Humphrey Bold: A Story of the Times of Benbow

by Herbert Strang

The next following days saw half a dozen of us busily employed in the courtyard in knocking together a long shallow box, in the upper side of which we pierced S-shaped holes like those of the fiddle, with a notched bridge at about one-third of its length for holding four strings, and wooden screws at the other end for stretching them taut. Joe Punchard, good fellow, was the most ardent of the artificers, plying the tools with a dexterity born of his work for master cooper Matthew Mark years before. We got from the soldiers, who showed a great interest in our task, cords of different thickness, and several lengths of iron wire which we twisted together somewhat after the manner of the thickest string of the fiddle. We then stretched this and three cords over the bridge on the top of the box, screwed them to a high tension, and plucked them to see if they emitted notes that could be called musical.

The result surpassed my expectations. Tolliday, our fiddler, declared that the notes were true music, though to be sure not very resonant, and he undertook to tune the strings in fifths, so that it might be able to take a proper part in our next symphony. Having no bow with which to scrape the strings, he said that they could only be strummed with the finger and thumb, and when he offered to teach one of us thus to handle it, there were many candidates for the place, which in the end fell to a man named Winslow. The men were all mightily pleased with the success of our work, and I was secretly delighted, not with the instrument as a producer of music, but at knowing that we had a box which might serve those of us who could not swim as a raft.

We had now at command (if we could secretly purloin it) a rope to let us down, and a raft to ferry us over the moat, but we had still to find a means of getting beyond the wall, and to this I bent all my energy of mind. In this, too, I took Joe Punchard into consultation, and we discussed all kinds of plans. With the sentry on guard throughout the night in the courtyard there was no hope of escape by the gate and drawbridge. There was no opening in the wall. The only possible means of exit was to cut a hole in it, and this would be a matter of great toil, the wall being, as some one had told us, ten feet thick. It consisted, so far as we could tell from the inside, of solid blocks of stone cemented together, and when, at an odd moment when no one was looking, I tried to scrape away some of the cement between two of the stones, I found that it was almost as hard as the stone itself.

To cut through ten feet of such solid material was a task that might have caused any one to despair. Still, it was the only course open to us, and I have never known any task too hard for patience and determination. Joe and I decided that we must gradually scrape away the cement around one of the blocks until we could remove this altogether, and then work at the next one, and the next, until we had pierced right through to the open air.

Apart from the toilsomeness of the task, there were risks to be feared and provided against. First; one or another of the soldiers inspected our dormitory every day. This inspection, 'tis true, had become somewhat perfunctory, the man being content, as a rule, to mount the ladder until his head was a foot or two above the level of the floor, throw a hasty glance around, and descend again. The second risk was more serious. Since we could hear at night the tramp of the sentry going his round of the battlements, it was probable that, however quietly we might work, the sentry would hear the sound of scraping as he passed above. If the wall had been wainscotted, he might suppose such sounds to be caused by the gnawing of mice; but there was no likelihood of mice making their habitat in a thick stone wall. Further, even if we should so contrive that our task of scraping was interrupted when the sentry passed, there was still the danger that the sound might attract the attention of the men in the adjoining dormitory. If they should get any suspicion of what was toward, it would soon be common talk among the whole body of prisoners, and some whisper of it would certainly reach the ears of the guard.

In order to lessen this risk, Joe and I decided to begin our work at a stone measuring three feet by two, in the right-hand corner of the dormitory, farthest removed from the partition dividing us from the next, and a foot or two above the floor, so that a bed could be pushed against the wall and hide all signs of our operations in case a sudden visit of inspection was made.

These preliminaries having been settled by Joe and myself, the time was come for taking our roommates into our confidence. I did not disguise from myself that we were staking a great deal on their loyalty, and even more on their silence, for the slightest whisper of the plot outside our own little company would be fatal. There were ten of us bandsmen altogether. At first I thought of speaking to the men individually, and thus testing their courage and enterprise. But on reflection I decided that what was most requisite to our success was a corporate spirit, which could be best engendered by opening the matter to them as a body. Accordingly, one evening, when we were assembled in the dormitory for a practice, I took the fateful plunge.

I am not an orator, and I shall not set down here the words in which I addressed them. Suffice it to say that they listened very attentively, not at first perceiving the full drift of my meaning, so careful was I to feel my way with them. They held me in some special consideration, which I no doubt owed partly to Joe Punchard, who had told them something of my story, and when at length I declared plainly our intention to escape, asked them if they would join hands with us, and impressed on them the necessity of maintaining silence about it, they one and all promised that never a word should pass their lips.

As to the scheme itself, when I unfolded its details, they were somewhat dubious, and, strangely enough, the most enthusiastic in its favor was little Runnles, the melancholy flute player, and the most doubtful was the bosun, whose physical courage was equal to anything, but who was daunted by what appealed more particularly to the moral qualities of patience and endurance. He dwelt lugubriously on the difficulties I have already mentioned, and shook his head when I combated his objections; but he agreed to throw in his lot with the rest of us, and said that if we once got clear of the walls, and there was any fighting to do, he would break any Frenchman's head as soon as look at him.

Nothing remained now but to begin operations, and I soon found that the demands upon our patience would be even more exacting than I had supposed. We divided our company of ten into five watches, each to take a spell of two hours' work. One night, as soon as all was quiet, Joe and I set to work, he with a chisel which he had used in making our new instrument, I with my clasp knife. Very gently, so as to avoid noise, we began to scrape away at the mortar between the block of stone we had selected for removal and the one below it.