Although a female moderately fickle,
Will hardly leave you, as she's not your wife,
For any length of days in such a pickle.—Don Juan.
Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of the outer door of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly pronouncing his name.
It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an official should visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the tenant's attempting to escape, or hold communication with neighboring prisoners. This duty was commonly discharged by non-commissioned officers of certain corps in the garrison. Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door, though much less ponderous, was secured with equal care; but in the middle of it was an oblong aperture, much like that of a post office letter box, though shorter and wider. The visiting official opened the outer door, and without opening the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his eye to this aperture.
"What are you doing there?" demanded the voice, in the usual form of the visitor's challenge.
The voice was different from that to which Morton had been accustomed; and, as he gave the usual answer, he looked towards the opening. Here he saw a full, clear, blue eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well formed; altogether a different eye from that which had formerly presented itself,—a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ, furrowed round about with the wrinkles called "crow's feet;"—altogether a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed, to a rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been warranted sabre-proof.
Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with great intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then it disappeared, but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for some moments longer.
"A new broom sweeps clean," thought Morton; "that fellow means to do his duty."
The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step of the retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.
Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself with his usual masculine employment of stocking knitting, till seven in the evening, when the visitor came on his second round, and the same voice challenged him through the opening. He looked up, and saw the eye again; when to his astonishment, the low, hissing sound—"s—s—t"—used by Italians and some other Europeans when they wish to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed him; for the eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.
Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about this incident, and had half persuaded himself that the whole was a cheat of the fancy; when, on the next morning, as he was led back, under a guard, from his walk on the rampart, he saw, on entering a long gallery of the prison, a tall man approaching from the farther end. He recognized him at once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before had guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly whisper in his cell had wakened in him a short gleam of hope. As the corporal passed, his eye met Morton's for an instant, with, as the latter thought, a glance of recognition.
In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in spite of himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was sure; the corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon him through the hole in the door; and he felt assured, moreover, that, from whatever cause, the corporal inclined to befriend him.
He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the next visit; and at the stated hour, the outer door was opened, and the eye appeared.
Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of friendly recognition.
"You remember me, eh?" whispered a voice, in broken French; "be always close to the door when I come. I shall have something to tell you."
The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were withdrawn from the opening, and Morton was left to his reflections.
To have a friend near him, however humble, was much, and the hope, slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid him, filled him with a feverish excitement. Why the corporal should interest himself in his behalf, he could not imagine; and he waited restlessly for his next coming.
In due time, the eye appeared.
"Look here," whispered Max, and thrust a paper through the opening, waiting only long enough to see Morton pick it up.
The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling; but Morton at last deciphered words to the following purport.
"You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I can. Long live America! Down with the emperor! Only be patient. Be sure to chew this paper, and swallow it."
The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner compromised the matter by tearing the paper into small pieces, and stuffing them into the crevices of the floor.
At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid words, expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal would help him to escape, and go with him to America, he would make him rich for life.
The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case of Max it was not needed. Though his tastes and habits savored of the barrack, the corporal was one of the most simple-hearted and generous of men, with, besides, much of that kind of enthusiasm of character which is apt to be rather ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and connections were not quite so low as might have been argued from his mean station in the service, in which his life had been spent from boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several of his brothers, and others of his relatives, had been deeply compromised in the Polish rising of 1831, and had suffered heavy and humiliating penalties in consequence. His eldest brother, however, had escaped in time, and gone to America, where, being very different in character from Max, he had thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared, travelling with a United States passport, as an American, inveighing against European despotisms, and dilating on the glories of his adopted country. Max, the only auditor of these declamations, was greatly excited by them. He had long been tired of his thankless position in the Austrian service; and listening to his brother's persuasions, he agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the seat, as he began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But before he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm; and seeing some indications that his identity was suspected by the police, decamped with the promptness and alacrity which had always distinguished him in times of danger. Max, therefore, was left alone; his adviser, for fear of compromising him, not daring to attempt any communication.
It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton, brought in for examination, and learned from the questions and replies, that the prisoner was an American. His interest was greatly stirred; for he had never seen one of the favored race before; and, like the commissioner, he had no doubt that Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His interest was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the latter faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was moved so deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived the idea of helping Morton to escape, and going with him to the land of promise. It was an idea more easily conceived than executed; and before he could find an opportunity, his corps was removed from the castle, and sent on duty elsewhere.
Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially of a prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable to him. Though brave as the bravest, he had not much energy or forecast, and commonly let his affairs take care of themselves. He lived on from day to day, neither abandoning his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until, after more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where his old disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this state of his mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him, thus bringing him in contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten feeling, and, at the same time, promising him an opportunity to carry his former scheme into effect.
To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much philosophy as could reasonably have been expected; but now that something like a tangible hope began to open on him, the excitement became intense. He waited the daily visits of the soldier with a painful eagerness and suspense. At the stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return, some whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.
Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and Morton read as follows:—
"We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten days; perhaps in a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only be patient."
Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon of the sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton, with a beating heart, read,—
"When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with you, and keep him with his back to the door. I shall come. Be cool and steady. I shall tell you what to do."
Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's system in a manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve the coolness which the emergency demanded; but he summoned his utmost resolution to meet this crisis of his fate.
The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how to engage him in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There was only one topic on which Morton had ever seen him at all animated. This was the battle of Wagram, in which, in his youth, he had taken part, and where he had received a sabre cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his cheek. In dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old German would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and Morton had often amused himself with trying to comprehend the jargon which he poured out, in thick gobbling tones, about cannonading and charging, sabres and bombshells, pointing continually at his scar, and laboring to impress his hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own mind, that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.
At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon, Jacob appeared. As he came in, he closed the outer door, which secured itself by a latch. This latch could be moved back from within or without, by a species of key in the jailer's keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a duplicate. The jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this, during his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.
Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply, meanwhile, and talking unconsciously to himself, after his usual manner.
"Do you know, Jacob," said Morton, seating himself on a stool in the farther corner, "I was dreaming the other night of you and the battle of Wagram."
"Eh!" grunted the jailer.
"What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You were never in that battle at all."
"Eh!"
"You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting began."
"Run! I run off!" growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating his brain.
Morton nodded assent.
The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open eyes and mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he began to pour forth a flood of denial, mixed with invective against his assailant, appealing to his scar as proof positive of his valor.
"A sabre never made that scar," said Morton, as the other paused in his eloquence.
Jacob stared at him, speechless.
"You got it in a drunken row."
At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and Morton thought he would attack him bodily, as he stood before him, shaking his fists, and stamping on the pavement.
This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair of strong hands clinched around Jacob's neck from behind, with the gripe of a vice.
"Shut the door," whispered Max.
On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close it. The corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of the cell.
"Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a sound."
Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of Max, and kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of the weapon against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp, and gagged him effectually with a piece of wood and a cord which he had brought for the purpose. Jacob lay, during the whole, quite motionless, glaring upward with glassy, bloodshot eyes, stupefied with fright and astonishment.
"You must put on his clothes," said Max.
They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments, which Morton substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored cap over his eyes. Max, at the same time, bound the jailer, hand and foot, with strings of leather, which he took from his pocket.
"Look out into the gallery," he said, unclosing the door, "and see if there's any body in the way."
Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back, reported that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed the door. The helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some other functionary of the castle should come to his relief.
They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps, and up another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max gave a careless nod of recognition. There were several private outlets to the castle, but each was guarded by a sentinel; and it was chiefly his preparation against this difficulty that had caused Max's delay.
Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,—a Prussian by birth. He had learned to read and write, and being inordinately vain of his superior acquirements, looked upon himself as the most learned of men. When off duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner of the barrack, poring over a greasy little book, which he always carried in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general butt of his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his crusty mood. Max, however, with a view to the furtherance of his scheme, had of late courted his good graces, flattering him on his learning, often asking him to drink, and otherwise cajoling him. Finding that, on this day, Peter's turn had come to stand guard at a certain postern of the prison, he had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium, mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular compound of simplicity and finesse, the former the result of nature, the latter of circumstance, plumed himself greatly on this exploit.
As they approached the narrow door in question, Max stooped and took off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the same. At a few paces farther on, they saw the sentinel, walking to and fro on his post, with no very military gait.
Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed Morton's arm.
"Voilà, monsieur,"—he was now and hereafter very respectful in his manner towards the man he was saving,—"voilà; look at the old booby; how he reels and staggers about—ah! do you see?"
Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the wall, nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and silly. Meanwhile his musket was slowly slipping down between his arm and his side, in spite of one or two efforts to clutch it. At last the butt struck on the pavement. The sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook himself, and began his walk again; but in a few moments stopped, leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther side of the door, let his musket this time rest fairly on the floor, and began nodding and butting his head, in a most ludicrous manner, into an angle of the wall.
Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe past the drugged sentinel, they went out at the door without alarming him. They were now in an obscure and narrow precinct of the castle, flanked on one side by a high wall of ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear of various outbuildings. The place did no great credit to the neatness of the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking along under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat dangling from her mouth.
They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left by the rear of the principal range of barracks.
"Hallo, Max, where are you going?" cried a voice.
Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at one of the barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side of his head, and a German pipe between his moustached lips.
"To the village."
"Who gave you leave?"
"The lieutenant."
"It's good company you are in. What are you going to do below?"
"Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for without his pipe?"
The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined, levelled at Max and his companion. Max retorted only by a ludicrous gesture of derision, which drew a horse laugh from a soldier at another window, under cover of which they passed out of the area, and reached a pathway leading down the height.
A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged down the side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a little watercourse, conducting all the rain that fell on the western roofs of the castle down to the filthy and picturesque hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty population of five hundred Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of dirtier gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their descents to the village.
Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels. The fresh wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading mother earth, wrought on him strangely; not, as on the wrestler of old, to nerve him with renewed force. He grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he staggered after his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison had sapped away his strength.
In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their way past the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety outhouses, broken fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and other impediments. Most of the men were absent; a few women only stared at them as they passed. With one very pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of appearances, exchanged a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a yellow Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly from a heap of rotten straw, on which he had been dozing, and made a fierce dash at Max's leg; but the latter gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent him off yelping, followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack damsel.
Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs for a full half mile; yet it was uneven,—not to say broken; and Max, who had made a careful reconnaissance, knew that if they could but reach unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods from the skirts of the hamlet, no eye from the ramparts could see them. Towards this, therefore, he walked, with an air of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart in his throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to excite suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow, they came upon a spring at the foot of a rock, where three women were pounding clothes on a stone with clubs, by way of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a broad felt hat, lay on the ground listlessly watching the process.
In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them; and, to Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eyeshot of the castle. Max, however, with the skill of an old deer stalker, soon managed to place, first, a large rock, then the rugged shoulder of a hill, between themselves and the detested battlements. Next they gained the partial shelter of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a ragged outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and underwood.
Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of idle strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight, than Max cried, "Come on!" and set out at a run. When he turned, however, and saw the pale face of Morton, already tired with unwonted effort, he took a flask of brandy from his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's sinews afresh. They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths and brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense and breathless as an American forest.
"Look!" said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and pointing back over the woods. Three miles off, the rock of Ehrenberg rose in view, bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements and towers. Morton gave it one look, prayed it might be the last, and motioned his companion forward again.
They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In the mud by its side was the slough where a wild boar had wallowed. The solitude and savageness of the place shot a fresh life through Morton's failing veins. The sense came upon him that his fate was now in his own hands; the resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max to stop.
"Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?"
Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to appropriate; and, keeping one of them, handed the other to Morton.
It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods, on a grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old beeches, oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the ground. Max made a fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of his flint-lock pistol, and placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a piece of cotton rag, rubbed with a little wet gunpowder. Morton roused himself, and breaking off small branches of the firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf which the jailer had brought for his next day's meal, with some more solid viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and, for drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring brook.
It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red light flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs, and knotty limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if time and space were done away; as if the prison were a dream; and as if, once more on some college ramble, he were seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests of America. But instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a Penobscot lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and long, waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged, like a Turk, on the pile of evergreens.
As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the boundless debt he owed him, his heart warmed towards him, and he poured forth his gratitude as well as he could, in the patchwork of languages which Max himself had used as his medium of communication.
The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With his companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the stars, and the dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening to the wind, and the mysterious sounds of the forest, and, as the night drew on, shivering with the damp and cold. His mind was a maze of confused emotions, suspense, and delight, hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos; till at last fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep haunted by hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and repose.
He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the half-dead embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But, as the fresh odors of the morning reached his senses, they brought so vividly upon him the memory of his youthful health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits rose almost to defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again on a well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.
About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned breed of the country, grazing very peacefully. Max looked about him, and began to move with caution. The cow was wild, and would not let them pass her, but walked before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great number of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two men watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen of this district, little better than banditti. One of them sat on a rock, the other lounged on the grass. Both were dressed in coarse linen shirts and trousers, short, heavy woollen cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a kind of rude sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served him for a walking stick.
Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived through the bushes, they suddenly appeared before the two men, much, as it seemed, to their amazement. Max, in a language quite new to his companion, desired them to change clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and air of the applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the breast pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more willingly as they would be great gainers by the bargain. Max threw off his uniform, and put on the dress of the taller herdsman. Morton satisfied himself with the woollen cloak of the other, in exchange for the jailer's coat.
The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the hatchet which he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling very sullenly. Max hastened to interpose, and offered a silver coin in return for the hatchet, which its owner at once surrendered. It was by no means any love of abstract justice which dictated this procedure; but a desire, on Max's part, to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended, they might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.
They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton betook themselves again to the woods.