VIPLANS FOR ACTION
Differentpeople have different kinds of difficulties to overcome. Rodney Nelson, over in the city, felt as if he were shut up from doing anything better than the work of changing his mother’s furniture from one room to another. He had no trade; nothing that he could earn money with; no prospects for the future. Jim, setting up type at his case in the printing office of the House of Refuge, felt almost as if he had no hope whatever. He had a new experience before him, however, and it began to come soon after he got out upon the parade-ground. It was not yet time for the afternoon drill and all the boys were at liberty to do as they pleased. Some of them were playing ball; some were at leap-frog; some were simply skylarking, as they called it, and that meantall sorts of rough fun. It was Jim’s time for selecting the boys to whom he could tell his secret and get them to join him in whatever he was going to do. He was just going to speak to one boy, when something came into his mind that made him stop.
“No, I guess I won’t tell him,” he said to himself. “I don’t belong here, but he does. I couldn’t look the Superintendent in the face if I should let that fellow out. It’s the best place for him. He didn’t know a thing when he came here. Now he can read and write and make shoes——”
Just then one of the officers passed him, with a nod and a smile, and Jim could smile back, as he touched his hat, for he had less of a sort of guilty feeling which had troubled him. He turned and looked at the great crowd of boys, scattered over the enclosure, and his thought took a wider form.
“Let ’em all out!” he exclaimed. “Why, it would be the worst thing in the world for most of ’em.”
That did not change his idea concerning himself and he may not have been a good judge of what was best for others, for, before the afternoon was over there were four boys besides himself who knew about the dormitory door-locks.
“If yours won’t spring open, mine will,” he said. “Just you wait, anyhow, till I come and let you out.”
They were excited enough about it, but each boy of them seemed to feel, as strongly as he did, that it would be doing the hundreds of others hurt instead of good to let them out of that place.
The Superintendent and the Managers might even have been gratified if they could have known how clear was the opinion expressed that they were “doing first-rate” with the youngsters under their charge.
That was not the only matter that Jim had to study, during that very long day. He believed that he knew every stone in the parade-ground wall, already, and now hefound himself studying the buildings also, and wondering how he should ever manage to lead a squad of escaping boys right through them. Getting out of a bedroom was only a kind of beginning, after all, and Jim’s heart sank within him, for he thought:
“They are stronger than the wall is, and beyond them is the East River.—I don’t care! It’s just the awfullest kind of thing to do, but I’m going to do it, somehow!”
No point or place in all the barriers of the House of Refuge seemed to promise a door through which he could get out.
That very evening, over in their house, Rodney and his mother were also discussing the door question, but they were also wondering over the fact that Billy the goat had evidently found one, for that remarkable animal was again missing.
“He can stay outside, too,” said Rodney, “if we’re going to have a garden.”
“He’d eat up everything we planted,” remarked Mrs. Nelson. “We’ve three wholelots of our own, and we can garden all the rest till they build on them. That won’t be for ever so long.”
“It’s about all I can do,” said Rodney, and he seemed to have a hopeless feeling about it and he went to bed thinking:
“If there’s anything that just tires a fellow out, it’s having nothing to do.”
Jim, on the other hand, marched into the dormitory, with the rest, feeling tired all over because he had something to do and did not yet know how to do it. He lay awake a long time, listening to the faint sounds which now and then disturbed the silence. No kind of rules could prevent some stirring until all the boys were asleep, but one sound that Jim waited for was that of the feet of the watchman, patrolling the corridor. He heard it come and go, more than once, before he cautiously arose and went to his steel-barred gate.
He had been studying that matter and he did not bang himself against it, this time.He folded his coverlet and poked it in among the middle bars, so that it covered three of them. Then he put on his stockings and his shoes, pulled his bedstead nearer, lay down on his back and drove both feet against the padded spot, with all his might. The coverlet had prevented any noise, but he had to try again and again.
“There!” he whispered, at last. “I’ve done it! The door’s open!”
Off came his shoes and in an instant he was out in the corridor, but there he paused, for a strange, guilty feeling came over him. He almost felt as if he were stealing something. He did not quite understand it, but he mustered all his resolution and went on. In less than three minutes he had his four friends, in their stocking feet, out of their cells.
“Come on!” he whispered. “All we can do, to-night, is to find out how.”
They only dared to nod at him, in reply, as they followed him to the large door, leadingout of the dormitory. It was not grated but made solidly, of wood, and it had a stern, forbidding look. Jim leaned forward and felt of the lock.
“There!” he said. “Hush—sh!—They only turned the key once, when they locked it. If they’d turned it twice I couldn’t have opened it.”
Slowly, heavily, reluctantly, the massive door came open, as he pulled, and he could peep out. O, how his heart was beating! The other boys stood and watched him as if he were a kind of hero, but he suddenly closed the door.
“He’s coming!” he whispered. “We’ve got to wait for some night when the watchman’s asleep. Get back to bed!”
There was a swift flitting along the corridor, a careful pulling to of five grated doors, and the patrol who went by them a minute or so later discovered no sign of anything unusual.
Jim lay awake for a while. There was aglow of exultation all over him, for he felt that he had gained one point now. Then he thought of the great world of freedom he hoped to escape into.
“Spring is here,” he thought. “Pretty soon things’ll be green and growing. I want to go up and see our place, but I won’t go in. I want to see Aunt Betty, but I don’t want to see Uncle John. He’d say I did wrong to get out. I don’t believe she would. There’s a farm here and lots o’ greenhouses, but only a few boys can work in them. I mean to be out in the country when summer comes.”
Between him and the country, however, lay the great city, and between Randall’s Island and that ran the deep, swift tides of the East River. It made him shiver to think of that, but he could see, in his mind’s eye, not only the river, with the wharves and buildings on the opposite side, but the one little wharf on this side, where the little tug that belonged to the House of Refuge wassure to be moored, each night, after all its trips to and fro were ended. He knew she was there, now, a tight little craft, mostly chimney and cabin, and just then he suddenly sat up in bed.
“That’s it!” he said, almost aloud. “I remember! There’s a little lifeboat on top,—on the roof deck. If we could get her! There might be a watchman on the wharf.—There might not.—I guess we could get her into the water. O!”
There seemed to be really less water in the East River, now he had thought of that boat, but he sank back on his pillow and went to sleep while he went over and over the obstacles that lay between him and the wharf where the tug was moored. His boy associates, curiously enough, were long since sleeping soundly, as if they had been contented to leave all the required thinking and all the anxiety to their busy minded and daring young captain.