Part 1

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Walled In

Walled In

A True Story of Randall’s Island

BY

William O. Stoddard

AUTHOR OF

“Dab Kinzer,” “Crowded out of Crowfield,” “Saltillo Boys,” etc., etc.

_Illustrated_

New York Chicago Toronto

Fleming H. Revell Company

M DCCC XCIX

Copyright, 1897,

BY

FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY

CONTENTS

CHAP. PAGE

I. THE HIGH STONE WALL 9

II. SUPPER TIME 20

III. EVENING VISITORS 31

IV. BEHIND BOLTS AND BARS 42

V. JIM’S PLOT FOR LIBERTY 51

VI. PLANS FOR ACTION 61

VII. ONE PLAN THAT FAILED 70

VIII. NEW IDEAS THAT CAME 80

IX. GETTING OVER THE WALL 91

X. A NEW HOME OF REFUGE 102

XI. JIM’S HIDING PLACE 114

XII. THE STOLEN MONEY 124

ILLUSTRATIONS.

THE WALLED IN REGIMENT. _Frontispiece_

THE SILENT PRINTING OFFICE. _Facing p._ 48

THEY ALL STOOD STILL WHILE THE DRUM BEAT. “ “ 82

Walled In

I

THE HIGH STONE WALLS

When the world was made, a number of islands were loosely scattered around at the mouth of the Hudson River. To this day, the old river works steadily on, trying to change the saltness of the Atlantic by pouring in fresh water, and trying to widen its own mouth by washing away these islands, but the ocean is as salt as it was a thousand years ago and the islands are of about the same size that they ever were, so far as anybody can see. When they were put there, however, and for nobody knows how long afterward, there was not a boy or girl to have been found upon either of them, while nowadays there are swarms and swarms, from every nation this side of Asia, and they are of all sorts and sizes.

Some of the ways and doings of those boys and girls cannot be rightly told without first asking those who are to hear the story to take a look at a map of New York City and of the land and water around it. The map shows everything pretty clearly excepting the people and the houses they live in.

One of the boys belonging to this story might have required a sharp search to find him, on a particular morning, early in the spring. Not that he seemed to be hiding, or that he was alone. On the contrary, he stood nearly in the middle of a long line of boys. There were over four hundred of them, dressed all alike, in jackets and trousers of dark, thick gray cloth. Their caps and shoes were of the same pattern, all along the line.

Stationed at intervals, here and there, were boys no larger than the rest, in uniforms of dark, but bright blue cloth, with red stripes on their arms, and these were officers and this was a battalion, and it was marching briskly forward to the spirited music of half a dozen drums and several shrill fifes.

It was a kind of charge, across the level, gravelly parade-ground, and the boys were marching well, but right before them stood a high and frowning stone wall and it was of no use to charge against it. It could neither be broken through nor climbed and this one boy, in the middle of the line, was staring at it as if he hated it, while he marched. His feet kept time with the music and perfect pace with the feet of the other boys, but there was an angry look in his black eyes and a hot flush on his face, as if the wall had spoken to him, saying something to rouse his temper and make him answer back. What he did say, was, in a whisper that the next boy to him heard:

“I will!--See if I don’t!”

“What?” whispered the other boy.

“I’ll go over it, some day.”

“I’ll go with you, then. I can climb anything you can----”

“_Halt!_”

The clear-voiced command was at that instant heard, all along the line, and every boy stood still in his tracks.

They were a pretty well drilled battalion.

“About,--_face_!”

In an instant the long, double lines stood, with their backs to the wall and facing the parade-ground.

Away out in the middle of it stood the commander, the drill-master of that very remarkable battalion. He was a handsome, pleasant eyed man, of about twenty-five, dressed in a trim blue uniform, very like that of a United States Army officer. He was really a naval officer, detailed there by the Government to be practically the colonel of a regiment of pretty wild boys. He was there to teach them discipline, order, obedience, only a shade or so more strictly than if they had been cadets at West Point, or the Naval Academy at Annapolis.

Other commands had been given and obeyed, and the entire force was now marching around the broad enclosure by companies, six of them, and each company was composed of boys of nearly the same height.

The first company consisted of boys, the oldest of whom may have been eighteen, and the rear company was made up of little fellows as young as twelve, or even younger.

Very nearly all of them, white or colored, moved as if they liked the idea of being young soldiers, but they had not been recruited like other soldiers. Some of them were there because they had no other home to go to nor any other school to be taught in. Many, however, were there for other reasons. For instance, that tall young fellow in command of the foremost company. The captain, in bright, blue uniform who handled his men so well. He is here for highway robbery and it will be a long time before they let him out, although he is one of the best behaved boys in the House of Refuge. He is not here altogether as a punishment, however, nor are any of his companions, no matter what their fault was. This is not a place of judgment, but of help and hope, and, not long ago, a well-known literary man, after inspecting the whole institution, said to the Superintendent:

“Sir, this is one of the footprints of Christ on earth. It is an effort, in His name, to seek and to save that which was lost.”

“Thank God!” replied the officer. “About eighty-five out of every hundred do well and become good citizens. We keep track of them, long after they leave us.”

Nevertheless, the House of Refuge has to be a kind of prison. It is on Randall’s Island, separated from the city of New York, on Manhattan Island, by a swiftly running branch of the East River, which is not a river at all, but an arm of the sea, and its rapid current is made by the changing tides.

If, in one view, this is a prison, in another it is a great boarding school, with very remarkable appliances for the education and discipline of its pupils.

The entire enclosure, of which the parade-ground is a part, contains several acres. The stone wall, twenty feet high, in front of which the battalion halted, guards all of one of the sides of the enclosure and parts of two other sides.

The remaining lengths of those two are protected just as well by high buildings but on the southern side a tall chimney sticks up from a range of buildings that are not so high. They contain a steam engine, machinery and several kinds of workshops.

The drill was long and must have been tiresome, particularly to the boy who carried and pounded the big, bass drum and to the other boy who carried the flag. It all but blew him over, more than once, for there were sharp gusts of March wind, now and then. He looked relieved, very much so, when the battalion at last halted on the side nearest the green lawn and the buildings, and was ordered to “break ranks.”

That command dispersed the young soldiers and sent them off to fun of their own making, just as the order to assemble for drill had found them, scattered here and there. It had not been a regular “school day” and none of them had been in the vast schoolroom in the main building, busy with books. At the moment when the military instructor’s whistle had sounded, a brisk game of base ball had been going on in the ball ground, next to the parade-ground. On that itself, a number of knots of boys had been skylarking. Most of them had been indoors, however, and of these, some had been in the conservatory, learning to be gardeners; others in the printing shop; in the tailor-shop; in the shoe-shop; in the stocking factory; in the carpenter shop; in the rope and matting shop; and so on. It was not the season for farm work and none had been away outside, on the island farm learning to be farmers as they soon were to be, later in the spring. Moreover, the model ship, in front of the main building, toward the East River, had a deserted look, but it was waiting for the boys to come, crew after crew, and play sailors under the nautical instructor. In that way many of them were to get themselves ready to go to sea, really some day.

Jim, the boy who had hated the wall, had been in the printing shop, and he had walked out of it with a look on his face as if he did not care much for drill or for printing or for anything else. He was a tall, wiry looking boy, of not much over fourteen, and he might have seemed even good looking if he had not been so downcast. That was hardly the right word for it, either, for right along with what some people might have mistaken for sullenness was another look that was full of the most determined pluck. It had stuck to his face during drill-time and had grown stronger when he stared at the wall. It was there now, as he walked along with the other boys, toward the entrance of the shop buildings.

“I don’t belong here!” came out in another whisper, that nobody heard. “I never did it! I never did it! I’ve been here long enough! I won’t stay any longer. I’m going to climb that wall, somehow. I’m going to be free and go where I choose!”

That was it. He was struggling with a sense of injustice, in some way done him, and it was stirred up to unusual bitterness by a longing for freedom. It was as natural as breathing to hate to be shut in and to hate the wall and to study how it could be climbed over, and to dream of all the wonderful things beyond it.

“Jim!” said a boy of his own size who was walking with him. “You can’t do it!--You can’t even get a chance to try.--Then, if you did get out, there’s the East River to cross and we never could swim it. What’s more, if we got to New York, we’d be known by our clothes and the cops would catch us and send us back. It’s no use!”

“I will, though,” said Jim. “You see if I don’t. I don’t belong here!”

And then he added, in his hot and angry thoughts, but not aloud:

“I’ve been here a whole year and I ought not to have been sent here. I didn’t do it!--I never stole a cent of that money,--I don’t care what they say.--When I get out, though, I won’t go back to uncle John’s house. He’s as hard as flint. Aunt Betty isn’t, though. I’d like to see her. She tried to keep me from being sent here.”

II

SUPPER TIME

No boy has ears keen enough to hear a woman who is speaking fifty miles away from him. Nevertheless, Jim might have been glad to hear what a woman was saying, in a farmhouse away up the Hudson, at the very moment when the battalion he was in was halted in front of the wall. She was a kindly faced, middle aged woman, and she was speaking with more energy than seemed naturally to belong to her, for she did not look energetic.

“John Bronson,” she said, “I suppose you did what you thought was right, but I never did believe Jim took that money!”

“Well!” sharply responded a large, heavy looking man, who sat near her. “You are all wrong! Nobody else could possibly have taken it. The court said so. Jim was the only one who could have got at it, anyhow. Besides, he was seen a spending money in the village, too. He took it.”

“I’ll never believe it!” she said. “I don’t care how they made it look. He never confessed it, either.”

“Jim always was obstinate, and you know it,” said her husband, sternly. “He never would give in. The House of Refuge men’ll bring him to his senses, though. He’ll learn something, there.”

“He has been there a whole year,” she said, sadly enough. “O, how I want to see him, sometimes!”

Something else cut off the talk about Jim, at that point. He did not hear the remarks of Aunt Betty, or Uncle John, but it was just as impossible for any boy or girl on Randall’s Island,--for there were many girls there,--to have heard what people were saying, over in the great city, so near at hand. Part of that city of New York is on Manhattan Island, but a larger part, with not nearly so many people in it, is on the mainland, above the arm of the sea known as Harlem River. It begins just above the upper end of Randall’s Island.

Away up in that new part of the city, a girl of about Jim’s age, and a boy who may have been a little older but was no taller, were standing in front of another kind of stone wall and were talking about it.

This wall was about twelve feet high and was roughly made, with a rugged face, very different from the smooth finish of the barrier around the parade-ground. In fact it was nothing at all but the side of a new street. An old road which once had run along there had been contented to go down into a hollow and come up again on the higher ground beyond. Now, however, that the city had spread out and taken in all that land, it had been best to make a level. All high places were cut down and across all low places the streets were carried on “viaducts.” These left the ground on either side of such a street away down below it, looking more of a hollow than ever.

One of these streets was a broad avenue, promising to be good looking after it was finished, but very ugly now. It was so much wider than the old road it was taking the place of that it cut off an old front yard entirely, and the house there which had been a number of feet from its old front gate was now almost exactly on a line with the stone wall at the edge of the avenue. That was the reason why the girl looked hard at the wall and at the house and then turned to the boy, exclaiming:

“Why, Rodney Nelson! Your folks are just walled in! How on earth are you going to get out?”

It looked like it, for the side streets, crossing the avenue at the ends of the square, were built up in the same way and on the fourth side, to which their backs were turned, were the backs of a solid row of buildings, fronting upon another avenue.

“You can’t get over that wall,” said Rodney. “Billy’s tried it, everywhere, and he can climb anything that isn’t straight up and down.”

He seemed to be pretty cheerful about it, nevertheless, whoever Billy might be.

“Tell you what,” she said, “you can come across and get out through our house and the shop, till you can put up some stairs, or a ladder.”

“Guess we’ll have to,” replied Rodney, “but Billy’s got to stay at home, now. They finished the last of that wall, this morning. Come on upstairs and see how mother’s going to get in, this evening.”

In half a minute more they were up in the room over the parlor and she at once remarked:

“O! I see! your mother’ll climb in at the second story windows.”

“She won’t have to climb,” said Rodney. “Look here.”

The Nelson house was old, but it was not large. That second story had but four rooms, two of them of good size, two of them, at each end of its entry, quite small. The large front room, however, had an ample bay window that jutted out, now, almost over the edge of the wall. That was not the window Rodney went to, but the one in the little room on the left, and he had it open in a twinkling.

“There, Millie,” he said, “I can nail down some pieces of board and mother can step right in. She won’t need any ladder. We can change things around, too, and bring the parlor up here.”

“That’ll do,” said Millie, “but it isn’t as good as a door. I wouldn’t want to live in a house that’s upside down, anyway. That avenue won’t be anything but mud, till they pave it and put in the sidewalks. I’m glad we can’t be walled in or lose our doors and windows.”

“It changes everything for us,” said Rodney. “I don’t quite know what to make of it, yet, but I’ve loads of work to do, all day, to have things right when mother comes home.”

“So have I!” exclaimed Millie, and away she went, downstairs, to go home across lots, while he stepped out of the window and turned to stare, in a puzzled way, at all of his house that stuck up above the new avenue. It certainly was not the same house it had been, and all the ground around it was walled in, but, after all, Rodney was the same boy.

How about all those other boys, over on Randall’s Island? They too were walled in, but were they not the same boys? Did the house they were in change them?

At all events, like Rodney, they had “loads of work to do,” all day, until supper time. Then indeed there was a curious kind of coming in to supper, for this, too, was part of their schooling and their discipline.

All over the enclosure and in every workshop, could be heard the tap of a drum. Everywhere, work stopped. There were minutes of preparation and of “putting away things.” Then another drum-tap was heard, and from all directions compact and orderly squads of young fellows began to march toward the great dining-room, supper-room, of the House. Every boy was “tallied,” on leaving his place of work, and he was counted again as he went in to supper. Every sentry on duty; every boy in the “office”; promoted there for good behavior; every inmate of the House was at that hour reported and the Superintendent knew where he was and what he was doing.

All but a very few of the boys were either eating supper or taking their regular turns as waiters, under the supervision of a blue-coated gentleman who was all the while explaining the supper management to half a dozen visitors.

The supper was plentiful, of good quality, well cooked, and there was absolute fairness in the way it was served. There were many tables, each large enough for a dozen or so of boys to sit around it comfortably, and each table had its own boy watcher, a kind of corporal, promoted to that post, temporarily, for good conduct. There could be no favoritism shown by the waiters, for among them, to and fro, walked the regular officers of the Institution. Anyhow, the supper of those hundreds of young fellows, so many of whom would otherwise have gone without any supper, was worth anybody’s while to go and see, for it suggested something that was said, once: “I was hungry and ye fed Me.”

Hundreds of boys, and not a word from one of them, even to his next neighbor, for the rule of the place was that there should be no talking at the table. Therefore, at all of the many tables arranged around the great dining hall, the most noticeable person present was Silence.

So it was, although not so perfectly, at Uncle John Bronson’s house, fifty miles away, up the Hudson, but the silence was broken there, at last.

“John!” exclaimed Aunt Betty. “I can’t help thinking of Jim. I wish I knew what he is doing and how they treat him.”

“I guess they treat him well enough,” he responded, grimly. “But it doesn’t do any good for us to talk about him.”

“Well, I s’pose it doesn’t,” she said. “But it seems as if he had lost everything. When a boy is sent to such a place, you take away from him all he has----”

“No, you don’t,” he exclaimed. “They say it’s a good place. Besides, he did it, himself, when he stole the money. He’d always been kind o’ reckless and self-willed. I guess he’ll learn something.”

“When a boy loses his good name, and his self-respect, and his liberty,” slowly replied Aunt Betty, looking sorrowfully through the window near her, “I think he loses about everything there is.”

Uncle John may have acted from what he thought was a sense of duty, in something he had done concerning Jim, but he looked very uncomfortable, just now. He sat there, with a face that grew redder and redder, all the while Aunt Betty was gone into the kitchen, after the teapot and the other things that belonged to the farmhouse supper-table. It might have been better for them both if Jim had been there, instead of at one of the tables in the House of Refuge.

III

EVENING VISITORS

Rodney had said enough to Millie to make it plain that his mother was accustomed to go out to work and that she earned barely enough for them to live on. He may have been thinking of that, now, as he stared at his house.

“It’s a big avenue,” he said, “but mother’s got to sell one of our lots to pay off the taxes and assessments for having it done. I don’t care if the city does pay for What land they take. It’s hard on mother.--She’ll be awful tired, but supper’s ready. Good one, too. Don’t I Wish I could find something to do, now I’m out of school? I’ve tried in dozens of places. Guess there are too many boys.--Hullo!”

“Me b’ye,” came at that moment in a deep, good-humored voice, behind him, “what ye want is a dure, where the small windy is. I can put wan in, chape.”

“That’s what we want, Pat,” said Rodney.

“It’s a dure was in a building we tore down,” said Pat, “and it’s a good big wan. All it wants is puttin’ in, and a dure step to the walk, wid a good rail, and ye’ll be as well aff as iver ye was, wid a foine front on the aveny.”

“I’ll tell mother,” said Rodney, with a keen and hopeful survey of the place where the door was to be.

“’Twon’t cost her much,” added Pat, “and the likes of her don’t want to be climbin’ in and out o’ windies.”

Away he went and Rodney was still considering the matter when he was again spoken to.

“O Rodney! This is dreadful! Seems to me as if they were taking away everything.”

“Mother!” exclaimed Rodney. “We’ll have a door, there, instead of a window----” and he rapidly explained Pat’s offer.

“Tell him to go ahead!” said Mrs. Nelson. “No matter what it is, so long as it’s a door. But somebody’s neck’ll be broken, yet, tumbling down that wall, into our garden.”

She said that as she was getting in at the window, after Rodney had taken away a bundle she had carried.

“I’ll take it downstairs,” he said, as he followed her. “The parlor’s got to come up here, but we can leave the dining-room where it is, and the kitchen. Billy’s been walking around, all day, at the foot of the wall, trying to find a place to climb out, but there isn’t any.”

At that very moment, a bearded, contented looking face, appeared at the bay window.

“Ba-a-beh!” it remarked.

“Mother!” exclaimed Rodney. “How on earth did that fellow get out? Even a goat can’t climb up and down a wall.”

“I don’t care how he got out,” she replied, wearily. “I must have my supper.--O, dear! What are we to do! I feel clean discouraged.”

Downstairs they went and both of them seemed to be carrying heavier burdens than the bundle, whatever it was. Rodney had evidently been both housekeeper and cook and a little table was set in the kitchen, handy to the stove and the teapot, but Mrs. Nelson walked straight on and out at the back door.

“How high those walls are!” she said. “Yes, I suppose the Kirbys would let us get out through their place, but I’d rather have a door of my own.”

“So would I,” said Rodney. “I’ll tell Pat to go ahead and put one in, as soon as I can see him, to-morrow.”

“Ba-a-beh!” came, just then, in a tone of strong approval, from a friend whose left horn was almost under Rodney’s elbow.

“I say, mother,” exclaimed Rodney, “how did he get down here again. Guess there’s a weak spot in that wall, somewhere.”

That might be, but Mrs. Nelson was too tired to be interested in goats and walls, and she went into the house. It was a great mystery to her son, however, for he had inspected the entire enclosure, that day, accompanied by Billy, and had decided that no fellow could get out unless he used a ladder.

“He’s about the smartest goat there is,” remarked Rodney, “but I’d better watch him and see how he does it.”