Chapter XII: The Stolen Money 124 (2)

“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 whole lots 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, leading out 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 a glow 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 was sure 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.

VII

ONE PLAN THAT FAILED

Early hours were the rule of the dormitory, but general conversation could not begin at once on getting up. Jim did not feel like speaking to anybody. His first strong impression was that any officer who looked him in the face might see there that something was going on. His next, as he met his confederates, one by one, was that he could see by their faces that they were trying to keep a secret.

After that, he was little surprised to find himself making the same remark concerning some of the smaller boys. He thought no more about that, for they were very apt to get into scrapes, but they did indeed have something on their minds, every inch as heavy, for them, as was the load he carried himself.

He had already learned over again one thing that he had known before. This was that all his hopes and plans must wait awhile. He would have to go along and let things turn up, one after another. Nobody can ever tell what is coming next or how their plans will unexpectedly run into those of other people.

Mrs. Nelson and Rodney, for instance, could hardly say that they had any plans, beyond hoping to sell one of their town lots for enough to pay the taxes and assessments on the rest; and having a door put in; and having a garden. She could not afford to keep Rodney any longer at school. He was old enough to earn something, and, besides, what if she should get sick or be out of work?

“I’ve got to do something,” he said, as he was carrying a chair upstairs. “Millie Kirby can set type. I wish I could. But she learned how in her father’s shop.”

She was a stirring kind of girl, anyhow, and he was a little afraid of her, but when he came downstairs again, she was in the back doorway, calling out:

“Rodney! Rodney!--You must come over to our house, right away! Billy’s down in our cellar and we can’t get him out. He’s drank up all the milk and he’s eaten all the vegetables. He tried to butt me and mother, too.”

“How did he get there!” exclaimed Rodney, setting out at once. “The old rascal!”

“The cellar was shut up, all night,” she said, “and the things were put into it to keep them safe, and when we went down, this morning, there was Billy, ready to fight us.”

“He’s the worst old goat!” said Rodney, “and he doesn’t belong to me, anyhow.”

He went in a hurry, however, and in a few minutes he began to understand the matter. The cellar stairs went down from a door opening into the hall.

“That was open when you and I went through, yesterday,” said Rodney to Millie. “He just followed us. Why, it’s through this hall he gets out into the street, sometimes. He watches till the door’s open. I guess he got into my room through that front window.”

That was not all, if Rodney had but known the working of the mind of a goat. Having once gone downstairs successfully, in his own house, the next time he saw stairs before him, they seemed to promise to let him out into liberty, and so he was now down in the Kirby cellar, a very much bewildered goat. His plans had all gone wrong and he was glad to have his own best friend take him by the horns and lead him upstairs again.

“There he goes!” shouted Millie, but Rodney was just then listening ruefully to Mrs. Kirby’s energetic account of all the robbery and other mischief Billy had accomplished in her cellar.

He was glad enough to get away homeward and carry an account of Billy’s transactions to Pat the carpenter, up on the new avenue.

“The baste!” exclaimed Patrick. “But thim will climb anywhere.--Luk at that? It’s a big hole for wan dure but it’s the good job I’m makin.”

“I can paint it,” said Rod. “I guess I can paint all the side of the house. ’Twon’t take much, all that’s above the street.--Then if I could get the garden ploughed----”

“Why not?” exclaimed Pat. “Sure, I know a man wid a small horse and a plough of his own. If Billy can come through Kirby’s hall, why can’t a pony? I’ll see to that same.”

It was a ray of hope for Rod, although he doubted if Mrs. Kirby would let a horse of any kind go through her house. He said he would see her about it, but what he really meant was that he would speak to Millie.

That was a long day to quite a number of people. Nowhere, however, was there more of it than among some of the boys who spent part of its afternoon in a long, hard drill on the House of Refuge parade-ground.

Most of them marched pretty well, but there were several middle-sized boys, in the third company from the front, who had to be spoken to, several times, for the way they missed step.

Jim was not near enough to them, when the line halted before the wall and faced about, to notice how they craned their heads around and stared at it. What could they have been thinking about, in or on that gray, stony face?

Jim himself had thought of it and had studied it, and it seemed to him to be all the while coming between him and the island wharf. Still, he paid particular attention to his orders and his marching, just as he had, in the earlier part of the day, to his type-setting tasks.

The close of the day came, at last, in a dim, foggy kind of dusk that promised darkness much earlier than usual. The parade-ground, and all the rest of the wide enclosure, outside of the buildings, seemed to be deserted. Inside of the buildings, however, there suddenly arose a kind of buzz, that quickly amounted to something like an excitement. A rumor whispered its way around among the boys that three of their number were missing and could not be found.

They did not know that the first difficulty which troubled their officers, just then, was that there was not a sufficient number of themselves for indoor duty and, at the same time, to spare searchers for stray boys over so large a space and in so many places. Nearly a score of the older and more trustworthy boys were therefore picked out as helpers, and they were quickly scurrying hither and thither, in all directions. Jim felt especially gratified that the Assistant Superintendent, a handsome young naval officer whom he could not help liking, chose him for one of the hunters. He knew that neither of the fellows were missing whom he intended as the crew of his boat, and he went out into the dim, gloomy parade-ground with a perfect fever of curiosity to discover what any other fellows were up to.

“They can’t get away,” he said to his blue uniformed friend, “but what can they be trying to do?”

“We’ll see,” said the officer, “but we can’t find a trace of them.”

It was indeed a pretty long time before they did so. Every nook and cranny of the shops and other buildings and of all the walled-in ground had been gone over and it was, fast getting into the shape of a mystery.

Jim was carrying a lantern, but the officer held in his hand a different kind of light, a reflector, a “bull’s-eye,” that would throw a stream of light ahead like a small locomotive headlight. He was busily throwing it in all directions and just now, as if by mere accident, he sent it up to the roof of the large building next to the engine building. It was not so very high, but was much higher than the latter and it had several chimneys, coming out just above its eaves.

“Hullo!” exclaimed Jim.

“There they are!” said the officer, almost laughing; and then he shouted, commandingly:

“Come down, boys! We’ll put up a ladder.”

They had not gone up there by a ladder, but, with wonderful pluck and agility, by way of the water-pipe at one end of the building. They had then intended to have remained hidden, each behind a chimney, until all should be quiet within the enclosure.

After that they would have had to come down into the parade-ground again and hunt for some means of scaling the wall. As for anything beyond that, when they came down and were questioned, it seemed that all their small plot went no further. They did not know what they meant to do after getting over the wall.

“They might have known they’d be missed, right away,” thought Jim. “Glad they didn’t fall and break their necks. Best thing for ’em that they got caught. But I’ve learned one thing. That high building has water pipes on this side but the engine building hasn’t any. It’s a low building, too. I wish there was some way for getting on the roof of it and down the other side, but there isn’t any.”

So there his own plan broke down again, just as had the thoughtless undertaking of smaller boys. Nevertheless, an hour or so after they were all safely locked up in the dormitory, he was out of his own cell and in four others, one after another, telling his friends he believed he had discovered a pathway which might lead them all to the wharf on the bank of the river.

VIII

NEW IDEAS THAT CAME

It is not always pleasant to have to wait, but there are a great many things to be learned, sometimes, while one is waiting.

Jim was now studying the House of Refuge, all over, all the while, and at first even the officers seemed like a part of the barrier he would have to break through in order to get out. Then, as he thought of them, he found himself wishing he could tell them he was not intending to run away from them, not at all, but only from the idea of being shut up. He longed for freedom. The House had been a sort of home, for a long time, but he wanted to escape from its unchanging routine of work and school and drill, and firm, though kindly discipline. No such thing was known there as corporal punishment, but all the rules were rigidly enforced, and Jim wanted to get away from them. Most of all, however, he wanted to escape from the sting and shame of being in prison, and from the injustice of being there for something he did not do. More than once he half wished he could explain himself to one of the Managers, a gentleman who used to come and sit down with the boys and talk with them. They told that man everything, somehow, as if he were an older brother.

Not only Jim but his confederates grew a little feverish, as the days went by. They even ran risks of discovery, for night after night they were out in the corridor, minutes at a time, trying the lock of the great door and peering furtively into the passage-way beyond to see what the watchman was doing. Jim knew more, now, about the tug and the wharf, and he had had opportunities for examining both sides of the engine house.

“It’s too high to climb,” he said, “unless we can get something to climb with. They never leave out a ladder, anywhere. It’s nothing but walls, walls, walls!”

He could not solve that problem, yet, but one of Rodney Nelson’s had been solved for him. Mrs. Kirby had permitted Pat’s friend to take his pony and plow through her hall, and the garden had been thoroughly ploughed and harrowed. Rodney was having plenty of work, therefore, although he would rather have been learning a trade. Most of the ground was to be planted in potatoes, but Millie Kirby told Rodney that if it were hers she would make every inch of it grow something.

She was over there, at the house, one evening, just after supper and they were all out on the sidewalk, looking at the new door. Billy the goat was standing with his forefeet on the edge of the wall, near them, looking down as if he were anxious to see his new vegetables begin to come up in that garden.

“Mrs. Nelson,” came from behind them, “I want to spake to ye about another job.”

“Pat,” she said, “but what a big door!”

“Isn’t it fine, ma’am?” replied Pat. “Now he’s painted it green, with red siding, and all the rest of the hoose white. It’s the good painter he is, for a b’ye----”

“But the doors big enough for the biggest kind of house----” began Millie.

“That’s it,” said Pat. “It kem out of an owld grocery-sthore front. It’s a sthore dure and not a hoose dure at all. What yez want, Mrs. Nelson, is to put a sthore behind that dure. The front room there is for that. Sure, the big, bay windy is there to show things in. Ye could sell all that comes from the garden, and hooks and eyes, and tay and coffee and sugar, and mebbe onything.”

“That’s it, mother,” shouted Rodney, but Pat had more to say and he went on:

“What yez want, now, is a counter and some shelvin’, and a whole lot of thim was thrown away from a place I know of, yisther-day. It’ll all go in, there, aisy, and the b’ye could paint it----”

“Fetch it right along,” said Rodney, and his mother repeated it.

“Fetch it along,” she said. “Why, we could keep a thread-needle store, and no rent to pay.”

“I’ll come and ’tend counter, too,” said Millie: “while you’re out and Rodney’s at work in the garden. Besides, he could carry newspapers----”

“I must go, now,” interrupted Pat, “but I’ll do that, at wanst, and by-and-bye yez can take out the middle partition, and have the whole flure in wan, and there’s your big sthore.”

He was off, leaving them to consider the matter, but the next remark was from Billy and it had a doubtful sound.

“Ba-a-ah-eh-beh!” he remarked.

The making of the new avenue and the laying of its neat, stone sidewalk, went rapidly on. It was already a thoroughfare, with wagons and foot passengers using it all the while. Only a few days later, Pat and Rodney spent an evening putting in the shelves and the counters. They would look shabby enough until they were painted, but there was a kind of promise in them.

“It’s the fine sthore ye’ll have,” said Pat, “and no trouble with ony landlord. Many’s the sthore’d do well, if it wasn’t for havin’ rint to pay.”

“It’ll be long before it pays us anything, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Nelson. “We mustn’t wait till Rodney can gather potatoes from that garden, though. I must see about getting something else.”

“I’m going to do that, myself,” remarked Rodney.

The bright, spring days were doing all they could for the gardens in the city and everywhere else, and there came one very bright day to Randall’s Island. The very water of the East River, on either side of the island, seemed to dance in the sunlight, and the mad rush of the tide through Little Hellgate channel, between that and Ward’s Island, northerly, was all one glitter. The great city of New York, over on Manhattan Island, was looking its very best, but the boys in the House of Refuge parade-ground could not see it. They could see nothing outside of their stone walled enclosure, but one boy saw something inside of it, just after the battalion broke ranks, which made him stand still and almost turn pale. The drums had ceased their beating, but his heart took up the business and went on, beating hard, for a full minute. He looked, he looked again, he stared earnestly at the roof of the engine house, and he exclaimed, aloud:

“That’s it!--That’ll do!”

Then he stooped and picked up a clutter of rope that lay upon the ground and threw it into a large, empty box, like a dry goods case, which stood near the corner of the base ball ground.

“I guess they won’t take it in,” he said, “and if they don’t, it’ll be there. I won’t say anything to the boys, yet.”

Precisely what he meant, he did not explain, but there was a flush on his face and a bright light in his eyes, all supper time.

Everything went on as usual, and in due season the long column of gray uniformed youngsters, larger and smaller, tramped into the dormitory and they were toled off to their sleeping cages. Not one was missing, for those who were still detained outside, on various duties, were all considered accounted for.

Jim was not one of these, and all he seemed to have to do was to get into bed and go to sleep. He got into his bed, indeed, in the most orderly way, but he did not go to sleep. No boy could do more than shut his eyes, by main force, when all the rest of him was in such a tingle.

Jim had a curious sensation of feeling very brave, himself, but of not being exactly sure of the pluck and steadiness of his comrades that were to be. His next idea was that he had enough and to spare for the whole party and that he could and would see them through.

He was their captain and the whole responsibility of success or failure rested upon him. It grew heavier, too, during three long hours that he deemed it well to wait, before he arranged his bed-battering ram and began to try his heels upon the springing steel rods of his grating.

The door seemed to open harder than usual, and he was afraid he was making a noise that would be heard by the wrong persons, but at that moment the lock-bolt clicked.

“It’s open!” he said to himself. “Now for the big door, before I stir ’em up. I must see how things are.”

O, how carefully he fingered the lock of that strong, wooden portal!

“They only turned it once!” he said. “It’s a slipping!”

It slipped silently back and he turned the knob and pulled. Then, as he peered furtively out, he drew a very long breath and wheeled around and darted along the corridor.

He opened one of the doors, but just behind it stood a boy, fully dressed, with a pair of shoes in one hand.

“How is it, Jim?”

“Murphy’s asleep! Come!”

Another door was visited and another boy stepped forth to hear the same news, with the order:

“Follow Joe! Wait at the door.”

Two more cages let out their actually trembling boys, and now all five of them stood in line at the main doorway.

Jim looked out and turned and raised his hand. In a moment more, that door was shut behind them and four of them had made their silent, stocking-footed way, to another, similar barrier, at the end of the hall. Their captain was leaning over the slumbering watchman, for in his relaxed hand, almost let go of, was a bunch of keys, and to take them away without waking him was a delicate piece of work. It was more than that, for Jim felt that it was something very like stealing. He would not have had one of the Managers see him do it for the world. He felt mean, even after he got the keys, but he seemed to get over it while he was opening the outer door with one of them. Then the hardest thing to do was to carry back the Whole bunch and put it silently down by the watchman, so that he need not miss them.

Jim did it, and he felt less like a thief after giving back those keys, but in a half minute more he and his friends were out on the parade-ground, clustering close to the shadowy wall of the engine house. They had accomplished a great deal, but they had not yet escaped, by any means.

IX

GETTING OVER THE WALL

There were lights, here and there, in some of the windows of the House of Refuge buildings and there were others, like street-lamps, outside, but all was silence.

The boys themselves had hardly dared to whisper, but now one of them asked:

“Jim, how are we to climb the wall?”

“We won’t climb it,” said Jim. “See! right here! Three empty boxes and a board! We are going over the roof.”

“But we can’t get down on the other side,” whispered another boy.

“Yes, we can,” replied Jim triumphantly, as he held up a coil of small rope that he pulled out of a box. “Wait and see. Let’s pile up these things.”

It was easy work for five strong, active boys, to put those boxes one on top of another, but even then the board only reached from the topmost box to a little above the eaves of the building.

“Now, boys,” said Jim, “soon as I’m up, throw me the end of the rope.”

Not many young fellows could have gone up that board as he did, or, afterward, up the steep, slippery slates of the roof, with a coil of rope in one hand. It was first-rate gymnastics, with a chance for a slide and a heavy fall, but Jim reached the ridge, just as one of his followers came up over the eaves, after making several small failures to climb the board.

“Now for the rope,” said Jim, as he passed it around a chimney that came up through the ridge, tied it at the ends and threw the loop down toward the head of the board. He could hold it steady and it was all they needed. Very quickly, all five were perched in a row, like blackbirds on a fence.

“What’s next?” they asked.

“Glad we all had so much practice on the training ship,” replied Jim. “It takes a sailor to go down by a rope. This one’s long enough to hang down, double, almost to the ground. It won’t be much of a drop, then. I’ll go first. Hold hard! Steady, now!”

Even yet, he had not told them the whole of his plan, but they were learning to trust him and they were eager enough to do just as he said.

On the whole, they had at least learned soldierly obedience and good discipline in the school they were escaping from.

Down went Jim, hand over hand, to the eaves on the outer side of the engine house, and then he disappeared. They had hardly been able to see him, anyhow, and now they waited, half shivering, till a warning tug at the rope told them he had safely reached the ground. He had really found little difficulty in doing that and the hardest share really fell upon the last boy of all, for it seemed to him as if the other four had taken all night for it.

“Wait, now,” said Jim, as he untied the ends of the rope.

“Leave it,” said one of the boys. “We don’t want it any more.”

“I’ll show you,” said Jim, as he drew down the full length of the untied rope, coiled it and made a hank of it. “If they find it on the other side, they won’t know how we got down.”

He threw it with all his might; it cleared the roof-ridge and down it slid into the parade-ground to keep its own secret.

“What are we going to do, now, Jim?”

“Come on!” he said. “Follow me!--The lifeboat on the tug!”

“I just want to yell!” exclaimed the boy he had called Joe. “We’re going to beat ’em, this time.”

“Glad it’s so dark,” said Jim. “Don’t you make a sound! Step carefully!”

Like so many young panthers, prowling in the woods, they went forward, a step at a time, single file, until they had cleared the corner of the main building and were in the broad, well kept grounds between that and the East River. Jim himself wanted to shout when he saw the water and, far beyond it, the glimmering midnight lamps of the city.

There, only a short distance from them, now, was the wharf at which the tug was moored and over the wooden-railed walk leading down to it was a bright gaslight burning.

“Down!” said Jim. “We must creep, now. Not on all fours.--Creep!”

So they did, and a watchman who was patrolling the entire front of the House did not catch a glimpse of them. Head foremost, they followed their leader, down the wooden-railed companion way to the wharf.

“There might have been a man on guard here,” said Jim, “but there isn’t.”

There was a light in the cabin of the tug and another in the engine room, but no living being was to be seen as they scurried up the bit of ladder that took them to the upper deck, the roof, of the tug, where the lifeboat lay.

“Quick, boys!” said Jim. “Over with her! There isn’t a minute to spare!--Don’t you see? There’s a stir in the House! We are missed, already!”

The lifeboat’s fastenings were good, but they were arranged for her easy launching. She was loose in a moment. Then there was a shove, a grating sound, a splash in the water,--but Jim’s exulting:

“Now, boys! Down we go! She’ll float. All we’ve got to do is to bail her out--” was followed by a loud shout from the front door of the main building and through all its corridors there were hurrying feet and rapidly given orders, for the officers had found five sleeping cells wide open and not a boy in one of them.

About the last place in the world where anyone would look for a missing boy, at about two o’clock in the morning, would be in a lifeboat on the outer side of a steam tug in the East River.

The startled officers of the House of Refuge were not at first thinking of the river, but of things inside of their high, strong walls, which no boy could climb over or get through.

Jim and his friends in the little lifeboat were baling her out rapidly. Of course, it had filled on plunging in, but very quickly enough was out for another boy to clamber down and help without sinking her gunwale under. Then they all came down, and they seemed to be one shiver of mingled fear, excitement and exultation. In a minute more, the oars were out, and, just as two or three men with lanterns came hurrying down toward the wharf, Jim exclaimed, under his breath:

“Pull, boys!--I’ll steer out into the dark. We’ll go with the tide. They’ll come after us with the tug. It’s going to be a race!”

Four boys at the oars and one to steer made a fair crew for so small a boat. She was swift, too, and so was the tide that swept her onward, but her pursuers knew, now, that she was gone and steam was already up on the tug. Only a minute or so more was wasted by them in waiting for the engineer, and another minute in casting loose, but every second of those minutes was made the most of by the runaways.

“There goes her whistle!” exclaimed one of the rowers. “She’s after us----”

“She can go faster than we can.”

“We’ve a good start.”

“No talking, boys,” said Jim. “Our chance is good, yet,--Hullo!”

Not far ahead of him, as he sat in the stern of the boat, he could see the lights on a great Sound steamer, as she came puffing along against the tide, but it struck him that she had made her appearance, suddenly, as if she had been hidden.

“Hurrah!” he shouted. “That saves us!”

“What is it, Jim?”

“Anything happened to the tug?”

“What’s coming?”

“Coming?” said Jim. “Why, we are pulling right into the thickest fog you ever saw. It’ll cover us up so they can’t follow us. It isn’t the tug I’m afraid of, now.”

“What then, Jim?”

“It’s the telegraph!” said Jim. “Our getting out’ll be known at every police station in the city, inside of five minutes. We must get ashore as quick as we can.”

“It’s an awful swift tide,” said Joe. “Why don’t you run right ashore?”

“You can’t tell where you’re going, in this fog,” said Jim, anxiously, for it seemed to him that they had gone more than far enough to have crossed the East River at that narrow place, even in a slanting direction. So they had, and all the while they had heard the steam whistles of all sorts of steamers answering each other through the fog. On, on, they went, the four rowers pulling desperately, until Jim asked, hoarsely, as he looked at something just beyond them:

“Boys!--What’s this?--I don’t know much about New York----”

He was from the country, but three of them were city boys and it was one of these who now responded:

“Hush, Jim! If you haven’t steered right into the Harlem River! That’s the Third Avenue swing-bridge. Go right under it. ’Twasn’t far to come, either.”

Right over their heads, now, for a moment, was the vast shadow of the bridge, and then, as they shot swiftly out beyond it, Joe whispered:

“North shore, Jim. We can get right in among the lumber yards. Best kind of hiding place.--We’re safe!”

It was but a minute, after that, before all five of them were standing on a wharf, looking back at the lifeboat, as she disappeared in the fog, for Jim had shoved her off and the tide had caught her.

“I don’t care where it carries her,” he said. “When they find her, she can’t tell them where she left us.”

X

A NEW HOUSE OF REFUGE

Jim had a very clear idea that the city of New York, with its thousands of sharp-eyed policemen, was no place for him. His four friends, however, were better acquainted with it and they now proposed to work their way down town before daylight, to hiding places they said they knew of. They urged him to come with them but he responded:

“Too many of us together, all in House of Refuge grey jackets. We’d better scatter. I’m for the country!”

Then it was “Good-bye, Jim!” all around, and “O! If you haven’t done it!”--“You’re the best kind of fellow!”--“Hope we’ll see you again, some day.”

“Not in the House of Refuge,” said Jim. “I won’t let them catch me. Now you’re out, keep out, but I tell you what, boys, we haven’t anything to say against any of those officers.”

So they all said, and they were off, working their stealthy way along among the huge piles of lumber. How the rest got out of the lumber yard, Jim never knew, but he found a gap in its high, picket fence, squeezed through it, and found himself in an open street. It was pretty well lighted, except for the fog, and Jim saw something, at once, that made him shiver, a little.

“Just what I was afraid of!” he said. “I must wait till he moves on. He might pick me up, any way, for being here at this time o’ night.”

He did not know that the policeman he saw, standing under the lamp at the street corner, was already warned and was on the lookout for five boys who had escaped from Randall’s Island. He was a real danger, therefore, and Jim did well to wait patiently until the officer marched away into the mist. Jim went forward, then, and his main idea was to get as far away as possible from the water-front.

“Hullo!” he exclaimed at the end of many minutes of brisk walking. “What’s this?”

Before him seemed to be a vast hollow, and the street he was on ran right across it, without any buildings on either side.

“New street,” he said. “It’s the new part of the city.--There!--That’s the rap of a policeman’s club on the sidewalk. My only chance is to hide!”

Down he went, over the wall-like side of that new street, clinging with toes and fingers to rough projections. In a moment more he was at the bottom, crouching close and looking up while a man in a blue uniform strolled slowly along the sidewalk.

“It isn’t as high as the wall around the parade-ground,” thought Jim. “That’s too smooth to climb.--I hope the other fellows’ll get away, now they’re out. It wasn’t just right for me to let ’em out, but I couldn’t help it. It’d be awful if all the boys in the House got away! I don’t belong there, though. But what can I do? Where on earth can I go?--Anyhow, I must keep hid till daylight.”

It was cold, it was foggy, and his heart sank within him as he crept slowly along the base of the wall, on a kind of exploring expedition. It was dreary waiting, but the time did wear away and the fog cleared when the sun rose.

People were arising, also, and Rodney Nelson was among those who were up and dressed very early. He had business on his hands, now, and he stepped right out of his own room and across the entry, into what he was beginning to call “the store.” It did indeed contain a great deal of counter and some shelving, but nothing as yet, that looked like a stock of goods.

“We’ll have some, I guess,” said Rodney. “I’ll go out and take a look at the garden. Nothing has sprouted yet, but lettuce and radishes, but it’s going to be the bulliest kind of garden.”

Downstairs he went, and his mother was busy around the stove when he passed through the kitchen. Somebody seemed to be calling him, around the corner of the house. He heard a loud:

“Ba a-a-beh?” like a question.

“Guess he’d like some breakfast,” said Rodney, as he stepped forward.

There was Billy, looking down from the edge of the sidewalk, but it was not the goat that gave Rodney such a start of surprise. Right before him stood a boy of about his own age and size, dressed from head to foot in dark, grey cloth. He seemed a healthy enough boy, but just now his face was very pale. He had been standing, for Rodney had seen him, close to the wall, where the house came against it, as if he were hiding. On the sidewalk above, and less than a hundred yards away, a policeman was walking leisurely along toward the Nelson place.

“Hullo!” said Rodney. “Who are you? What are you down here for?”

It was all right to question him, but the stranger’s face flushed suddenly and he breathed a long, choking kind of breath, before he exclaimed:

“I say, were you ever in prison?” His voice had a husky, despairing tone.

“No, I never was!” replied Rodney, with strong emphasis. “Was you?”

“Yes, I was,” came promptly back. “My name’s Jim Harris, and I didn’t do a thing. Didn’t steal a cent. But I’ve been in the House of Refuge for a good deal more’n a year----”

“And you got out?” shouted Rodney, enthusiastically. “Hurrah!”

“I got out last night,” said Jim, “and they’re after me, now----”

“Rodney!” exclaimed an excited voice behind him. “Don’t you let them get him! I saw him, from our house, and I came over to tell you. If you do let them get him!”

“Of course I won’t, Millie,” said Rodney, “but he must come right into the house. They’d know him, right away, by his rig.”

Millie was thinking with all her might, and her eyes were dancing their liveliest.

“Rod!” she said. “Take him in! Get him something to eat. I’ll go and get some of Tom’s old clothes. Mother’d let him have ’em all, before she’d see him sent to prison again. O, dear me! It was awful! And he didn’t do anything to be sent there for, either.”

“I guess it was awful----” said Rodney, but she interrupted him:

“I’ll be back as quick as I can. Besides, I want to know how he got out. He must be real hungry----” and away she went.

“Come on, Jim,” said Rodney. “You’ll be safe, in our house. I’m glad you didn’t do it, though. Tell you what, if it had been me, I’d ha’ broke loose. How’d you ever manage to do it? Tell us----”

“I will,” said Jim, as he followed his new friend, but a sudden change had come over him.

His step was light and springy, and his face was bright with new hope. He had watched there in the raw, chilly morning until he had grown almost desperate. Not that he had wished himself back in the House of Refuge, but that he had felt very tired, very hungry, and altogether uncertain what to do next, or where to go.

“Mother!” shouted Rodney, with a sort of effort not to shout quite so loud:

“He’s from Randall’s Island! He got away last night, and the cops are after him. Millie’s going to bring him some of Tom’s clothes----”

“Rodney!” she exclaimed. “Why, how did he get here?--~Now, you keep still and let him tell me all about it.”

That was precisely what Rod was very willing to do, and Jim was glad enough to tell them everything.

“O, Rod!” said his mother. “What if it had been you!--His uncle ought to be put there, himself,--and what could his aunt have been thinking of----”

“’Twasn’t her fault,” said Jim, “and the money was really gone. Somebody took it, but I didn’t, and Uncle John may not have been so much to blame. He never liked me anyhow----”

“He ought not to have sent you to jail,” said Mrs. Nelson, positively. “And I suppose they treated you awfully. Did they flog you much?”

“No, they didn’t,” said Jim. “They never flog anybody. It’s the best place in the world for loads of those boys. They get a chance to learn something and they have to behave themselves. What I mean is that I didn’t do anything to go there for, and I didn’t belong there. They’re the best kind of men for the boys that ought to be there.”

He really came up with a good deal of energy to the defence of the House of Refuge and its management, but he was tremendously in earnest in his assertion that he would not go back there again. He had hardly completed his wonderful story of escape, before the door of the kitchen opened, half stealthily, and they heard the voice of Mrs. Kirby:

“Go right in, Millie. Don’t say a word. Don’t speak about him. Somebody else might be there and hear you. Don’t you run any risk of anybody’s knowing what they’re for. If they don’t fit him, I can alter them----”

“Come right in, Mrs. Kirby,” called out Mrs. Nelson, but Millie was in first, with her arms full of coats, trousers and other matters, that had nothing grey about them.

“That’s the checker!” shouted Rod. “That old blue. It’s patched, some, but it’ll do first-rate. He won’t look like the same fellow. Come on, Jim. Come into the front room and put ’em on. Mother, you tell ’em just how it was.--Guess the cops won’t get him out of our house.”

There was plainly no danger that anybody now in it would help them, and Jim’s possible peril from anybody else was certainly very much less when, a few minutes later, he came back into the kitchen. Mrs. Nelson had, meantime, been telling his story, as he told it, with sympathetic additions of her own.

“It fits him!” shouted Millie, but her mother exclaimed:

“Rodney! What did you put on him that old red necktie for?”

“Guess there isn’t anything like it on Randall’s Island,” said Rodney. “All he’s got to do, now, is to keep still till they stop hunting for him.”

“They’re hunting, everywhere, just now,” remarked Jim. “I wish I knew what had become of those other fellows.”

“Just you come and eat your breakfast,” said Mrs. Nelson. “Don’t mind them----”

“We must go home,” said Millie, “and I can’t come right back. I’ve a lot of type-setting to do----”

“I can set type,” said Jim. “I was in the printing office, all the while.”

“That’s it!” exclaimed Mrs. Kirby. “Come right over, after breakfast. The last place they’d look into would be Mr. Kirby’s office. You can earn something, too.”

XI

JIM’S HIDING PLACE

Jim enjoyed his breakfast, exceedingly. It was the first he had eaten, for a long time, without any rules against talking. It seemed as if everybody in the room talked all the while. After it was over, he and Rodney went to the door and looked out.

The wide, bare space, in which the Nelson garden was beginning to grow, was not much like the House of Refuge parade-ground, although it seemed to have pretty high, stone walls on three of its sides and a row of buildings on the other. These were different buildings and nearly in the middle of the row was the Kirby place, instead of the Randall’s Island printing office. It looked very much as if all this had been getting ready to take Jim in, whenever he should get away from the Island. He had a strong, oppressive feeling, however, that he had not yet entirely escaped.

“They’ll think it was awful wrong for me to get away,” he thought. “It’s just as if it was as bad as stealing to have ever been sent there. How shall I get rid of it?”

He had all the while, month after month, been suffering under a sense of terrible injustice, and now it stung him again, for it was following him, and so, he knew, were men who deemed it their duty to catch him and take him back.

Rodney, too, was thinking of that.

“Jim,” he said, “Kirby’s printing office is better than working in our garden. They might see you, from the sidewalk, and ask where you came from.”

“I guess I could tell ’em, with these clothes on,” laughed Jim, for his spirits were improving and it seemed to him as if Randall’s Island were drifting away.

At that very moment, in the Bronson farmhouse, away up the Hudson, they were talking about Jim.

A man had come in, just at breakfast time, and had said something which made everybody jump.

“What’s that, Squire? Did you say it was a telegraphic despatch from Randall’s Island that Jim’s got out?”

“Thank God if he had!” exclaimed Aunt Betty, and it looked as if she would have clapped her hands, or danced, if she had not been so anxious to hear.

“Jim and four more of ’em,” said the Squire. “It doesn’t tell how they did it, but they might come right here, or he might, and you’d ought to know.”

“I’d like to know all about it,” said Uncle John Bronson, slowly. “If you hear anything more, let me know. Jim may not come this way.”

“Perhaps not,” said the Squire, “but I just want to say one thing. We’re old neighbors, and Jim’s a right likely young fellow. I can’t guess how he beat ’em, but if he should get up this way, and you or his aunt knew where he was, you needn’t say too much to me. You see, it would be my duty to catch him, and I’d have to do my duty----”

“O, no! Never!” broke in Aunt Betty. “I wouldn’t say a word! I wouldn’t be so mean as to put that on you. John wouldn’t either.”

“Why, Squire,” said Uncle John, “I don’t know a word about it----”

“No more do I,” said the Squire, turning to go out. “Good morning.--But he’s a plucky young fellow, now, I tell you. How they did it, I don’t see.--I’d have to take him. Of course I would. I’d do my duty.--But I don’t really believe they need Jim Harris, much, on Randall’s Island.”

So different people, in places widely apart, were aware of Jim’s escape and were taking their own peculiar view of the matter. Quite a number were wishing they knew how he did it but they had not yet found out.

A sea tide ebbs with as much force and swiftness as it flowed in with, and it will carry loads both ways. This was the reason why when the House of Refuge lifeboat was found, some hours after it was shoved off by Jim and his crew, it was found knocking against the side of a pier away down, near the middle of the city. Therefore it gave no hint as to where it had landed the runaways. Only an hour or so later, however, the police knew a little more, for they managed to capture poor Joe. He had been altogether too confident and had walked out into the street too soon, without changing his grey uniform for every day clothes. He was a little chopfallen, at first, but he really could not tell much about the other boys. He was at once ferried over to the Island and brought face to face with his old friends, the officers.

“What did you run away for, Joe?” asked the pleasant faced Superintendent.

“I--I don’t know, sir,” replied Joe.

“Didn’t we treat you well?” asked the Military Instructor, for Joe had been a lieutenant in one of the companies.

“Of course you did,” said Joe. “But, tell you what, I’d as lief come back, but then, any fellow’d get away, if he had Jim to show him how.”

“Big adventure!” exclaimed another officer.

That was indeed a part of it, and there was no reason, now, why Joe should conceal anything. He went with them to the dormitory and explained about the locks. Then they walked out into the parade-ground, where the empty boxes still lay at the machine shop wall.

“We went over the roof,” said Joe, and every man who heard him tell how they did it agreed with the Superintendent.

“Jim is a genius!” he exclaimed. “Not one boy in a thousand could have planned and carried out that escape.”

“He’s a captain!” added the skipper of the steam tug. “But we’d have caught ’em, if it hadn’t been for that fog.”

“We shall get them all, before long,” said Jim’s friend, the naval officer. “All but Jim. I’m afraid we’ve lost him. I’m sorry. I did want to do something more for that boy.”

The very kindly man in charge of the House of Refuge printing office also remarked that it was a pity Jim should run away, just when he was learning his trade so fast and so well. He could hardly have guessed that Jim was already at a case in another shop, setting type as busily as usual.

Mr. Kirby himself, a grey-haired, silent man, with a queer kind of smile on his face, was working at the press in another room, but Jim was not the only type-setter. At the next case stood Millie, and between them and the door were other ranges of cases, and two of these were journeymen printers. All were seemingly absorbed in their type-sticking when a man in a blue uniform opened the street door and strolled in.

“Where’s Kirby?” he asked.