Part 3

That did not change his idea concerning himself and he may not have been a good judge of what was best for others, for, before the afternoon was over there were four boys besides himself who knew about the dormitory door-locks.

“If yours won’t spring open, mine will,” he said. “Just you wait, anyhow, till I come and let you out.”

They were excited enough about it, but each boy of them seemed to feel, as strongly as he did, that it would be doing the hundreds of others hurt instead of good to let them out of that place.

The Superintendent and the Managers might even have been gratified if they could have known how clear was the opinion expressed that they were “doing first-rate” with the youngsters under their charge.

That was not the only matter that Jim had to study, during that very long day. He believed that he knew every stone in the parade-ground wall, already, and now he found himself studying the buildings also, and wondering how he should ever manage to lead a squad of escaping boys right through them. Getting out of a bedroom was only a kind of beginning, after all, and Jim’s heart sank within him, for he thought:

“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.