“That’s all right,” replied the voice. “I prefer you like that. You disgust me less.”
“Bring your lantern nearer,” the Captain shouted to the sailor.
He examined with minute care the irons, called bars of justice. They consisted of a long rod of over an inch in diameter with fetters attached which kept the legs crossed, and, if needs be, the arms as well. In Chéri-Bibi’s case the arms were crossed. When the shackles were once fitted to the limbs, they were threaded to the rod, and let down to the spot which they were intended to occupy. Afterwards the end of the rod was closed by means of a large padlock which served as a bolt. An iron pad covered the other end of the rod, to prevent the fetters from slipping off.
Captain Barrachon made sure that the bars and shackles were in position and Chéri-Bibi’s limbs also. The lantern did not cast any light upon the lower part of the object crouching in the dusk; the object whose wheezing and hateful breathing could be heard though its face could not be seen. The Captain took the lantern from the sailor, and felt no inclination to throw its rays upon Chéri-Bibi’s face, which always perturbed him. He could look at the hands and feet in their irons; but he would not look at the face, the hideous face.... He could not bear to see it.
.. He shuddered at the thought of the terrible expression which it must wear since he had ordered him to be kept “in irons for the rest of the voyage,” for, after all, it was as though he had sentenced him to death.
The lantern was clear of the rod and was held over the padlock, which was properly fastened. It was a sound, heavy, thick, honest padlock of which the Captain held the key, the only key, in his pocket. And he stood up with a sigh of relief. He was more easy in his mind now that he had examined the irons.
“I’ve always regretted,” he said to the Lieutenant, “that these irons which recall the Inquisition and the gloomy Middle Ages, are used in our navy to punish the slightest breach of the regulations or of discipline. But really I’m not sorry that we still have these last vestiges of barbarism at our command when we have to deal with a convict like this.”
“Shut up!” said the voice in the dark.
“Do you hear him. ’Tis crime itself that is speaking,” said Barrachon, incensed. “Crime in all its impudence and horror. Crime with no name to it.”
“Yes, for it’s called Chéri-Bibi,” shrieked the voice proudly.
“This wretch respects nothing. Perhaps he has parents who are mourning over his misdeeds, but he is as oblivious of them as he is oblivious of the crimes themselves.”
“I’ve weakened my memory by excess,” replied the voice.
“Let’s hurry away,” exclaimed the Captain, “or I shall kill him and regret it all my life.”
“And I... I should congratulate you all mine,” replied the Lieutenant.
The Captain turned to the two men whose duty it was never to lose sight of Chéri-Bibi.
“I’ve ordered the guard to be relieved every hour. It will be less of a strain. You know your instructions.... You must never speak or answer No. 3216.”
At that moment a dismal sob came from the darkness. It was so terrible and so mournful that both officers were singularly impressed. The Captain was at the end of his endurance. He lifted the lantern to a level with the face of the man who was crying. And all five — the two officers, the two warders, and the sailor — started back appalled, for they had before them a man who was laughing. The men would never forget the abominable spectacle, this bitter laughter in the red gleam of the lantern, this monstrous grimace of the man who mocked them by laughing from ear to ear because they believed for a moment that he had moaned and felt compassion for his suffering. The Captain let the lantern fall, and it shattered, and the light went out, and the loathsome object faded in the darkness. Barrachon, stifling, staggering, opened the door of the cell and took refuge in the alley-way.
“He laughs!” he muttered, overcome with a fit of shivering. “The monster must have laughed when he committed his last murder.”
The door was not yet closed, and Chéri-Bibi heard the Captain’s word. And the hoarse voice overtook Barrachon as he fled:
“You’re wrong in thinking it made no difference to me. That very night I had to take a mustard foot hath!”
Barrachon and de Vilène pressed their whole weight against the door to shut out the sound.
Then they mounted the steps of the inferno which above and below and around them seemed once more to he filled with a general shout. The convicts would not keep silent unless they saw a non-commissioned officer or an officer. From cage to cage, from cell to cell, from lower deck to upper deck ribald songs, insults, curses, challenges, obscenities were being bandied about; but the Captain and the Lieutenant could think only of Chéri-Bibi.
“Luckily for all of us he’ll be dead before the voyage is over,” said de Vilène.
“Why should he be?” asked Barrachon, stopping short with one foot on the last rung of the ladder which ran up to the second deck. “Why do you want him to die?”
“He won’t be able to hold out to the end with those irons on. His hands and feet are already bleeding.”
“The devil they are!” said the Captain, thinking out aloud. “That’s a ‘question of conscience.’”
“Is there any question of conscience concerned with men like that? We must have more pluck than jurymen, that’s all.... Hark!”
The vessel re-echoed with the convicts’ doleful singing.
“There’s no hope with that scum,” went on the Lieutenant. “Oh, if we made up our minds to it! A little blood-letting would soon bring them to their senses.”
Before the Captain had time to reply a big white body came tumbling against him, grabbed him as it passed, made him slightly lose his balance, continued its course swiftly down the ladder, heels uppermost, and would have rolled to the bottom of the hold if the Lieutenant had not quietly caught it midway. The officers recognized the cook’s mate, who had obviously not found his sea legs. From the beginning of the voyage the lurching and wallowing of the ship held him at their mercy. The unfortunate man could not stand upright. Because of this fact and his thinness he was the sport of the warders and the sailors, who nicknamed him the Dodger.
“What are you doing here?” asked the Captain.
“You see for yourself, sir” the Dodger replied in a serious voice. “I’m collecting my dishes.”
As a matter of fact, men were following him with the convicts’ mess tubs. He caught hold of the rope of the ladder and added:
“Do you know, sir, that the cook has been working it out in the store-room with the Inspector? Not a single bottle of rum is missing.”
At that moment a more than usually sudden lurch of the vessel made him let go the rope and he went flying down to the deck below.
“I never heard of such a thing,” groaned the Captain.
“I swear that I’ll clear the matter up before the day is over,” said de Vilène. “The rum must have been sold to them by the overseers.”
When the announcement was made by the guard that the two officers had returned to the lower deck, the singing ceased, to be taken up again as soon as the Captain and Lieutenant had passed. And it was the turn of the upper deck to smother its clamor.
“Here’s the Cap’n and the Second!”
The signal passed from cage to cage. The two officers halted for a moment before the “financier’s cage.” Not that a special compartment was set aside for financial gentlemen, but the cage owed its name to the great number of fraudulent bankrupts and swindlers who had misappropriated funds who were present, cheek by jowl with the usual number of common rogues. For that matter they were all dressed alike. Thus it was impossible to distinguish the small fry, the society sharper, the solicitor who was once held in honor in his county, the fraudulent banker who had surprised the town by his display, nor those popular cracksmen with a sense of humor who when they came before judges and juries excited the admiration of certain ill-balanced young persons. Sp
iritless, dejected, cast down amidst this confused jumble of the tagrag and bobtail of crime, they were no longer recognizable with the exception of the Top, who every now and then, when least expected, gave vent to a sharp, shrill chuckle which vibrated like a pea-whistle, and had the effect of driving the overseers almost crazy.
The officers afterwards passed on to another compartment, the cage for women, containing some forty old incorrigibles who, as soon as they caught sight of the Captain, began to bewail their fate and to groan in the most heartrending manner.
“Have you done sniveling?” snarled one of them, whose white face and flaming black eyes were glued to the grille.
Oh, she was not the one to whimper was not the Countess. Always in a passion, always in rebellion, she never ceased to stride round her cage like a wild hyena, scattering with a blow from her paw anyone who might stand in the way of her perambulation.
The other women dreaded her, for she was cruel, and of great strength, and used her teeth. She was extraordinarily beautiful. And they called her the Countess because she had assumed towards them from the beginning the airs of a great lady.
And then one day she started to talk slang as if she had been used to it all her life, and she dominated them by her brazen effrontery. The Countess was the Kanaka’s wife and was condemned at the same time as that peculiar doctor for deeds which the indictment itself dared not describe. They were suspected of cannibalism.
Barrachon and de Vilène stood before this beast of prey clinging to the bars of its cage.
“What do you want, Captain? Do you want me to make love to you?”
The Captain uttered a cry of pain, for the Countess suddenly stretched out her claw and seized him by the chin.
“I’ve got him by the beard... I’ve got him by the beard!”
The Lieutenant had to strike her a violent blow with the butt end of his revolver before she released her hold. She flung herself back, whining like a beast in a menagerie mastered by the prong of its keeper.
The Lieutenant ordered her to be taken to the cells at once.
“Oh, let’s get out of this,” gasped the Captain.
“Let’s get — up to the — light of — day. — We must; — leave these cursed places.”
De Vilène shrugged his shoulders and followed him. The Captain’s weakness and his bombastic manner of expressing himself irritated him. Barrachon could endure it no longer nor could he master his disgust. He glided between the last cages as though he were running away, and heaved a sigh of relief when he placed his foot on the deck, notwithstanding that, down below, the inferno re-echoed once more with its terrible songs.
“But why are they singing? We’ve never heard them sing like this before,” he said to the Lieutenant. “Something is happening that we know nothing about.”
“Convicts are fond of singing,” answered the Lieutenant, smiling coldly. “Do you know the derivation of the word chiourne, convict? It comes from the Italian ciurma, which itself is derived from the Greek keleusma, and it means the Song of the Rowers. What is there more agreeable in the world than the Song of the Rowers?”
The Captain made off. He locked himself in his cabin. He was assailed by the gloomiest forebodings. He was especially perturbed by the mystery of the bottles of rum. Fortunately he had a considerable armed force under his command. Had he made sufficient use of that force? Had not his own weakness produced, by degrees, the state of mutiny into which his extraordinary cargo had fallen? If he had dared to let his men use their weapons once or twice, as was his right, there would have been no more singing in the cages. And then he asked himself: “After all, why should I prevent them from singing? Why?” And he realized that it was not the singing that worried him, but someone that was at the bottom of it all, someone in the vessel, and that someone was no other than Chéri-Bibi. He had confessed to his lieutenant that the man prevented him from sleeping. As he reached this point in his reflections, there was a loud knock at his door and Lieutenant de Vilène came in as pale as death.
“What’s the matter?” he asked in a voice that failed him somewhat, for he was already convinced that he was about to hear of some terrible misfortune.
“The matter is that No. 3216 has escaped,” replied the Lieutenant quickly.
“Chéri-Bibi?”
“Yes. Chéri-Bibi is not in his cell.”
The Captain partly turned round and dropped onto the sofa.
“But look here,” he exclaimed with a start, “you don’t mean to say so. What about the warders?”
“Both of them are dead. The relief guard found them behind the door of the cell strangled. The irons are still padlocked, and Chéri-Bibi has disappeared.”
CHAPTER II
IN THE HOLD
ON HEARING THE Lieutenant’s last words the Captain made sure that the key of the padlock was in his pocket and ran towards the cabin door like a madman. De Vilène stopped him.
“Wait a bit, Captain,” he said. “Don’t go out in that state. We’ve the greatest reason to conceal this matter as far as possible. Chéri-Bibi can’t be far away; he can’t escape us; we will catch him again, but let’s try to lay hands on him without rousing anyone’s suspicions. As you said just now, things are happening that we know nothing about. I’ve not said anything to the Inspector yet, but he has just made an alarming report on the state of mind of the convicts in the lower decks. Something is in the wind, and the disappearance of Chéri-Bibi is perhaps only the beginning or the signal of the affair. At my request the Sergeant and the two warders, who alone know the truth, have sworn that they will not breathe a word to a soul. Let’s make our investigation alone without seeming to do so. Afterwards we will come to some decision. To act otherwise will be to encourage the convicts and perhaps to frighten our men out of their wits, for they have a terror of Chéri-Bibi.”
“You’re quite right,” acquiesced Barrachon. “We must be calm.... But it’s awful.”
“Let’s quietly go down to the cell,” said the Lieutenant, “and we’ll see for ourselves. I have my little dark lantern in my pocket. Chéri-Bibi must be in the hold. We’ll see from which side he escaped.”
“What about the dead warders?”
“They’re still in the cell. My opinion is that they should not be moved to the sick-bay until to-night.”
“Oh, it’s terrible,” groaned Barrachon, beside himself. “How can such things be!... Let’s They left the cabin, affecting as far as possible an air of unconcern.
“I’ve doubled the sentries on the pretence that the convicts are in an ugly frame of mind, and on the off chance I’ve placed overseers near each boat,” said the Lieutenant.
“You’re perfectly right; but he won’t risk coming on deck in broad daylight.”
“You can never tell with a man like that. He is armed now, for he took the revolvers and cartridges from the murdered warders. We must be prepared for everything.”
They once more made their way down to the lower decks. It was an extraordinary thing, and seemed to them of ill-omen, but an incredible silence prevailed in the cages. Not a voice, not a word could be heard.
Not a hand or a foot stirred, though the wind had suddenly died down and the vessel was sailing on an even keel. The convicts, motionless behind their bars, stared at the officers as they passed. Nevertheless a curious chuckle came from the “financiers’ cage” as they crossed the lower gun deck. De Vilène turned round. The laugh ceased. A warder behind them shouted through the bars of the cage to the Top:
“Have you done setting everybody at defiance?” And he added:— “I don’t know what’s the matter with them to-day. A moment ago they were making a devil’s row, and now we hear nothing but this idiot’s laugh.”
The officers descended to a lower deck.
In order that the reader may understand the events which were about to take place within the particular compass of a troop-ship commissioned to take convicts to the penal settlement at Cayenne, it may be useful to picture in its general fe
atures the plan of the Bayard. Five parallel lines ran the full length of the vessel. These were the five decks, which were in each case nearly six feet apart. On the first deck stood the central superstructure, deck houses, bridges, masts, funnels and the other external works part and parcel of the life and navigation of the vessel. On the second deck were the officers’ cabins and berths, the staff quarters and the ward-room, and the passengers’ and government officials’ cabins. On the third deck, in addition to the crew’s and warders’ quarters, one saw numbers of men packed and huddled together in cages, each man allowed a space of under two feet square in which to move; heavy iron railings against which pallid men were seated, fiercely picking up crumbs of bread which were barely enough to assuage a hunger still left unsatisfied by dry or rancid vegetables and uneatable meat. On the fourth deck was the same picture, but the men’s faces were leaden-colored because for the most part they were no longer hungry. They were down with a fever which follows the continuous breathing of a vitiated atmosphere, for the air was freshened only through the ventilator which ran up to the prow. Thus they suffered not only from insufficient food but from absolute lack of air and light. On the fifth deck were the cells and the dark holds, filled with casks and provisions which was the domain of the ship’s stewards and the commissariat. Below the fifth deck were the store-rooms.
“If he’s managed to slip into the holds or the store-rooms, we shan’t find him again very soon,” said the Captain.
“We’ll ferret him out. Why, he can’t be far away,” replied de Vilène. “The main thing is to know which way he went. He won’t be able to move ten yards without running up against a warder. We must be prepared for anything that might happen.”
They cocked their revolvers. The Lieutenant switched on his dark lantern and they opened the door of the cell, closing it at once behind them.
The two dead bodies lay on the deck with their tongues hanging out, and their eyes starting from their sockets, and each one had a bootlace round his throat. After examining them for a moment, Barrachon rose from his stooping posture and shuddered.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 140
