The Lord of the Sea Part 18

So Hogarth grew loud; and the warder, presently rousing his drowsy bulk, unlocked the gate of that compartment, as Hogarth said to himself: "Do it handy..."

And as the warder stooped, Hogarth clapped the rag upon his mouth and nose. A struggle followed a m.u.f.fled sob, both standing upright now, till the warder began to paw the air, sank, toppled upon the bed, whereupon Hogarth slipped into the blanket again, and called out in the voice of the warder: "Come here, Barrows--see if this man is dead ".

He had now drawn the warder over him, holding up his chest with one arm, had also poured chloroform upon the rag, and when the convict-orderly came, Hogarth, by means of a short struggle, had him asleep, then seized the warder's truncheon and keys, and ran out in his stockinged feet.

At that sight, the sick, the dying, the two rows of stretchers, were up on elbow, gazing with grins. To the second convict-orderly who came running to meet him Hogarth hissed: "Not a word--or I brain you with this! If I tie your feet, you won't have to answer for anything. Come along...."

He was an old fellow, and when he realized the impending truncheon, the menace of Hogarth's eyes, and the silence of the warder, he permitted himself to be dragged toward Hogarth's stretcher; and his feet were quickly knotted in his own stockings.

Now again Hogarth ran: but not many steps, when he felt himself tapped on the back, and, glancing in a horror of alarm, saw one of the two patients who had occupied with him his cage of bars--a wiry, long-faced c.o.c.kney shop-boy, who had had his ankle crushed by a rock at the quarry.

"Are you off?" he asked.

"That's _my_ business--"

"No, you don't. Part, or I give the alarm".

"What is it? Do you want to come with me?"

"That's about it".

"But--your foot's sick, you fool".

"You'll carry me in your awms, as a father beareth his children...."

"You are cool! What are you in for?"

"Murder, my son-red, grim, gory murder!"

"Guilty?"

"Guilty, ya'as. What do _you_ think?"

"Then you may go to h.e.l.l".

"_'Ell_ is it? I'm _there_: and if I linger longer loo in it, you linger, too, swelp me Gawd!"

Hogarth was nonplussed.

"But the foot..."

"Never mind the _foot_. Foot's still good for a run. Do we go shares?"

"Come along, then".

"But you ain't 'alf up to snuff, I can see, though you are pretty smart in your own way: I'd 'ave felt the confidence of a son in you, if you 'adn't overlooked that wine--"

To Hogarth's dismay, he turned back to the table, put a black bottle, half full, to his lips, and with tilts anc stoppages set to gulp it, while eager jokes, touched with jealousy, began to jeer from the beds.

"Lawd Gawd, that was good!" said the c.o.c.kney with upturned eyes, "and what do I behold?--broth, ye gawds!"

Now a saucepan of cold broth was at his lips; and not till he had drunk all did he run after Hogarth into the other arm of the ward, where one of the keys unlocked the door at its end, and they pa.s.sed out into the infirmary exercise-hall, now dark, Hogarth dragging the c.o.c.kney, who limped, and kept up a prattle of tipsy ribaldries.

Then, emerging upon a platform of slabs, from which the jump into the infirmary exercise-yard is twenty feet, Hogarth leapt. The c.o.c.kney stood hesitating on the brink.

"As sure as my name's 'Arris, you'll be the bloomin' ruin of me..." he said aloud.

"_Sh-h-h_", went Hogarth, "one more word, and I leave or knock you speechless".

Now at last Harris jumped, Hogarth catching him, and they ran across the yard northerly, Harris complaining of cold, being in hospital flannels, his feet bare, Hogarth bitterly regretting the burden of this companion, meditating on deserting him. Accordingly, when they had run down a pa.s.sage, and were confronted by a great gate, spiked a-top, Hogarth said: "I'll get up first", and, forcing the small end of the truncheon into the s.p.a.ce at the hinges, he got foot-hold from which he caught the top hinge and scaled, a feat of which he considered Harris incapable; and, instead of helping him up, leapt down with a new feeling of lightness, hearing from the other side "Dastardly treachery...!"

Again he ran through dark night wild with winds wheeling snowflakes; and, seeing in the unpaved court in which he now was a clothes-line supported on stakes, he seized both, to run with them to where the court is bounded by the great outer wall: for though it is thirty feet of sheer rock, the mere fact of stakes being found there, and of a vanished rope, would furnish grounds for the belief that he had scaled it: he therefore leant the stakes against it, and kept the rope.

About to turn, he felt his back touched; and, spinning round, saw Harris panting.

"There's a friend that sticketh closer than any bloomin' brother, Mr.

76", Harris said. "Try that game on again, and I give myself up; and where will _you_ be then?"

"You silly wretch!" said Hogarth: "before I am free, there'll be a hundred difficulties and pains. Are you prepared to undergo them? You couldn't, if you tried".

"Bear ye one another's burdens, it _is_", said Harris: "with thee by me what need I fear? Lawd Gawd, that wine was good! it's got into my poor 'ead, I believe. On, general; where thou leadest, I will follow".

Hogarth looked at him, half inclined to knock him down, and half to shelter, and save.

"All right", said he. "Can you climb?"

"Climb, yes, like a bag of monkeys".

"Come, then".

He mounted three low steps before four doors at the north end of the infirmary buildings, where, as he had observed from the moor, a spout runs up the wall at its east end; and up this he began to climb.

"'Old on!" called Harris: "I can't do that lot".

"_Sh-h-h!_--you must!--come--"

Harris made three attempts before he reached the first footrest, and there stuck, vowing in loud whispers that he would no further go, and Hogarth had to come back, and encourage him up. Finally, they went running southward on the leads between the infirmary roof and its coping, and had hardly reached the south end when a whistle shrilled, and they saw a warder run across the exercise-yard with a lantern.

"Stoop!" whispered Hogarth.

Crouching, they stole along the south coping, and thence dropped to a flat cistern-top, Hogarth, with a painful "_Sh-h-h_", catching Harris as he fell, for the signs of alarm and activity every moment increased.

Up a series of little brick steps, the base of a chimney over the kitchen--then across another stretch of leads beneath which is the tailor's shop--then, stealing in shadow under the beams of overhanging eaves by a garret window, behind which was a light, and someone moving--then a spring of three feet between two cornices--then a running walk at a height of a hundred feet along a beading four inches wide, holding on with the upstretched arms--then, with course changed from south to east, along more leads--then a climb of ten feet up a glazed main--and now they were skulking behind the coping of the great No. 2 prison.

Now, contiguous with the back of the bath-house is a wall which runs from No. 2 prison to the bell-tower, dividing the bath-house yard from the bell-yard; but the top is not horizontal, being lower at the bell-tower end, neither is it broad, and to reach it from the prison coping a drop of seven feet is necessary: this Harris refused to do.

"Not for Joe", said he: "I've already run my 'ead into enough perils by land and sea on your account. If this is what you've brought me out moonlighting here for...."

Hogarth did not wait, but disappeared over the side: and Harris, after five minutes' pleadings, followed. They then drew on the belly to the bell-tower; and here again Harris refused the leap to the conductor.