It was a lie, but the Agent believed it, and made an instant bolt for the entrance.
"Then I should have been told. This is murder—deliberate, cold-blooded murder, and you shall smart for it! Let me out for the Lord's sake, before I've gulped any more of their filthy air!"
They made way and opened the gates. Then, before he vanished, Mr. Blazey turned and bawled a word or two towards Stark.
"I'll see what can be managed for ye. I'll do my best endeavours. But I've no power, and no funds neither. Besides, all exchange of prisoners is stopped for this year. So you'll do wisely to bide quiet, and trust in God and the Transport Board, not me."
He vanished, with his clerks and the soldiers after him; and then for a moment silence, dreadful and solemn, fell upon the captives. The haggard faces that had strained upon Blazey so long as he was visible, turned each to gaze into his neighbour's eyes; the gates fell to, the locks clashed, the sentries on the wall resumed their eternal tramp. Some men, wrought up to a pitch of mental excitement beyond their strength to conceal, shed tears and sneaked in corners to hide them. The boys—powder-monkeys out of captured ships—broke their ranks and went off whooping to leap-frog; the negroes chattered and blubbered apart; some Americans scowled and shook their fists at the blind doors; some cursed their spokesman for bungling the matter; others walked away mute, quite frozen by long suffering to a dead indifference. Many fell to quarrelling among themselves, and their leaders, including Commodore Miller and Stark, sat together and debated upon the failure of this—their forlorn hope. In the dark disappointment of the hour young Burnham lifted his voice against his motherland.
"They have forgotten us!" he said. "We have lived for the States, fought and bled for them; and now we are forgot."
"Nay, lad, don't think it," said Miller. "Your heart is low and time drags into a daily eternity here; but remember that it flies faster outside these walls than within them. Our country is busy."
"'Tis that cursed Agent," growled Leverett to Knapps. Then he scratched the red-grey wedge of hair upon his chin and turned to Stark.
"I asked Blazey as he came in whether he had got our letters and he nodded. He's in communication with both Governments.
"Thet 'ere man will hev the devil's toasting-fork in his guts afore he's much older," prophesied Knapps. "He's a traitor."