Part 2

Supper time came and went, everywhere, and after that the evening shadows began to settle down over the city. Then anybody looking in that direction from a distance would have seen a kind of glow in the sky above it, coming up from all the lights that were burning along all the hundreds of streets. There was no moon to speak of but there were lights, in front windows of dwellings and business places, and the stars helped also, so that it seemed a pleasant kind of evening.

There was one street, on the eastern side of the city, which projected nearly a hundred feet out into the East River in the form of a wooden pier. Only one solitary street-lamp was burning on the pier and beyond it all was a gloomy glimmer of rippling, rushing water. A swift tide was rushing out and a brisk wind was blowing.

The one lamp was on the left side of the pier, at the head of a flight of wooden steps, leading down to a float, and by the float was moored a small but serviceable steam tugboat. In that light, all that could be seen of her was a stumpy, sheetiron engine chimney; a lot of small windows, lighted up inside; some steam from a puffing pipe; and the rest of the boat had to be taken for granted. There were puffs and coughs of steam because the boat was at that moment casting loose her hawser and setting out upon a voyage.

She did not go directly across, but in a slanting, southerly course, out of which she was quickly compelled to veer, yet more to starboard, that is, to her right, by a vast blaze of glitter and puff and a warning hoot of a steam whistle which came swiftly up from the southward. The glittering ranges of windows and the two huge, black pipes that towered above them, belonged to one of the largest “Sound Steamers.” She was so large, indeed, that when the tug had passed her and steered into her wake, the swell it was rocked in called out an exclamation of:

“O!--Well!--I declare!” from one of two gentlemen who were sitting in the little cabin.

The next words he uttered, as he once more squared himself in the seat he had been so suddenly pitched out of, were:

“What a swell!--But what I was saying about Jim is this:--He isn’t so bad a boy----”

“Not bad at all, I think,” said the other.

“But then I can’t get at him. I’ve tried again and again----”

“So have I. He’s a complete puzzle.”

“And he isn’t sullen, either, and he isn’t exactly rebellious, but you can’t make any impression on him.”

“He says he was unjustly convicted and it works on him worse and worse, all the time. We can’t help it, though----”

“Of course we can’t, but I’m afraid it’ll hurt him, all his life----”

“To be sure it will, but we must do our duty. Some of the boys are turning out splendidly. I’ve been hearing good news from several of mine.”

“So have I, but I don’t mean to give up Jim. There’s the making of a man in that boy.”

“He is doing well in the school.”

“He is the best type-setter in the printing office.”

“I wish he was out. There are a dozen more that ought never to have been sent there. I don’t mean that none of them did wrong, but it hurts some boys, worse than others, to be shut up. They feel a sting----”

“Here we are----”

They had talked pretty steadily all the way, but the tug was now at her wharf on Randall’s Island, and these were two of the managers of the Society for the Reformation of Juvenile Delinquents. The boys were “in prison and they visited them.” They were men of wealth, education, unusual intelligence. There were others like them who came and worked as they did, and it was curious how strong a hold the youngsters seemed to have upon them. Of course the boys liked their friendly, sympathizing visitors, but probably none of them ever knew, at least while on the Island, what a study and worry they were to such men as these, as well as to the exceedingly capable and faithful officers who were all the while in charge of them. Many learned more after going out into the world and finding that even then these friends of theirs did not let go of them but followed them with help and hope and sympathy.

So this great school, with its high, stone walls and its rigid discipline and its likeness to a prison, was after all a splendid token of the love that goes out after even the very bad boys whom some people are willing to give up and to throw away. The other name of that Love is very sacred and beautiful.

Jim was not a bad boy, but he felt like one, that night. He felt bad, all over, and angry, and rebellious, and almost hopeless, for he was all the while thinking of the wall and of how high it was, and of all the great world of life and liberty that lay beyond it.

So far as he could see, there were to be long years of House of Refuge life, during which he was to know little and see nothing at all of that wide, bright world, and the thought was very terrible. He thought a great deal and imagined a great deal, but not among any of his imaginings did there come any idea that he had an interest in another boy, over in New York City,--a boy whose house and garden had been walled in by new streets. Jim knew nothing of Rodney; nor of his mother; nor of Billy the goat; nor of Millie Kirby. He could not have guessed that they were ever to be of any importance to him, over on the Island, listening and waiting for the rap of the drum that was shortly to tell him and all the rest that it was bedtime.

IV

BEHIND BOLTS AND BARS

Bedtime at the House of Refuge was quite an affair. Wherever there might be a squad of boys, in any part of the buildings or grounds, at the tap of the drum, they were expected to “fall in,” like soldiers, and march toward the dormitory. Each detachment was sure to have its own officer, a boy promoted, for good behavior and trustworthiness, to be corporal, sergeant, or lieutenant.

The dormitory itself was a remarkable sleeping place. It contained a separate room for each boy, but the rooms were not arranged like those of a hotel or a dwelling. There was one immense room, with plenty of windows for daylight and plenty of burners for gaslight. All around the sides of this room ran a broad, empty space, or passage-way, and inside of this, up and down the middle, had been constructed two tiers, one above another, of little bedrooms. Each tier was composed of two rows of rooms, set back to back with their faces toward the outer windows. The face or front of each room was made of slender, upright steel bars, not much more than two inches apart, and each room had a door, made in the same way, shutting with a strong, spring lock. Of course, each room was small and the beds were only wide enough for one boy, but they were very clean and comfortable. There was plenty of light when light was needed; plenty of air, always; and then perfect silence to sleep soundly in was secured by the rule which forbade talking or any kind of skylarking in the dormitory.

Watchmen patrolling around the upper or lower tier of cells, or rooms, could at any time see the entire inside of each, as they walked by. The outer doors of the dormitory closed with strong and intricate locks, of a peculiar pattern. Beyond these were other doors, with watchmen, and beyond all was the open parade-ground inclosure and its high stone wall. Beyond this was the chilling, rushing, impassable tide of the deep and pitiless East River. No boy could hope to get out from one of those sleeping cells and into the city,--into liberty and the world until the appointed time should come for him.

The dormitory was as still as still could be, that night, when Jim lay upon his bed and thought of it all, and he grew bitter at heart with the seeming impossibility of even getting a chance to try Whether or not he could climb the outer wall.

“I’m about the best climber on the training ship, when they send us into the rigging,” he said to himself. “I could go up on a rope or anything. If I could have some of the other fellows with me! Some things I guess I couldn’t do alone. I don’t want any but plucky fellows and good climbers. I don’t belong here. I never did it and I’ve been here long enough. I’m going to get out, if I can.--There, he’s just gone by.”

That meant the passage of a watchman, on his patrol, and Jim obeyed a strong, angry impulse, to jump out of bed and stare after him through the grated door of his cage.

“It’s just like what they put wild animals in, in a menagerie,” he thought, fiercely, as his fingers griped the slim, but strong steel rods.

O!--How he wanted to break out! He drew back, a moment, and then he threw himself, with all his might, against the grating.

He did not care if it hurt him. He was so sore inside that it almost felt good to be pained a little, outside.

Click!

“What was that?--What?--The door is open?--What have I done?--I couldn’t have broken it!”

That was so. Every rod in the grating near him and in the door, was perfectly sound and whole, and yet,--he could hardly believe his eyes,--the door of his cage was now standing ajar, as if inviting him to push it open wider and walk out into the roomy corridor. He did so, but it was very much as if it were all a dream.

Jim’s first feeling was a strong sense of exhilaration, for one of the barriers he had been thinking of had unexpectedly given way. It was such a strong barrier, too, with its steel gratings and its lock. He turned and stared at his open door and empty bedroom and he came near exclaiming aloud:

“How did it happen?”

He knew the door had been shut as carefully as usual by the officer who had been in charge of the boys when they marched into the dormitory.

He examined the look.

It was a very pretty, very perfect lock, but he saw that its strong, brass tongue, that played back and forth on its spring when a key worked it, could also be pushed back by his finger, pressing on its end. Then he almost shut the door and could see that the brass tongue was short and would only go under its catch, on the upright at the side, about half an inch or so.

“That’s it!” exclaimed Jim. “I can see, now. When I pushed so hard, I bent the grating, for those light steel bars are springy. They sprung out so far that they pulled out that tongue beyond the catch and so the door slipped open. I can do it again,--Why,--I can get out into the corridor as often as I want to, but I mustn’t let anybody know how it’s done. Not even the other fellows.--I’ll look at their locks.”

It seemed to him as if his very breathing could be heard by somebody, and so he hardly breathed as he stepped softly along to the next door. The gas-jet near him had been turned low and the light was dim, but he could see that the boy in that cell was sleeping soundly, after his hard work in one of the shops and his long drill-marching.

“He isn’t one of the fellows I want,” thought Jim. “He can’t climb worth a cent and he hollers when he’s hurt.”

That would never do, for Jim was beginning to feel like a captain, hunting up recruits for some difficult and almost desperate enterprise. Nevertheless, he tried the lock of that boy’s door.

“Yes,” he said to himself, “they are all alike. I can get my finger in over the end of the catch-bolt and push it back.--There, I’ve opened that door, but I’ll shut it again. Guess I’ll go back to bed, too, before anybody comes to catch me. I know I can open the doors, but what good’ll that do? I’ve got to think about it.”

Silently, with his heart beating hard and his breath coming short, Jim slipped back to his own door, and through it, and pulled it shut behind him. He made no noise in doing so,--only a slight click as the bolt sprang into the hasp,--but he did not feel safe until the bedclothes were over him and he could seem to be asleep. Not many minutes passed before he heard the feet of another watchman, or it may have been the same man,--going along the corridor.

“I’d have been caught,” he thought. “I must look out for that.”

During all those minutes, and long afterward, he lay and thought of locks, locks, locks, on all the doors he knew of in that House of Refuge. He made up his mind to examine them, every chance he could get, and he thought of all sorts of impossible ways of opening them.

It was more and more like a dream until his eyes closed and he was asleep, and he slipped at once into a real dream of having passed all the locked doors, only to find himself standing in front of a stone wall twenty feet high.

Away over in one of the northern wards of the city of New York, Rod Nelson, as sound asleep as Jim, was also dreaming and he too had a stone wall to dream of. He was not trying to climb it himself, however, for he was only looking on while his bearded friend Billy walked up the side of that wall into the avenue, remarking, triumphantly:

“Ba-a-a-beh!”

When morning came, the usual round of activities began, everywhere. The boys in the House of Refuge dormitory dressed themselves in their rooms. Then, as the Superintendent’s assistant came and let them out, they all marched away to breakfast. Jim went with the rest, but he gave a keen, inquiring side-glance, at the lock of every door they passed. He thought he saw something worth remembering in the lock of the great, outer door of the dormitory itself.

“He only turned his key in it once,” he said to himself. “I’ve seen them turn it away around three times. What does that mean? I don’t know much about locks. They say these are the best and safest kind, though.”

V

JIM’S PLOT FOR LIBERTY

Women, like Mrs. Nelson, who go out to work for other people, have to get up early, but her first thought, and Rodney’s, was more about the door she was to go out by than even about breakfast.

“I’m going right off to find Pat,” said Rodney, as he helped her through the upper side-window.

Nevertheless, before setting out on that errand, he went down into the garden and took a long look at all the land which had been walled in. It might be as good as ever, for a garden, but it had a queer, shut-up appearance.

“Where’s Billy?” he inquired, aloud. “Hullo. There he is, out on the avenue. How did the old rascal foot it up that wall?”

There was Billy, indeed, with his toes on the very edge, and with a wisp of something green sticking out at one side of his mouth.

“Greens!” exclaimed Rodney. “He can steal from a grocer’s wagon better than any other goat I know of.--We used to have a garden. Tell you what, we can make garden of our lots and all the others, too, if we can only have it ploughed. But how would a horse and plough ever get down here?”

It was a pretty deep question and he gave it up, for that time. In a minute more he was upstairs and out through the window, on his errand to Pat. So far as he knew, he left the house without a living soul in it, but before he reached the next corner, the door of the little back bedroom, at the head of the stairs, went to with a sharp slam. It must have been a strong draft of air that did it, or else the door shut itself.

Pat was found and a bargain was made but Rodney did not see the new door. That is, the old door that was to take the place of the window. In fact, he felt like being satisfied with almost anything.

When he reached home again, he closed the window carefully behind him and went down and out for another look around at his vacant land. Hardly was he beyond the back doorstep, however, before he was hailed with:

“Rodney!--Do look up there!--Doesn’t he look funny! How did he ever manage to get there?”

“Why!--Millie!” exclaimed Rodney.

“Ba-a-a-beh!” came almost piteously down from the upper back window, on the left. It Was Rodney’s own room and the window had been left open, to air it, and there was Billy.

“I don’t care so much how he got in,” said Rodney, “but there he is and we must get him out, somehow.”

At that very hour, the breakfast room at the House of Refuge was full of hungry boys but it was wonderfully quiet. There was a slight rattle of crockery, and now and then a low-spoken word from one of the officers, but the eyes of those watchful guardians were everywhere and the rules of order were thoroughly enforced. Beyond a doubt, this also was a valuable part of the schooling the boys were getting but it was a kind of restraint and was in danger of being mistaken for oppression. It is one of the traditions of the House that all of the half-way rebellions among the young fellows have broken out in the dining-room or in the schoolroom, where the discipline is so complete, and never in any manner out of doors, no matter how severe might be the drill of the parade-ground.

Jim, at his own table, was willing enough to be silent, then and there, but he was ready to burst with his great secret and was anxious to find somebody, the right boy, to tell it to. He thought them over, one by one, for he knew them all, but it was not easy to decide among them. He was compelled, at all events, to wait for a proper opportunity, and that could not come for hours, yet. His next experiences must necessarily come to him at his type-setting work, at his “case” in the printing room.

This was a light and pleasant place to be in. It had altogether an air of regular business and not at all of restriction, unless it might be in the clock work precision of whatever was going on and in the fact that there was no talking, no communication, among the many busy “typos.”

Jim had a slip of printed “copy” put before him, on his case, and the moment he saw it he remarked to himself:

“Star Spangled Banner?--If I haven’t had to set that up four times! I know where that comes from. The Superintendent is always telling us we are Americans. Going to be citizens. So is the Military Instructor. They’re both naval officers--I’m an American, but loads of the other fellows are not. It’s my flag--I’ll set it up----”

There was something in it. A great deal more teaching than he or any of the others knew was in the flag, the starry flag of freedom, that was carried at the head of the parade-ground battalion; that was displayed in the larger rooms of the House; that hung over the principal’s platform in the schoolroom; and that so finely ornamented the handsome lecture room in the main building. It had something to do with the other teachings and with some of the traditions that passed around among the boys. How some had gone out from that place to be sailors in the navy; others to be soldiers and even officers in the army; and how that and everything else, to them and all other boys, depended on good behavior.

Jim was thinking about it, now, but his uppermost thought was that sailors went all over the world, into far off seas, into foreign lands, in freedom; and that soldiers, especially cavalry soldiers, rode across the plains and among the mountains, seeing and doing wonderful things, in freedom. O, how he longed for something wild and dashing and adventurous,--something like the very dash for freedom that he was even now looking forward to and trying to plan!

He naturally supposed that his undertaking, if he should make it, would have to do with the various kinds of persons near him, and would as soon have thought of China, as of a boy and girl who were looking at a goat, in a second story window, over in the city. He was not in their thoughts either, and Millie’s next remark was:

“Mother says you can go through our house as much as you want to. She won’t look the back door----”

“I’ll come right over and see her, soon as I’ve got Billy down,” said Rodney. “I want to find out how he got into my room.”

“I’ll wait,” said Millie. “Mother said she wanted to see you--” but he had already darted into the house.

In a moment more the door of his bedroom was opened and out sprang Billy. Without stopping to explain how he got in, or in what freak of goat-mind he butted that door shut, he showed Rod that he could at least go downstairs. Rod followed him out and Millie shouted:

“There he goes!--Now you come right along with me!”

She was a short, thin, dark haired girl, with eyes and a face that seemed all one flush and sparkle of go and energy. Her very voice had in it something peremptory and Rod stepped off as obediently as if she had been a school-teacher. He knew the way through the gap in the fence and through the Kirby back-yard, and he knew that they had a hall running through the house to the street door. That opened on an old avenue that was all built up and almost all the lower stories of the houses were used for business purposes. Mr. Kirby was a printer and his ground floor was his shop, with a steam engine in the rear room. There were two stories above for the family to live in and the hall went all the way through.

“Thank you ever so much,” said Rodney to Mrs. Kirby, when she came downstairs, “but we’re going to have a door put in and then we won’t have to climb through the window----”

“You can use our hall till then,” said Mrs. Kirby, with a voice and manner precisely like Millie’s, “but I can’t have you bringing any other boys to tramp through. Mr. Kirby’s workmen are bad enough----”

Something else called her and she was gone before Rodney could think what to say to her, but she had used one word that fitted closely to all he had been thinking about while he was looking at the walls and the land and the house.

“Workmen?” he said. “Tell you what, Millie, don’t I wish I had a trade! I’m afraid I ain’t going to get one. They say there isn’t any chance for boys, nowadays----”

“I can set type,” said Millie, “when there’s any to set, but father says it’s awful dull times. I want to do something else.”

“I’m going to!” exclaimed Rodney. “You see if I don’t. I won’t let my mother work to support me. I’m going to get out, somehow.”

So he too had a feeling that he was somehow penned in. Circumstances were against him and he must climb over them or get around them. Billy the goat had somehow or other circumvented the walls created by the streets and avenues. What a goat could do, a boy could do, but then Rodney did not as yet quite understand how Billy had managed to perform his feat.

VI

PLANS FOR ACTION

Different people have different kinds of difficulties to overcome. Rodney Nelson, over in the city, felt as if he were shut up from doing anything better than the work of changing his mother’s furniture from one room to another. He had no trade; nothing that he could earn money with; no prospects for the future. Jim, setting up type at his case in the printing office of the House of Refuge, felt almost as if he had no hope whatever. He had a new experience before him, however, and it began to come soon after he got out upon the parade-ground. It was not yet time for the afternoon drill and all the boys were at liberty to do as they pleased. Some of them were playing ball; some were at leap-frog; some were simply skylarking, as they called it, and that meant all sorts of rough fun. It was Jim’s time for selecting the boys to whom he could tell his secret and get them to join him in whatever he was going to do. He was just going to speak to one boy, when something came into his mind that made him stop.

“No, I guess I won’t tell him,” he said to himself. “I don’t belong here, but he does. I couldn’t look the Superintendent in the face if I should let that fellow out. It’s the best place for him. He didn’t know a thing when he came here. Now he can read and write and make shoes----”

Just then one of the officers passed him, with a nod and a smile, and Jim could smile back, as he touched his hat, for he had less of a sort of guilty feeling which had troubled him. He turned and looked at the great crowd of boys, scattered over the enclosure, and his thought took a wider form.

“Let ’em all out!” he exclaimed. “Why, it would be the worst thing in the world for most of ’em.”