Part 4

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.