by M. P. Shiel
XVIII
CHLOROFORM
(Captain Bucknill, the Governor, was making his morning rounds, when heheard that among the convicts claiming to see him was 76.)
A little man, prim, snappy, compact: an army officer, with moustachiosstuck upon him, to curve and finish him off.
"Well, what is it, 76?" said he busily at the cell door.
Hogarth struck a hand-salute--his old habit on His Majesty's ships.
"Sir, I wished to tell you that I have determined to escape from thisprison--if I can".
"Indeed, now! This is a most refreshing candour, 76!"
"I have said what I had to say", said Hogarth. "You keep a sharp eye onme, and I, too, will keep a sharp eye".
The Governor puffed a breath of laughter, turned on his heels, walkedaway, and that day spoke to three officials with regard to Convict 76.
And during a week Hogarth lay deep, chained, in a punishment-cell.
But during its first four days he had invented three separate plans ofescape, and had determined upon the one which seemed the surest, thoughlongest.
When he again came up into the light, he was a marked man, under WarderBlack's constant suspicion.
Now, however, his expression was changed: he no longer belonged toColmoor, though he was there. Sometimes he felt like shouting at theburden of his secret. In his impatience to proclaim it, he pined towrite to Loveday--but now his punishment had lost him that privilege.
Meantime, the problem was to get ten good miles beyond Colmoor: a hardone; but his brain had already accomplished a task far harder: and thegreater implied the less.
His first thought, when he had begun to plan, had been Loveday; hissecond, that on no account could he permit Loveday to incur furtherrisk, or expense, for him; his third, that he might yet use Loveday toany extent not involving risk or expense.
At the next weekly "School" he sat near a Thames-works hackle-maker,who, though he could write, was no scholar, and was laboriously spoilinga second letter-sheet, when Hogarth whispered him: "Can I help you? Isee it's to your mother. I could get her a quid from a friend of mine".
"Well, I'm much obliged....!"
The laborious letter, after half an hour, had in it:
"If you go to 15, Cheyne Gardens, the gentleman will give you asovereign which he owed me for cutting down the elm in the beech-wood atTeddington for him".
Now, Loveday lived at 15, Cheyne Gardens, and had only to see thosewords "_the elm in the beechwood_," to scent a cypher from Hogarth.
He offered five pounds for that letter: but it was two weeks before hedecided upon the intended words: "Small chloroform--trenches--rock".
There were several trenches, many rocks: yet one midnight, when ablustering wind huddled the bracken, and the prison stood darkling,wrapped in mystery, a lonely figure in an ulster was there; and undereach of three rocks he deposited two vials: for the formation of onlythree gave the least chance of concealment.
What Hogarth's plan could be he racked his brain in vain to dream,guessing that prisoners, on returning from the moor, must be searched,even to the ears: Hogarth, therefore, could never use the vial withinthe walls, and must mean to use it without--a sufficiently wildproceeding. But the finding of the vials, was sure: for the "rock" whichHogarth had had in mind was one of those granite ones common on Colmoor,standing five feet high on a small base; and one day he swept his handamong the gorse under it, and, with a glad half-surprise, touched twovials.
Three days later he again swept his hand among the gorse, touched thevials, breasted his handkerchief, laid the vials on it, and presentlycontrived to tie them together with a twig.
At his feet now was a wheelbarrow full of marl, and two yards off WarderBlack, waiting for him to roll the barrow; but, inserting his spadebetween a wheel and a side of the barrow, his back toward Black,Hogarth, with a tug, bent the spade: then walked to Black.
"Look here", he said, "that spade isn't much good now...."
Black strode to look, Hogarth a little behind him: and at the instantwhen the officer was a-stoop to lift the spade, Hogarth took the vialsfrom his breast, and laid them upright in the little pocket of Black'stunic, near his bayonet-sheath and cartridge-box, above the belt.
By the time the matter of the spade was settled, the great bell rang,the gangs went marching over the old familiar level, up the old path inthe grass-mound on which the Palace stands, and so, in lax order, likeshabby French conscripts, powdered, toil-worn, into the gates.
Then the search on parade: during which, as Black busily searched him,Hogarth said: "Search well".
They were then led up to cells.
And the moment Hogarth's door closed upon him, he put his skilly-can onthe floor, and, with one stamp, stamped it out of shape; also he brokehis cup, and pocketed two fragments of it.
A few minutes afterwards, before cocoa, Black, trotting in heavy hastehere and there in the gallery, looked in to say: "Bath to-night".
And Hogarth: "Warder! a word with you! sorry, I have trodden on mycan...."
Upon which Black went stooping to look, the can now standing on the lowshelf; and as he said "I shall report this", Hogarth, stooping, withquick deftness had the vials picked from the thick pocket.
"Well, fall in", said Black to him; "better take your precious can, andgive it to a bath-room warder for the store-keeper to change".
Hogarth, as he passed out, placed the vials on the shelf over hisdoor, where they were secure, since cells were never searched; and, thebathers having formed in single file, five feet between man and man,away they moved and down--away and down--lost in space, treading thejourney of galleries, till, at the bottom, they passed up a vaultedcorridor, monastically dim, across a yard open to starry sky, andinto the door of a semi-detached, steep-roofed building, which was thebath-house.
A row of thirty-five baths; a very long bench for undressing; in thespace between bench and baths three warders walking: such was thebath-house: all whitewashed, galvanized iron, and rigour; but for itsold record of uneventfulness a scandal was preparing that night.
Outside the door a fourth officer paced, and a cord within rang a littlebell in one click, to tell when, the bathing over, the door should beunlocked outside.
After giving up his can near the door to a warder, who laid it on thebench, Hogarth undressed slowly; got off his boots; and now had on onlyknickerbockers and stockings: he got off his stockings.
And the moment his bare soles touched the floor, he felt himself oncemore agile on the ratlines, larky for a shore-row, handy in any squall.Let them all come, therefore! He smiled; passed his palms down his cribof lean ribs.
"Good gracious, why don't you hurry up there...?" an officer cameasking, stooping.
At "there" he saw stars-and-stripes, dropped upon his back: Hogarth wasaway toward the door, while the bathers started with shouts, though inno bosom arose any impulse to follow, the bath-house being the centre ofa maze of twenty unscaleable walls, prison within prison.
But as for Hogarth, in such a dazzling flash did he dash toward thedoor, that he had struck down the second officer before the outcry ofthe first, and had pulled at the door-bell before the third could cry_"Don't open!"_--a cry muffled into his maw by a cuff prompt as thunder.
This third man, however, grasped the fugitive by the middle: and whilethe overthrown two were running up, and the key without seeking thelock, a short, venomous tussle was waged just near the door, tillHogarth, wringing his naked body free, tossed his antagonist by theknees to slide into the path of the two on-comers; at the same time,catching up his battered can, and smashing it into the face of thedoor-orderly, who now peeped in, he slipped through, and was gone into ayard, small, of irregular shape, and dim, with one wall-lantern, andbut one egress (except the egress into the prison-hall), namely ablind-alley between the laundry and carpet-makers' building on one side,and stables on the other: blind alley, yard, and all, being shut in bybig buildings.
By the time the door-orderly opened his e
yes, and one of the insidethree had rushed out, Hogarth had vanished; and these two, shrillingwhistles to reinforce the bath-room guard, pelted down the blind-alleyto effect, as they thought, a sure capture. But Hogarth was not there.
Back they came trotting, breathless, rather at a loss. One panted: "Hemust have run back into the great hall...."
The other panted: "He'd hardly do that--hiding in the yard still, _must_be. There's that little nook...."
The "little nook" is a three-sided space in a corner, very dark, formedby one wall of the campanile, or bell-tower, together with a wall of thelaundry-house, and a third wall which shuts in the yard; the entrance toit narrow, and one looking up within it seems to stand at the bottomof a triangular well, split at one corner. It is not far from thebathhouse, and into it Hogarth had really darted; but when the officerscame peering, no trace of him.
He had, in fact, gone up the lightning-conductor, which runs downa bell-tower remarkably high, Colmoor having been built during theNapoleonic wars for French prisoners at a time when the theory wasaccepted that a lightning-conductor protects a space whose radius isdouble the height of the conductor. The tower is a five-sided structurewith a Gothic window into which it is impossible to get from theconductor, because a corner intervenes, and it is a feat to swing fromthe conductor to the laundry-wall coping, and thence, leaping up, togrip the window: at each of which ordeals Hogarth hesitated, piercedwith chills; to his observations from afar it had seemed so much lessstupendous; but in each case he dared, and reached.
All this time the can was between his teeth.
Arrived on the window, his arms out groping, he felt a slantingbeam--climbed it--found it short-mounted upon a horizontal one, allhere, as he had expected, being a chaos of beams, raying every way.Thrice he sneezed low, and felt cobwebs in his face.
And groping he went, seeking the great Bell of Colmoor, which he haddoomed, hearing sounds of the to-do, echoes that ran below, and thevague shout of somebody, till he touched the flat top of the bell,clamped to the swing-beam on which he sat astraddle; felt also thatalong the top of the beam lay an iron bar; made sure that this was inactual contact with the clamps of the bell: and, no longer hesitating,set to work upon the can.
Tugging with his dog-teeth under the upper rim, he got a loose end, andwrenched the rim off; then, tearing along the solder, got the cylinderseparated 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 thethin-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 thebeam; then connected that strip with another by loops, slid again to thewindow, and there lay connecting the six strips by a smith's-trick, withskew loops, non-slipping, getting a tin string five feet long. Hethen took the leap to the laundry coping, and thence the spring to theconductor, this being all the more ticklishly perilous because he couldbarely see it.
Hanging away now from the conductor by the left elbow, he reached outthe right arm across the corner to catch the tin, which stuck toward himfrom the window: and he wound its end round the conductor, electricallyconnecting the bell with the conductor.
And now, standing with one foot on a staple below the tin, he twicesawed the conductor's soft metal with the fragments of cup, cutting andtugging out three inches of it, thus isolating the conductor's pointatop from its earthing; then he tossed the piece cut out behind thelaundry-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 inthe prison-hall, five night-warders with bull's-eyes fell out, stillseeking 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...!"
