Humphrey Bold Part 18

Chapter 15: The Ba.s.s Viol.

Where one leads, others are sure to follow. It was wonderful how many of the prisoners discovered a talent for music after Punchard and Runnles had thus led the way. Our jailers encouraged this pastime; it was not merely harmless in itself, but it had a quietening effect on the temper of the men, and the squabbles and brawls among them notably diminished. One of the Frenchmen unearthed an old fiddle, and though one of its strings was wanting, a man named Ben Tolliday contrived to sc.r.a.pe very pa.s.sable melody out of it. Old John Dilly announced that he had played the cornet in his youth, and before very long an instrument was found for him, and after a few days' practice (during which we had to suffer a variety of discordant and ear-splitting noises) he recovered something of his former skill. An old drum with a very loose membrane was found in the lumber room of the keep, and this the bosun appropriated, though being quite dest.i.tute of a sense of rhythm he made but an indifferent performer. Some of the men fashioned original instruments for themselves, one of these, a mouth organ, being a real triumph of ingenuity.

I, alas, had no singing voice, and was totally ignorant of music; but Joe kindly informed me that any fool could play the bones, and made two pairs of castanets for me out of beef bones supplied by the soldiers (we had no joints ourselves, but only a bullock's cheek now and then) so that I too was able to bear my part in the concerts which now became of daily occurrence.

The soldiers of the guard often came and listened to our performances, and even the sour-faced commandant once condescended to form part of our audience, and smiled broadly when Dilly, who was a Devon man, sang with much expressive pantomime the pleasant ditty of Widdicombe Fair, though the Frenchman did not understand a word of it.

This condescension on the part of the commandant emboldened me to proffer a request which I had been meditating for some days. I had by no means given up the hope of escaping from the castle, but the more I thought of it, the less likely it appeared that I could succeed without a.s.sistance. Of course, Joe Punchard should accompany me, and when I talked the matter over with him, neither of us had the heart to scheme for our own freedom without regard to those of our fellow prisoners with whom we had become more closely connected through our musical interests.

"There is old John Dilly," I said one day, when we were discussing the subject, "he was good to me aboard the Dolphin; I shouldn't like to leave him behind."

"True," says Punchard, "and Runnles is a quiet, good soul; besides his name is Joe."

"And the bosun, he's as strong as an ox, and might be a useful man."

"And Tolliday, he's for ever sighing about Molly, his sweetheart; 'twould make two folks happy (maybe) if he got away among us."

Thus we ran over the list of our friends very seriously, though it tickled my sense of humor when I remembered that we had not as yet the ghost of a notion how this escape we talked of was to be contrived. But having thus selected our partners in the attempt we were resolved to make some day, we decided that it would be a step in the right direction if we all shared the same dormitory. We might then talk over the matter without the danger of it being blabbed among the whole body of prisoners.

Accordingly I took advantage of the commandant's gracious appearance among our audience to ask him (having now picked up enough French to make myself understood) to allow all the members of the band to sleep together, explaining that we should attain to greater efficiency if, after the lower doors were locked for the night, we could practice for an hour or so together before the sun went down. His grim face relaxed into a smile at the serious manner in which we took our diversion, and he readily granted the permission we desired. By this change we got rid of Vetch, who was glad enough to leave us, I doubt not.

The first step having thus been gained, I began to devote myself earnestly to the problem of escape. I did not make light of the difficulties. The only entrance to the castle precincts was, as I have said, the gateway at the end of the drawbridge, and this was so stoutly guarded that escape in daylight was impossible. At night we were locked in the dormitory nearly thirty feet above ground, with a thick stone wall between us and freedom, and supposing we could make a hole in the wall, which seemed unlikely, there was still the moat to be reckoned with. It was not only too far below for any one to dive into it with safety, but it was, as I had learned from the soldiers, choked with mud to within a very little of the surface, so that I could not but doubt whether it were possible even to swim across. But I did not despair of crossing it if we could only get down: that was the difficulty, and for long tedious weeks it seemed to me insuperable.

Before we had hit upon a plan, we were thrown into a great excitement by the disappearance of Vetch. I had missed him for a day or two from the courtyard, but thought little of it, supposing that he was confined to his dormitory by a touch of fever, as happened not infrequently among the prisoners. But on Punchard's remarking one day that he believed Vetch was malingering, it came out that he had not been seen by his roommates for nearly a week.

Was it possible that while we had been merely thinking of escape, Vetch had found a means of escaping? It seemed impossible, and when I was having my daily conversation with the soldiers of the guard, I asked point blank what had become of him. They laughed and chuckled, and amused themselves for some time by giving all manner of fantastic explanations, which improved my knowledge of French, but were mightily vexatious. At last I made out, from hints and half statements, that the commandant had been discreetly inquiring among some of the prisoners for a man who was well acquainted with the river Avon. Since these inquiries ceased and Vetch disappeared about the same time, I was free to conclude that in Vetch the commandant had found his man. Had he purchased his freedom at the price of treason to his country? Were the French meditating an attack on Bristowe? These were questions I could not answer; but you may be sure the knowledge that Vetch was gone acted as a whip to my determination, and I was more than ever resolved to find some way of leaving these walls behind.

We had concluded, Punchard and I, that our only course must be to pierce the castle wall and let ourselves down to the moat by means of a rope. The latter portion of this scheme being manifestly the more likely, we decided to secure our rope first. This was easier said than done. Our coverlets were of such thin and rotten material, we should need to tear up several of them before, even carefully knotted, they would serve our purpose, and we could not risk the detection that would surely follow if any of them were missed by our guards. When I went next to take my turn at drawing water from the well I carefully examined the rope by which the bucket was let down, thinking it might be possible to cut this one night at an hour when its loss would not be discovered till next day and the birds had flown. But a close inspection showed that it was very rotten; evidently it had seen long service; and while it was still strong enough to stand the strain of a bucketful of water, I could not flatter myself it would safely bear my weight, to say nothing of the bosun, who was a deal heavier.

But since a rope we must have, I pleased myself with the fancy that if I should succeed in procuring that it might be taken as a good augury for success in the more difficult feat, the piercing of the wall. Could we make a rope, I wondered? We had a fair quant.i.ty of bast, in the mats that formed the only covering of the floor of our barracks, but not near enough to form a rope sufficiently stout to bear the weight of even the lightest of us; besides the tearing up of the mats could not fail to be discovered.

Racking my brains for some means of overcoming the difficulty, I suddenly bethought myself of trying a ruse. I said nothing of my intention to Punchard (to the others I had as yet not breathed a word of our purpose) but the next time I went to the well I took a knife with me, and, choosing a portion of the rope where it was much frayed, I carefully sawed through one or two of the strands with the blunt edge. The result was that when I was drawing the full bucket up, the rope snapped, the bucket fell to the bottom with a clatter, and I (to make the accident more convincing) toppled over on my back. Up came one of the guard, and rated me soundly for my clumsiness, employing a succession of abusive terms which I stored in my memory for use in case of need.

I picked myself up slowly, rubbing my back, and, putting on the most innocent air in the world, I pointed to the frayed rope and asked whether my corrector could expect such a thing as that to last for ever. The man grumbled a good deal, but the condition of the rope admitted no answer to my question, and I had the satisfaction next day of seeing a brand new rope attached to a brand new bucket. I even had the pleasure of using it for the first time, for the old rope having broken when I was on duty, I was condemned to the punishment of drawing water for a week afterwards, an extension of my task which I bore with wonderful cheerfulness.

When I told Punchard of what I had done he laughed with great delight, but immediately became very sober.

"'Tis all no use, sir," says he gloomily. "For why? I can't swim."

This was a difficulty I had not foreseen. How is it, I wonder, that so many men who go down to the sea in ships do not master that most useful art--the very first, one would think, that should engage their attention? 'Twas true, the depth of water above the mud in the moat was so little that even the best swimmer would be at a bad pa.s.s; but I hoped that with the coming of the spring rains this would be remedied. Yet if Punchard and any of the others were unable to swim, the moat would be impa.s.sable were it dredged to the bottom; and since we must descend the rope singly, and the water came right up to the wall, I could not see for the life of me how this disability could be got over.

Finding our purpose thus stopped in this direction (though but for a time, for my resolution was in nowise weakened), I began to devote myself earnestly to what I had felt all along was the crux--the breaking through the wall. So deeply was I preoccupied with this baffling problem that I fear I clattered my bones but half heartedly in our musical concerts. Yet it was during one of these concerts that some good genie flashed upon my invention a plan which promised (if it could be carried out) to solve the very difficulty I had almost given up as insoluble. I say it was a good genie that suggested the idea to me, for, looking back upon it, I can account for it in no other way.

I was watching Tolliday sawing away at his fiddle, and marveling (being ignorant of music) at the loud tones which he produced from so small an instrument. 'Twas clear that the hollow belly of the fiddle had some part in the effect, and then I remembered the big ba.s.s viols I had seen used in the church at home, and reflected that the larger the instrument the deeper and more powerful the tones.

And here came in the genie to supply the link which led to the formation of my plan. In my mind's eye I saw a big hollow vessel shaped like a ba.s.s viol floating on the water of the moat, and Joe Punchard clinging to it, and I wished with all my heart that one of our jailers would discover such an instrument, and hand it to us for the use of our band. 'Twas but a step from wishing to devising.

We had no ba.s.s viol; could we not make one? No one would oppose us; the band was highly popular with the garrison, and I was sure that they would willingly provide us with material for the construction of yet another instrument.

Accordingly, next morning I suggested that we should ask the commandant to give us some planks of wood with which to make an instrument of a new model. The men were amused at the notion, never suspecting that I had any other design than to enrich the harmony of our ensemble. 'Twould be good fun, they agreed, though they had great doubt (as I had myself) whether our unskilled workmanship would produce anything but a useless monstrosity so far as music was concerned. They were willing to try, however, the attempt would help us to kill time; and the commandant proving perfectly agreeable to humor us, we gut the planks, borrowed some tools from the soldiers, and set to work.

The next following days saw half a dozen of us busily employed in the courtyard in knocking together a long shallow box, in the upper side of which we pierced S-shaped holes like those of the fiddle, with a notched bridge at about one-third of its length for holding four strings, and wooden screws at the other end for stretching them taut. Joe Punchard, good fellow, was the most ardent of the artificers, plying the tools with a dexterity born of his work for master cooper Matthew Mark years before. We got from the soldiers, who showed a great interest in our task, cords of different thickness, and several lengths of iron wire which we twisted together somewhat after the manner of the thickest string of the fiddle. We then stretched this and three cords over the bridge on the top of the box, screwed them to a high tension, and plucked them to see if they emitted notes that could be called musical.

The result surpa.s.sed my expectations. Tolliday, our fiddler, declared that the notes were true music, though to be sure not very resonant, and he undertook to tune the strings in fifths, so that it might be able to take a proper part in our next symphony. Having no bow with which to sc.r.a.pe the strings, he said that they could only be strummed with the finger and thumb, and when he offered to teach one of us thus to handle it, there were many candidates for the place, which in the end fell to a man named Winslow. The men were all mightily pleased with the success of our work, and I was secretly delighted, not with the instrument as a producer of music, but at knowing that we had a box which might serve those of us who could not swim as a raft.

We had now at command (if we could secretly purloin it) a rope to let us down, and a raft to ferry us over the moat, but we had still to find a means of getting beyond the wall, and to this I bent all my energy of mind. In this, too, I took Joe Punchard into consultation, and we discussed all kinds of plans. With the sentry on guard throughout the night in the courtyard there was no hope of escape by the gate and drawbridge. There was no opening in the wall. The only possible means of exit was to cut a hole in it, and this would be a matter of great toil, the wall being, as some one had told us, ten feet thick. It consisted, so far as we could tell from the inside, of solid blocks of stone cemented together, and when, at an odd moment when no one was looking, I tried to sc.r.a.pe away some of the cement between two of the stones, I found that it was almost as hard as the stone itself.

To cut through ten feet of such solid material was a task that might have caused any one to despair. Still, it was the only course open to us, and I have never known any task too hard for patience and determination. Joe and I decided that we must gradually sc.r.a.pe away the cement around one of the blocks until we could remove this altogether, and then work at the next one, and the next, until we had pierced right through to the open air.

Apart from the toilsomeness of the task, there were risks to be feared and provided against. First; one or another of the soldiers inspected our dormitory every day. This inspection, 'tis true, had become somewhat perfunctory, the man being content, as a rule, to mount the ladder until his head was a foot or two above the level of the floor, throw a hasty glance around, and descend again. The second risk was more serious. Since we could hear at night the tramp of the sentry going his round of the battlements, it was probable that, however quietly we might work, the sentry would hear the sound of sc.r.a.ping as he pa.s.sed above. If the wall had been wainscotted, he might suppose such sounds to be caused by the gnawing of mice; but there was no likelihood of mice making their habitat in a thick stone wall. Further, even if we should so contrive that our task of sc.r.a.ping was interrupted when the sentry pa.s.sed, there was still the danger that the sound might attract the attention of the men in the adjoining dormitory. If they should get any suspicion of what was toward, it would soon be common talk among the whole body of prisoners, and some whisper of it would certainly reach the ears of the guard.

In order to lessen this risk, Joe and I decided to begin our work at a stone measuring three feet by two, in the right-hand corner of the dormitory, farthest removed from the part.i.tion dividing us from the next, and a foot or two above the floor, so that a bed could be pushed against the wall and hide all signs of our operations in case a sudden visit of inspection was made.

These preliminaries having been settled by Joe and myself, the time was come for taking our roommates into our confidence. I did not disguise from myself that we were staking a great deal on their loyalty, and even more on their silence, for the slightest whisper of the plot outside our own little company would be fatal. There were ten of us bandsmen altogether. At first I thought of speaking to the men individually, and thus testing their courage and enterprise. But on reflection I decided that what was most requisite to our success was a corporate spirit, which could be best engendered by opening the matter to them as a body.

Accordingly, one evening, when we were a.s.sembled in the dormitory for a practice, I took the fateful plunge.

I am not an orator, and I shall not set down here the words in which I addressed them. Suffice it to say that they listened very attentively, not at first perceiving the full drift of my meaning, so careful was I to feel my way with them. They held me in some special consideration, which I no doubt owed partly to Joe Punchard, who had told them something of my story, and when at length I declared plainly our intention to escape, asked them if they would join hands with us, and impressed on them the necessity of maintaining silence about it, they one and all promised that never a word should pa.s.s their lips.

As to the scheme itself, when I unfolded its details, they were somewhat dubious, and, strangely enough, the most enthusiastic in its favor was little Runnles, the melancholy flute player, and the most doubtful was the bosun, whose physical courage was equal to anything, but who was daunted by what appealed more particularly to the moral qualities of patience and endurance. He dwelt lugubriously on the difficulties I have already mentioned, and shook his head when I combated his objections; but he agreed to throw in his lot with the rest of us, and said that if we once got clear of the walls, and there was any fighting to do, he would break any Frenchman's head as soon as look at him.

Nothing remained now but to begin operations, and I soon found that the demands upon our patience would be even more exacting than I had supposed. We divided our company of ten into five watches, each to take a spell of two hours' work. One night, as soon as all was quiet, Joe and I set to work, he with a chisel which he had used in making our new instrument, I with my clasp knife. Very gently, so as to avoid noise, we began to sc.r.a.pe away at the mortar between the block of stone we had selected for removal and the one below it.

Runnles. .h.i.t upon a capital way of warning us of the approach of the sentry within earshot. He tied a string to Joe's leg, and gave it a tug when he heard the tramp of footsteps above. Then we desisted for a minute or two, resuming our work when the footsteps had died away.

At the end of our two hours' spell we were disappointed at the little we had been able to do. Two small heaps of dust lay at the foot of the wall, but the impression on the hard mortar or cement had been but slight, and I was appalled to think of the weeks that must elapse before we had cut completely round the stone. But I professed myself well satisfied with the start we had made, and we handed over our tools to Dilly and Tolliday, the next couple, with encouraging words.

Chapter 16: Across The Moat.

It would be tedious to chronicle the stages of our progress, the hopes and fears, the anxieties and suspense, which in turn laid hold of me. Night by night for a week, in pitch darkness and bitter cold, we sc.r.a.ped away the cement, carrying away in the morning in our pockets the dust that fell, and disposing of it in the sweepings of the courtyard.

Once we had a great scare. In the dead time of night we heard footsteps, and voices in the room below our dormitory, and gave all up for lost. We stole into our beds, and lay in that painful state of shortened breath and quickened pulse which the expectation of ill induces. But by and by the voices ceased; we heard the closing of the door below; whatever their errand had been (and we never knew it) the men of the guard had returned to their quarters, and after a few minutes' pause we were again out of bed and at our work.

At the end of a week it happened as I had feared. The men's patience gave out. The bosun was the first to yield. After his two hours' spell of labor he rose from the cramped position it entailed and swore he would do no more. The men whose turn it was to follow refused to get out of bed, and Joe and I, who, having worked our spell were fast asleep, knew nothing of the mutiny until the morning. Then, though I was nigh despairing, I affected cheerfulness, said that we had all been working too hard, and declared for a couple of nights' holiday.

I did not blame or expostulate, and the wisdom of my course was vindicated on the third night, when, without a word being said, the bosun and Runnles took up their tools and set to work again. I learned afterwards that Runnles had employed himself during the two days in quietly encouraging the others, and I think it was the persistence of the little man that shamed them into perseverance.

Night by night for three weeks we toiled on, and then were bountifully rewarded. We had sc.r.a.ped away the cement between the stone we had selected and those around it, and by prying it with our chisel and one or two other tools we had now procured, we gradually forced it inwards and at length lifted it out and laid it on the floor. It was the middle of the night, but all the men were awake, and in the excitement of the occasion the bosun uttered a shout of triumph, cursing himself immediately afterwards for his folly. The sentry above stopped, and by and by a soldier came into the room below and up the ladder and demanded what was the matter.

Luckily I had the presence of mind (and by this time sufficiency of French) to make answer pat.

"'Tis the big man in a nightmare," I said with a laugh, "dreaming he heads a boarding party."

"Mad dream!" says the Frenchman with a chuckle, and went down again without entering the room.

We longed for daylight to reveal the full extent of our success, yet dared not wait for it, for the stone was heavy, and it would take some time to replace it, and since we were always visited soon after daybreak we feared to be intruded on before we had put it back and removed the traces of our work. So we set it again in its place and for the rest of the night slept the sound sleep of contentment.