Carette of Sark

by John Oxenham

I slipped out of my hammock, unhitched it, and stole across to Le Marchant.

"Come! Bring your hammock!" I whispered, and within a minute we were outside in the storm, drenched to the skin but full of hope.

One of the long wooden houses on the other side of the enclosure was ablaze, but whether from the lightning or as cover to some larger attempt at escape we could not tell. Very likely the latter, I have since thought, for the soldiers were gathering there in numbers, and the bell still rang and the drum still beat.

Without a word, for all this we had discussed and arranged long since, we crept to the palisade nearest to us. I took my place solidly against it. Le Marchant climbed up onto my shoulders, flung the end of his hammock over the spiked top till it caught with its cordage, and in a moment he was sitting among the teeth up above. Another moment, and I was alongside him, peering down into the danger ring below, while the rain thrashed down upon us so furiously that it was all we could do to see or hear. We could, indeed, see nothing save what was right under our hands, for the dead blackness of the night was a thing to be felt.

There was no sound or sign of wardership. It seemed as though what I had hardly dared to hope had come to pass,—as though, in a word, that urgent call to the other side of the enclosure, to forestall an escape or assist at the fire, had bared this side of guards.

We crouched there among the sharp points, listening intently; then, taking our lives in our hands, we dropped the hammock on the outside of the palisade and slipped gently down.

My heart was beating a tattoo as loud as that in the soldiers' quarters, as we sped across the black space which had baffled us so long, and not another sound did we hear save the splashing of the rain.

My hammock helped us over the outer palisade in the same way as the other, and we stood for a moment in the rain and darkness, panting and shaking,—free men.

We made for the void in front, with no thought but of placing the greatest possible distance between ourselves and the prison in the shortest possible time. We plunged into bogs and scrambled through to the farther side, eager bundles of dripping slime, and sped on and on through the rain and darkness—free men, and where we went we knew not, only that it was from prison.

For a time the flicker of the burning house showed us where the prison lay, and directed us from it. But this soon died down, and we were left to make our own course, with no guide but the drenching rain. We had headed into it when we loosed from the palisade, and we continued to breast it.