CHAPTER LIV.
CAPTAIN JACK AND OLD BATES ARE FUGITIVES—THEY FLY FROM LONDON AND CONCEAL THEMSELVES IN HORNSEY WOOD—THEIR DEPREDATIONS.
CAPTAIN JACK AND OLD BATES ARE FUGITIVES—THEY FLY FROM LONDON AND CONCEAL THEMSELVES IN HORNSEY WOOD—THEIR DEPREDATIONS.
With the arrest or dispersion of the principals of their gang the greater part of Captain Jack’s anxieties and difficulties ceased.
The remainder of the vagabonds pursued through the villages and woods soon fell into the hands of justice.
Beggars, sham hawkers, deserters, came in succession to swell the list of prisoners in the London gaols.
Jack and his friend Bates had withdrawn to the country.
There, in almost inaccessible thicket, they constructed a hut of branches and leaves, very skilfully contrived to deceive the eyes of the passers by.
Only at night did they venture out into the neighbouring commons, and the fears their audacity inspired prevented the peasants from betraying their place of concealment.
Ned Warbeck and others undertook to effect this difficult capture.
Four of them, disguised as wood-cutters, with two others to assist them, and who were well acquainted with every nook and corner of the forest, determined to enter at nightfall under the trees of Hornsey Wood, and bivouacked in silence.
At about four o’clock in the morning they surrounded the retreat of the two outlaws.
Ned Warbeck and one of the wood-cutters, with musket in hand, and finger on trigger, gently drew aside the leafy door, when they perceived the terrible couple lying amid bundles of hay and picked bones.
A gun, loaded and cocked, was lying between them.
Captain Jack opened his eyes, awoke less by the noise than by the vague uneasiness that must ever haunt the guilty.
Seizing his gun he cried,
“Help! Bates, help!”
But Ned covered him with his musket, while one of the wood-cutters seized the gun, and two others rushing in, in another moment both the rascals were safely handcuffed.
“Ned Warbeck,” said Captain Jack, “it was not right of you to betray your friends in this manner.”
“Thank you,” Ned laughingly replied, “but I prefer such friends as you at a distance, anywhere except in our own neighbourhood.”
The Captain cast an evil glance at Ned, and followed on to prison.
No sooner did the law show itself stronger than Captain Jack’s roguery than the tongues of the people loosened, and singular revelations were made; the former related that several times during the hot days of summer Jack and his friends used to arrive by dozens, and shutting the gates of farms, they opened the doors leading into the cellars, and helped themselves to the farmers’ cider.
Then stripping themselves of their clothing, converted thus the yard into a ball-room, where they performed the wild antics of the “beggar’s dance,” resembling some of the strange scenes described by travellers of what they had witnessed among certain tribes of African and South Sea Islanders.
In other places they would make themselves quite at home, especially Captain Jack, for no sooner was his tall figure recognised, whether he was alone or accompanied by any of his friends, immediately all the servants, ploughmen, and shepherds assembled round their dangerous guest to attend upon his wants for fear of being shot.
The tales told by these oppressed people revealed more than one hidden crime.
To render his authority secure and to prevent desertion and treachery, Captain Jack had established among his regular followers a sort of bond of union secured by an oath of vengeance.
Every member of his new gang convicted of having betrayed their associates, or of refusing an order issued by Captain Jack, was pitilessly massacred, and the executioners selected from among themselves.
It was in this manner that a poor lad suffered for a crime against the association.
He gave, thoughtlessly, no doubt, some wrong information respecting some farm they were going to attack.
He was seized, and carried to the camp of Captain Jack.
His accuser was no less than old Bates, who had stolen the sails of a windmill for some purpose, and the boy had made known this trick to Captain Jack.
Some time afterwards the boy spoke rather freely of the projects of the gang upon the farm of a very poor man near by.
Thereupon it was resolved he should die.
Captain Jack pronounced sentence upon him, and he was beaten to death with sticks.
The terror inspired by Captain Jack had hitherto deterred the peasants from giving information to the magistrates of the murder of this lad.
His bones lay bleaching on the ground where he had fallen, and no one had ventured to inter them.
The remains of the poor boy were collected as evidence against Jack and old Bates.
Another was murdered in the wood for having taken the part of an innkeeper against his comrades, who wanted to cheat him at the reckoning.
A third was also murdered for a similar offence.
They tied him to an oak-tree and burned him alive, first cutting off his ears, and nailing them to a tree, as a terror to others of the gang.
Several would have met with similar fates, and only escaped by a miracle.
“Come here,” said Ned to Master Tim. “Have you not often said and boasted that you would take Captain Jack as a deserter from the king’s army?”
Poor Tim looked pale, and turned about anxiously for succour, and trembled in every limb.
Several peasants whom Tim had not perceived at first, and several others, formed a circle around him, which gradually grew narrower and narrower, and of which Tim himself formed the centre.
“No, sir, I did not say so,” replied Tim, very modestly.
“You lie,” said Ned, laughing, at the same time striking a heavy blow on the side of Tim’s head with his stick.
The poor groom cast a terrified glance around, and perceived a fellow-servant who had more than once taken his part. But this companion now gave him a very different reception; now, he smote him a blow on the arm with a walking-cane which almost broke the bone.
Then Ned and others rained a shower of blows upon him until he fell to the ground, well punished for all his past boasting.
The energetic and unwearied Ned kept up the pursuit of the gang for one hundred and fifty days, without halting to rest, or scarcely ever putting off his clothes and arms, or quitting his horse’s back.
He made captures almost every day.
The terror that had formerly possessed the neighbourhood had now passed away, and two or three mounted men were quite sufficient to send away any of the fugitives, and more than enough to secure many vagabonds.
It was a truly grand affair the trial of those members of Captain Jack’s band.
The mass of positive evidence was immense, but scarcely equal to the suspicion that attached to the prisoners for other crimes in which it was supposed they had taken a part.
To let light into this chaos, to collect all the scattered proofs, to separate the facts from surmises, to complete imperfect cases by evidence withdrawn from other cases, and to sift the truth out of constantly varying testimony on the part of witnesses, was a most difficult task.
Continual error and confusion arose from the various aliases assumed by the more notorious members of the gang, while the differences in the calendar between old and new style added to the difficulties that beset the ministers of justice.
Nothing of the kind is more curious than the interminable questions put by the patient counsel, repeated in each new trial month after month with untiring perseverance, and which most frequently elicited the same answers.
But at times the monotony was relieved byoverwhelming proofs by the evidence of some of the culprits themselves, or of others who seemed to grow tired of the suspense of a trial, and convicted themselves to put an end to it.
It was by a very narrow opening that night first entered, but day by day it grew larger.
Confession followed confession.
One appeared to stimulate the other, and they seemed to pride themselves as to who should outvie the other in recitals of the atrocities they had committed.
Much exaggeration was, it is true, mixed up with these communications, and it was only by close comparison and sifting, that the truth could be elicited regarding the atrocious doings of Captain Jack and his famous Baker’s Dozen.
But there they were in prison, through the instrumentality and industry of Wildfire Ned and Lieutenant Garnet.
What became of most of them we shall quickly see.