THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK SHEDS.
THISmuch being settled, the army of Windy Standard advanced upon the enemy's entrenchments.
Prissy was the only soldier in the force with any religious convictions of a practical kind. On this occasion she actually wanted to send a mission to the foe with an offer of peace, on condition of their giving up Donald to his rightful owners. She instanced as an example of the kind of thing she meant, the verses about turning the other cheek. But General Napoleon had his answer ready.
"Well," he said, "that's all right. That's in the Bible, so I s'pose you have got to believe it. But I was looking at it last Sunday in sermon time, and it doesn't say what you are to doafteryou turn the other cheek. So yesterday I tried iton Tommy Pratt to see how it worked, and he hit me on the other cheek like winking, and made my eyes water. So then I took off my coat, and, Jove!—didn't I just give him Billy-O! Texts aren't so bad. They are mostly all right, if you only read on a bit!"
"But," said Prissy, "perhaps you forgot that a soft answer turneth away wrath?"
"Don't, nother," contradicted Sir Toady Lion, whose pronunciation of "wrath" and "horse" was identical, and who persistently misunderstood the Scriptural statement which Janet Sheepshanks had once made him learn without explanation. "Tried soft answer on big horse in the farm-yard, yesterday, and he didn't turn away a little bit, but comed right on, and tried to eat meallup!"
Toady Lion always had at least one word in italics in each sentence.
Prissy looked towards her ally and fellow-private for assistance.
"Love your——" suggested Sammy, giving her a new cue. Prissy thanked him with a look.
"Well," she said, "at least you won't deny that it says in the New Testament that you are to love your enemies!"
"I don't yike the New Test'ment," commented Toady Lion in his shrill high pipe, which cuts through all other conversation as easily as a sharp knife cleaves a bar of soap; "ain't never nobody killed dead in the New Test'ment!"
"Hush, Arthur George," said Prissy in a shocked voice, "you must not speak like that about the New Testament. It says 'Love yourenemies!' 'Do good to them that hate you!' Now then!"
Hugh John turned away with a disgusted look on his face.
"Oh," he said, "of course, if you were to go on like that, there would never be any soldiers, nor bloody wars, nor nothing nice!"
Which of course would be absurd.
During this discussion the two Generals of Division had been wholly silent. To them the New Testament was considerably outside the sphere of practical politics. Peter Greg indeed had one which he had got from his mother on his birthday with his name on the first page; and Mike, who was of the contrary persuasion as to the advisability of circulating the Written Word in the vulgar tongue, could always provoke a fight by threatening to burn it, to which Peter Greg invariably replied by a hasty and ungenerous expression of hope as to the future welfare of the head of the Catholic religion.
But all this was purely academical discussion. Neither of them knew nor cared one jot about the matter. Prissy alone was genuinely distressed, and so affected was she that two big tears of woe trickled down her cheeks. These she wiped off with her pinafore, turning away her eyes so that Hugh John might not see them. There was, however, no great danger of this, for that warrior preoccupied himself with shouting "Right-left, Right-left," as if he were materially assisting the success of the expedition by doing so.
At the entrance to the pastures tenanted by butcher Donnan, the army divided into its two divisions under their several commanders. The Commander-in-Chief placed himself between the wings as a central division all by himself. It was Peter Greg who first reached the door, and with his stout cudgel knocked off the padlock. He had already entered in triumph, and was about to be followed by his soldiery, when a loud shout was heard from the edge of the park.
"Here they are—go at them! Give them fits, boys! We'll learn them to come sneaking into our field."
And over the stone dikes, from the direction of the town of Edam, came an overpowering force of the enemy led by Nipper Donnan. They seemed to arrive from all parts at once, and with sticks and stones they advanced upon the slender array of the forces of Windy Standard. Their rude language, their threatening gestures, and their loud shouts intimidated but did not daunt the assailants. Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith called on his men to do or die; and everyone resolved that that was just what they were there for—all except Prissy, who promptly pulled up her skirts and went down the meadow towards the stepping-stones like a jenny-spinner driven by the wind, and Sir Toady Lion, who, finding an opening in the hedge about his size in holes, crept quietly through and was immediately followed by Cæsar, the "potwalloping" Newfoundland pup.
The struggle which raged around those who remained staunch to the colours was grim and deadly. General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith threw himself into the thickest of the fray, and the cry, "A Smith for Merry England," alternated with the ringing "Scotland for ever!" which had so often carried terror into the hearts of the foe. Prince Michael O'Donowitch performed prodigies of valour, and personally "downed" three of the enemy with his national weapon. Peter Greg fought a pitched battle with Nipper Donnan, in which double-jointed words were as freely used as tightly clenched fists. Cissy Carter "progged" at least half-a-dozen of the enemy with her pike, before it was wrested from her by the united efforts of several town lads who were not going to stand being punched by a girl. Sammy Carter stood well out of the heady fray, and contented himself with stinging up the enemy with his vengeful catapult till they howled again.
"THE BATTLE OF THE BLACK SHEDS."
But the struggle of the many against the few, the strong against the weak, could only end in one way. In ten minutes the forces of law and disorder were scattered to the four quarters of heaven, and the standard that had streamed so rarely on the braes of Edam was in the hands of the exulting foe.
Prince Michael was wounded on the nose to the effusion of blood, General Peter Greg was a fugitive with a price on his head, and, most terrible of all—Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith was taken prisoner.
But Sir Toady Lion was neither among the slain, nor yet among the wounded or the captives. What then of Toady Lion?
TOADY LION PLAYS A FIRST LONE HAND.
SIRToady Lion had played a lone hand.
We left him sitting behind the hedge, secure as the gods above the turmoil of battle. But he could not be content to stay there. He thought of Richard Cœur-de-Lion, his great namesake and hero; and though he wanted to do nothing rash, he was resolved to justify the ginger-beer label Victoria Cross which he wore so proudly on his breast. So he waited till the forces of the town had swept those of Windy Standard from the field. He saw on the edge of the wood Hugh John, resisting manfully to the death, and striking out in all directions. But Toady Lion knew that he had no clear call to such very active exertions.
Cautiously he returned through his hole in the hedge, and crawling round the opposite side of theBlack Sheds, he entered the door which Peter Greg had forced with his cudgel, before he had been interrupted by the arrival of the enemy. Toady Lion ran through a slippery byre in which calves had been standing, and came to an inner division with a low door and a causewayed floor like a pig-pen. He opened this gate by kicking up the hasp with the toe of his boot, and found himself at once in the inmost sanctuary.
And there, right before him, with a calf's halter of rope about his neck, all healthy and alive, was Donald, his own dear, black, pet lamb Donald, who gave a little bleat of pure delight upon seeing him, and pulled vigorously at the rope to get loose.
"Quiet now, Donald! Or they will come back. Stand still, 'oo horrid little beast 'oo, till I get the rope off!"
And so, easing the noose gradually, Toady Lion slipped it over Donald's head and he was free.
Then, very cautiously, his deliverer put his head round the door to see that the coast was clear. Not a soul was to be seen anywhere on the pastures; so Toady Lion slid out and made for the gap in the hedge, sure that Donald would follow him. Donald did follow, but, as luck would have it, no sooner was he through than Cæsar, who had been scraping for imaginary rabbits at the other side of the field, came barking and rushing about over the grass like a runaway traction engine.
Now Donald hated big dogs—they rugged and tugged his wool so; as soon therefore as he saw Cæsar he took down the lea towards the island ashard as he could go. He thundered across the wooden bridge, breaking through the fleeing forces of Windy Standard, which were scattered athwart the castle island. He sprinted over the short turf by the orchard, Cæsar lying off thirty yards on his flank. At the shallows by the stepping-stones Donald sheepfully took the water, and was not long in swimming to the other side, the Edam being hardly deep enough anywhere at this point to take him off his feet. In a minute more he was delightedly nuzzling his wet nose into the hand of Janet Sheepshanks, on the terrace of Windy Standard House.
"Wi beast, whaur hae ye come frae?—I declare I amthatglad to see ye!"
But had she known the price which had been paid for Donald's liberty, her rejoicing would quickly have given place to sorrow. It was mid-afternoon on the day of battle and defeat when Toady Lion straggled home, so wet and dirty that he could only be slapped, bathed and sent to bed—which, in the absence of his father, was felt to be an utterly inadequate punishment.
Prissy had long ago fled home with a terrible tale of battle, murder, and sudden death. But she knew nothing of her brother Hugh John, though she had nerved herself to go back to the Black Sheds, suffering grinding agonies of fear and apprehension the while, as also of reproach for deserting him in his hour of need. Mike and Peter were quietly at work in the stable, in momentary dread of being called upon to give evidence.
The Carters, Sammy and Cissy, had run straight home, and were at that moment undoubtedly smelling of arnica and slimy with vaseline. But there was no trace of the Commander-in-Chief anywhere. General-Field-Marshal Napoleon Smith had vanished from the face of the earth.
"OH, THE BONNY LADDIE!"
Tea-time came and went. He had been knownto be absent from tea. Supper-time arrived and overpassed, and then the whole house grew anxious. Ten o'clock came, and in the clear northern twilight all the household were scattered over the countryside seeking for him. Midnight, and no Hugh John! Where could he be? Drowned in the Edam Water—killed by a chance blow in the great battle—or simply hiding from fear of punishment and afraid to venture home? It must have been some stranger entirely unacquainted with General Napoleon Smith who advocated the last explanation. The inmates of Windy Standard cherished no such foolish hopes.
The sun rose soon after two on as glorious a summer morning as ever shone upon the hills of the Border. As his beams overshot Brown Gattonside to the east they fell on Janet Sheepshanks. Her decent white cap was green-moulded with the moss of the woods; the drip of waterside caves had grimed it, the cobwebs of murky outhouses festooned it. Her abundant grey hair hung down in untended witch locks. She had not shut an eye nor lain down all night.
Now she leaned her head on her hands and sobbed aloud.
"Oh, the bonny laddie! Whatever will I say to his faither when he comes hame? His auldest son and the aipple o' his e'e! My certie, if the ill-set loon were to come up the road the noo, I wad thresh the very skin aff his banes! To think that he should bide awa' like this. Oh, the dear, dear lamb that he is; and will thae auld e'en never mair rest on his bonnie face? Cauld, cauld nooit looks up frae the bottom o' some pool in the Edam Water!"
And Janet Sheepshanks, like one of the mothers in Ramah, lifted up her voice and wept with the weeping which will not be comforted; for oft-times bairns' play brings that which is not bairns' play to those who love them.
THE SMOUTCHY BOYS.
GENERALNapoleon Smith had been taken captive by the Comanche Cowboys. Now it is fair to say in this place that they also had their side of the question. Their fathers were, in their own opinion, striving for the ancient rights of the town against an interloping Smith. Why should not they against the son of that Smith and his allies? The denunciations of the Edam Town Council were only transformed into the blows which rained down so freely upon Hugh John's bare and curly head, as he stood at bay that Saturday morning in the corner of the dike.
"Surrender!" cried Nipper Donnan, whose father had moved that the town of Edam take the case up to the House of Lords.
"'A Smith dies but does not surrender'!" replied the son of the man who had declared his intention of fighting the matter out though it took his last copper.
In the calm atmosphere of the law-courts this was very well, and the combatants stood about an equal chance; but not so when translated into terms to suit the Black Sheds of Edam and the links of the castle island.
So the many-headed swarmed over the wall from behind; they struck down the last brave defender of privilege, and Hugh John Picton Smith was borne away to captivity.
Now there are many tongues and many peoples on the face of the earth, and doubtless the one Lord made them all. But there is one variety which appears among all nations, and commentators disagree as to what particular Power is responsible for his creation. He is the Smoutchy Boy.
This universal product of the race is indeed the chief evidence that we are lineally connected with the brutes that perish; for there is no doubt that the Smoutchy Boy is a brute among brutes. He is at once cruel and cowardly, boastful and shy, ready to strike a weaker, and equally ready to cry out when a stronger strikes him. He is not peculiar to any one class of society. He frequents the best public-schools, and is responsible for the under-current of cruelty which ever and anon rises to the surface there and supplies a month's free copy to enterprising journals in want of a sensation for the dull season. He makes some regiments of the service a terror. He understands allabout "hazing" in the navy. Happily, however, among such large collections of human beings there is generally some clear-eyed, upstanding, able-bodied, long-armed Other Product who, by way of counterpoise, has been specially created to be the defender of the oppressed, and the scourge of the Smoutchy Boy.
I have seen one such scatter a dozen Smoutchies, who were employed after their kind in stoning to death a nestful of fluffy, gaping, yellow-billed young blackbirds. I have heard the sound of his fists striking most compactly and satisfactorily against Smoutchy flesh. Also I know the jar with which a foot stops suddenly in mid-air, as the Scourge pursues and kicks the fleeing Smoutchy—kicks him "for keeps" too.
Yet for all this Smoutchy Boy is a man and a brother. His smoutchiness generally passes off with the callowness of hobble-de-hoyhood. The condition is indeed rather one for the doctor than for the Police Court. It is pathological rather than criminal; for when the Smoutchy is thrown for some time into the society of men of the world—drilled for instance in barrack yards, licked and clouted into shape by the regiment or the ship's crew, he sheds his smoutchiness from him like a garment. It is on record that Smoutchies ere now have led forlorn hopes, pierced Africa to its centre, navigated strange seas, and trodden trackless Polar snows. The worst Smoutchy of my time, the bully who, till the biceps andtendo Achillesmuscles hardened to their office, made life at a certain school a terror and an agony, afterwardssprang from a steamer in order to save the life of a man who had fallen overboard in a high-running sea.
"THE HEAD SMOUTCHY."
But of all Smoutchies the worst variety is that reared in the vicinity of the small manufacturing town. He thrives on wages too early and too easily earned. Foul language, a tobacco pipewith the bowl turned down, and the rotten fagends of Association football, are the signs by which you may know him. In such a society there is always one Smoutchy who sets the fashion, and a crowd who imitate.
In Edam the head Smoutchy of the time was Nipper Donnan. He was the son of a fighting butcher, who in his day, and before marrying the widow of the deceased publican of the "Black Bull," had been a yet more riotous drover, and had almost met the running expenses of the Sheriff Court by his promptly paid fines.
The only things Nipper Donnan feared were the small, round, deep-set eyes of his father. The police were a sport to him. The well-brought-up children of the Grammar School trembled at his name. The rough lads at work in the mills on the Edam Water almost worshipped him; for it was known that his father gave him lessons in pugilism. He sported a meerschaum pipe; a spotted handkerchief was always knotted knowingly round his throat, and a white bull-dog, with red sidelong eyes and lips drawn up at the corners, followed close at his heel.
Great in Edam and on all the banks of the Edam Water was Nipper Donnan, the King of the Smoutchies.
And it was into his hard, rough, unclean hands that our brave General Napoleon had fallen. Now Nipper had been reared in special hatred of the Smiths of Windy Standard. Mr. Picton Smith it was who, long ago at Edam Fair, as a young man, had interfered with Drover Donnan,when he was just settling to "polish off" a soft, good-natured shepherd of the hills, whom he had failed to cheat out of the price of his "blackfaces." Mr. Picton Smith it was who on the same occasion had sentenced the riotous drover to "thirty days without the option of a fine." He it was in times more recent who had been the means of getting the Black Bull shut up, upon the oft-repeated complaint of the Chief Constable.
And so all this heritage of hatred was now to be worked off on the son of the gentleman by the son of the bully. Of course it might just as well have been the other way about, for there is no absolute heredity in Smoutchydom. The butcher might easily have been the gentleman, and the landlord's son the Smoutchy bully; only to Hugh John's cost, on this occasion it happened to be the other way about.
The lads who followed Nipper Donnan were mostly humble admirers—some more cruel, some less, but sworn Smoutchies to a man, and all afraid to interfere with the fierce pleasures of their chief. Indeed, so absolute was Captain Nipper Donnan, that there never was a time when some of his band did not bear the marks of his attentions.
BEFORE THE INQUISITION.
WITHthis excursion into the natural history of the Smoutchy Boy, which perhaps ought to have come somewhat earlier in the history, we continue the tale of the adventures of General Napoleon Smith.
Beaten down by numbers, the hero lay on the ground at the corner of the butcher's parks. Nipper Donnan stood over him and held him down with his foot. They were just the right ages forbully and bullied. Hugh John Smith was twelve, slim, and straight as an arrow; Nipper Donnan sixteen, short, hard, and thick set, with large solid hands and prominent knuckles.
"Got you at last, young prig! Now I'll do you to rights!" remarked Nipper, genially kicking Hugh John in the ribs with his hobnailed boots.
Hugh John said not a word, for he had fought till there was no more breath left in him anywhere.
"Sulky, hey?" said Nipper, with another kick in a more tender spot. Hugh John winced. "Ah, lads, I thought that would wake the young swell up. Oh, our father is the owner of this property, is he? So nice! He owns the town, does he? Nasty pauper he is! Too poor to keep a proper carriage, but thinks us all dirt under his feet. Yaw, yaw, we aw-w so fine, we aw-w, we a-aw!"
And Nipper Donnan imitated, amid the mean obsequious laughter of his fighting tail, the erect carriage of his father's enemy, Mr. Picton Smith, as he was accustomed to stride somewhat haughtily down the High Street of Edam.
Then he came back and kicked Hugh John again.
"You wouldn't dare to do this if my father were here!" said General Napoleon, now sitting up on his elbow.
"Yourfather, I'll show you!" shouted furiously Nipper the Tyrant. "Who asked you to come here anyway to meddle with us? Who invited you into our parks? What business have you in our castle? Fetch him along, boys; we'll show him something that neither he nor his fatherknow anything about. They and the likes of them used to shut up people in the castle dungeons, so they say. We are just the boys to give 'em a taste of what it is like theirselves."
"Hooray," shouted the Smoutchy fighting tail; "fetch him along, lads!"
So with no gentle hands Hugh John was seized and hurried away. He was touched up with ironbound clogs in the rear, his arms were pinched underneath where the skin is tender, as well as nearly dragged from their sockets. A useless red cravat was thrust into his mouth by way of a gag—useless, for the prisoner would sooner have died than have uttered one solitary cry.
And all the time Hugh John was saying over and over to himself the confession of his faith:
"I'm glad I didn't tell—I'm glad I wasn't 'dasht-mean.' I'm a soldier. The Scots Greys saluted me; and these fellowsshan'tmake me cry."
And they didn't. For the spirit of many generations of stalwart Smiths and fighting Pictons was in him, and perhaps also a spark from the ancestral anvil of the first Smith had put iron into his boyish blood. So all through the scene which followed—the slow mock trial, the small ingenious tortures, pulling back middle fingers, hanging up by thumbs to a beam with his toes just touching the ground, tying a string about his head and tightening it with a twisted stick—Hugh John never cried a tear, which was the bitterest drop in the cup of Nipper Donnan.
They removed the gag in order that they might question him.
"Say this is not your father's castle, and we'll let you down!" cried Nipper.
"Itismy father's and nobody else's! And when it is mine, I shan't let one of you beasts come near it."
The Smoutchies tried another tack.
"Promise you won't tell on us if we let you go!"
"I shan't promise; I will tell every one of your names to the policeman, and get you put in jail—so there! My father has gone to London to see the Queen, and have you all put into prison—yes, and whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails as soon as ever he comes back!" answered Hugh John, shamelessly belying both his father and his own intentions.
But he comforted himself and excused the lie, by saying to himself, "It is none of their business whether I tell on them or not. They shan't think that I don't tell because I am afraid of them!"
And the great heart of the hero (aged twelve) stood high and unshaken.
At last even Nipper Donnan tired of the cruel sport. It was no great fun when the victim could not be made to cry or appeal for mercy. And even the fighting tail grew vaguely restive, perhaps becoming indistinctly conscious, in spite of their blind admiration for their chief, that by comparison with the steadfast defiance and upright mien of their solitary victim, the slouching, black-pipe-smoking smoutchiness of Nipper Donnan did not appear the truly heroic figure.
"Let's put him in the dungeon, and leave himthere! I can come and let him out after, and then kick the beggar home the way he came! That will learn him to let us alone for ever and ever!"
The fighting tail shouted agreement, and Hugh John was promptly haled to the mouth of the prison-house; a rope was rove about his waist, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was lowered down into the ancient dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard. This place of confinement had last been used a hundred and fifty years ago for the stragglers of the Bonny Prince's army after the retreat northward. The dungeon was bottle-necked above, and spread out beneath into a circular vault of thirty or forty feet in diameter. Its depth was about twelve feet; and as the boys had not rope enough to lower their prisoner all the way, they had perforce to let Hugh John drop, and he lighted on his feet, taking of course the rope with him.
"Come on, lads," cried Nipper Donnan, "let's go and have a smoke at the Black Sheds, and then go up to the Market Hill to see the shows. The proud swine will do well enough down there till his father comes back from London with the cat-o'-nine-tails!"
He looked over the edge and spat into the dungeon.
"That for you!" he cried. "Will ye say now that the castle is your father's, and that we have no right here!"
Hugh John tried to give the required information as to ownership, but it was choked in the folds of the red cravat. Nipper went on tauntingly, all unchallenged.
"'WILL YE SAY NOW THAT THE CASTLE IS YOUR FATHER'S, AND THAT WE HAVE NO RIGHT HERE!' SAID NIPPER DONNAN."
"There's ethers (adders) down there—and weasels and whopper rats that eat off your fingers and toes. Yes, and my father saw a black beast like an otter, but as big as a calf, run in there out of the Edam Water; and they'll bite ye and stang ye and suck your blood! And we are never coming back no more, so ye'll die of starvation besides."
With this pleasing speech by way of farewell and benediction, Nipper Donnan drew off his forces, and Hugh John was left alone.
THE CASTLE DUNGEON.
FORsome time after Hugh John was thus imprisoned, he stood looking up with a face of set defiance through the narrow aperture above, where he had last seen the triumphant countenances of his foes.
"Who's afraid? They shan't say Hugh John Picton Smith is afraid!" were the words in his proud and angry heart, which kept him from feeling insult and pain, kicks and buffetings. Gradually, however, as the sound of retreating footsteps died away, the rigid attitude of the hero relaxed. He began to be conscious that he was all one great ache, that the ropes were drawn exceedinglytight about his wrists, that the gag in his mouth hurt his cheeks, that he was very tired—and, oh! shame for a hero of battles and martyr in secret torture-chambers, that he wanted badly to sit down and cry.
"But I won't cry—even to myself!" said Hugh John. Yet all the same he sat mournfully down to consider his position. He did not doubt that he had been left there for altogether, and he began at once (perhaps to keep himself from crying) to argue out the chances.
"First," he said, "I must wriggle my hands loose, then I can get the gag out of my mouth easy enough. After that I've got to count my stores, and see if I can find a rusty nail to write my name on the wall and the date of my captivity."
(Hugh John wanted to do everything decently and in order.)
"Then I must find a pin or a needle (a needle if possible—a pin is poisonous, and besides it is so much more easy to prick blood from your thumb with a needle), and then I have got to write an account of my sufferings on linen like the abbé, or on tablets of bread like Latude. As I have no bread, except the lump that was left over at breakfast, I suppose it will need to be written on linen; but bread tablets are much the more interesting. Of course I could make one or two tablets, write secret messages on them, and eat them after."
General Smith would have gone on to make still further arrangements for the future, but the present pain of the blood in his hands and thetightness of the rope at his wrists warned him that he had better begin the practical work of effecting his release.
Now General Smith was not one of that somewhat numerous class of persons who take all day to do nothing, and as soon as he was convinced by indisputable logic of the wisdom of any course, he threw himself heart and soul into the accomplishment of it. On his hands and knees he went half round the circuit of the wall of his prison, but encountered nothing save the bare clammy stones—with the mortar loose and crumbly in the joints, and the moist exudations of the lime congealed into little stony blobs upon the surface which tasted brackish when he put his lips to them.
So Hugh John stood up and began a new search on another level. This time he did find something to the purpose.
About three feet from the ground was a strong nail driven firmly into a joint of the masonry. Probably it owed its position to one of the Highland prisoners of the Forty-five, who had used it to hang his spare clothes on, or for some other purpose. But in his heart Hugh John dated it from the days of the Black Douglas at least.
Either way it proved most useful.
Standing with his back to the wall, the boy could just reach it with his wrists. He had long thin hands with bones which, when squeezed, seemed to have a capacity for fitting still more closely into one another. So it was not difficult for him to open the palms sufficiently to let the head of the nail in. Then biting his teeth uponhis lip to keep the pain at a bearable point, he bent the weight of his body this way and that upon the iron pin, so that in five or six minutes he had worked Nipper Donnan's inartistic knots sufficiently loose to slip over his wrists. His hands were free.
"HE BENT THE WEIGHT OF HIS BODY THIS WAY AND THAT."
His first act was to take the red cravat out of his mouth, and the next after that to lie down with all his weight upon his hands, holding them between the floor of the dungeon and his breast, for the tingling pain of the blood returning into the fingers came nearer to making the hero cry than all that had happened that day. But he still refrained.
"No, I won't, I am a Napoleon—Smith!" he added as an afterthought, as if in loyalty to the father, whose legal and territorial claims he had that day so manfully upheld.
But suddenly what was due to his dignified position as a state prisoner occurred to him. Casanova had struck at the wall till his fingers bled. Latude had gnashed his teeth, howled with anguish, and gnawed the earth.
"I have not done any of these things," said Hugh John; "I don't like it. But I suppose I've got to try!"
However, one solid rap of his knuckles upon the hard limestone of the dungeon wall persuaded him that there were things more amusing in the world than to imitate Casanova in that. And as at the first gnaw his mouth encountered a tiny nettle, he leaped to his feet and declared at the pitch of his voice that both Latude and Casanova were certainly "dasht fools!"
The sound of his own words reminded him that after all he was within a mile of home. He wondered what time it might be. He began to feel hungry, and the cubic capacity of his internal emptiness persuaded him that it must be at least quite his usual dinner-time.
So Hugh John decided that, all things being considered, it would be nothing against his manhood if he called for help, and took his chance of any coming. But he remembered that the mouth of the dungeon was in a very retired part of the castle, in the wing nearest to the river, and shut off from the road across the island by a flankingtower and a thirteen-foot wall. So he was not very sanguine of success. Still he felt that in his perilous position he could not afford to neglect any chance, however slight.
So he shouted manfully, "Help! Help! Murder! Police! Fire!" as loud as he could bawl.
Then he tried the "Coo-ee" which Sergeant Steel had taught him, under the impression that it would carry farther. But the keep of a fourteenth century castle and thirteen feet of shell lime and rubble masonry are proof against the most willing boyish voice in the world. So General Napoleon made no more impression upon his friends than his great original would have done had he summoned the Old Guard from the cliffs of St. Helena.
But the younger warrior was not discouraged. He had tried one plan and it had failed. He sat down again to think what was the next thing to be done.
He remembered the thick "hunk" of bread he had put in the pocket of his jacket in the morning. He could not eat it at breakfast, so greatly had he been excited by the impending conflict; so, to prevent waste, and to make all safe, he had put it in his pocket. Besides, in the absence of his father, it was not always possible to be in for meals. And—well, one never knew what might happen. It was best to be prepared for all emergencies.
With trembling hand he felt for the "hunk." Alas! the jacket pocket was empty, and hung flat and limp against his side. The staff of life must have fallen out in the progress of the fray, or elseone of the enemy had despoiled him of his treasure.
A quick thought struck his military mind, accustomed before all else to deal with questions of commissariat. It was just possible that the bread might have fallen out of his pocket when the Smoutchies were letting him down so roughly into the dungeon of the castle.
He went directly underneath the aperture, from which a faint light was distributed over the uneven floor of hard trampled earth whereon a century's dry dust lay ankle deep.
There—there, almost under his feet, was his piece of bread!
Hugh John picked it up, blew the dust carefully off, and wiped the surface with his handkerchief. It was a good solid piece of bread, and would have served Cæsar the Potwalloper for at least two mouthfuls. With care it might sustain life for an indefinite period—perhaps as much as twenty-four hours.
So, in accordance with the best traditions, the prisoner divided his provision with his pocketknife, as accurately as possible under the circumstances. He cut it into cubes of about an inch square, exactly as if he had been going to lay down rat poison.
Napoleon Smith was decidedly beginning to recover his spirits. For one thing, he thought how very few boys had ever had his chances. A Latude of twelve was somewhat unusual in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and even in the adjacent islands. He began atonce to write his memoirs in his head, but found that he could not get on very well, because he could not remember which one of his various great-grandmothers had danced with Bonny Prince Charlie at Edinburgh. This for a loyal prisoner was insuperable, so he gave the memoirs up.
THE DROP OF WATER.
FROMfruitless genealogy he turned to the further consideration of his supplies. He wanted water, and in a dungeon surrounded by lime-stone walls and founded upon a rock, it seemed likely he would continue to want it. But at the farthest corner, just where the roof approached most closely to the floor, Hugh John could hear apat,patat regularly recurring intervals. He put his hand forward into the darkness, and immediately a large drop of water fell on the back of it. He set his tongue to it, and it tasted cool and good after the fustiness of the woollen gag.
Hugh John thrust forward his hand again, palm upwards this time, and was rewarded by findingthat every time he counted ten slowly a large drop, like those in the van of a thunder storm, splashed into the hollow. It was tedious work, but then a dungeon is a slow place, and he had plenty of time. He crawled forward to be nearer to the source of supplies, and while trying to insinuate his head sideways underneath like a dog at a spout, to catch the drop in his mouth without the intervention of a warm hand, he felt that his knee was wet. He had inadvertently placed it in a small natural basin into which the drop had been falling for ages. Hugh John set his lips to it, and never did even soda-water-and-milk, that nectar of the meagre and uncritical gods of boyhood, taste sweeter or more refreshing. After he had taken a good solid drink he cleaned the sand from the bottom carefully, and there, ready to his hand, was a stone cup hollowed out of a projecting piece of the rock on which the castle was built. This well-anchored drinking-cup was shaped like the pecten-shell of pilgrimage, and set with the broad fluted end towards him.
Thus fortified with meat and drink, for he had devoured the first of his rat-poison squares, or rather bolted it like a pill, General Napoleon sat down to reckon up his resources. He found himself in possession of some ten feet of fairly good cord, which had evidently been used for bringing cattle to the fatal Black Sheds of butcher Donnan. The prisoner carefully worked out all the knots, in order to get as much length as possible. He did not, indeed, see how such a thing could help him to escape, but that was not his business, forin the authorities a rope was always conveyed into the cell of the pining captive, generally in an enormous pie.
Hugh John felt that he was indeed a pining captive, but it was the pie and not the rope he pined for. His dungeon was downstairs, and he did not see how a rope could possibly help him to get out, unless there was somebody at the top of the bottle ready to haul him up.
He tried his voice again, and made the castle ring in vain. Alas! only the echoes came back, the pert jackdaws cried out insolently far above him and mocked him in a clamorous crowd from the ruined gables.
Then his mind went off all of itself to the pleasant dining-room of the house of Windy Standard, where Prissy and Sir Toady Lion would even now be sitting down to tea. He could smell the nice refreshing bouquet of the hot china pot as Janet Sheepshanks poured the tea into the cups in a golden brown jet, and then "doused" in the cream with a liberal hand.
"I declare I could drink up the whole tea-pot full without ever stopping," said Hugh John aloud, and then started at the sound of his own voice.
He waited as long as possible, and then ate the second of his squares of bread. Then he drank the mouthful of water which had gathered in the stone shell. While he was in there underneath the dungeon eaves, he put out his hand to feel how far off the wall was. He expected easily to reach it, but in this he failed entirely. His hand was merely stretched out into space, while thedrop fell upon his head, and then upon his neck, as he leaned farther and farther over in his efforts to find a boundary wall.
He had noticed from the first that the floor immediately beneath the cup was quite dry all round, but it had not occurred to him before that if the drop fell constantly and regularly the basin must overflow in some direction. Hugh John was not logical. It is true that he liked finding out things by his five senses, but then that is a very different affair. Sammy Carter tried to argue with him sometimes, and make matters clear to him by pure reason. The first time Hugh John usually told him to "shut it." The second he simply hammered the logician.
Finally, to solve the mystery, Hugh John crawled completely over his drinking fountain and kneeled in the damp sand at the back of the basin. Still he could discover no wall. Next, he put his hand forward as far as it would reach out, and—hecould feel no floor.
Very gingerly he put his foot over the edge, and at once found himself on the top step of a steep, narrow, and exceedingly uneven stair. The explorer's heart beat fast within him. He knew what it was now that he had found—a secret passage, perhaps ending in an enchanted cave; perhaps (who knew) in a pirate's den. He thought of Nipper Donnan's last words about the beast as big as a calf which his father had seen going down into the dungeon. It was a lie, of course; it must be, because Nipper Donnan said it; but still it was certainly very dark and dismal down there.
Hugh John listened with his ear pointed down the stair, and his mouth open. He certainly did hear a low, rushing, hissing sound, which might be the Edam water surrounding the old tower, or—the breathing of the Black Beast.
If Hugh John had had even Toady Lion with him, he would have felt no fears; but to be alone in silence and darkness is fitted to shake stronger nerves than those of a twelve-year-old boy. It was getting late, as he knew by the craving ache in his stomach, and also by the gradual dusking of the hole twelve feet above his head, through whose narrow throat he had been let down in the forenoon.
Now at first the Smoutchy boys had not meant to leave Hugh John in the dungeon all night, but only to give him a thorough fright for his hardihood in daring to attack their citadel. But Nipper Donnan's natural resolution was ever towards cruelty of all sorts, and it was turned to adamant upon discovering that Donald, the captured hostage and original cause of conflict, had in some mysterious way escaped.
This unexpected success of the attacking party he attributed, of course, to Hugh John, whom, in spite of his youth, he well knew to be the leading spirit. Sir Toady Lion was never so much as suspected—a fact which would have pleased that doughty warrior but little had he known it.
In the afternoon Nipper had gone to Halkirk Tryst to bring home two bullocks, which Butcher Donnan had bought there the day before; but his father becoming involved in some critical cattle-dealing transaction, for which he was unable to obtain satisfaction in cash, resolved that Nipper should wait till the next day, when he hoped to be able to accompany him home in person. So engrossed was Nipper with the freaks of the fair, the Aunt-Sallies, the shooting-galleries, and miscellaneous side-shows and ghost illusions, that he quite forgot all about our hero immured in the dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard. Even had he remembered, he would certainly have said to himself that some of the other boys would be sure to go and let him out (for which interference with his privileges he would assuredly punch their heads to-morrow!)—and that in any case it served the beggar right.
Probably, however, his father (had Nipper thought fit to mention the matter to him), would have taken quite a different view of the situation; for the butcher, with all his detestation of the owner of the Windy Standard estate, held Mr. Picton Smith in a wholesome awe which almost amounted to reverence.
So it came about that none approached the castle all that afternoon; for the boys of Nipper's band were afraid to venture upon the castle island in the absence of their redoubtable chief, while the servants of Windy Standard House sought for the vanished in quite other directions, being led astray by the innocent assertions of Toady Lion, who had last seen Hugh John defending himself gallantly against overwhelming numbers in the corner of the field nearest to the town, and at least half a mile as the crow flies from the castle on the island.