The Lord of the Sea by M. P. Shiel

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"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 passion, 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 oakum. 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 assistant
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
shirt-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 glasses,
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 shirt with some of the fluid.

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

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 muffled 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 Cockney 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 hell".

"_'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 Cockney 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 passed
out into the infirmary exercise-hall, now dark, Hogarth dragging the
Cockney, 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
Cockney 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 passage, 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 space 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. When finally he dared, and Hogarth sought to steady him,
as he came sprawling upon the rod, both went gliding down, till
checked by a staple.

But they climbed again; Hogarth undid the half-fused string of tin
from the conductor, swung to the laundry coping, caught Harris,
leapt to the window, drew up Harris; and was ensconced far up among
the beams in thick darkness in the belfry an hour before daybreak.

At this time the great gates were open, and the moor being scoured
for the two.

XXI

IN THE DEEP

They had not been ten minutes in the tower when Harris began to
whine of the cold; whereupon Hogarth took off his slop-jacket and
waistcoat, and put them upon the Cockney.

As from two sound-escapes far down near the bell some twilight came
in, near eight Hogarth descended, working from beam to beam, to find
that on one side the bell-metal had been melted into a lumpish mass,
its rim shrivelled up, leaving an empty space under the motto
_Laudate Domino_ (mistake for _Dominum_) _omnes gentes_; and on the
opposite side ran a crack from top to rim. Sliding still lower on a
slanting beam, he could look obliquely upward into the bell's
interior, and see the clapper, a mass weighing eight hundredweight,
and so long, that quite down at the bell's rim were two hollows
where it had constantly struck. It, too, had been blasted; but the
bell-rope hung intact from a short beam at right angles to the swing
beam; and, having found this much, he searched where he had left the
bottom of his tin can, and clambered back with it into the upper
regions.

About eleven, lying along two beams, they could see the portal below
opened, and four men came in, looking unreal and small; whereupon
the leverage wheel was pulled, the swing-beam swung, the bell struck
the clapper, and throughout the tower growled grum sounds: after
which the four stood talking half an hour, and went away.

A little later--it must have been after the forty minutes' dinner-
interval--about twenty convicts entered with two warders, bearing
three ladders. When these had been fastened together and set up, and
the leverage wheel removed, they went away.

It was evidently to be slow work. Not till about four did a solitary
man mount the ladder, and take stand, far down under the bell,
gazing up a long while, with stoops, and changes of posture. Hogarth
thought that it was the bell-foundry expert whom he had seen; but
could only guess: for all here was dim and remote.

By now he had sawed the clothes-line into two pieces with the tin,
one piece eight feet, the other much longer--had intended tearing
his clothes into strips for ropes, but the clothes-line was still
better. In both ropes he made knots for hand-hold, a large knot at
one end of the short one, and he attached the string of tin to the
other end. Descending now, he tied the longer rope round the
swingbeam, let himself down to the rim of the bell, and with the
right hand pushed the tin into the hole in which the clapper swung,
reaching up, until the tin over-balanced, ran, and toppled down
beside the clapper; drawing the tin now, he brought the rope down
till it was stopped by the knot; and now, by a swing off from rope
to rope, could climb into the bell. He then reascended, taking the
longer rope, and the tin, with him.

As night fell, he judged that by the next he would succumb. Happily,
Harris, who had eaten later than he, was snoring in a nook; but
toward morning began to whine again, and sulk, and kept it up all
the day. Not a soul now entered, and as the blackness of night once
more filled the place, Harris threw up the sponge, with "Here goes
for this child....!" Hogarth flew across the space which divided
them, and a quarrel of cats ensued, both being under the influence
of the fury called "hunger-madness". It was only when Harris felt
the grip of Hogarth at his windpipe that he squealed submission,
whereupon Hogarth threw himself away; and half the night they sat,
nothing but four eyes, eyeing each other.

That night what was a revival of the great gale took place, belling
like bucks about their heads, and noising through the tower in many
a voice. This so increased their sense of desolation, that even the
heart of Hogarth fainted, they like castaways on some ocean whose
glooms no sunrise ever goldens; and now a doubt arose whether, even
if the bell were removed on the morrow, Harris would have strength
to cling on during the descent.

However, early the next day hope revived when five men entered, four
mounting among the beams to the swing-beam with tools, one at the
ladder-head shouting up orders; and Hogarth, when they had gone,
whispered Harris: "They have been unscrewing the sockets in which
the bell-beam swings".

"Let them unscrew away", said Harris, his chin shivering on his
hand.

Five more hours; during which only once did three men enter, seeming
to do nothing but talk, with upward glances.

But at three it was evident that there was considerable to-do,
though above there the row of the winds drowned all sound. A crowd,
chiefly of convicts, passed in and out; then twelve men, one after
the other, ran up the ladder, and thence climbed among the beams,
with six cables. Half went to the east, half to the west, side of
the bell; and three of the cables were fastened round the swing-beam
near one end, three near the other end; one three were then cast
over a beam higher than the swing-beam, to the north of it; the
other three cast over a beam to the south of it; and the six ends
lowered--operations which Hogarth, lying on his face, could just
see; and the twelve had hardly begun to descend, when he saw a lorry
backed into the gateway, filling half 1 the area of the tower;
whereupon over a hundred convicts were swarming over and round it.

"Now", said Hogarth; and he hurried down, tacking his way with
slides and runs among the intricate beams, tied the rope to a beam
above the swing-beam, and let himself down to the bell's rim;
reached out then, caught the knotted rope that was within the bell,
and climbed, the clapper now so rough, that hand and knee found
grip; and he spent a minute in estimating his power of holding on
with one arm, and with both, to its support-shaft.

And now he whispered Harris, and caught and half-sustained the
Cockney.

Now they could hear echoes of the tongues below; and now Harris,
clinging alternate with Hogarth, arms and legs, face to face, by
rope and shaft and clapper, whispered: "But-good Lord-look 'ere-
there are some people coming up!"

Four convicts were indeed climbing: but even directly beneath the
bell, where it was impossible to come, they would hardly have
distinguished the forms huddled in its dark cavern, and their aim
was higher, to stand ready, when the beam should lift, to swing it
diagonally across the square of beams which had supported it, so
that it might find space to descend. And soon the bell-beam stirred
at the tightening ropes: the fugitives felt themselves swinging,
rising, poised--descending.

They were dizzily aware of shouted orders, the creaking of the
toiling, slipping ropes, little jolts and stoppages, two hundred
eyes blinking up, not seeing their cringed-up limbs--unnecessary
cautious: for the nearer they descended to-ward the half-light, the
surer did the area of the lorry make their invisibility. At last
they were near; the bell lingered, swinging; babel was around them;
the Governor's voice; a cheer: the bell was on the lorry.

Someone struck the bell with a hammer, there was talk, swarmings
round it, then shoulders pushed at the lorry wheels, which squealed
and moved amid a still fussier babel drawn by four horses, and seven
yoke of cattle. The fugitives could hear the opening of the great
gate, the laborious exit, and, in a moment's pause, again the
Governor talking, it seemed far off, to the expert....

Wearily creaked the cart--beyond the moor--to a country road.

Now chattering words came from Harris: "All damned fine! I don't
deny that you know your way about--"

"Way out", said Hogarth.

"Yes, a gamesome sort of cock you are in all weathers...but what
next?"

"'Next' is to fall upon your knees and worship me, you cur".

"Thou shalt worship the Lawd thy Gawd", chattered Harris; "no
bloomin' fear! This is only a new kind of punishment cell. You've
got me in; 'ow are you going to get me out?"

Hogarth believed that the lorry was _en route_ for the railway, and
hoped to escape in the transfer of the bell; but that night lorry
and bell slept in a shed outside a village _en route_ for the sea.

At four A.M. they were again _en route_, and at intervals during the
day, opening their now feeble and sleep-infected eyes, could hear
the hoots of the two cattlemen, the sound of winds, the rowdy gait
of the crooked-legged oxen, and stoppages for drink or rest, and
anon an obstruction, with shouting and fuss. It was night before the
waggon came to rest on a jetty, the elaborate day's journey done.

The fugitives were then deep in sleep, and only awoke at the rattle
of a steam-crane in action above them, to find the bell beginning to
tilt, lift and swing; then they were on a deck; and soon afterwards
knew that it was a steamer's, when they heard the bray of her
whistle, and presently were aware of blaring winds, and billows of
the sea.

Harris was for then and there crying out, but Hogarth, now his
master, said: "To-morrow morning"; and they fell again into their
morbid slumber.

When they again awoke, uproar surrounded them, voices, a heaven-high
shouting of quenched fires and screaming steams; moreover, the bell
was leaning steeply, they two huddled together at its edge.

Harris began to bellow: but he was not heard, or not heeded....
There had been a collision.

"If you can't swim, better catch hold of me", Hogarth shouted--
"there will be--"

But the earth turned turtle, and Hogarth felt himself struck on the
shoulder, flung, and dragged down, down, into darkness.

After an upward climb and fight to slip the clutch of the ship's
suction, in the middle of a heavy sea he managed to get off his
clothes, and set to swimming, whither he did not know, a toy on
mountains of water.

Exultation raged in him--a crazy intoxication--at liberation
attained, at the sensation of warmth, at all that water and waste of
Nature.

But within ten minutes it is finished: he shivers, his false
strength changing to paltriness, the waves washing now over his
head; and now he is drowsing...drowning...

XXII

OLD TOM

He continued, however, to swim after his conscious efforts ceased:
for his body was found next morning on a strip of Cornish sand
between Gorran and Mevagissey, washed by every sheet of surf.

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