The Lord of the Sea Part 17

XIX

THE GREAT BELL

The next morning Hogarth was not marched out, and near dinner-time was summoned before the Governor. Here he stood in a cage of bars in a room of "No.1" prison, devoted to prison-offences; and before him, at a littered table, sat governor and chief warder, with the witnesses of the outbreak near.

The case was gone into, the report made: whereupon the Governor looked up and down the length of Hogarth, and suddenly gave vent to a laugh.

"So, No. 76", said he, "this was the threatened escape?"

Hogarth was now all contrition and hanging head.

"I beg for mercy", he said, with a little smile.

"Oh, I am not your judge...Where were you when the officers were looking for you in the yard?"

"I was hiding in that little nook".

"Confounded carelessness on someone's part...And what cut and swelled your mouth?"

"I bashed into the wall in the nook" (The can had cut him!).

"You must have been mad!"

"Yes, sir".

During the next two weeks he had round his ankles a chain which, rising in two loops, was fastened to a band round his waist; and he was set to turn "the crank".

Finally, he was led forth to stand before the periodic Director, who, after reading the report, turned to a volume of writing in which was Hogarth's record: good--till lately; and the Director addressed him with sternness, which yet was paternal: he would sentence him to one month in a punishment cell, to two months in chains, and to one dozen lashes.

And two days later he was led to the flogging-hall, which, as he approached it, sent forth screams; the doctor looked at him and consented; the Governor said: "Get it over".

Hogarth stripped to the waist, his teeth chattering: but not with fear.

On the contrary, he felt a touch of exultation.

The wrists of his outstretched arms having been bound to "the triangle", the Governor gave the sign, the cat rose, and sang, and fell.

Slowly up, and whistlingly down, rasping, reaping. At the seventh shock he fainted: and thence onward had a long dream, in which he saw Rebekah Frankl in Hindoo dress and jewellery, and she threw at him a red rose black at heart with pa.s.sion, and her body balanced in dance, and her hands clapped at him.

During the next month he tholed the cold of that same punishment-cell; and during the next was in his old cell, but in chains, picking oak.u.m.

All this time, if he was aware of high winds by night, he was in an agony, till the next day the great bell rang its treble.

About the middle of February he was once more trenching in the open air.

But a fear had stolen into his mind: for the string of tin was not strong, and the winds of the last month may have dislocated it. In any case, he might have to wait a year, two, ten....

Occasionally he would redden with suppressed and turbulent energy.

But on the 17th of March, toward evening, England was visited by a storm long remembered, lasting three days, during which the poor prisoners were comforted with rations of hot soup and cocoa.

On the morning of the fourth day when the gangs were once more taken out Hogarth was hardly conscious of frigid winds or agued limbs: for three days the great bell of Colmoor had not rung; and his ears were open.

Of the prisoners, who, by practised instinct, get to know the moment at which it should sound, three presently straightened up, spade in hand, to glance at the prison: and suddenly heard--a sound.

A dull something somewhere--from the prison? unless it was some shock of the wind...Hogarth gazed piteously into the faces near him...No one seemed to have heard.

A few seconds, like eternities...Then he saw a warder look at his watch; then--another! and--they glanced at the prison; and--they approached each other; and--they laid whispering heads together.

Then--joy!--came five officers, wildly running from the prison gates, calling, waving....

And now he knew, and smiled: the babble of that lalling tongue was dumb.

And the very next day, when the afternoon-gangs were marching out, they saw descending from a carriage before the Deputy Governor's house a gentleman with a roll of diagram-paper--a bell-foundry expert, summoned by telegraph from Cardiff.

Hogarth resolved to act that night.

XX

THE INFIRMARY

As soon as the cell-door clicked upon him, he commenced to work: first took off his boots; then felt over the doorshelf for the chloroform; wet his handkerchief with some of it: then inserted the vials across the toes 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 the handkerchief over his mouth and nose, breathed deep, knowing that in four minutes, when he did not obey the order of "brooms out", his cell would be opened.

As he sank deeper and deeper into dream, it was with a concentration of his 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, was gone.

He had known that he must have about his body the unmistakable signs of an abnormal condition in order to sleep a night in the infirmary--which was what he wanted. And thither, when shakings and the bull's-eye had sufficiently tested him, he was swung away, and the doctor's a.s.sistant summoned.

Hogarth's pupils were hurriedly examined, his heartbeat tested; and the freshman frowned, smelling an odour which, in another place, might have been chloroform, but here was pharyngitis; and he muttered, "Digitalis, perhaps...."

From a table Hogarth was swung to a bed by two of those well-behaved convicts who act as hospital-orderlies, and there two hours later had all his wits about him, and a racking headache.

His first thought was his boots--expecting to find them under his stretcher, and himself in flannels; but he had them still on, and also his work-clothes, humanity to the sick in the first stages not being in the Colmoor code.

He spent half an hour in stealthily tearing a square foot from his s.h.i.+rt-tail; then, weary and sick, went to sleep.

When, soon after 3 A.M. his eyes again opened, all was still. He lay in a long room, rather dim, in the midst of a row of stretchers which were shut in by bars containing locks and gates, and on the other side of the room a row of stretchers, shut in by bars. At a table in the middle, on which were bottles, lint, graduated gla.s.ses, sat a warder, with outstretched legs and fallen head: near him, standing listless, a convict hospital-orderly, who continually edged nearer the stove; and, half-way down the room, another.

Occasionally there were calls from the sick-beds--whispered shouts--apologetic and stealthy, as of men guiltily conscious of the luxury of being ill; but neither night-warder nor orderlies made undue haste to hear these summonses. There was, beside, an octagonal clock, which ticked excessively in the stillness, as though the whole place belonged to it.

Hogarth took off his boots under his blanket, and from them took out the vials; then, sitting up, commenced to call the warder, at the same time wetting the torn piece of s.h.i.+rt with some of the fluid.

"All right, I'm coming--shut up!" said the warder, but did not come.