by M. P. Shiel
XX
THE INFIRMARY
As soon as the cell-door clicked upon him, he commenced to work: firsttook off his boots; then felt over the doorshelf for the chloroform;wet his handkerchief with some of it: then inserted the vials across thetoes of his boots, which were a succession of wrinkles, far too large;then put on the boots again.
He then lay on the floor, close to the low shelf; and, pressing thehandkerchief over his mouth and nose, breathed deep, knowing that infour minutes, when he did not obey the order of "brooms out", his cellwould be opened.
As he sank deeper and deeper into dream, it was with a concentration ofhis will upon one point--the handkerchief, which, if smelled by anyone,would ruin all; and finally, as he drew the last gasp of consciousness,he waved it languidly from him under the shelf; then, with a sigh, wasgone.
He had known that he must have about his body the unmistakable signs ofan abnormal condition in order to sleep a night in the infirmary--whichwas what he wanted. And thither, when shakings and the bull's-eye hadsufficiently tested him, he was swung away, and the doctor's assistantsummoned.
Hogarth's pupils were hurriedly examined, his heartbeat tested; and thefreshman frowned, smelling an odour which, in another place, might havebeen chloroform, but here was pharyngitis; and he muttered, "Digitalis,perhaps...."
From a table Hogarth was swung to a bed by two of those well-behavedconvicts who act as hospital-orderlies, and there two hours later hadall his wits about him, and a racking headache.
His first thought was his boots--expecting to find them under hisstretcher, and himself in flannels; but he had them still on, and alsohis work-clothes, humanity to the sick in the first stages not being inthe Colmoor code.
He spent half an hour in stealthily tearing a square foot from hisshirt-tail; then, weary and sick, went to sleep.
When, soon after 3 A.M. his eyes again opened, all was still. He lay ina long room, rather dim, in the midst of a row of stretchers which wereshut in by bars containing locks and gates, and on the other side of theroom a row of stretchers, shut in by bars. At a table in the middle,on which were bottles, lint, graduated glasses, sat a warder, withoutstretched legs and fallen head: near him, standing listless, aconvict hospital-orderly, who continually edged nearer the stove; and,half-way down the room, another.
Occasionally there were calls from the sick-beds--whisperedshouts--apologetic and stealthy, as of men guiltily conscious of theluxury of being ill; but neither night-warder nor orderlies made unduehaste to hear these summonses. There was, beside, an octagonal clock,which ticked excessively in the stillness, as though the whole placebelonged to it.
Hogarth took off his boots under his blanket, and from them took out thevials; then, sitting up, commenced to call the warder, at the same timewetting the torn piece of shirt with some of the fluid.
"All right, I'm coming--shut up!" said the warder, but did not come.
So Hogarth grew loud; and the warder, presently rousing his drowsy bulk,unlocked the gate of that compartment, as Hogarth said to himself: "Doit handy..."
And as the warder stooped, Hogarth clapped the rag upon his mouth andnose. A struggle followed a muffled sob, both standing upright now, tillthe warder began to paw the air, sank, toppled upon the bed, whereuponHogarth slipped into the blanket again, and called out in the voice ofthe warder: "Come here, Barrows--see if this man is dead ".
He had now drawn the warder over him, holding up his chest with one arm,had also poured chloroform upon the rag, and when the convict-orderlycame, Hogarth, by means of a short struggle, had him asleep, then seizedthe warder's truncheon and keys, and ran out in his stockinged feet.
At that sight, the sick, the dying, the two rows of stretchers, wereup on elbow, gazing with grins. To the second convict-orderly who camerunning to meet him Hogarth hissed: "Not a word--or I brain you withthis! If I tie your feet, you won't have to answer for anything. Comealong...."
He was an old fellow, and when he realized the impending truncheon, themenace of Hogarth's eyes, and the silence of the warder, he permittedhimself to be dragged toward Hogarth's stretcher; and his feet werequickly knotted in his own stockings.
Now again Hogarth ran: but not many steps, when he felt himself tappedon the back, and, glancing in a horror of alarm, saw one of the twopatients who had occupied with him his cage of bars--a wiry, long-facedCockney shop-boy, who had had his ankle crushed by a rock at the quarry.
"Are you off?" he asked.
"That's _my_ business--"
"No, you don't. Part, or I give the alarm".
"What is it? Do you want to come with me?"
"That's about it".
"But--your foot's sick, you fool".
"You'll carry me in your awms, as a father beareth his children...."
"You are cool! What are you in for?"
"Murder, my son-red, grim, gory murder!"
"Guilty?"
"Guilty, ya'as. What do _you_ think?"
"Then you may go to hell".
"_'Ell_ is it? I'm _there_: and if I linger longer loo in it, youlinger, too, swelp me Gawd!"
Hogarth was nonplussed.
"But the foot..."
"Never mind the _foot_. Foot's still good for a run. Do we go shares?"
"Come along, then".
"But you ain't 'alf up to snuff, I can see, though you are pretty smartin your own way: I'd 'ave felt the confidence of a son in you, if you'adn't overlooked that wine--"
To Hogarth's dismay, he turned back to the table, put a black bottle,half full, to his lips, and with tilts anc stoppages set to gulp it,while eager jokes, touched with jealousy, began to jeer from the beds.
"Lawd Gawd, that was good!" said the Cockney with upturned eyes, "andwhat do I behold?--broth, ye gawds!"
Now a saucepan of cold broth was at his lips; and not till he had drunkall did he run after Hogarth into the other arm of the ward, where oneof the keys unlocked the door at its end, and they passed out into theinfirmary exercise-hall, now dark, Hogarth dragging the Cockney, wholimped, and kept up a prattle of tipsy ribaldries.
Then, emerging upon a platform of slabs, from which the jump into theinfirmary exercise-yard is twenty feet, Hogarth leapt. The Cockney stoodhesitating on the brink.
"As sure as my name's 'Arris, you'll be the bloomin' ruin of me..." hesaid aloud.
"_Sh-h-h_", went Hogarth, "one more word, and I leave or knock youspeechless".
Now at last Harris jumped, Hogarth catching him, and they ran across theyard northerly, Harris complaining of cold, being in hospital flannels,his feet bare, Hogarth bitterly regretting the burden of this companion,meditating on deserting him. Accordingly, when they had run down apassage, and were confronted by a great gate, spiked a-top, Hogarthsaid: "I'll get up first", and, forcing the small end of the truncheoninto the space at the hinges, he got foot-hold from which he caught thetop hinge and scaled, a feat of which he considered Harris incapable;and, instead of helping him up, leapt down with a new feeling oflightness, hearing from the other side "Dastardly treachery...!"
Again he ran through dark night wild with winds wheeling snowflakes;and, seeing in the unpaved court in which he now was a clothes-linesupported on stakes, he seized both, to run with them to where the courtis bounded by the great outer wall: for though it is thirty feet ofsheer rock, the mere fact of stakes being found there, and of a vanishedrope, would furnish grounds for the belief that he had scaled it: hetherefore leant the stakes against it, and kept the rope.
About to turn, he felt his back touched; and, spinning round, saw Harrispanting.
"There's a friend that sticketh closer than any bloomin' brother, Mr.76", Harris said. "Try that game on again, and I give myself up; andwhere will _you_ be then?"
"You silly wretch!" said Hogarth: "before I am free, there'll be ahundred difficulties and pains. Are you prepared to undergo them? Youcouldn't, if you tried".
"Bear ye one another's burdens, it _is_", said Harris: "with thee by mewhat need I fear? Lawd Gawd, t
hat wine was good! it's got into my poor'ead, I believe. On, general; where thou leadest, I will follow".
Hogarth looked at him, half inclined to knock him down, and half toshelter, and save.
"All right", said he. "Can you climb?"
"Climb, yes, like a bag of monkeys".
"Come, then".
He mounted three low steps before four doors at the north end of theinfirmary buildings, where, as he had observed from the moor, a spoutruns up the wall at its east end; and up this he began to climb.
"'Old on!" called Harris: "I can't do that lot".
"_Sh-h-h!_--you must!--come--"
Harris made three attempts before he reached the first footrest, andthere stuck, vowing in loud whispers that he would no further go, andHogarth had to come back, and encourage him up. Finally, they wentrunning southward on the leads between the infirmary roof and itscoping, and had hardly reached the south end when a whistle shrilled,and they saw a warder run across the exercise-yard with a lantern.
"Stoop!" whispered Hogarth.
Crouching, they stole along the south coping, and thence dropped to aflat cistern-top, Hogarth, with a painful "_Sh-h-h_", catching Harris ashe fell, for the signs of alarm and activity every moment increased.
Up a series of little brick steps, the base of a chimney over thekitchen--then across another stretch of leads beneath which is thetailor's shop--then, stealing in shadow under the beams of overhangingeaves by a garret window, behind which was a light, and someonemoving--then a spring of three feet between two cornices--then a runningwalk at a height of a hundred feet along a beading four inches wide,holding on with the upstretched arms--then, with course changed fromsouth to east, along more leads--then a climb of ten feet up a glazedmain--and now they were skulking behind the coping of the great No. 2prison.
Now, contiguous with the back of the bath-house is a wall which runsfrom No. 2 prison to the bell-tower, dividing the bath-house yardfrom the bell-yard; but the top is not horizontal, being lower at thebell-tower end, neither is it broad, and to reach it from the prisoncoping a drop of seven feet is necessary: this Harris refused to do."Not for Joe", said he: "I've already run my 'ead into enough perilsby land and sea on your account. If this is what you've brought me outmoonlighting here for...."
Hogarth did not wait, but disappeared over the side: and Harris, afterfive minutes' pleadings, followed. They then drew on the belly to thebell-tower; and here again Harris refused the leap to the conductor.When finally he dared, and Hogarth sought to steady him, as he camesprawling upon the rod, both went gliding down, till checked by astaple.
But they climbed again; Hogarth undid the half-fused string of tin fromthe conductor, swung to the laundry coping, caught Harris, leapt tothe window, drew up Harris; and was ensconced far up among the beams inthick darkness in the belfry an hour before daybreak.
At this time the great gates were open, and the moor being scoured forthe two.