Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  “This is the Weasel, sir,” he said, “at least he goes by that name, although the Weasel I have chased these ten years was a different cut of a rogue. But it’s all one, captain; 417 he was took with Jack Mount, and he’ll dance a rope-jig the 19th of April next.”

  “Why not sooner?” asked the officer, gravely.

  I started, quivering in every limb.

  “Why not hang him sooner?” inquired Walter Butler, moving back a step into the corridor. He limped as he walked and leaned on a cane. My mark was still upon him.

  “Well, sir,” said Bishop, scratching his ears, “we hung eight coast-scrapers in November, and two sheep-thieves in December. We’ve got three pickpockets to swing this month, then Symonds, the wharf-robber, is to go in February. There’s no room in March either, because the Santa Cruz gang goes up the 13th — seven o’ them in chains — and the gallows yonder ain’t dropped last year’s fruit yet, and the people hereabouts complains o’ the stench of a hot day and a south wind—”

  “Can’t he change places with some other rogue?” interrupted Butler, impatiently.

  “Lord, no!” cried Bishop, horrified. “Leastways, not unless the court-martial directs it, sir. They don’t do no such things in Boston, sir.”

  “They do in Tryon County,” observed Butler, eying me coolly. Presently a ghastly smile stretched his pallid face, but his yellow eyes glared unchanging.

  “Well, well,” he said, “so you are to sail to glory at a rope’s end, eh? You wouldn’t burn, you know. But the flames will come later, I fancy. Eh, Mr. — er — Mr. Weasel?”

  “Are your broken bones mended?” I asked, quietly.

  “Quite mended, thank you.”

  “Because,” I said, “you will need them some day—”

  “I need them now,” he said, cheerfully; “I am to wed a bride ere long. Give me joy, Weasel! I am to know the day this very night.”

  I could not utter a sound for the horror which froze my tongue. He saw it; fastened his eyes on my face, and watched me, silent as a snake with its fangs in its paralyzed prey.

  “Would you care to see the famous Jack Mount, captain?” asked Bishop, swelling with pride. “I took him myself, sir. All the papers had it — I have the cuttings in my room; I can fetch them, sir—”

  Butler did not appear to hear him.

  “Yes,” he continued, thoughtfully, “I ride this night to Lexington. She’s a sweet little thing — a trifle skinny, perhaps. I think you have seen her — perhaps picked her pocket. When we are wed we shall come to Boston — on the 19th of April next.”

  I sprang at him; I had gone stone-blind with rage, and knew not what I did; the steel door crashed in my face; the locks rattled.

  Outside the door I heard Butler’s cool voice, continuing: “But if she pleases me not, to-night, I may change my mind and take her for my mistress — as Sir William took your aunt — as my friend General Gage has taken your old sweetheart, Mrs. Hamilton. One wench is like another in silken petticoats. Sleep soundly, Master Weasel. If I find her too thin for my taste I’ll leave her for Dunmore.”

  All that night I lay on the stone floor of my cell, by turns inert, stupid, frantic.

  When Bishop came to me in the morning he thought me ill and summoned the prison apothecary to cup me; but ere that individual appeared with his pills and leeches, I was quiet and self-possessed, ready to argue with the pill-roller and convince him I needed no nostrums. All that day I watched for Dulcima; twice I saw her go to Mount’s cell, but could hear nothing of what they whispered.

  Now as I was standing, looking out of the grating, I chanced to glance down, and saw that the apothecary had left his case of herbs and drugs on a bench which stood just outside my cell door.

  Idly I read the labels on the bottles and boxes: “Senna, Jalap, Brimstone, Es. Cammomile, Saffron Pills, Tinc. Opium—”

  Opium? An easy death.

  I gazed at the dark flask, scarcely a foot below me, but as safe from me as though under lock and key. Presently I turned around; my cell contained a cot, an iron table, a bowl for washing, and a towel.

  After a moment’s thought I caught up the coarse towel, drew from it some threads, twisted them, tied on more threads, and then, greasing the cord with a bit of soap, made a running noose at the end.

  There was nobody in the corridor. I heard voices in Bishop’s room, whither the apothecary had gone to examine the baby at Mrs. Bishop’s summons. Very carefully I let down my thread, fishing for the bottle’s neck with my slip-noose; but the neck was so placed that I could not snare it, and I drew up another bottle instead, bearing the label: “Ex. S. Nigrum.”

  What Ex. S. Nigrum might be I did not know, but hid the tiny flask under a loose fragment of stone in my flooring where a black beetle had his abode. Scooping out for it a little hole in the damp earth, I buried it, not harming my friend the beetle; then I returned to fish for my opium flask, but could not snare it. Finally I drew in my string just as the apothecary came out with Mrs. Bishop at his heels.

  He stood a moment, talking, then picked up his cow-hide case, closed it, and took himself off.

  That night, when the corridor was dusky and Bishop sprawled outside his door to smoke his evening pipe, I called to him and asked him for a jug of water. He fetched it and seemed disposed to linger and chat a bit, but I was uncommunicative, and presently he left me to my own devices, lighting the lanthorn in the corridor ere he retired to his room with his long pipe.

  I now unearthed my flask containing the Ex. S. Nigrum, poured a single drop into my basin, filled it up with water, and then returned the flask to its hiding-place.

  “We shall see,” I muttered, “whether there be any virtue of poison in my Nigrum,” and I caught the poor little black beetle who had come out to enjoy the lamplight.

  Now as the drop of Ex. S. Nigrum had been diluted many hundreds of times by the water in my bowl, I argued that, if this solution dealt death to the beetle, a few drops, pure, would put Jack Mount and me beyond the hangman’s hands.

  Poor little beetle! how he struggled! I was loath to sacrifice him, but at last I dropped him into the bowl.

  He did not swim; I watched him for a moment, and finally touched him. The little thing was stone dead.

  That I had a terrible and swift poison in my possession I now believed; and my belief became certainty when the 420 apothecary came next day in a panic, crying out to Bishop that he had lost a flask of nightshade syrup, and feared lest the infant might find it and swallow the poison.

  I watched Bishop and his wife rummaging their rooms in a spasm of panic, and finally saw them go off with the puling pill-roller to report the loss to the head warden.

  Later that day a turnkey searched my cell, but did not see the cracked corner of the stone slab, which I covered with one foot.

  When all was quiet, I called to Dulcima and bade her tell Jack Mount that I had the poison and would use it on us both if we could not find other means to escape the gallows.

  The poor child took the message, and presently returned, wiping her tears, to say that Jack had every hope of liberty; that I must not despair or take the life which no longer was at my own disposal, and that she, Dulcima, had already communicated with Shemuel.

  She handed me a steel awl, telling me to pick at the mortar which held the stones on my window-ledge, and to fill these holes with water every night, so that the water might freeze and crack the stones around the base of the steel bars.

  I had never thought of such a thing! I had often seen the work of frost on stones, but to take advantage of nature in this manner never occurred to me.

  Eagerly and cautiously I set to work with my little steel pick, to drill what holes I might before Bishop came. But it was heart-breaking labour, and so slow that at the end of a week I had not loosened a single bar.

  The next week the weather was bitterly cold. I had drilled some few holes around the base of an iron stanchion, and now I filled them with water and plugged them with a paste of
earth from beneath my flooring, threads from my towel, and some soap.

  At dawn I was at my window, and to my delight found the stone cracked; but the iron bar was as firm as ever, so I set to drilling my holes deeper.

  At the end of that week Dulcima let me know that Jack had loosened one bar of his window, and could take it from its socket whenever I was ready. So I worked like a madman 421 at my bar, and by night was ready to charge the holes with water.

  It was now the middle of March; a month only remained to us in which to accomplish our liberty, if we were to escape at all.

  That night I lay awake, rising constantly to examine my work, but to my despair the weather had slowly changed, and a warm thaw set in, with rain and the glimmer of distant lightning. In vain I worked at my bar; I could see the dark sky brighten with lightning; presently the low mutter of thunder followed. An hour later the rain fell hissing into the melting snow in the prison yard.

  I sent word to Mount that I could not move my bar, but that he must not wait for me if he could escape from the window. He answered that he would not stir a peg unless I could; and the girl choked as she delivered the message, imploring me to hasten and loose the bar.

  I could not do it; day after day I filled the cracks and holes, waiting for freezing weather. It rained, rained, rained.

  Weeks before, Mount had sent the girl to seek out Mr. Foxcroft and tell him of my plight. I also had sent by her a note to Silver Heels.

  The girl returned to report that Mr. Foxcroft had sailed for England early in November, and that nobody there had ever heard of a Miss Warren in Queen Street.

  Then Butler’s boast came to me, and I sent word to Shemuel, bidding him search the village of Lexington for Miss Warren. I had not yet heard from him.

  Meanwhile Mount communicated, through Dulcima, with the Minute Men’s Club, and already a delegation headed by Mr. Revere had waited on Governor Gage to demand my release on grounds of mistaken identity.

  The Governor laughed at them, asserting that I was notorious; but as the days passed, so serious became the demands from Mr. Revere, Mr. Hancock, and Mr. Otis that the Governor sent Walter Butler to assure these gentlemen that he knew Mr. Cardigan well, and that the rogue in prison, who pretended to that name, was, in fact, a notorious felon named the Weasel, who had for years held the highway with the arch-rogue, Mount.

  At this, Shemuel came forward to swear that Mr. Butler and I were deadly enemies and that Butler lied, but he was treated with scant ceremony, and barely escaped a ducking in the mill-pond by the soldiers.

  Meanwhile Mr. Hancock had communicated with Sir John at Onondaga, and awaited a reply to his message, urging Sir John to come to Boston and identify me.

  No reply ever came, nor did Sir John stir hand or foot in my behalf. Possibly he never received the message. I prefer to think so.

  Matters were at this pass when I finally gave up all hope of loosening my window bars, and sent word to Jack Mount that he must use his sheets for a cord and let himself out that very night. But the frightened girl returned with an angry message of refusal from the chivalrous blockhead.

  The next day it was too late; Bishop’s suspicions somehow had been aroused, and it took him but a short time to discover the loosened bars in Jack Mount’s cell.

  How the brute did laugh when he came on the work accomplished. He searched Mount’s cell, discovered the awl and a file, shouted with laughter, summoned masons to make repairs, and, still laughing, came to visit me.

  I had not dared to leave my poison-flask in the hole under the stone. What to do with it I did not know; but, as I heard Bishop come chuckling towards my cell, I drove the glass stopper into the flask firmly as I could, then, wiping it, placed it in my mouth, together with the small gold ring I had bought in Albany, and which I had, so far, managed to conceal.

  It was a desperate move; I undressed myself as he bade me, and sat on my bed, faint with suspense, while Bishop rummaged. He found the hole where I had hidden the flask. The awl lay there, and he pouched it with a chuckle.

  When Bishop had gone, I drew the deadly little flask from my mouth, trembling, and chilled with sweat. Then I placed it again in its hiding-place, hid the ring in my shoe, and dressed slowly, brushing my shabby clothes, and returning the pockets and flaps which Bishop in his careful search had rifled. He did not search my cell again.

  And now the days began to run very swiftly. On the 18th 423 of April, towards five o’clock in the evening, a turnkey, passing my cell, told me that General Gage was in the prison with a party of ladies, and that he would doubtless visit my cell. He added, grimly, that the death-watch was to be set over us in an hour or two, and that, thereafter, I could expect no more visitors from outside until I held my public reception on the gallows.

  Laughing heartily at his own wit, the turnkey passed on about his business, and I went to the grating to listen and look out into the twilight of the corridor.

  Mrs. Bishop, whose sick baby was squalling, lighted the lanthorn above the door of her room, and retired, leaving me free to converse with Mount.

  “Jack,” I called, hoarsely, “the death-watch begins to-night.”

  “Pooh!” he answered, cheerfully. “Wait a bit; there’s time to cheat a dozen gibbets ‘twixt this and dawn.”

  “Yes,” said I, bitterly, “we can cheat the hangman with what I have in this little flask.”

  “You must give it to the girl,” he said. “She will flavour our last draught with it if worst comes to worst. She will be here in a moment.”

  At that instant I caught sight of Dulcima Bishop, her cloak all wet with rain, passing quickly along the corridor towards Mount’s cell; and I called her and gave her my flask, glad to have it safe at least from the search which the death-watch was certain to make.

  The poor child turned pale under the scarlet hood of her witch-cloak when I bade her promise to serve us with a kinder and more honourable death than the death planned for us on the morrow.

  “I promise, sir,” she said, faintly, raising her frightened white face, framed by the wet cloak and damp strands of hair. She added timidly: “I have a knife for — for Jack — and a file.”

  “It is too late for such things,” I answered, quietly. “If it is certain that you cannot get the keys from your father, there is no hope for us.”

  Her face, which in the past month had become terribly pinched and thin, quivered; her hands tightened on the 424 edge of the grating. “If — if I could get the keys—” she began.

  “Unless you do so there is no hope, child.”

  There was a silence; then she cried, in a choking voice: “I can get them! Will that free Jack? I will get the keys; truly, I will! Oh, do you think he can go free if I open the cell?”

  “He has a knife,” I said, grimly; “I have my two hands. Open the cells and we will show you.”

  She covered her eyes with her hands. Jack called to her from his grating; she started violently, turned and went to him.

  They stood whispering a long time together. I paced my cell, with brain a-whirl and hope battering at my heart for the admittance I craved to give. If she could only open that door! — that rusted, accursed mass of iron, the very sight of which was slowly crushing out the last spark of manhood in me!

  “Are you listening?” whispered Dulcima at my grating again.

  “Yes,” I answered.

  “Watch our door at seven to-night!” she said. “Be ready. I will open your door.”

  “I am ready,” I answered.

  At that moment the sound of voices filled the corridor; the girl fled to her room; a dozen turnkeys shuffled past, bowing and cringing, followed by Collins, the chief warden, an old man whom I had not before seen. Then came a gentleman dressed in a long dark cloak which hung from twin epaulettes, his scarlet and gold uniform gleaming below. Was that the Governor?

  He passed my cell, halted, glanced around, then retraced his steps. After a moment I heard his voice distinctly at some distance down the corrido
r; he was saying:

  “The highwaymen are here, Mrs. Hamilton — if — if you would care to see them.”

  I sat up in my cot, all a-tremble. Far down the corridor I heard a woman laughing. I knew that laugh.

  “But,” persisted the Governor, “you should really see the highwaymen, madam. Trust me, you never before beheld such a giant as this rogue, Jack Mount.”

  The voices seemed to be receding; I sprang to my grating; the Governor’s bland voice still sounded at some distance down the passage; Mrs. Hamilton’s saucy laughter rang faintly and more faintly.

  Half a dozen keepers were lounging just outside of my cell. I summoned one of them sharply.

  “Tell General Gage that Mrs. Hamilton knows me!” I said. “A guinea for you when she comes!”

  The lout stared, grinned, and finally shambled away, pursued by the jeers of his comrades. Then they turned their wit against me, begging to know if I had not some message for my friends the Grand Turk and the Emperor of China.

  I waited in an agony of suspense; after a long time I knew that the keeper had not delivered my message.

  In the fierce returning flood of despair at the loss of this Heaven-sent chance for life, I called out for Bishop to come to me; I struck at the iron bars until my hands were bathed in blood.

  At length Bishop arrived, in a rage, demanding to know if I had lost my senses to create such an uproar when his Excellency, Governor Gage, had come to inspect the prison.

  In vain I insisted that he take my message; he laughed an ugly laugh and refused. Mrs. Bishop, whose infant was now very sick, came out, wrapped in her shawl, carrying the baby to the prison hospital for treatment, and a wrangle began between her and Bishop concerning supper.

  My words were lost or ignored; Bishop demanded his supper at once, and his wife insisted that she must take the child to the hospital. The precious moments flew while they stood there under my grating, disputing and abusing each other, while the sick child wailed ceaselessly and dug its puny fingers into the sores on its head.

  Presently a keeper passed, saying that the Governor wished to know what such indecent noise meant; and Bishop, red with rage, turned on his wife and cursed her ferociously until she retreated with the moaning child.