*CHAPTER XI*
*A BREAK FOR FREEDOM*
"By Jove!" thought Jack with a chuckle as he scrambled out of thechimney, "won't there be a rumpus when the cook misses his poker!Luckily, he'll never think it has gone aloft!"
It was a very sooty object that descended, after pausing to make surethat all was safe, into the prisoners' room. Jack was immediatelysurrounded by a group of the _Fury's_ men, so eager to hear what hadhappened that they raised their voices and provoked an angry reprimandfrom the sentry at the door.
"Silence, you donkeys!" whispered Jack.
"Avast your jabber!" said Babbage, scowling upon Turley. "Me and Mr.Hardy have got to lay the course for this little venture."
After this the men behaved more discreetly, and left Jack alone withBabbage.
"Now, Babbage," said Jack, when he had finished his story, "we're goingto escape, and I'll tell you how."
"Not up the chimbley, sir? I'd squeeze myself as small as I could, butI'm afeard I should stick fast and spoil the whole boiling."
"No, no; you're too fat for the chimney. You'll be left in charge tillyou hear a hubbub below; then you're to break open the door and make adash for it at the head of the men."
"Why, I'll obey orders, sir; Ben Babbage always obeys orders; but,begging your pardon, it beats me how I'm to break the door open with apoker and a chopper--"
"Babbage, if you make any more difficulties you'll never see yourbrother Sol, for here you'll stay. You shall have other tools by andby. You understand, nothing is to be done until you hear the signal; itwill be loud enough, I promise you. I shall wait until the captain'sguests have gone. That will probably be late; so there'll be plenty oftime for us to make a rope. No, don't speak. I haven't done yet.We'll tear up the coverlets--they're precious thin, but we haven't anybetter--and twist up a rope long enough to reach from the top of thechimney to the bottom: about fifty feet, I should think. Then I'll takeit with me and four or five of the men, Turley for one--
"Begging your pardon, sir--
"What?"
"Begging your pardon, sir,--not Turley, but me."
"Oh, very well! You're too fat for the chimney at present, as you ownedyourself, but we could get something off you with the chopper."
Babbage grinned sheepishly, and made no further suggestions.
Several hours later, Jack, at the window, heard loud voices and laughterin the courtyard below. The captain's guests were evidently departing.Allowing an hour to pass, sufficient, he thought, for the captain andthe servants to have settled into their beauty sleep, he signed to hisfour selected men, and led the way up the chimney, Turley carrying therope. They clambered across the roof and came to the kitchen chimney.
"Now, Turley," said Jack, "pay out the rope as I go down. By George!'tis a good deal hotter than when I was here before."
He got down into the chimney, leaving the four men on the roof. It wasindeed very hot; the kitchen fire, made up for cooking the supper, hadevidently not yet died down. Fortunately there was little smoke; evenwithout it the air was so stifling that Jack was surprised that hereached the bottom safely. He jumped when his feet touched the grate;they were protected only by his stockings.
There was no light in the room, but the glow of the dying fire wasstrong enough to show him that it was empty. He tiptoed to the threedoors. The back door was locked and bolted; the door of the cook's roomwas closed but not locked, and he heard snores from within; the thirddoor, leading to the rest of the house, he supposed, was ajar, and a dimlight came through the opening.
A little more light was necessary. Not without a tremor, Jack venturedto put on the embers one or two small chips of wood that were drying atthe side of the grate. They kindled, and lit the room with a dancingflame, which Jack fervently hoped would not attract the attention of thesentry outside. He had already seen that the shutters of the windowwere closed; he trusted there was no chink to betray him.
The first thing was to get arms of some kind for his men. A poker and achopper he had already purloined, much to the mystification of the cook,no doubt. Ah! there was a rolling-pin hanging by a loop from a nail inthe wall. Down it came; in a trice he tied it to the thin rope. Givingthis a gentle tug, he saw the rolling-pin disappear up the chimney.
Then he looked round quickly for more weapons. Yes; there was a cleaver,a gridiron, a frying-pan.
"I must have them," he said to himself. By the time he had taken themdown from their nails, the rope was hanging once more within reach. Oneby one they followed the rolling-pin. Another hunt on tiptoe round theroom yielded a brass candlestick, a braizing-pan, several dish-coverswhich he rejected as being too clumsy to wield, a big soup-ladle, and acouple of long carving-knives. There were saucepans in plenty, but toobig for his purpose. He had to be content with the ten articles he hadobtained--rude weapons, indeed, but likely to be formidable in the handsof determined and desperate men. As the utensils of metal passed up thechimney they clicked more than once on the wall, and Jack's heart beatfaster as he wondered if the sounds would be heard. But no doubt therewere mice and rats behind these old walls; blessed rats and mice!
After waiting a little to make sure that the cook and his assistants hadnot been disturbed, he prepared to go farther afield. Creeping to thedoor that stood ajar, he pushed it a little. It moved with a creak whichmust surely, Jack thought, be heard all over the house. He waitedbreathlessly; there was no sound. But he could not risk a continuouscreaking. Taking his courage in both hands he pushed the door quickly,stopping it with a jerk. It made never a sound. Jack saw by the lightof a small lamp that it opened into a narrow passage, with a door at theend. He crept along the wall. The farther door was not closed. Hepeeped in.
"The _salle a manger_!" he thought. There was the table at which thecaptain had entertained his guests.
To the left there was another passage at right angles to the first. Anarrow staircase led, he supposed, to the servants' rooms. A few stepsalong the passage brought him to the entrance hall, from which sprangthe main staircase. He looked up. He was at the bottom of a deep well,extending, it appeared, to the top of the mansion. He shrank back intothe shade of the huge post at the foot of the stairs; for if thesentries outside the prisoners' room chanced to hear a movement belowand looked over, they would certainly see him.
Then he cast back, and came to the back staircase. The steps were ofstone; he might ascend without the danger of creaking; and he must seewhither these stairs led. He went up the steps in pitch darkness, andfound himself on a landing. Groping along the wall, he knew that he wasin a stone-flagged corridor. Ah! at the end there was a streak oflight. Tiptoeing along, he came to a door partly open. Dared he peepround it? He paused for a few seconds.
"Hang it!" he said to himself, "I wish my heart wouldn't thump so!" Helistened: how these Frenchmen snored! Were they all asleep? He took astep forward; then felt a sudden unreasoning fear, and stole back forseveral yards. In a few seconds he had collected himself and returned tothe door.
Now he ventured to put his head into the room. A dozen men--he wouldhave said a score at the first moment--were asleep on rough settlesagainst the wall. They had their clothes on, as if in bivouac, readyfor action at a moment's notice. A smoky lamp hung from a bracket onthe wall. In the corner of the fireplace, where there was a faint glow,were stacked the men's muskets. The key of the room was on the inside.
Having taken all this in at a glance, Jack carefully withdrew, returnedalong the passage and down the stairs, and arrived once more at thekitchen. Two sharp tugs at the rope brought Turley to his side; atshort intervals the other three appeared.
"All safe!" whispered Jack. "You've taken the things to Babbage,Turley?"
"Ay, ay, sir."
"That's well. Now, Turley, that's the cook's room. You'll stay andwatch the door. If any one tries to break out, you'll know what to do.You other men come with me."
He led them quietly along the passage and up the staircase. At thelanding he halted.
"The guards are in that room at the end of the corridor," he whispered."I'm going in to try and get their muskets. If I'm discovered, youthree make a rush and get hold of the muskets. Never mind about me.You understand."
"Ay, ay, sir."
He crept stealthily into the room. The men's cartridge-belts lay in aheap on the table. Taking care to make no noise, Jack lifted two orthree, one at a time, and handed them to his men. Then he approached thepile of arms. With the gentlest of movements he released two of themuskets, one with each hand, on opposite sides of the pile. Would thebalance be disturbed? No, all was safe. He passed the weapons out ofthe room, and turned to remove a third and a fourth. But who had makethat click? It was one of the men outside. Jack looked anxiously atthe sleeping forms. Had any of them been awakened?
One of the Frenchmen turned, sat up, rubbed his eyes--and saw theEnglish prisoner!
"_Au voleur! au prisonnier! aux armes! Eveillez-vous, mes camarades!_"
He was so sleepy that he scarcely knew what he was saying; but his shoutroused his companions. As they turned, too heavy with sleep to have alltheir wits about them, Jack's three men sprang in, and in a twinklingseized the remaining muskets and rushed back into the passage. Thefirst Frenchman was now on his feet. Jack with a straight right-handersent him spinning over; then he dashed to the door, slipped the key outof one side of the lock and into the other, and just as two of the othermen were lurching toward him, skipped outside, slammed the door, andturned the key.
Jack, with a straight right-hander, sent him spinningover]
"Now, men, after me!" he cried.
He raced along the corridor, conscious of a tremendous uproar in theguard-room--cries, oaths, violent thumps and kicks on the door. Up thestairs! There were the sentries at the top, startled out of their wits.What was happening? Hubbub below, hubbub in the prisoners' room! Theprisoners were actually battering at the door! And with heavyimplements: where had they got them? Crash! There was a panel halfdriven out. The amazed soldiers raised their muskets; they could atleast fire into the room. But at this moment they caught sight of Jackand the sailors springing up the back staircase. Another crash on thedoor! _O ciel_! They waited for no more, but with a yell turned theirbacks and leaped down the main staircase, taking three stairs at a time.
"Ahoy there, Babbage; stand clear!" shouted Jack.
"Ay, ay, sir!" cried the bo'sun from within.
Putting to the lock the musket he carried, Jack fired. The lock wasburst; with a touch the door gave way; and a second later the prisonersbegan to pour out.
"Steady, men!" cried Jack. "No crowding, or we'll get jammed and beclapped under hatches again. Armed men in front."
They followed Jack down the same staircase by which he had come. Asthey passed the locked door of the guard-room they heard the imprisonedmen making a furious assault upon it. But it was a piece of good oak;they had no firearms to blow away the lock; and Jack knew that theymight hammer it for an hour without making much impression.
Down they go! Here they are at the kitchen. And there is Turley, asaucepan in one hand, a huge dish-cover in the other, holding at bay thefat cook and his two assistants, who are vainly attempting, withferocious cries, to get within his guard. When they see Jack enter theroom, and behind him a swarm of seamen, they wheel round and scurry likehares into the farther apartment, the fat cook going last, squealing.
"No danger there!" said Jack. "There's no time to lose, men. Now forthe back door."
He ran to it, drew back the bolts, and throwing it wide dashed out intothe open. There was a blinding flash close by; the shot missed; andwith Turley and others hard on his heels Jack dashed straight in thedirection from which the shot had come. But the sentry who had firedwas already scampering away. A companion had joined him; together theymade for the wicket of the front gate; dashed through, and tried toclose it. But Turley was just in time to slip his saucepan in and holdthe gate open. The sentries waited no longer. They raced as fast astheir legs would carry them toward the town.
To overtake them was impossible. In a few minutes the two companies ofinfantry would be on the track of the escaped prisoners. Was there timeto reach the harbor before they came up? Had the shots already rousedthe officers of the vessels at anchor and caused them to despatch menashore? Jack could not wait even to wonder. On he went, calling to hismen to close up, straight along the road leading to the town. But topass through the streets to the harbor would be fatal. Within half amile of the town he halted.
"You, Mudge, and you, Folkard, cut off a quarter of a mile to port andfire your muskets. Then run as hard as you can in our wake. Quick,men!"
He hoped that the firing in that direction would mislead the enemy andgive the fugitives the few minutes' grace they needed for the next moveof his plan. When the two men had gone off to the left, he led theparty rapidly to the right, hoping to strike the harbor at its easternextremity.
As the fugitives, keeping perfect silence, stumbled in the darkness overfields and across ditches toward the harbor, they heard loud shouts totheir left, followed by the roll of a drum. Clearly the alarm had beenraised, the soldiers were turning out. All now depended on whether thedirection of the escape was discovered within the next few minutes. Ifnot, Jack thought that he might reach the harbor with his band in timeto seize some boats before they were intercepted. He listened eagerlyfor shots behind; they seemed long in coming, and the outskirts of thevillage loomed up in the darkness ahead before the expected reports atlast struck his ear. Fervently he hoped that the sound would draw thesoldiers off in that direction.
He wished he could go faster, but many of the men were weak from theeffects of imprisonment and meager fare, and he had to accommodate hispace to the slowest.
Making a fairly wide circuit, Jack steered for the extremity of theharbor, where only a few fishermen's cottages intervened between him andthe waterside. Some fishers who had turned out of their dwellings onhearing the alarm scurried down the rutty road with loud shouts. Thenoise was bound to bring the soldiers to the spot within a few minutes.Jack's heart was pumping at a great rate, but he did not lose hiscoolness or his nerve. He must do something to check the soldiers, thatwas plain. Sending twenty men to search the shore for boats, he postedthe nine armed with muskets under cover of the cottages with orders todelay the soldiers at all costs. The rest of his men, some armed withthe spoil of the kitchen, others with bricks and stones snatched up onthe way, he placed behind the nine to support them.
A minute or two--horribly long they seemed to Jack--of anxious waiting;then the two men who had fired the shots in the rear came panting up,and from the direction of the harbor a messenger brought the good newsthat six large boats had been found. Almost at the same moment theclump-clump of heavy boots and sabots on the road was distinctly heard,ever growing louder. If the runners proved to be soldiers it would beimpossible to escape without a fight. Jack would rather have beenallowed to embark in peace, but if there must be a fight--
"Well," he whispered to Babbage, "we'll show them what English Jack Tarsare made of."
He at once sent the unarmed men down to the water under guidance of themessenger, bidding them get into the boats; then with the rest heprepared to fight a rear-guard action.
The Frenchmen came on helter-skelter. Not one of them imagined thatthey had any enemy more formidable than unarmed weaklings to deal with.Jack waited until they were within twenty yards; even in the dimstarlight they could be seen distinctly enough. Then in a voice thatrang clearly he gave the word "Fire!" The eleven rifles flashed; therewere cries from the advancing Frenchmen; some of them, at any rate, musthave been hit at this point-blank range. The head of the column was inconfusion; men turned this way and that; they were apparently withoutleadership.
While they halted and wavered another word of command was heard abovetheir cries and the sound of shuffling feet:
"Charge!" The sailorsresponded with a cheer; some thirty strong, they dashed forward as oneman; and in a few seconds the enemy were in full flight, struck by oneof those sudden panics to which even the best troops are liable in nightoperations.
Jack also had his moment of alarm. Knowing the thoughtless impetuosityof the British sailor, he feared lest, with the enemy on the run, hismen should forget everything else in the excitement of pursuit. But hehad them soon in hand again.
"Now to the boats!" he said, "and as quickly as you can."
He had no difficulty in finding them. One of the sloops had alreadyopened fire upon them; and the sound of oars in that direction showedthat a boat, perhaps more than one, had been lowered, no doubt to pullin to the assistance of the soldiers. It was too dark for the fire ofthe sloop to be effective; Jack heard one or two shots strike the harborwall.
Here were the boats, a few yards from the beach.
"Tumble in, men," said Jack.
In a few seconds all were aboard. Already Jack in the foremost boat wassteering for a black shape almost exactly ahead, which he believed to bethe _Fury_. Scarcely was his craft well under way before he heard oarsin that direction; the cutter also, it appeared, was sending a boat.
"So much the better!" thought Jack. "There'll be fewer men on deck torepel boarders."
In less than a minute he saw the cutter's boat ahead; it was turning, asif to regain the vessel--he wondered why.
"Give way, men!" he cried, and from the boat behind came Babbage's voiceurging his crew: "Pull, shipmates; pull, my hearties; Mr. Hardy ain'ta-goin' to do it all by his lone self!" And Jack heard Turley,somewhere in his own boat, mutter: "Bust yourself, old Artichokes, butwe'll be there first!"
It was a race between them. The other boats were some distance astern,for two, being without oars, were being towed by the remaining two. Inthe two foremost boats the men were straining every nerve. They knewthat their lives depended on success, and scarcely needed theencouraging words of Jack and the old bo'sun. They gained on theFrenchman; the three boats dashed almost together under the cutter'scounter; then there was a tussle. Rising in the boats the crews shoutedand cheered and belabored their opponents, Jack's men plyingrolling-pins, gridirons, soup-ladles, frying-pans, shovels,candlesticks, with a hearty vigor that made them more formidable weaponsthan the Frenchmen's cutlasses. In half a minute the Frenchmen,outnumbered and outfought, were hurled neck and crop out of their boats,and the English sailors were swarming up the side of the cutter. In theshort fight the cutter's crew had been unable to help their comrades; itwas such a rough and tumble that they would as likely have hit a friendas a foe. But they gathered for a desperate resistance when theEnglishmen poured on to the deck. Jack and his party boarded aft;Babbage's men forward; but neither made easy progress, for the Frenchmenfought like tigers, rallying twice after momentary set-backs, and takingadvantage of their superior numbers to press forward in the attempts todrive the boarders into the sea. The melee was at its fiercest when thearrival of the other boats turned the scale. Cheering British tarsbeset the gallant Frenchmen on all sides; man after man of the defendersfell, and in two minutes from the time when the last boat's crewboarded, the cutter was once more in English hands.
"Secure the Frenchmen!" shouted Jack, when the enemy surrendered andcried for quarter. He himself rushed aft and cut the cable; and whileTurley and some others were collecting the Frenchmen's weapons andescorting their prisoners below, a score of willing hands had run up themainsail, jib and foresail. Grazing the side of the fishing smack toleeward as she gathered way, the _Fury_ moved out to sea. As sheemerged from the shelter of the brig a round shot from one of the sloopsstruck her full amidships, and the other sloop was seen making sail inpursuit.
"Any damage done?" sang out Jack.
"Not a farden's worth, sir," replied Turley. "Well above water-line."
"Here's another! Look out!" shouted Babbage.
But the second shot whizzed harmlessly by; then the sloops and othervessels faded from sight; and the buoyant little cutter began tocourtesy to the waves of the Channel, showing white-crested in thegloom.
Jack Hardy: A Story of English Smugglers in the Days of Napoleon Page 11