Hammer and Anvil: A Novel

by Friedrich Spielhagen

"Work, and stop gabbling!" called out the sergeant.

"I can do no more!" said Cat-Kaspar, throwing down his crowbar.

He had gained his object, and had no desire to expend his strength further, at no advantage to himself.

"Come out!" ordered the sergeant, well pleased to have been right, and indeed doubly right, since the two strongest men of the gang had not been able to accomplish what Cat-Kaspar had undertaken to do single-handed.

Order was restored, and the work proceeded as usual. I did the work of two, to conceal the excitement into which the assassin's words had thrown me. His plan at once seemed tolerably plain, and I comprehended it thoroughly when I found an opportunity to take a look around from the highest point of the site from which one could see over the wall. Immediately adjoining the place where we were working was a gate in the wall, which during the progress of the work was frequently used, and the key to which the sergeant carried in his pocket. A short bridge, which had in the centre a gateway defended by chevaux-de-frise, led from the gate over a wide moat which in former times had been the town-fosse, as our prison-wall had once been part of the town-wall. Beyond the moat was a high bastion, with a walk shaded with walnut-trees at its foot, and on it stood two cannon, but I had never observed any sentry near them. To the right of the bastion was a much lower rampart, over which from my position it was easy to see; and beyond this I caught sight of the pennons of ships, which must be in the outer harbor of which Cat-Kaspar had spoken. Between the pennons glittered a bit of blue sea; indeed I could catch a glance of the island beyond, whose low chalk-cliffs shone bright in the sunset.

I had seen enough, and hastened to descend in order to awake no suspicion. The evening-bell rang, our work was over for the day; with the sergeant at my side I retraced the now familiar way by the garden, past the house to my cell.

This night no sleep visited my eyes. All night long I revolved in my mind the possibilities of flight. That Cat-Kaspar's plan was feasible, I was now convinced; and equally so that this cunning, bold fellow was the very man to carry it out. The place could not have been better chosen; a high bastion, an outer harbor with ships and boats, a deserted strand beyond, and over there the island, which I could reach in any event by swimming. Once there, I knew now how to get away, and how easily it could be done. My clothes were still in the old woman's keeping, and there also were my gun and my game-bag. Then farewell preliminary detention and imprisonment; farewell judges and counsel, superintendents and turnkeys! I should be a free man and could mock you all--and you too, worthy citizens of my native town, who had dealt so generously with me, and my father--well, my father might look to it how he reconciled to his conscience his treatment of a son whom his severity had driven from his house, whom he and he alone had made a criminal.

I had not been a criminal yet, but I knew that I should soon be one; indeed I felt myself one already. I even now felt the taint of my associations with Cat-Kaspar. It was plain enough that without real and deep crime--without murder--our plan could not be executed. The sergeant kept the keys of the gates in his pocket, and he was not a man to yield, especially in such a case. Then the other two overseers were there, who were clearly no chicken-hearts. The three would resist as long as life was in their bodies. They must be despatched at the very first attack, in order that terror should be added to confusion, if our flight was to succeed.

I sprang up from my bed with a wildly-beating heart. Cat-Kaspar counted on my assistance first of all, and he was right; unless we two began the attack simultaneously, there was no chance of success; one man alone would have none to second him; so one of the guards, probably the sergeant, must fall by my hand.

By my hand--how easy it was to think and to say this; but would not my courage fail me at the moment? True, I had fired at the officer in the moor, but then not only my own liberty, but that of my protector, benefactor, and friend was at stake, and thankful had I been that my bullet went astray. Now my associate was not the man I so loved and admired, but Cat-Kaspar; the thing to be done now was not to fire a pistol at a dark figure that suddenly springs up threatening in the way, but to perpetrate a deliberate murder; it was to kill a comparatively unarmed man with a spade, a pick, or a crowbar, or the first tool that came to the murderer's hand. And I had done everything in my power to hate the man, and could not do it. Through all his roughness there shone so much genuine kindness, that it often seemed to me that he had put on this prickly garb because he knew how soft he was by nature. If my relations to him were none of the best, whose fault was it but mine who had so rudely repulsed all his advances? He had not retaliated; he had never wavered in his rough but sincere good-will; if I overlooked his surly fashion of speech, he had treated me, not as a keeper his prisoner, but as an old faithful servant, who can take many liberties, might treat a young master who has behaved badly, and who has been entrusted to him to bring back to reason. Often during the work I found his clear blue eyes looking at me with a strange expression as if he were saying constantly to himself: "Poor youth! poor youth!" and as if he would like to throw down his measuring-rod, seize my pick, and do the work in my place. Once or twice he had said, as we were returning from work, "Well, hasn't one had enough of it yet?" and again, "One shouldn't be too obstinate and grieve the captain so." (The sergeant never called his former officer the "superintendent," except where it was absolutely necessary.) "How grieve the captain?" I asked. "One will not understand it," the old man replied, and looked quite sad and dejected.