Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (306 page)

‘Now, gentlemen,’ said I, ‘if the rope is ready, here is the criminal!’

The tunnel was cleared, the stake driven, the rope extended.  As I moved forward to the place, many of my comrades caught me by the hand and wrung it, an attention I could well have done without.

‘Keep an eye on Clausel!’ I whispered to Laclas; and with that, got down on my elbows and knees took the rope in both hands, and worked myself, feet foremost, through the tunnel.  When the earth failed under my feet, I thought my heart would have stopped; and a moment after I was demeaning myself in mid-air like a drunken jumping-jack.  I have never been a model of piety, but at this juncture prayers and a cold sweat burst from me simultaneously.

The line was knotted at intervals of eighteen inches; and to the inexpert it may seem as if it should have been even easy to descend.  The trouble was, this devil of a piece of rope appeared to be inspired, not with life alone, but with a personal malignity against myself.  It turned to the one side, paused for a moment, and then spun me like a toasting-jack to the other; slipped like an eel from the clasp of my feet; kept me all the time in the most outrageous fury of exertion; and dashed me at intervals against the face of the rock.  I had no eyes to see with; and I doubt if there was anything to see but darkness.  I must occasionally have caught a gasp of breath, but it was quite unconscious.  And the whole forces of my mind were so consumed with losing hold and getting it again, that I could scarce have told whether I was going up or coming down.

Of a sudden I knocked against the cliff with such a thump as almost bereft me of my sense; and, as reason twinkled back, I was amazed to find that I was in a state of rest, that the face of the precipice here inclined outwards at an angle which relieved me almost wholly of the burthen of my own weight, and that one of my feet was safely planted on a ledge.  I drew one of the sweetest breaths in my experience, hugged myself against the rope, and closed my eyes in a kind of ecstasy of relief.  It occurred to me next to see how far I was advanced on my unlucky journey, a point on which I had not a shadow of a guess.  I looked up: there was nothing above me but the blackness of the night and the fog.  I craned timidly forward and looked down.  There, upon a floor of darkness, I beheld a certain pattern of hazy lights, some of them aligned as in thoroughfares, others standing apart as in solitary houses; and before I could well realise it, or had in the least estimated my distance, a wave of nausea and vertigo warned me to lie back and close my eyes.  In this situation I had really but the one wish, and that was: something else to think of!  Strange to say, I got it: a veil was torn from my mind, and I saw what a fool I was — what fools we had all been — and that I had no business to be thus dangling between earth and heaven by my arms.  The only thing to have done was to have attached me to a rope and lowered me, and I had never the wit to see it till that moment!

I filled my lungs, got a good hold on my rope, and once more launched myself on the descent.  As it chanced, the worst of the danger was at an end, and I was so fortunate as to be never again exposed to any violent concussion.  Soon after I must have passed within a little distance of a bush of wallflower, for the scent of it came over me with that impression of reality which characterises scents in darkness.  This made me a second landmark, the ledge being my first.  I began accordingly to compute intervals of time: so much to the ledge, so much again to the wallflower, so much more below.  If I were not at the bottom of the rock, I calculated I must be near indeed to the end of the rope, and there was no doubt that I was not far from the end of my own resources.  I began to be light-headed and to be tempted to let go, — now arguing that I was certainly arrived within a few feet of the level and could safely risk a fall, anon persuaded I was still close at the top and it was idle to continue longer on the rock.  In the midst of which I came to a bearing on plain ground, and had nearly wept aloud.  My hands were as good as flayed, my courage entirely exhausted, and, what with the long strain and the sudden relief, my limbs shook under me with more than the violence of ague, and I was glad to cling to the rope.

But this was no time to give way.  I had (by God’s single mercy) got myself alive out of that fortress; and now I had to try to get the others, my comrades.  There was about a fathom of rope to spare; I got it by the end, and searched the whole ground thoroughly for anything to make it fast to.  In vain: the ground was broken and stony, but there grew not there so much as a bush of furze.

‘Now then,’ thought I to myself, ‘here begins a new lesson, and I believe it will prove richer than the first.  I am not strong enough to keep this rope extended.  If I do not keep it extended the next man will be dashed against the precipice.  There is no reason why he should have my extravagant good luck.  I see no reason why he should not fall — nor any place for him to fall on but my head.’

From where I was now standing there was occasionally visible, as the fog lightened, a lamp in one of the barrack windows, which gave me a measure of the height he had to fall and the horrid force that he must strike me with.  What was yet worse, we had agreed to do without signals: every so many minutes by Laclas’ watch another man was to be started from the battlements.  Now, I had seemed to myself to be about half an hour in my descent, and it seemed near as long again that I waited, straining on the rope for my next comrade to begin.  I began to be afraid that our conspiracy was out, that my friends were all secured, and that I should pass the remainder of the night, and be discovered in the morning, vainly clinging to the rope’s end like a hooked fish upon an angle.  I could not refrain, at this ridiculous image, from a chuckle of laughter.  And the next moment I knew, by the jerking of the rope, that my friend had crawled out of the tunnel and was fairly launched on his descent.  It appears it was the sailor who had insisted on succeeding me: as soon as my continued silence had assured him the rope was long enough, Gautier, for that was his name, had forgot his former arguments, and shown himself so extremely forward, that Laclas had given way.  It was like the fellow, who had no harm in him beyond an instinctive selfishness.  But he was like to have paid pretty dearly for the privilege.  Do as I would, I could not keep the rope as I could have wished it; and he ended at last by falling on me from a height of several yards, so that we both rolled together on the ground.  As soon as he could breathe he cursed me beyond belief, wept over his finger, which he had broken, and cursed me again.  I bade him be still and think shame of himself to be so great a cry-baby.  Did he not hear the round going by above? I asked; and who could tell but what the noise of his fall was already remarked, and the sentinels at the very moment leaning upon the battlements to listen?

The round, however, went by, and nothing was discovered; the third man came to the ground quite easily; the fourth was, of course, child’s play; and before there were ten of us collected, it seemed to me that, without the least injustice to my comrades, I might proceed to take care of myself.

I knew their plan: they had a map and an almanack, and designed for Grangemouth, where they were to steal a ship.  Suppose them to do so, I had no idea they were qualified to manage it after it was stolen.  Their whole escape, indeed, was the most haphazard thing imaginable; only the impatience of captives and the ignorance of private soldiers would have entertained so misbegotten a device; and though I played the good comrade and worked with them upon the tunnel, but for the lawyer’s message I should have let them go without me.  Well, now they were beyond my help, as they had always been beyond my counselling; and, without word said or leave taken, I stole out of the little crowd.  It is true I would rather have waited to shake hands with Laclas, but in the last man who had descended I thought I recognised Clausel, and since the scene in the shed my distrust of Clausel was perfect.  I believed the man to be capable of any infamy, and events have since shown that I was right.

CHAPTER VII — SWANSTON COTTAGE

I had two views.  The first was, naturally, to get clear of Edinburgh Castle and the town, to say nothing of my fellow-prisoners; the second to work to the southward so long as it was night, and be near Swanston Cottage by morning.  What I should do there and then, I had no guess, and did not greatly care, being a devotee of a couple of divinities called Chance and Circumstance.  Prepare, if possible; where it is impossible, work straight forward, and keep your eyes open and your tongue oiled.  Wit and a good exterior — there is all life in a nutshell.

I had at first a rather chequered journey: got involved in gardens, butted into houses, and had even once the misfortune to awake a sleeping family, the father of which, as I suppose, menaced me from the window with a blunderbuss.  Altogether, though I had been some time gone from my companions, I was still at no great distance, when a miserable accident put a period to the escape.  Of a sudden the night was divided by a scream.  This was followed by the sound of something falling, and that again by the report of a musket from the Castle battlements.  It was strange to hear the alarm spread through the city.  In the fortress drums were beat and a bell rung backward.  On all hands the watchmen sprang their rattles.  Even in that limbo or no-man’s-land where I was wandering, lights were made in the houses; sashes were flung up; I could hear neighbouring families converse from window to window, and at length I was challenged myself.

‘Wha’s that?’ cried a big voice.

I could see it proceeded from a big man in a big nightcap, leaning from a one-pair window; and as I was not yet abreast of his house, I judged it was more wise to answer.  This was not the first time I had had to stake my fortunes on the goodness of my accent in a foreign tongue; and I have always found the moment inspiriting, as a gambler should.  Pulling around me a sort of great-coat I had made of my blanket, to cover my sulphur-coloured livery, — ’A friend!’ said I.

‘What like’s all this collieshangie?’ said he.

I had never heard of a collieshangie in my days, but with the racket all about us in the city, I could have no doubt as to the man’s meaning.

‘I do not know, sir, really,’ said I; ‘but I suppose some of the prisoners will have escaped.’

‘Bedamned!’ says he.

‘Oh, sir, they will be soon taken,’ I replied: ‘it has been found in time.  Good morning, sir!’

‘Ye walk late, sir?’ he added.

‘Oh, surely not,’ said I, with a laugh.  ‘Earlyish, if you like!’ which brought me finally beyond him, highly pleased with my success.

I was now come forth on a good thoroughfare, which led (as well as I could judge) in my direction.  It brought me almost immediately through a piece of street, whence I could hear close by the springing of a watchman’s rattle, and where I suppose a sixth part of the windows would be open, and the people, in all sorts of night gear, talking with a kind of tragic gusto from one to another.  Here, again, I must run the gauntlet of a half-dozen questions, the rattle all the while sounding nearer; but as I was not walking inordinately quick, as I spoke like a gentleman, and the lamps were too dim to show my dress, I carried it off once more.  One person, indeed, inquired where I was off to at that hour.

I replied vaguely and cheerfully, and as I escaped at one end of this dangerous pass I could see the watchman’s lantern entering by the other.  I was now safe on a dark country highway, out of sight of lights and out of the fear of watchmen.  And yet I had not gone above a hundred yards before a fellow made an ugly rush at me from the roadside.  I avoided him with a leap, and stood on guard, cursing my empty hands, wondering whether I had to do with an officer or a mere footpad, and scarce knowing which to wish.  My assailant stood a little; in the thick darkness I could see him bob and sidle as though he were feinting at me for an advantageous onfall.  Then he spoke.

‘My goo’ frien’,’ says he, and at the first word I pricked my ears, ‘my goo’ frien’, will you oblishe me with lil neshary infamation?  Whish roa’ t’ Cramond?’

I laughed out clear and loud, stepped up to the convivialist, took him by the shoulders and faced him about.  ‘My good friend,’ said I, ‘I believe I know what is best for you much better than yourself, and may God forgive you the fright you have given me!  There, get you gone to Edinburgh!’  And I gave a shove, which he obeyed with the passive agility of a ball, and disappeared incontinently in the darkness down the road by which I had myself come.

Once clear of this foolish fellow, I went on again up a gradual hill, descended on the other side through the houses of a country village, and came at last to the bottom of the main ascent leading to the Pentlands and my destination.  I was some way up when the fog began to lighten; a little farther, and I stepped by degrees into a clear starry night, and saw in front of me, and quite distinct, the summits of the Pentlands, and behind, the valley of the Forth and the city of my late captivity buried under a lake of vapour.  I had but one encounter — that of a farm-cart, which I heard, from a great way ahead of me, creaking nearer in the night, and which passed me about the point of dawn like a thing seen in a dream, with two silent figures in the inside nodding to the horse’s steps.  I presume they were asleep; by the shawl about her head and shoulders, one of them should be a woman.  Soon, by concurrent steps, the day began to break and the fog to subside and roll away.  The east grew luminous and was barred with chilly colours, and the Castle on its rock, and the spires and chimneys of the upper town, took gradual shape, and arose, like islands, out of the receding cloud.  All about me was still and sylvan; the road mounting and winding, with nowhere a sign of any passenger, the birds chirping, I suppose for warmth, the boughs of the trees knocking together, and the red leaves falling in the wind.

It was broad day, but still bitter cold and the sun not up, when I came in view of my destination.  A single gable and chimney of the cottage peeped over the shoulder of the hill; not far off, and a trifle higher on the mountain, a tall old white-washed farmhouse stood among the trees, beside a falling brook; beyond were rough hills of pasture.  I bethought me that shepherd folk were early risers, and if I were once seen skulking in that neighbourhood it might prove the ruin of my prospects; took advantage of a line of hedge, and worked myself up in its shadow till I was come under the garden wall of my friends’ house.  The cottage was a little quaint place of many rough-cast gables and grey roofs.  It had something the air of a rambling infinitesimal cathedral, the body of it rising in the midst two storeys high, with a steep-pitched roof, and sending out upon all hands (as it were chapter-houses, chapels, and transepts) one-storeyed and dwarfish projections.  To add to this appearance, it was grotesquely decorated with crockets and gargoyles, ravished from some medieval church.  The place seemed hidden away, being not only concealed in the trees of the garden, but, on the side on which I approached it, buried as high as the eaves by the rising of the ground.  About the walls of the garden there went a line of well-grown elms and beeches, the first entirely bare, the last still pretty well covered with red leaves, and the centre was occupied with a thicket of laurel and holly, in which I could see arches cut and paths winding.