The MS. in a Red Box

by John A. Hamilton

CHAPTER XV

In my sleep I dreamed of what happened when I was seized and carried off. Again I was running up the slope, again I backed against the tree, again I fell through the yielding bark, again my captors bound me and thrust me into the cart.

And I awoke to find myself more tightly bound than before. My arms were held to my sides by a sack, and my legs were fastened to a pole. My head was firmly clamped, I knew not how. I could move my lips and my eyes; otherwise I was like a man of wood. A lamp stood on a projection of the wall, so that its light shone full on my face, and Boswell was stooping over me with a knife in his hand. My cheek was wet, and a smarting there told me the moisture was blood. What could the man be cutting my face for, I wondered, being dazed and not yet out of my dream. Before I had quite come to myself, he had made two slits in my nose, and pressed it to one side. At this I yelled, not so much for pain as from a kind of fright, and with that I regained my senses pretty well.

"What's your devilish game now?" I asked with difficulty, for blood was running into my mouth.

Boswell gave me no answer, but went on with his operation. He laid down his knife, released my head, pulled out of his pocket a narrow strip of cloth, and bound it tightly over my nose, crushing it cruelly. I could not speak now, being near suffocation by the stoppage of my nose with the bandage and of my mouth with blood. When he had taken a good, long look at his surgery, Boswell filled and lighted his pipe, and sat down to full enjoyment of his tobacco. While he sat puffing smoke through his nostrils, I recovered my wits a little, perceiving that I had been overcome by some drug, mixed with the wine I had taken, but what was the intent of the villain in gashing my face I could not surmise. My first thought was that the design might be to make me hideous in Anna's sight.

As I lay, dizzily pondering, Boswell finished his pipe and laid it down to resume his work. He passed a cord several times round my body just above and below my elbows, knotting it securely. Then he slit the sack, and tore open my shirt, laying bare my breast, and taking up a needle and a small pot from the table, he began pricking my chest, dipping the point of the needle often into the pot. The pricking was worse to bear than the slashing with the knife, but I made no outcry, knowing the uselessness of it. So I lay silently shivering under the dab, dab of the needle for what seemed to me a fearfully long time, while he worked some kind of pattern on my breast. At length it came to an end, and when Boswell had examined his handiwork, adding a touch here and there, he laid down his implements, refilled his pipe, refreshed himself from a bottle, and sat down with the air of one well pleased with his achievement.

I thought it plain that this business with knife and needle was intended to give me a deceiving resemblance to some other man, in all likelihood a boatman or sailor, for such fellows had a custom of wearing figures and letters imprinted on breast or arm. The man into whose likeness I was to be changed had, I supposed, a broken nose and a scar on his cheek. But I could not see how this marking and mutilation would avail much, so long as I had the use of my tongue. Still, Boswell must have considered this. He must have thought how easy it would be for me to declare who I was, and to give proof of my identity. Must he not be prepared for such a certain event? There came to my mind stories I had heard of the disappearance of persons who stood between others and a great inheritance, and of the abduction of persons who might be inconvenient witnesses against men of rank and power. Some of these stories ran on to the discovery of such persons in after years, rendered blind or mute, or reduced to idiocy, by the art and craft of gipsies. I had smiled at these fireside tales of the peasantry, but as I lay helplessly bound on this ninth day of my imprisonment within a few miles of home, smarting and aching under wounds inflicted by gipsy tools, I became more credulous. Boswell might deprive me of sight or speech or strength by a knife-thrust, or even the prick of a needle. How I had laughed at the warnings of Bess! But the event had more than justified them. Well, come what might, there was only one course for me, to play the man and trust in God, as I vowed to do to the end.

There is no need to linger over the details of the next few days. Boswell attended closely on me for a week, treating my wounds with salve, and compelling me to drink a quantity of some abominable decoction. He eased my bonds from time to time, but took good heed to prevent my having freedom to use my arms, while I watched closely for any opportunity.

On the sixteenth day of my captivity, Sheffield's negro appeared on the scene, evidently bringing disquieting news for my jailer. He carried a hamper into the adjoining chamber, and there the two conversed in a lingo which I did not understand, but from the tone of their voices I judged that they were hurried, and in perturbation of mind. Now one and now the other went out, and once I heard a great crash overhead. Finally, the negro brought in an iron ball of fifty or sixty pounds' weight, attached by bar and chain to a ring, which Boswell locked on my right ankle, otherwise releasing me entirely. The pair kept their eyes on me, and their weapons handy, when this had been done, but I was not so foolhardy as to attack them. In truth, a great hope had come to me that they meant to leave me alone awhile, and I waited to see whether they would deprive me of the means of deliverance. After a good deal of gibberish had passed between them, and the Moor had done various errands at Boswell's command, both went out together, locking and barring the door in the corridor, and then the outer door behind them.

I picked up the ball, which I could carry in the crook of my arm, lighted a lamp which had been left on the table, and made a tour of inspection, rejoicing to be able to move about, my limbs being stiff and feeble by long constraint. As I had imagined, the negro had brought a store of food. I found bread, salt-beef, tongue, a couple of pasties, several bottles of burgundy, a jar of aqua vitæ, but no water. But I had no great concern about meat or drink. It was more to my purpose that there were eight moderate-sized faggots of sticks, a pile of turves, and a dozen largish logs. These would suffice. I shouted for joy to find a small hatchet, but was disappointed in searching for oil: the jar was empty. My survey taken, I made up the fire, and put my iron ball at the back of it, so that the links of the chain connecting ball and bar might get the full benefit of the heat, and as soon as one grew red, I prised it open with the head of the hatchet. Fire had freed me from a weight, and provided me with a missile, which, if well thrown, would disable an enemy. I had no means of ridding myself of the bar, much though it would be in my way in my next effort, which was to explore the chimney. I removed the fire from the hearth, and had it well blazing in the middle of the floor, before attempting the chimney, for on fire I must now chiefly depend for my liberation.