betwixt us stands thus: It is your business to make your escape, and
mine to take care you shall not.' Jack had answered coolly enough: 'Then
let's both mind our own business.' And it was to some purpose that he
had minded his. The letter to his baffled guardian, already sketched
in his mind, tickled him afresh, when suddenly he leaps to his feet and
begins to force the garret window.
The turner's maid was a heavy sleeper, and Sheppard crept from her
garret to the twisted stair in peace. Once, on a lower floor, his heart
beat faster at the trumpetings of the turner's nose, but he knew no
check until he reached the street door. The bolt was withdrawn in an
instant, but the lock was turned, and the key nowhere to be found.
However, though the risk of disturbance was greater than in Newgate,
the task was light enough: and with an iron link from his fetter, and a
rusty nail which had served him bravely, the box was wrenched off in a
trice, and Sheppard stood unattended in the Old Bailey. At first he was
minded to make for his ancient haunts, or to conceal himself within the
Liberty of Westminster; but the fetter-locks were still upon his
legs, and he knew that detection would be easy as long as he was thus
embarrassed. Wherefore, weary and an-hungered, he turned his steps
northward, and never rested until he had gained Finchley Common.
At break of day, when the world re-awoke from the fear of thieves, he
feigned a limp at a cottage door, and borrowed a hammer to straighten a
pinching shoe. Five minutes behind a hedge, and his anklets had dropped
from him; and, thus a free man, he took to the high road. After all he
was persuaded to desert London and to escape a while from the sturdy
embrace of Edgworth Bess. Moreover, if Bess herself were in the lock-up,
he still feared the interested affection of Mistress Maggot, that other
doxy, whose avarice would surely drive him upon a dangerous enterprise;
so he struck across country, and kept starvation from him by petty
theft. Up and down England he wandered in solitary insolence. Once,
saith rumour, his lithe apparition startled the peace of Nottingham;
once, he was wellnigh caught begging wort at a brew-house in Thames
Street. But he might as well have lingered in Newgate as waste his
opportunity far from the delights of Town; the old lust of life still
impelled him, and a week after the hue-and-cry was raised he crept at
dead of night down Drury Lane. Here he found harbourage with a friendly
fence, Wild's mortal enemy, who promised him a safe conduct across the
seas. But the desire of work proved too strong for prudence; and in a
fortnight he had planned an attack on the pawnshop of one Rawling, at
the Four Balls in Drury Lane.
Sheppard, whom no house ever built with hands was strong enough to
hold, was better skilled at breaking out than at breaking in, and it
is remarkable that his last feat in the cracking of cribs was also his
greatest. Its very conception was a masterpiece of effrontery. Drury
Lane was the thief-catcher's chosen territory; yet it was the Four Balls
that Jack designed for attack, and watches, tie-wigs, snuff-boxes
were among his booty. Whatever he could not crowd upon his person he
presented to a brace of women. Tricked out in his stolen finery, he
drank and swaggered in Clare Market. He was dressed in a superb suit of
black; a diamond fawney flashed upon his finger; his light tie-periwig
was worth no less than seven pounds; pistols, tortoise-shell
snuff-boxes, and golden guineas jostled one another in his pockets.
Thus, in brazen magnificence, he marched down Drury Lane on a certain
Saturday night in November 1724. Towards midnight he visited Thomas
Nicks, the butcher, and having bargained for three ribs of beef, carried
Nicks with him to a chandler's hard by, that they might ratify the
bargain with a dram. Unhappily, a boy from the 'Rose and Crown' sounded
the alarm; for coming into the chandler's for the empty ale-pots, he
instantly recognised the incomparable gaol-thief, and lost no time in
acquainting his master. Now, Mr. Bradford, of the 'Rose and Crown,' was
a head-borough, who, with the zeal of a triumphant Dogberry, summoned
the watch, and in less than half an hour Jack Sheppard was screaming
blasphemies in a hackney-cab on his way home to Newgate.
The Stone-Jug received him with deference and admiration. Three hundred
pounds weight of irons were put upon him for an adornment, and the
Governor professed so keen a solicitude for his welfare that he never
left him unattended. There was scarce a beautiful woman in London who
did not solace him with her condescension, and enrich him with her
gifts. Not only did the President of the Royal Academy deign to paint
his portrait, but (a far greater honour) Hogarth made him immortal.
Even the King displayed a proper interest, demanding a full and precise
account of his escapes. The hero himself was drunk with flattery;
he bubbled with ribaldry; he touched off the most valiant of his
contemporaries in a ludicrous phrase. But his chief delight was to
illustrate his prowess to his distinguished visitors, and nothing
pleased him better than to slip in and out of his chains.
Confronted with his judge, he forthwith proposed to rid himself of his
handcuffs, and he preserved until the fatal tree an illimitable pride in
his artistry. Nor would he believe in the possibility of death. To the
very last he was confirmed in the hope of pardon; but, pardon failing
him, his single consolation was that his procession from Westminster
to Newgate was the largest that London had ever known, and that in
the crowd a constable broke his leg. Even in the Condemned Hole he was
unreconciled. If he had broken the Castle, why should he not also evade
the gallows? Wherefore he resolved to carry a knife to Tyburn that he
might cut the rope, and so, losing himself in the crowd, ensure escape.
But the knife was discovered by his warder's vigilance, and taken
from him after a desperate struggle. At the scaffold he behaved with
admirable gravity: confessing the wickeder of his robberies, and asking
pardon for his enormous crimes. 'Of two virtues,' he boasted at the
self-same moment that the cart left him dancing without the music, 'I
have ever cherished an honest pride: never have I stooped to friendship
with Jonathan Wild, or with any of his detestable thief-takers; and,
though an undutiful son, I never damned my mother's eyes.'
Thus died Jack Sheppard; intrepid burglar and incomparable artist, who,
in his own separate ambition of prison-breaking, remains, and will ever
remain, unrivalled. His most brilliant efforts were the result neither
of strength nor of cunning; for so slight was he of build, so deficient
in muscle, that both Edgworth Bess and Mistress Maggot were wont to
bang him to their own mind and purpose. And an escape so magnificently
planned, so bravely executed as was his from the Strong Room, is far
greater than a mere effect of cunning. Those mysterious gifts which
enable mankind to batter the stone walls of a prison, or to bend the
iron bars of a cage, were pre-eminently his. It is also certain that he
could not have employed his gifts in a more reputable profession.