Joscelyn Cheshire Part 16

"G.o.d bless you, Joscelyn, though your heart is as hard as flint."

CHAPTER XV.

AN AWAKENING AND A MUTINY.

"I can bear scorpion's stings, tread fields of fire, In frozen gulfs of cold eternal lie; Be tossed aloft through tracts of endless void-- But cannot live in shame."

--JOANNA BAILLIE.

Besides the patrol and the ship's long-boat only one other ever tied up to the prison-vessels, and that one belonged to Dame Grant, the b.u.mboat woman, who brought such small luxuries as the prisoners were able to purchase. She herself seldom came on board, but sent up her tiny parcels by two boys who made their deliveries under the eye of the warden. This was the woman Richard had hoped to bribe to aid his escape, but with whom he had never found the smallest opportunity to speak at close range. She was corpulent and coa.r.s.e of feature, and the boys who served her often felt the weight of her big hand; but Richard had once thrown her a jest over the rail, and she had laughed good-naturedly, showing that she had a soft side to her rough exterior. In the lining of his ragged boot were the few coins Colborn had given him, but not so much as a letter had he been able to bribe her to take. Often he cursed the watchfulness of the sentinel, longing to send at least some little message to those who thought of him in far-off Hillsboro'-town.

The morning of his awakening from the despairing stupor in which nearly two months had been pa.s.sed, it so chanced that Dame Grant brought in her boat a basket of pears. Very luscious they looked, for sun and dew had kissed them lavishly; but only the guards could pay their price, so the prisoners feasted with their eyes only. By and by, however, one of the sentinels who had purchased some of the fruit went to attend to some duty below, and left one of the pears on the rail of the deck. So transparent was his action and so subtle the temptation, that it almost seemed he had set a delicate trap for some unwary captive. If, indeed, it was a trap, it caught its prey; for one of the prisoners, a poor old man, starving, yet too ill to eat the mouldy biscuit and rancid meat that was their daily portion, saw the tempting fruit and stole it, hoping the owner would think it had rolled off into the water with the rocking of the ship. But nothing escaped the argus-eyed watch; one of the other sentinels saw him as he ravenously devoured it, and collaring the trembling culprit carried him to the warden. He acknowledged the theft, excusing himself on the plea of extreme hunger, and begged for mercy. He might as well have asked for the sun, whose rays whitened the deck and shimmered on the restless waves.

"I will make an example of him that we may have no more thieving on this ship. Order the prisoners out that they may see," commanded the warden, a big-thewed fellow with the face of a bulldog.

The culprit, whose age alone should have protected him, was stripped to the waist and dragged to the middle of the deck, where he stood weak, scarred, emaciated,--as pitiful an object as the sun ever shone upon. In a wide circle about him were crowded the unwilling prisoners, their faces scowling with a helpless rage; and behind these were posted the guards with levelled guns. While the warden knotted his lash, Peter and Richard, after a whispered consultation with those nearest to them, stepped forward and touched their caps.

"If you please," said Peter, acting as spokesman, "we will all of us give something toward the price of the fruit, if you will spare this man."

The warden wheeled suddenly upon them and struck out with his whip, barely missing Peter's head. "Back with you, an you want not the lash upon your own backs, hounds that you are! The first man of you who stirs again shall have his share of this pastime." The ferocity of his look and voice quelled any further attempt at conciliation, and the prisoners turned their faces sullenly away.

"So it's delicacies your stomach craves, is it?" sneered the warden to the trembling man before him. "Well, does that taste like pears--or that--or that?" and the cruelly knotted lash swirled through the air, and fell again and again upon the quivering flesh of the helpless creature. The man staggered, screamed, reeled from place to place, and finally fell. A harsh laugh answered his cries for mercy, and the lash went on until the blood spurted from the livid welts upon his body, while his groans were horrible to hear; and the prisoners groaned in answer. But the warden's fury was aroused, and the blows fell until insensibility mercifully came, and the man lay still in a pool of his own blood.

"So shall it fare with every thief among you!" cried the warden, throwing the whip down and facing around the scowling circle. But he saw there no intimidation, but a wrath that needed but a touch to burst into a storm, and he was quick to take the warning.

"Dismiss the prisoners below," he thundered to the guards, and went swiftly to his own cabin.

As Richard watched the cruel scene, something had stirred and then suddenly snapped within him; the inert, despairing stupor was gone, and in its place was a wild desire for action. Every nerve within him quivered with a savage impulse to give the brutal warden blow for blow--nay, two for one; that was what he wanted to do. His fingers closed in a fierce grip, and only Peter's firm hand held him in his place.

"The guards would riddle you with bullets before you could get to him,"

the latter whispered, under cover of that other terrible noise of the flogging.

"I have but once to die. Unhand me!"

"Yes, but death here would be wasted. Wait."

From that hour Richard was a changed man; the dulness of despondency was gone, and in its place there had come a recklessness, a demon of desperation, that nothing could still.

"I shall not stay quietly here to be flogged or to rot with the fever and starvation," he said to Peter, and his jaw was hard and square. "I shall get away or I shall die in the attempt."

Two days later the flogged man was sewed into his blanket and carried away in the funeral-boat; and the malcontent of the prisoners broke out in angry mutterings. Here Richard, who had been brooding over a plan of escape, believed he saw his chance. By night his plan was laid; and when the hatches were beaten down and they lay in serried rows in the stinking hold, he went from man to man and told his scheme. It was to be a mutiny, a direct revolt. At a given signal they were to rise in a body, fall upon the guards, over-power them--kill them--and then pulling up the anchor they were to run the ship to the open sea, beach her somewhere on the Jersey coast if she gave signs of leaking, and take their chance to hide along the sh.o.r.e until they could get away into the interior. Richard was to head them, for in his voice and manner the men recognized the spirit of a leader. He longed with something akin to ferocity to strike the first blow at the warden.

"And besides," he said, "since I have proposed the plan it is but meet that I should a.s.sume the first risk. If I fall, Peter will take my place. Jack Bangs here has been on the sea all his life, and knows the coast hereabouts as we know our farms at home. What say you to giving him charge of the ship and letting him choose his own sailing crew?"

"Good; he is the man for the place."

"Very well," said Bangs; "but we cannot go down the Jersey coast, for we would have to pa.s.s too many posts of the enemy, besides the guns in the New York harbour. We must steer east through the sound, and if the ship is beached, it must be on the Connecticut or Rhode Island coast."

"Very well; that is not so convenient, since it takes us far from our army, but anywhere will be better than here."

They counted every risk: the difficulty of disarming the guards, the proximity of the other two prison-ships, the interference of the sh.o.r.e patrol in their swift-sailing boat, the disabled and sailless condition of their own vessel; but nothing turned them from their purpose. Every detail of the plot was arranged when toward morning the men lay down for a little rest and sleep.

All the morning Richard scrubbed or cleaned as the guards bade, and then sat on deck with his eyes alternately upon the sun and the ship.

But toward the middle of the afternoon Richard noticed signs of dissatisfaction among a few of the men near the stern, where there was an improvised back-gammon board. They were evidently angry about something. A quarrel at this spot was a daily occurrence, and occasioned no surprise among the sentinels; but Richard guessed that some other cause was at the bottom of this, and gradually made his way to Peter's side.

"'Tis Henry Crane," Peter whispered, and his close-shut fists showed an emotion his face concealed. "He is jealous that the ship was given to Bangs rather than to him, and he and some of his fellows--his old crew--are threatening mischief."

"Fool, to risk his neck and liberty for a d.a.m.nable vanity!" Rising, Richard crossed to the group of players, and sinking down upon the deck gathered the dice into his hand as though to take part in the sport.

"I play to win; and the man who fouls my game--for any cause whatsoever--has me to answer to," he said with stern emphasis, his fearless eyes fixed steadily on Crane's face. The man flushed and began to mumble an answer, but the guard, pa.s.sing, said sharply:--

"Since you cannot play without a row, break up the game."

The players got up slowly. "You understand?" Richard said under his breath, and Crane nodded surlily.

The afternoon wore on and all remained quiet. Crane had evidently thought better of his foolish jealously. It was growing late, and there was going to be a high wind, and that was well, for it would set the tide yet stronger in its outward sweep, and their flight would be all the swifter.

It lacked only a little while before the drum-tap. Richard got up and stood with his face to the glowing west to take his last farewell of the dream-girl with whom he kept his tryst each evening at this hour.

"Good-by, sweetheart," he said in his inner consciousness. "I love you.

On your dear eyes I kiss you--so--"

"Attention! First division carry down their bedding!"

He wheeled; for he was in that first division. A quick glance about the deck showed everything quiet as usual. Crane and a few others stood at the far end of the deck awaiting their order to go down with the rest of the bedding. This would take only ten minutes, then the drum-tap for the roll-call and--death or liberty.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "... THE PRISONERS LINED UP AND ANSWERED TO THEIR NAMES."]

Swiftly the first division seized their allotment of the bedding and pa.s.sed below. Knowing what was to follow, they did not lose a moment; but, quick as they were, something happened up above. There was a sound as of a struggle, a fierce cry, the report of a musket, all so close together as to seem almost blended into one sound; and then the ship writhed and quivered with the reverberation of the cannon on the upper end of the deck. Richard sprang to the ladder, but thrust only his head above deck when an order to halt, accompanied by a touch of steel to his temple, brought him up with a pull. But a look showed him what had happened. Crane and three others lay motionless upon the deck, and the other two men who had stood with them were covered by the muskets of the guards, while the warden leaned against the cannon ready to sweep the deck with another shot should so much as a hand be lifted without his orders. He was absolute master of the situation. A signal was run up to the patrol boat, the two mutineers were bound and hurried away; then the drum tapped for roll-call. But no one made any show of revolt.

With the guards aroused, the patrol alarmed, and that murderous cannon ready to rake the deck, it had been the act of madmen to resist; so, scowlingly and surlily the prisoners lined up and answered to their names, and then marched below, their plans all gone wrong. Richard threw himself down and sobbed like a child. The plot had failed through the malice of one man. Crane, thinking everything was ready, and that the men would all respond to the signal, gave it while Richard was below, thinking thus to s.n.a.t.c.h the leadership and gain control of the whole vessel. But the other men, watching only for Richard's signal, did not comprehend or respond to this unexpected whistle, only the five who stood immediately with Crane falling in with his plan. But even they were not quick enough, for the sentinel upon whom they leaped had time to cry out the alarm and discharge his gun, while the warden sprang to the ever-ready cannon.

Although the prisoners felt the warden's anger in many petty ways, no other arrests were made; for the two captives took their punishment heroically and told no tales, and inquiry of course failed to elicit any information from the rest of the prisoners.

"I cannot stay here--I will not!" Richard cried vehemently to Peter. "I am going, and soon at that."

"What is it you propose to do?"

"I do not yet know, but I am going, or they shall kill me with a rifle-ball instead of by slow starvation," he said doggedly.

Then one night a month later, as they lay gasping for air in the black hold, he unfolded a plan that made Peter's heart sick with dread and uncertainty.

CHAPTER XVI.