CHAPTER XVI.
CAPTAIN PRENDERGILLS, OF THE AMAZON.
While the Selma steamed proudly past the banks of the Mississippi, the inhabitants of New Orleans were occupied by the discussion of an event which had taken place on the previous night, but which had only been discovered early that morning.
Paul Lisimon had escaped from prison.
When Silas Craig and Augustus Horton took their places on board the Selma, they little dreamed that their victim had escaped them.
Nevertheless it was so. The turnkey who visited the cell occupied by the young Mexican at eight o'clock on the morning after his arrest, found, to his bewilderment, that the dreary apartment was empty. The bars of the narrow window had been cut away, and a file, left upon the floor of the cell, told of patient labor which had occupied the prisoner in the silence of the night.
A rope, one end of which was attached to the stump of one of the bars, also told of the mode of escape.
One thing was sufficiently clear. Paul Lisimon had received assistance from without. He had been searched upon his entrance into the prison, and nothing of a suspicious character had been found about him; the file and rope had, therefore, been conveyed to him by some mysterious hand.
The astonished officials of the jail looked from one to the other, not knowing what to suspect.
The escape seemed almost incredible; for, in order to regain his liberty, the prisoner had not only to descend from the window of his cell, which was thirty feet above the prison yard, but he had also to scale the outer wall, which was upward of twenty feet high, and surmounted by a formidable chevaux de frise.
How, then, had Paul Lisimon accomplished a feat hitherto unattempted by the most daring of criminals?
None suspected the truth of the matter. None could guess at the real clew to the mystery!
Paul Lisimon had neither descended from the window of his cell nor scaled the outer wall of the prison. He had walked out of the jail in the silence and darkness of the night, and in five minutes from leaving his cell had found himself in the streets of New Orleans.
The person who had effected this miraculous escape was no other than the jailer, who had charge of Lisimon; and this jailer was one of the most trusted functionaries of the prison.
Sir Robert Walpole said that every man has his price; this man had been richly bribed by a mysterious visitor, who had gained admission to the jail on the evening of Paul's arrest.
The rope and file had been used in order to blind the governor of the prison to the real delinquent.
At daybreak on the morning after his imprisonment Paul Lisimon found himself free in the streets of New Orleans, but utterly ignorant as to the mysterious being to whom he owed his release.
The jailer had refused to give him any information about this person.
"I know nothing of the business," the man said, "except that I am well paid for my share in it, and that I shall be a ruined man if I am found out."
Paul Lisimon was free.
He was free; but he stood alone in the world, without a friend—branded as a thief—cast off by the protector of his youth—an escaped felon!
He hurried toward the lonely and deserted quay. Despair was in his heart, and he yearned to rest beneath the still waters of the Mississippi.
"There, at least," he murmured, "I shall be at peace. Camillia now believes me innocent, and she will weep for my memory. Were I to wait the issue of a trial, which must result in shame and condemnation, she might, indeed, as the Frenchwoman insinuated, learn to despise me."
Heedless of all around him, absorbed in gloomy meditation, Paul Lisimon was some time unaware of the sound of a footfall close behind him; but as he drew nearer to the water side this footstep approached him still closer, and presently, in the faint gray light of that mysterious hour, betwixt night and morning, he beheld the long shadow of a man's figure upon the ground beside him.
He started and turned round. As he did so, a heavy hand was laid upon his shoulder, and a deep bass voice exclaimed:
"What do you want with yonder dark water, my lad, that you're in such a hurry to get to the river-side?"
Paul shook the man's hand away from his shoulder with a gesture of anger. "By what right do you question me?" he said; "stand aside, and let me pass!"
"Not till we've had a few words, my jail bird," answered the stranger.
"Jail bird!"
"Yes, mate, jail bird! you've no need to carry it off so fiercely with me. A file and a rope, eh? to blind the governor of the prison, and a good-natured turnkey to open the doors for you. That's about the sort of thing, isn't it?"
Paul Lisimon turned round, and looked the stranger full in the face. He was a big, broad-shouldered fellow, upward of six feet high, dressed in a thick pilot coat, and immense leather boots, which came above his knees. The pilot coat was open at the waist, and in the uncertain glimmer of the morning light Paul Lisimon caught sight of the butt end of a pistol thrust into a leather belt. The stranger's face had once been a handsome one, but it bore upon it the traces of many a debauch, as well as the broad scar of a cutlass wound, which had left a deep welt from cheek to chin.
"I know not who you are," said Paul, after looking long and earnestly at this man, "nor by what right you have interested yourself in my fate; but it is evident to me that you have had some hand in my miraculous escape of to-night."
"Never mind that, comrade," answered the stranger, linking his arm in that of Paul Lisimon, and walking slowly toward the quay. "You're free and welcome, as far as that goes; but I don't think, after an old friend had taken a good bit of trouble to get you out of that thundering jail yonder—I don't think it was quite fair to go and try to chuck yourself into the water."
"You, then, were my deliverer?"
"Never you mind whether I was or whether I wasn't. Do you know what it cost to get you out of prison?"
"No."
"Well, near upon a thousand dollars, my lad."
"And you paid this money! You, an utter stranger to me, bribed my jailers!"
"Never you mind about that, I say again; those that paid the money for you didn't grudge a farthing of it. As to being a stranger, perhaps I'm not quite that."
"You know me, then?"
"Fifteen years ago I knew a little, curly-haired, black-eyed chap, who used to play about the gardens of a white-walled villa on the banks of the Amazon, and I fancy that you and he are pretty near relations."
"You knew me in my childhood; you knew me in the lifetime of my earliest and dearest benefactor."
"I did. It was only last night that I came ashore, and the first thing I heard in New Orleans was, that Mr. Paul Lisimon had been arrested for the robbery of his employer, one of the land sharks your genteel folks call lawyers. Now, we seamen are not fond of that breed, so I wasn't sorry to hear that for once a lawyer had been robbed himself, instead of robbing other people, so I asked who this Paul Lisimon was that had been too many guns for his employer, and they told me that he was a young Mexican, who had been brought up by Don Juan Moraquitos. Now, I happen to know a good deal of Don Juan Moraquitos, and I had never heard before of Paul Lisimon; but I had heard of a little curly haired lad that was once a great favorite with Don Tomaso Crivelli, and Don Tomaso had been a good friend to me. So that's why your jailer was bribed, and why you stand a free man in the streets of New Orleans this morning."
"My generous friend," exclaimed Paul, "this is all so much a mystery to me that I know not how to thank you for your goodness."
"And I tell you that I want no thanks, so let's talk of business. In the first place, what made you so anxious to get to the water just now? I thought there was blood in your veins that never yet ran in those of a coward."
"A coward?"
"Ay, youngster; the man who has no better resource when he's down in the world than to make away with himself isn't worthy of any other name."
"And what right had you to suppose that I contemplated suicide?"
"The right of a good sharp pair of eyes, my lad. But come, once more to business. Do you see yonder craft at anchor there, to the right of the harbor?"
Paul looked in the direction to which the stranger pointed, and perceived the trim masts of a lightly-built schooner.
"I do."
"Then you see one of the fastest clippers that ever sailed. No rotten timber, but green oak and locust from stem to stern, with not an inch of canvas that isn't meant for speed. Don't talk to me about your steam vessels; lumbering old Noah's arks, that can't go a good pace without bursting up and sending every soul to tarnation smash. See the Amazon fly before the wind, and then you'll know what fast sailing is. If we Southerners come to handy grips with the North, let the Yankees look out for squalls when the Amazon is afloat on the blue water."
"And you, my friend, are you one of her crew?" asked Paul.
"I'm her captain, mate, Captain Prendergills—a sailor by profession, a rover by choice, and a privateer for plunder."
"A privateer?"
"Yes. You don't think the word an ugly one, do you? Now listen to me; you can't go back to Villa Moraquitos, can you?"
"No."
"And you and Don Juan have parted company for a long spell?"
"We have."
"Very well, then, why not join us? I may have more reasons than one for taking an interest in you. You can't stay in New Orleans, for by eight o'clock this morning your escape will be discovered. I've a fancy that you'd make a smart mate on board yonder vessel. Will you come?"
"I will," answered Paul, grasping his new friend by the hand. "You at least trust me—you do not fear to take me on board your vessel, though the hand of suspicion is upon me, and men have called me thief. Providence seems to have raised you up, as if by a miracle, to preserve me from disgrace, despair and death. I am yours for good or evil; in weal or woe I will serve you faithfully."