yard was left empty. Robinson's curiosity had reached such a pitch that notwithstanding the risk he ran—for he knew the governor would send back to the yard the very first disengaged officer he met—he could not stay quiet. As the governor closed the gate he ran with all speed to the cell, he darted in, and then the thief saw what made the three honest men laugh so. He saw it, and started back with a cry of dismay, for the sight chilled the felon to the bone.
A lad about fifteen years of age was pinned against the wall in agony by a leathern belt passed round his shoulders and drawn violently round two staples in the wall. His arms were jammed against his sides by a straight waistcoat fastened with straps behind, and those straps drawn with the utmost severity. But this was not all. A high leathern collar a quarter of an inch thick squeezed his throat in its iron grasp. His hair and his clothes were drenched with water which had been thrown in bucketsful over him, and now dripped from him on the floor. His face was white, his lips livid, his eyes were nearly glazed, and his teeth chattered with cold and pain.
A more unprincipled man than Robinson did not exist; but burglary and larceny do not extinguish humanity in a thinking rascal as resigning the soul to system can extinguish it in a dull dog.
“Oh, what is this!” cried Robinson, “what are the villains doing to you?”
He received no answer; but the boy's eyes opened wide, and he turned those glazing eyes, the only part of his body he could turn, toward the speaker. Robinson ran up to him, and began to try and loosen him.
At this the boy cried out, almost screaming with terror, “Let me alone! let me alone! They'll give it me worse if you do, and they'll serve you out, too!”
“But you will die, boy. Look at his poor lips!”
“No, no, no! I shan't die! No such luck!” cried the boy impatiently and wildly. “Thank you for speaking kind to me. Who are you? tell me quick, and go. I am —— Josephs, No. 15, Corridor A.”
“I am Robinson, No. 19, Corridor B.”
“Good-bye, Robinson, I shan't forget you. Hark, the door! Go! go! go! go! go!”
Robinson was already gone. He had fled at the first click of a key in the outward door, and darted into his cell at the moment Fry got into the yard. An instinct of suspicion led this man straight to Robinson's hermitage. He found him hard at work. Fry scrutinized his countenance, but Robinson was too good an actor to betray himself; only when Fry passed on he drew a long breath. What he had seen surprised as well as alarmed him, for he had always been told the new system discouraged personal violence of all sorts; and in all his experience of the old jails he had never seen a prisoner abused so savagely as the young martyr in the adjoining cell. His own work done, he left for his own dormitory. He was uneasy, and his heart was heavy for poor Josephs; but he dared not even cast a look toward his place of torture, for the other executioners had returned, and Fry followed grim at his heels like a mastiff dogging a stranger out of the premises.
That evening Robinson spent in gloomy reflections and forebodings. “I wish I was in the hulks or anywhere out of this place,” said he. As for Josephs, the governor, after inspecting his torture for a few minutes, left the yard again with his subordinates, and Josephs was left alone with his great torture for two hours more; then Hodges came in and began to loose him, swearing at him all the time for a little rebellious monkey that gave more trouble than enough. The rebellious monkey made no answer, but crawled slowly away to his dungeon, shivering in his drenched clothes, stiff and sore, his bones full of pain, his heart full of despondency.
Robinson had now eight thousand turns of the crank per day, and very hard work he found it; but he preferred it to being buried alive all day in his cell; and warned by Josephs' fate, he went at the crank with all his soul, and never gave them an excuse for calling him “refractory.” It happened, however, one day, just after breakfast, that he was taken with a headache and shivering; and not getting better after chapel, but rather worse, he rang his bell and begged to see the surgeon. The surgeon ought to have been in the jail at this hour. He was not, though, and as he had been the day before, and was accustomed to neglect the prisoners for any one who paid better, he was not expected this day. Soon after Fry came to the cell and ordered Robinson out to the crank. Robinson told him he was too ill to work.
“I must have the surgeon's authority for that, before I listen to it,” replied Fry, amateur of routine.
“But he is not in the jail, or you would have it.”
“Then he ought to be.”
“Well, is it my fault he's shirking his duty? Send for him, and you'll see he will tell you I am not fit for the crank to-day; my head is splitting.”
“Come, no gammon, No. 19; it is the crank or the jacket, or else the black hole. So take which you like best.”
Robinson rose with a groan of pain and despondency.
“It is only eight thousand words you have got to say to it, and they are not many for such a tongue as yours.”
At the end of the time Fry came to the mouth of the labor-cell with a grim chuckle. “He will never have done his number this time.” He found Robinson kneeling on the ground, almost insensible, the crank-handle convulsively grasped in his hands. Fry's first glance was at this figure, that a painter might have taken for a picture of labor overtasked; but this was neither new nor interesting to Fry. He went eagerly to examine the meter of the crank—there lay his heart, such as it was—and to his sorrow he found that No. 19 had done his work before he broke down. What it cost the poor fever-stricken wretch to do it can easier be imagined than described.
They assisted Robinson to his cell, and that night he was in a burning fever. The next day the surgeon happened by some accident to be at his post, and prescribed change of diet and medicines for him. “He would be better in the infirmary.”
“Why?” said the governor.
“More air.”
“Nonsense, there is plenty of air here. There is a constant stream of air comes in through this,” and he pointed to a revolving cylinder in the window constructed for that purpose. “You give him the right stuff, doctor,” said Hawes jocosely, “and he won't slip his wind this time.”
The surgeon acquiesced according to custom.
It was not for him to contradict Hawes, who allowed him to attend the jail or neglect it, according to his convenience, i. e., to come three or four times a week at different hours, instead of twice every day at fixed hours.
It was two days after this that the governor saw Hodges come out of a cell laughing.
“What are ye grinning at?” said he, in his amiable way.
“No. 19 is light-headed, sir, and I have been listening to him. It would make a cat laugh,” said Hodges apologetically. He knew well enough the governor did not approve of laughing in the jail.
The governor said nothing, but made a motion with his hand, and Hodges opened cell 19 and they both went in.
No. 19 lay on his back flushed and restless with his eyes fixed on vacancy. He was talking incessantly and without sequence. I should fail signally were I to attempt to transfer his words to paper. I feel my weakness and the strength of others who in my day have shown a singular power of fixing on paper the volatile particles of frenzy; however, in a word, the poor thief was talking as our poetasters write, and amid his gunpowder, daffodils, bosh and other constellations there mingled gleams of sense and
