Chapter XIV: "fair Stood the Wind for France."

Was it worth being saved from murder at the hands of Lord Alderby's hirelings on Breakneck Stairs, to swing a few months later at Tyburn? Dick asked himself this question in the first few hours during which he either sat listless in the dim-lit cell shared by him with a half-dozen foul-mouthed and outwardly reckless rascals, or paced the courtyard upon which his and other cells opened.

It was not so much the confinement that crushed him, though that was a terribly galling thing; he had endured closer confinement in Boston, and on the _Adamant_. But never had he been surrounded by so vile a herd of beings. He accustomed himself, though, in time, to their crime-stamped faces, their disgusting talk, and the sodden drunkenness they were enabled to maintain by means of the liquor smuggled to them by visitors,--for the courtyard and the cells thronged every day with visitors of either sex, and of quality similar to that of the prisoners themselves. Dick was presently able to discriminate among his jail-mates, and so he found one or two of more gentle stuff.

One of these was a young Frenchman awaiting trial for an assault of which he declared that he had been the victim and that the complainant had been the aggressor. In order to converse with this one refined companion without being understood by their coarse associates, Dick resumed, with him, the study of French, and, as he now had plenty of time, he made rapid progress. There were several French books brought by this tutor's visitors, from which to learn the written language, and there was the tutor's own speech from which to acquire the pronunciation.

It will be seen, thus, that Dick had plucked up heart, as it was his nature to do. He steadfastly refrained from looking into the future, and he made no provision in regard thereto. A grinning attorney had benevolently buttonholed him on his first day of imprisonment, and had proposed to take his case in hand, but, on learning how little money Dick would have for the luxury of a defence, this person had gone away, minus grin and benevolence.

Dick had more money than he had offered the shark of the law, but he needed it in order to pay for quarters and food of a grade above that which had to be endured by those miserable prisoners who could pay nothing and who had to live on a penny loaf a day. The court in which Dick abode was neither the best nor the worst in Newgate; but the best, where those dwelt who paid most, was loathsome enough as to the company.

To follow the example set by Wetheral himself in his memoirs, and to make swift work of his Newgate life,--for only in the "Beggar's Opera" is Newgate life a merry thing to contemplate,--let it be said at once that a true bill was duly found against him by the grand jury, and that his trial was set for the September sessions at the Old Bailey Sessions House, next door to Newgate Prison. As Dick surveyed the long list of witnesses who would be called for the Crown, and bethought him that he was without witness or counsel, the vision of Tyburn gallows was for a moment or two exceedingly vivid before his mind's eye.

It was now about the middle of August, and that same day there came to Dick another piece of news brought in by visitors,--that on the fourth day of July the American rebels, in the State House in Philadelphia, had declared the colonies to be free and independent States. A thrill of joy and pride brought the tears to Dick's eyes, and the apparition of Tyburn, the very sense of the Newgate walls and herd around him, gave way to visions of things far over seas, of people rejoicing in the cities he had passed through towards Cambridge, of his father rubbing hands and crying "Well done!" over the news, at home in the Pennsylvania valley; of the cheers of Washington's men, and the sage comments of old Tom MacAlister. When he awoke to Newgate and the Tyburn phantom, he brought his teeth hard together and fretted at fate.

Early in September, sitting idly on a bench at an end of the court, his ears pricked up at the words, "American prisoner," uttered in course of talk by a woman who was making a visit to an imprisoned waterman accused of robbing a passenger.

"They say as 'ow, afore 'e was picked up, off the Lizard, by the ship as brought 'im 'ere," she went on, "the rebel 'ad got out o' jug, by jumpink on a 'orse in Pendennis Castle, and ridink away in broad daylight, afore a multitood o' people."

A prisoner escaped from Pendennis Castle on horseback! Dick instantly joined in the conversation. "You say a ship picked the man up, off the Lizard," he put in. "How did they know he was the man who had escaped on the horse?"

"By 'is clothes, in course," said the woman, "and by the descriptions as was sent everywhere."

"But you say the ship has brought him to London?"

"Yes. 'E was picked up in a small boat, far hout to sea, a-trying for to make the French coast. The ship's captain, having put out of Plymouth on a long voyage,--for this 'appened last February,--'ad no mind to turn back, and so he took the fellow all the way to the Barbados, and then brought him 'ome to London. So now he lies at St. Catherine's, on shipboard, while the Government is making up its mind what to do with 'im."

And thus had fate treated Edward Lawson, otherwise Captain Ted, Dick's whimsical gentleman of Taunton! To think that a fugitive, in exchanging himself out of an incriminating suit of clothes to avoid detection, should exchange himself into the clothes of another fugitive, and be caught as the latter! Dick laughed to himself, even as he went to beg a turnkey to inform the governor that he, Dick, had an important disclosure to make.

The turnkey carried the message, for a consideration, and Dick was summoned to the governor's room, where it was finally got into the head of that functionary that Dick claimed to be the American prisoner for whom the other man had been taken. Dick was sent back to his court, with no satisfaction; but the next day he was led again into the governor's room, and confronted with the whimsical gentleman himself, who looked decidedly the worse for wear. It appeared that the highwayman was glad to be known, even in his true colors, rather than as a rebel prisoner who might be charged with treason.

The two were taken by hackney coach to Bow Street, and there the whimsical gentleman, much to his relief, was identified as Captain Ted, by the very ladies who had identified Dick as the same person, Justice Fielding subsequently observing that the resemblance between the two men was so great as to leave no ground for a charge of perjury against the identifiers. Captain Ted was then promptly committed to Newgate, on the evidence of the woman who had first laid information against him. With a friendly smile and courteous bow to Dick, he was led away.

And now Dick, relieved of the oft-recurring Tyburn vision, was to learn what disposition was to be made of himself. Standing out from the prisoners' pen, and in the vacant space before the magistrate's table, he was addressed at some length by Sir John Fielding. It appeared that his story, as related to the governor of Newgate the previous day, having tallied with certain statements made by the other prisoner, had been considered by no less a personage than the Secretary of State. If he was one of the American prisoners who had been confined at Pendennis Castle, the justice said, his treatment ordinarily would have been the same as theirs,--that is to say, he would have been taken aboard the _Solebay_ frigate on the 8th of January, and sent back to America as a prisoner of war, subject to exchange (this was Dick's first intimation of what had befallen Allen and the others). But he had broken from custody while he still regarded it as likely that he would be proceeded against for high treason, and he was therefore to be considered as having admitted his guilt of high treason. However, it was the desire of the King to exhibit great clemency to his rebellious American subjects, even in the most aggravated cases; hence the justice dared presume that the Crown would not move against the prisoner on the charge of treason (Dick afterward guessed that the real reason for this self-denial on the Crown's part lay in the difficulty and expense of getting witnesses to the alleged treason). The prisoner had, however, been shown to have sold a stolen suit of clothes; he ought to have known, by the circumstances in which he had acquired the clothes, even if those circumstances were as he alleged, that the clothes had been stolen; his not so knowing was a fault, yet was the fault of no one other than him, hence must be his fault. The justice was, therefore, compelled, on information sworn by the Monmouth Street dealer and by Mr. Charteris's servant, to commit the prisoner for trial on this new charge.

So back to Newgate went Dick, wondering whether matters were improved, after all. At the September sessions he was haled, upon indictment, before the bewigged judges and the stolid jury in the Old Bailey; pleaded not guilty, was tried with great expedition, convicted without delay, and sentenced (at the end of a solemn speech in which he thought at first the judge was driving at nothing less than death by hanging with the next Tyburn batch) to hard labor for three years on the river Thames. It appeared that the prisoner's general honesty, to which his George Street landlady's son voluntarily testified, influenced the judge against a capital sentence. Well, what is three years' hard labor to a man who has seriously contemplated a gibbet for several weeks past?

The vessel on which Dick found himself, in consequence of this manifestation of British justice,--which in those benighted days was almost as dangerous for an honest man to come in contact with as New York City justice is to-day,--resembled an ordinary lighter, though of broader gunwale on the larboard side. A floor about three feet wide ran along the starboard side, for the men to work on, and their duty was to raise ballast, of which the vessel's capacity was twenty-seven tons, by means of windlass and davits. The convicts slept aft, where the vessel was decked in, and the overseer had a cabin in the forecastle.

The men were chained together in pairs, and Dick, to his surprise, recognized his own comrade as none other than the body-snatcher through whom he had accidentally come to try his card tricks in London taverns. This amiable person had been caught while conveying a pauper's body, wrapped in a sack, by hackney coach, from Shoreditch to St. George's hospital, for the use of surgeons. He belonged to a gang that worked for the Resurrectionist, an inhabitant of the Borough, who was a famous trader to the surgeons.

Dick had to work all day, and to eat nothing but ox-cheek, legs and shins of beef, and equally coarse food; to drink only water or small beer, and to wear a mean uniform, which, as autumn wore into winter, ill protected him from the cold. Yet the hard work kept his blood going by day, gave him appetite for the food, and made sleep a pleasure. The fatigues of the day left the convicts no inclination to talk at night. One day was like another, and the monotony of uninteresting toil was endurable only for the prospect of freedom at the end of the three years. Dick had no mind to attempt an escape, for on receiving sentence he had been told that his term might be abridged for good behavior, that it would certainly be doubled on a first attempt to escape, and that on a such second attempt he would be liable to suffer death. So when, in the fifth month of his durance, he was awakened one night by the grave-robber, and a general plot to break away was cautiously broached to him, he resolutely refused to take part or to hear more, and went to sleep again. He observed, the next few days, that he was narrowly watched by the other convicts, who doubtless feared he might inform the overseer; but he had no such intention.

One night in February,--it was between Sunday and Monday,--when the vessel was moored off Woolwich, Dick was violently awakened by a kind of tugging at his leg. Throwing out his hand in the darkness to investigate, he heard a threatening whisper, "If you move or call out, I'll blow your head off with this pistol! Bill the Blacksmith is taking off our irons. You can join us if you like, or you can stay here, but you'll keep quiet!"

The voice was that of the body-stealer, to whom Dick was chained. In releasing the former, the Blacksmith, working in the darkness, had necessarily disturbed the chain attached to Dick. Bill the Blacksmith was a person unknown to Dick. As afterward appeared, he was one of a rescue party that had come on this dark night to free those prisoners who were in the plot. Some of the party had got aboard, crawled unseen within a few feet of the guards, reached the sleeping-place of the convicts, supplied some of these with weapons, and were now at work removing their irons.

Dick lay perfectly still. Presently the grave-robber stood up, unshackled. The chain was still fastened to Dick's leg.

"Well," whispered the grave-robber, "will you stay as you are, or will you join us?"

To be shortly free of the chafing fetters, able to use his whole body in a dash for liberty; to seize now what would not be offered to him for two long and miserable years! The temptation was too strong. "I'll join," whispered Dick.

"This one, too, Bill," said the grave-robber, and the Blacksmith went to work on Dick's fetters.

Other skilful hands were employed at the same time on the shackles of other convicts. The operations went on in the utmost silence. Now and then, at some sound from without, they would stop for a while. It was only after he had been awake some time, that Dick could distinguish the dark forms of the artisans working over the prostrate forms of the prisoners. Never had he seen such a combination of skill, patience, persistence, and noiselessness. Pick-locks, burglars, jail-breakers, all, exercising their abilities this time to free their comrades, were the men at work; yet Dick could not but admire the manner in which they went about their business. Doubtless there was a large reward to be earned, perhaps from some employer of certain of these convicts,--some such great man as the Resurrectionist, of the Borough, or as Gipsy George, leader of smugglers; for any one of these rescuers would as soon turn King's evidence against a comrade as liberate him.

At last all irons were off. Instantly, with the grave-robber at the head, there was a general rush to the platform on which the men worked. The surprised guards were either shot at, struck, intimidated, or swept into the hold, by the advancing convicts. The latter scrambled over the vessel's side, some dropping into a boat that suddenly unmasked two lanterns. Another boat, also belonging to the rescue party, now showed a light a little farther off. For this boat Dick swam, with many others who had plunged at once into the water, and presently he was hauled aboard like a hooked shark.

Some of the convicts, as if fearing there would not be room for them on the boats, struck out for the shore. Dick never knew what became of them, or of those who crowded into the first boat. The craft in which he found himself was speedily filled, whereupon the men at the oars, aided by convicts who had found other oars waiting, pulled rapidly down the river, the boat's lantern again being darkened. By this time those in charge of the convict vessel had recovered their senses and begun firing shots of alarm. Dick made up his mind to get away from his villainous company at the first opportunity.

Presently the men at the oars were relieved by another force, which included Dick. Thus, aided by the river's current, and thanks to their system of alternating at the oars, as well as to the strength derived from fear of recapture, the desperate crew made incredible speed. As dawn began to show itself, Dick saw, on the southern bank of the Thames, a considerable town against a hillside, environed by meadows and fields, pleasure grounds and country-seats. A high hill near by was crowned by a windmill. Vessels of every size lay in the harbor. Dick learned from the talk in the boat that this was Gravesend.

The men rowed straight for a certain sloop, which, it appeared from their conversation, was engaged in the business of conveying stolen horses to Dunkirk and other Continental ports. Dick inwardly determined to follow the fortunes of this rascal boat's crew no longer. Once alongside the sloop, the convicts proceeded to board it, each man for himself. The stern of the boat drifted several feet away from the sloop. Dick, pretending he would leap in his turn, across the intervening space, purposely missed hold of the sloop, and sank into the water. Diving some distance, he came up at a spot far from where the attention of his erstwhile comrades was directed. He then struck out for the outskirts of Gravesend, and landed a little east of the town, in the gray of the morning.

Skirting the town, and passing only bare vegetable gardens and fishermen's houses, he reached the Dover road, and walked on four miles to Gad's Hill, where Sir John Falstaff had played valorous pranks. Three miles more of walking brought him to Rochester, with its twelfth century Cathedral, and its ruined Norman Castle aloft by the Medway. A sailor's wife, living in a small house in a squalid part of the town, gave him a breakfast of porridge, while he dried his clothes at her fire.

Knowing he might be detected by his uniform, and finding the woman good-hearted, Dick offered to exchange the suit he had on for some worn-out raiment of her husband's, saying that the cloth of his garments might be made over into clothes for her little son. This exchange being made in the woman's parlor while she was at work in the kitchen, Dick proceeded on his way. At Sittingbourne, ten miles farther southeast, he stopped at a villager's house, on pretence of asking the road, and received a glass of milk and an egg, which he ate raw. Thus refreshed, he trudged on seven miles, to Ospringe, where he passed the night under a sheep-skin, in a cart-house.

The next morning (Tuesday), breakfasting on a pot of ale given him by an oysterman of Faversham, Dick went on to Canterbury, where, procuring a pack of cards from an hostler of an inn in High Street, he fell back on his card tricks for a living, though now with great aversion. He risked wearing out his welcome at the Canterbury inns and tap-rooms, for that he so much liked the town; and it was reluctantly that, on Saturday morning, he left the old Cathedral behind, and set his face southeastward. Passing the Gothic towers of Lee Priory, he plodded on, mile after mile, hour after hour, over downs and through villages, till he stood at last on the hills at whose feet, before him, lay the town and the harbor of Dover, and from whose top, near the old castle supposed to have been founded by Julius Caesar, could be seen, beyond the ruffled waves of the Channel, the distant coast of France.

Tired and hungry, Dick descended from the cliff and proceeded along narrow Snaregate Street to a straggling suburb of low-built houses inhabited by sailors and fishermen. It was late in the afternoon, when he entered a small tippling-house, where were a number of seafarers boisterously talking, and called at the bar for a glass of rum. While drinking, he asked the barman how one might go to France more cheaply than by the regular packet. He was immediately referred to one of the fellows drinking at a small table in the room. Thus introduced to this person, who was a stalwart, sea-browned man of fifty, Dick ingratiated himself into his liking, drank with him, and presently began his usual procedure with the cards.

As invariably happened, certain of his spectators offered Dick small sums to show them how one or other of his most puzzling tricks were done. As always, Dick refused. But his first acquaintance, under a curiosity to which Dick had adroitly ministered, persisted hard in begging to know the secret of a certain sleight. Dick finally replied:

"I shall tell you on the other side of the Channel."

"T'other side of the Channel?" repeated the seafarer. "When shall I see you there, man?"

"When you shall have taken me there in your fishing-smack."

"So 'tis settled I'm to take you? But the pay?"

"Good Lord! If I show you my card trick, isn't that pay? I call a miserable passage across the Channel a mighty cheap price for one of my secrets. But if you will haggle, you shall have all my money into the bargain,--one shilling, and one sixpence. Well, well, so you don't want to learn the trick? Good evening, then!"

"Oh, hold! I didn't say no. I don't haggle. I'll take you, lad, to-morrow night,--when I go a-fishing."

If Dick thought it strange to go fishing by night, particularly Sunday night, he kept his thoughts to himself. He had heard tales of the fisherfolk and other worthy people of the coast towns, and was prepared to be blind to certain signs. As for the readiness with which the seafarers in the ale-house let him come among them, his own appearance of poverty had quickly served to establish a fellowship. His winning, yet confident, manner prevented his being despised for the poverty he showed. Moreover, his desire to cross the Channel indicated, in a person of his attire, such motives for absence from England as these men were of a class to sympathize with. They knew at first glance that he had no purpose inimical to them, so keen was their scent for a government spy in any disguise. In fine, Dick had the gift of adapting his demeanor to the society of a Lord or of a cutthroat, and easily made himself received without distrust by these wary folk who fished by night.

On Saturday night, that of his arrival at this humble suburb of Dover, he slept in a corner of the fisherman's loft. All the next day, he lay quiet indoors, sharing the Sunday life of the fisherman's family, which included a wife and two huge, awkward sons, respectively sixteen and eighteen years old. At night, preceded by these sons, the fisherman led Dick some distance from the town, to a cove, where lay the smack. An unknown man was already aboard, adjusting sail. The four immediately joined him, Dick bestowing himself in the stern while the fisherman and his sons assisted the unknown at the ropes. Few, short, and low were the words spoken, and very soon the little craft glided out from shore, upon the easy swell of the Channel. The night was lit by stars only, the wind was fair, and the heave of the sea was not violent.

Dick noticed that his skipper kept a very keen lookout, seeming to search the sea ahead for some particular object. He wondered how soon these nocturnal fishermen would begin to cast lines, and what sort of fish they would be catching at this season. But presently he drew in all his thoughts to his own affairs, for he had become unmistakably seasick. Busy for a long while in seeking relief, his head over the side of the boat, he gave no heed to the doings or words of the crew.

He was, in time, vaguely aware of a hail from another vessel; of the fact that this vessel loomed into close view; that his own boat lay to alongside of it; that the two crews conversed in mixed French and English; that sundry bales, kegs, ankers, and two or three barrels, were lowered from the other vessel into the boat, and then that he was shaken at the shoulder by his conductor, who said, "Come aboard the lugger, lad, and make haste!"

Surprised but unquestioning, Dick staggered after the fisherman and clambered from the boat's gunwale, with the crew's help, to the other vessel. Just as the fisherman was about to follow, one of his sons gave a low cry. The fisherman uttered a curse, and leaped to his rudder, while the son who had called out seized a rope and began vigorously making sail. At the same moment a man on the lugger instantly released the line by which the Dover smack had been kept alongside, and there was a general noise of ropes, blocks, and canvas, in quick movement. Before Dick knew what was the matter the two vessels had parted company, and the lights of a third appeared, from which came a sharp, mandatory hail. This, being unanswered, was followed by a flash and a boom and a splashing up of water,--the last in the wake of the boat from Dover. That craft showing its heels in fine fashion, and Dick's vessel also making speed, the former was soon out of sight. The revenue cutter, for such was the intruder whose advent had caused the two smuggling vessels to part so suddenly, chose to pursue the English boat, so that the French lugger to which Dick had been transferred went its way unhindered.

Dick turned with an inquiring look to the man who seemed in command of the lugger. The latter, evidently supposing that Dick's solicitude was in regard to the Dover smack, said in French, "Have no fear, my brother. Your comrades will carry their fish safe home. Their King's vessels waste time and powder chasing them. _Mon Dieu_, the bottom of the ocean must be paved with the cannon-shot the revenue vessels have sent after the night fishermen in vain!"

Dick, from his long association with the French teacher in Newgate, could grasp the meaning of this speech after a few moments. He knew from the words and manner that the Frenchman understood him to be on a good understanding with the Dover fishermen, and would treat him as one who deserved well of the vast fraternity of Channel smugglers. It was comforting to know that his way had thus been made smooth by the Dover man when the latter had bespoken Dick's passage, for the French smuggler was as villainous-looking a rascal as Dick had seen in Newgate, and, had Dick come to him without proper introduction, would doubtless have been as ready with a hostile knife or belaying-pin as he now was with deference and amiability. Dick found, without directly asking, that the lugger was bound for Boulogne.

It was that darkest hour which precedes the dawn, when the vessel anchored some distance off that port. The skipper and one of the crew rowed ashore with Dick in a small boat, getting out in the surf, and dragging the boat after them while they waded to dry beach. They were now on the sands near the town. The captain took polite leave of Dick, pointing out the most convenient way to go, and adding, with a grin, that, as this road was not obstructed by custom-house officers, Dick would undergo no delay over his baggage. Nothing was said about passage money. The Dover skipper had evidently provided for Dick's transportation, which was doubtless a matter of reciprocal favor between the English and the French smugglers. Dick was sorry the Dover man had been disappointed, by the interference of the revenue cutter, of the intended trip to the French coast and of the proposed payment for Dick's passage. "I'll show him the card trick if ever we meet again," thought Dick, as he walked towards the town and realized that he was on French ground; "but, if we never meet, it isn't my fault he was left behind."

Dick entered Boulogne with two sailors whom he happened to overtake, and to whom he contrived to make known in French his desire of learning the nearest way to a public house. They led him to the upper town and to the cabaret for which they were bound. His pockets and stomach were alike empty, and his teeth were chattering from the cold. He was goaded by his condition to immediate effort.

As soon as he entered the kitchen, where the sailors promptly sat down to bread and butter and brandy, Dick proposed he should share free their loaf, their firkin, and their keg, on condition that any card they might name should be found on the top of the pack he now held face downward before him. If the top card should be any other, he should pay for their breakfast. Of course they jumped at the proposition, and of course the top card was the one they had named.

An hour later, filled with bread and butter, warmed inside by the brandy and outside by the kitchen fire, Dick went forth with some thought of soliciting employment from one of the several British merchants who, as he had learned at breakfast, dwelt in Boulogne.

In the streets, he felt as if he had been suddenly transported to a new world. The one night's trip across the Channel, between coasts in sight of each other, had wrought a greater transformation in his surroundings than the five weeks' voyage across the Atlantic had produced. The spareness, alertness, fussiness, and excessive politeness of the people was as great a contrast to the characteristics of the rubicund Britons he had been among a day ago, as he could have imagined. The jabbering of the people, though, was not entirely strange to his ears; he had heard its like from the _habitans_ of Canada. Nor was the ubiquity of soldiers and priests new to eyes that had seen Quebec and its environs. Yet the tall, straight, carefully powdered French soldiers that he saw as he walked near the fortifications, little resembled the stout, well-fed English troops he had faced at Bunker Hill.

Now and then he could recognize in the crowd, at a glance, some round, red, contented-looking English face; and, when two of these passed together, it was a pleasure to Dick to hear the English words that fell from either mouth.

As he was approaching one of the best hotels of the place, Dick got a rear view of a gentleman standing before it, from whose broad back and solid-looking legs Dick would have sworn him to be an Englishman. Dick observed that this gentleman was looking at a pretty girl at an upper window of a house across the street. Himself gazing at the same object, he bumped heavily against the gentleman in passing.

"Damme," cried the gentleman, in a robust voice, "must you frog-eaters be always tumbling over people, because you have no footways in your cursed streets?" And he glared indignantly into the face of Dick, who had stopped and was inspecting him.

"I don't happen to be a Frenchman, and I agree with you in cursing the lack of footways," said Dick. "How have you fared since we met--and parted--at the Pelican at Newbury, Sir Hilary?"

"Eh? Sir Hilary? Pelican? Why, who the devil--By the lord, 'tis the gentleman that offered to pay the landlord, so we might all get away betimes! Welcome, sir! By your looks, I can guess you're like some others of us on this side the Channel,--you've had your own reasons to try the air of France! Well, by George, you shall keep me company awhile! You shall come in, and break a bottle with me, sir,--half a dozen bottles, damme! And after that you shall be my guest. Come in! I won't hear you say no! God save the King, and huzza for old England!"

And, having capped these patriotic exclamations with a defiant look around at the French passers-by, the exiled Berkshire fox-hunter caught hold of Dick, who had not the slightest intention of saying no, and hustled him cordially into the inn.