We had pressed ourselves against the market barrier, Jeddy and I, to watch them hand in their hammocks and blankets and become their own masters after years of living death; and there was one I shall never forget. He was a thin, stooped Frenchman with gaping holes in the knees and elbows of his yellow Transport Office suit, huge flapping bare feet, and a crust of dirt down the front of his jacket. He came up to the guards, breathless, like a fluttering, frightened bird, to tell them his hammock had been stolen—though I think, from his looks, he had sold it for money with which to gamble.
The guards pushed him away, for the rule had been made that no prisoner could go free until his hammock was turned in. He came scuttling out past us and dashed for the prison to hunt for it, or to beg one from another man; but soon he came hurrying back again, so wild looking that I almost thought I could hear his heart thudding with terror beneath his ragged yellow jacket. We saw him run to the guards; and by this time the last of the five hundred were crowding through the gate; but the guards struck at him and drove him off, for he had no hammock.
Panting like a frightened dog, this tattered Frenchman went down on his knees. I saw he had an open knife in his hand; and even while I wondered what he wanted of a knife, he stabbed the blade into his throat and fell over on his side, pushing the blade away from himself, so that his throat opened out in a spurt of blood. He sat up and looked at us, dazed like, holding his throat together with his fingers. Before the guards could come out and pick him up, he had fallen back on the ground with no blood in him.
So only four hundred and ninety-nine Frenchmen crowded out into the wet Dartmoor fog, some of them weeping and some kissing the handful of soldiers that escorted them down the long hill. My heart was both glad and touched with envy by the secret knowledge I had that among them were more than twenty Americans who, being able to speak French, had answered to the names of dead Frenchmen.
The prison records had been badly kept at the time of the smallpox epidemics; and many prisoners who had died were not marked down as dead. For years, General Le Febvre told us, the Frenchmen had drawn the rations issued to these dead men and sold them, and drawn clothes and shoes in their names and sold those; and now, having no further use for the names, they sold the names as well.
The names of Felix Berthot and Jean Marie Claude Decourbes, we learned, would be called at the same time as Le Febvre’s name, probably in the third draft.
The second draft of a thousand men was released on the twenty-fifth of May, and fifteen Americans escaped with them. The third draft of a thousand went out on the last day of the month; and something had alarmed the British, so that they were watching. General Le Febvre was in this draft, and Felix Berthot, and Jean Marie Claude Decourbes.
We had let our beards grow for three days, on orders from General Le Febvre; and when the draft was called we took our hammocks and bags and went out past the sentries and into the market place, wearing the patched yellow rags we had bought from Frenchmen.
The general, waiting for us, herded us along.
“Remember,” he whispered, “you care no longer for these guards. There must be no apprehension! They are nothing to you—dogs under the feet! You are free men! You understand? You are Frenchmen, freed by the Peace! No man can stop you.”
We watched the Frenchmen ahead of us pushing up to the gates at the far end of the market place, eager to be gone from the mud and fog and dripping walls of Dartmoor. Clerks at the gates took the names of those who passed out, checking them off in a ledger.
It is waiting, as every man knows—waiting and thinking of what is to come—that causes more trouble than almost anything in the world; and it was to shorten this waiting that I turned to look for the last time on the angry stone faces of the seven prison houses. For a moment I had the illusion that they were faces indeed, grotesques that gnashed their teeth at us. Upon the roofs stood lines and clusters of prisoners, following us hungrily with their eyes when we trooped through the gates; and other prisoners were pressed against the iron barrier at the far end of the market place, as we had been pressed to watch the first draft go out.
The front row was hunkered down like monkeys, so those behind could see over their heads; and as my eye ran along this crouching, ape-like line, it was caught and held by a weazened, malevolent face that had been gone from my mind for weeks; a face I had seldom glimpsed since the night of our arrival, when its owner welcomed us to Dartmoor with a snarl and sent us up the stone stairs to what he doubtless thought would be a pummeling from King Dick.
It was Eli Bagley who crouched there, glaring furiously at us as he had glared at me when I called him from his berth in Halifax harbor, and later when I had taken his sailing master from him and sent him wallowing off on a trackless sea with his brig full of British supplies. I turned away with a cold feeling behind my ears; for we had forgotten Bagley in making our plans to escape. If I had remembered him, I would have contrived to have him held inside Number Four until we were well out of the way; for I would have known he would make trouble for us if he could.
The general prodded me, and I turned to see Jeddy, just ahead, attempting to embrace and kiss the clerk, though hampered by his hammock and bedding.
“Hey!” the clerk exclaimed, disgusted. “Allez vous enl Save them kisses for somebody as wants ’em! Wot’s yer name, yer little grasshopper! Nom! Nom!”
“Felix Berthot,” Jeddy said, bursting into the set speech so carefully taught him by the general. “Ah, my friend, how I have a heart swollen with joy because of my wife Marie and my two beautiful daughters and that beautiful Morlaix—”
“Ah, the hell with cette belle Morlaix,” the clerk said roughly, pushing him ahead and fixing me with a hard eye. “Nom! What’s your nom?’
“Jean Marie Claude Decourbes, m’sieu,” I said, drawing down my mouth and lifting my two bundles an inch.
“Gord!” the clerk said to a brother clerk who stood beside him, “wouldn’t you think they’d name one of ’em Jack or Jim for a change!”
He flapped over the pages of his ledger and ran his finger down one of them; then looked at me impatiently. “Where from? ”he asked.
I smiled and nodded, saying, as the general had told me, “M’sieu desire?”
“Oh, Gord! he said. “De quoi? De quoi?’
“St. Remy de Provence,” I said, pushing the sounds up into my nose and letting them die there, as taught by the general.
“All right! Go ahead and good luck to you, Frenchy. Bon chance!”
I hurried away, and heard the general break into an instantaneous flux of French that must have fairly engulfed the clerk who had questioned me.
Before we knew it, almost, we were through the arched gate and out on the slippery road. The long line of Frenchmen stretched so far down the hill ahead of us—the hill at the bottom of which lay Princetown—that the head of the column was lost in the mist that had come to seem as much a part of Dartmoor as her fleas and the bells on the wires around the walls.
I had long looked forward to the day when I should find myself on the outer side of those iron-studded doors; but now that the dream had become a reality I felt only a profound depression at the thought of Eli Bagley glaring hatefully from behind the bars of the market place.
I told General Le Febvre about Bagley: how we had first taken his boat in Halifax harbor; then punished him on the edge of the Gulf Stream.
The general turned and looked back, up the hill toward the prison walls. There were four guards at the end of our long column. Strung out behind the guards were baggage wagons, loaded with our duffel bags. The road itself was a trench cut in the slippery black peat of the moor; and we could see at a glance there was no way for the two of us to scramble from it unseen.
“Holy name!” the general said, tugging at his mustaches. “Sweet Jesu! here is an affair out of hell!”
We looked desperately for drains into which to crawl, but there were none: only the barren river bed of a road, slimy with mud. We looked for t
hickets in which to hide, but the land was treeless and grassless: a desolate rolling expanse, with fingers and humps of granite thrust up through it here and there, but all of them far removed from our line of march. There were no houses: nothing—only the vast stretch of black moor, to which spring had brought a faint swarthy green, such as comes over the face of a Negro afflicted with seasickness.
“Well, now,” the general said, “I think of nothing!” He struck his forehead with his hand. “Holy God! There must be a way! If we could get to Plymouth—”
Jeddy laughed a fierce short laugh. “Plymouth!” he cried. “We’ll never reach the halfway mark!”
We looked behind us again, fearing to see a messenger posting after us; but there was nothing in that slot of a road, only the four guards and the baggage wagons.
“Here,” Jeddy said desperately, “have these friends of yours start a fight, General. Everyone’ll climb on the bank to watch it, and we’ll climb up with ’em and hide somewhere till they’ve gone on.”
“It’s no good,” I told him, and my mouth was dry, as though stuffed with cotton. “Look at these yellow suits! We’d get nowhere in ’em! We couldn’t hide for five minutes, not even on Dartmoor.”
“Truly,” the general said, “you must do better than that!”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” Jeddy said, “let’s fight our way through ’em!”
“It would do more harm than good!” the general protested, staring helplessly around like an owl revolving his head in search of food. “Instead of ten days in the Cachot they give you one month—two month.”
I looked back once more and saw a dim figure approaching through the mist. My stomach pitched down and came slowly up again, as it always does when hope departs. We walked on in silence. To me the gabbling of the Frenchmen in front and behind us seemed like sounds that were no part of our life, as the lapping of water under my cabin windows has often sounded between waking and sleeping.
We heard a voice, then, shouting blandly in our rear, “Ah gits mah beer ’is mawnin’! Mebbe Ah bus’ open one li’l’ bahl, ’count of all ’ese Frawgs gittin’ out f’um under foot!” It was King Dick. When we looked around, we saw him towering above the four guards in his bearskin hat and smiling down at them as though they were his benefactors.
They cursed him affectionately. He flapped his ham-like hand at them and came on, singing happily and grinning from ear to ear at the marching Frenchmen:
"When Ah sees mah Lawd on Jedgment Day,
Ah’s go’nter say, ‘Lawd, Ah’s heah to stay:
Ah kin fry yo’ fish; Ah kin scrub yo’ floh:
Ah’s pow’ful handy wif a twenty-foh!
“ ‘Ah needs you, Lawd, an’ you needs me!
Ah’s a bestest gunner ’at ever you seel
Ah kin pivot ’at gun; Ah kin shoot him right:
Ah kin blow ole debbil clean outa sight!’ ”
I made ready to hail him as he came abreast of us; but when his eyes met mine, I was warned to silence by a fleeting expression of almost Satanic ferocity that momentarily contorted his face and was instantly gone. He paid no more attention to us than as if we were strangers; but he lowered his voice and sang a third verse of his song in a half whisper:
“’Ere’s somebody lookin’ foh folks Ah knows:
Devonshuh Ahms is safe, Good Lawd!
Git inside quick: git into ’at attic!
An doan git out till Ah gits to ’at attic!”
He quickened his pace when he had finished, and broke into a fourth verse; and before he had reached the end of it he was forging rapidly toward the head of the column—like a frog through a goose, Jeddy said.
* * *
Princetown, named for Britain’s dissolute prince regent by the pig-headed Englishman who built it, Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, lies half a mile from the gate of the prison. More than once I have longed to change places with the prince regent for five minutes for the sole purpose of hanging Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt for naming such a town after me—and God knows he deserved to be hanged for persuading the British government to build Dartmoor Prison on his property.
We reached the Devonshire Arms in a sweat of apprehension for fear we would be overtaken before anything could be done to help us. The line of prisoners had halted; and the officers of our guards were standing expectantly near the door. As we came up, King Dick emerged with a barrel of beer clasped in his arms, making no more of it than of a bolster stuffed with feathers, and grinned a grin that threatened to split his head in two parts.
“Heah!” he shouted, “doan’ ev’ybody stan’ jus’ nussickin’ roun’! Git a-hol’ ’is ole bahl while Ah gits a hawse!” The prisoners surged forward, forcing us toward the inn. They seized the keg and drew it toward the middle of the street, while King Dick went back indoors. We flattened ourselves against the front of the inn, near the door, and clung there, which was not difficult, since all the others sought to be near the barrel.
A carter in a rusty top hat and a long smock emerged from the inn carrying a stout wooden horse; and two boys, very important, followed him with a bung starter and a basket of earthenware mugs. We could hear King Dick, inside, laughing his oily, chuckling laugh.
“Ev’ybody gits mah beer!” he insisted heartily. “Ev’ybody’s gotta taste mah beer!” He herded out an old man and a small girl; then stood like a colossus before the door, his arms benevolently spread. We edged ourselves along until we were behind him.
“Whoo!” he shouted. We heard the thumps of the bung starter, followed by the gush of beer and the slushy chuck as the spigot was driven home. Jeddy dodged through the door, and I after him. We stood in the stuffy, beery dimness of the inn’s taproom, holding our breaths and listening for a cry of warning; but we heard nothing save the happy, thirsty babbling of the Frenchmen.
We looked at each other; then, at a slight sound, stared hastily around. In the doorway facing us a girl stood—a buxom, red-cheeked girl in frilled cap and short-sleeved dress. She nodded and turned away silently, evidently expecting us to follow. We tiptoed after her, and she led us up three flights of stairs; then stepped aside to let us enter a smelly attic with two pallets in the corner.
There was the sound of a slap and a scuffle behind me as I crossed to the dusty small window.
“Doan’t ’ee be a zany!” the girl said.
“Bot you are so beauty-fool, ma cherie,” Jeddy murmured.
“You Frenchies!” she exclaimed, and tittered. “They’s cloaze under the beds, carters’ cloaze. Boots be under pillows. Lay youmselves on they beds, and doan’t forget ye’re droonk. They’s rum oonder they washstand, and if any o’ they guards coom oop, zee as how ’ee’s droonk raight!”
She scuffled with Jeddy; then left us. We tore off our saffron-colored Transport Office rags and scrambled into the carters’ garb that lay neatly folded beneath the mattresses: leather breeches, red vests to the thighs, long dust-colored smocks, and worsted stockings that pulled over the knees. Under the pillows were enormous boots and rusty battered top hats, such as every Devonshire wagoner wears, so we knew we weren’t the first escaped prisoners to make use of this attic.
“For God’s sake, be careful!” I told Jeddy, as I laced the heavy shoes. “Don’t make that girl angry! We’re not a half mile from the prison!”
“Angry!” Jeddy whispered, raising his pale eyebrows. “She let me kiss her! If you can kiss a woman she’ll never blab!”
The tumult in the street subsided. When we peered from the small dusty window we saw the barrel of beer had been lifted to the back of one of the baggage wagons and had started off toward Plymouth, with prisoners and guards trailing alongside. We became aware of distant noises below us, and stretched ourselves on the two beds with the rum bottle between us. Our retreat was invaded by the perfume of frying bacon and of coffee—genuine coffee, such as we hadn’t tasted in months.
“Probably the bacon’s rancid,” I told Jeddy.
He removed his top hat, lay back on his bed, and star
ed dreamily at the rough timbers of the roof. “Do you know how much of that rancid bacon I could eat?”
I couldn’t answer for the moisture in my mouth.
“Well,” he said, “I’d start off with two fry-pans full: big fry-pans. I’d eat it out of the pans. I’d shove the bacon on one side and push slices of bread into the bacon fat, and first I’d take a bite of the bacon, and then I’d take a bite of the bread. Then I’d have ’em cook me another fry-pan full, and drop six eggs into the middle of the slices; and when the eggs were half done, I’d stir ’em all up together and eat ’em with a spoon: a big spoon.”
We heard a rasping sound, like that of sandpaper passing over wood with quick, regular strokes. We looked up to see King Dick in the doorway. He had mounted the stairs in his stocking feet as softly as an enormous black cat, and the rasping noise was his stifled laughter.
“Mah lan’l” he said in his faint, high, plaintive voice, “heah Ah gits mahse’f all whuffussed up ’bout you white folks, an’ heah you is lyin’ in bed lak ’at ole prince region an’ not whuffussed over nuffin’ seppen bacon!”
“How did they find out?” I asked him. “It was Bagley, wasn’t it?”
“Ain’t no way tellin’,” he said. “ ’Ese infohmers, ’ey’s foxy, so’s ’ey won’t be tattooed wif T. B. on ’eir forruds foh bein’ traitors.”
“Can we get away?” I asked him.
“Yarse!” he said. “Yarse SUH! Ain’t nobody goin’ look in ’is ole inn, account it bein’ so close ’at ole prison.” He stared at us innocently, then drooped his right eyelid slightly. “Ah gits all mah beer heah,” he added irrelevantly. “Two bahls weekdays; foh bahls on Sadday; six-sem bahls on pay days.”
He took a bundle from under his woolly black jacket and handed it to Jeddy. It held a loaf of bread and a wedge of cheese.
“Nawsuh,” he said, “ain’t nuffin’ goin’ happen to you long’s you doan’ try go buckussin’ aroun’ Plymuff or Teignmuff or Tor Bay. ’Is li’l’ gull downstays, she goin’ lem you know when ev’ythin’ raidy tonight, ’nen you git up ovah ’at ole moor—up ovah ’at high moor. ’At road, she doan’ run nowheres seppen Exeter, soon’s you git stahted up. Effen you’s still agoin’ in daytime, ack lak you’s drunk an’ doan’ know nuffin; ’at’s how ’ese Devonshuh folks acks when ’ey’s natural.
The Lively Lady Page 26