The Road to Paris: A Story of Adventure

by Robert Neilson Stephens

"Yes. 'E was picked up in a small boat, far hout to sea, a-trying for to make the French coast. The ship's captain, having put out of Plymouth on a long voyage,—for this 'appened last February,—'ad no mind to turn back, and so he took the fellow all the way to the Barbados, and then brought him 'ome to London. So now he lies at St. Catherine's, on shipboard, while the Government is making up its mind what to do with 'im."

And thus had fate treated Edward Lawson, otherwise Captain Ted, Dick's whimsical gentleman of Taunton! To think that a fugitive, in exchanging himself out of an incriminating suit of clothes to avoid detection, should exchange himself into the clothes of another fugitive, and be caught as the latter! Dick laughed to himself, even as he went to beg a turnkey to inform the governor that he, Dick, had an important disclosure to make.

The turnkey carried the message, for a consideration, and Dick was summoned to the governor's room, where it was finally got into the head of that functionary that Dick claimed to be the American prisoner for whom the other man had been taken. Dick was sent back to his court, with no satisfaction; but the next day he was led again into the governor's room, and confronted with the whimsical gentleman himself, who looked decidedly the worse for wear. It appeared that the highwayman was glad to be known, even in his true colors, rather than as a rebel prisoner who might be charged with treason.

The two were taken by hackney coach to Bow Street, and there the whimsical gentleman, much to his relief, was identified as Captain Ted, by the very ladies who had identified Dick as the same person, Justice Fielding subsequently observing that the resemblance between the two men was so great as to leave no ground for a charge of perjury against the identifiers. Captain Ted was then promptly committed to Newgate, on the evidence of the woman who had first laid information against him. With a friendly smile and courteous bow to Dick, he was led away.

And now Dick, relieved of the oft-recurring Tyburn vision, was to learn what disposition was to be made of himself. Standing out from the prisoners' pen, and in the vacant space before the magistrate's table, he was addressed at some length by Sir John Fielding. It appeared that his story, as related to the governor of Newgate the previous day, having tallied with certain statements made by the other prisoner, had been considered by no less a personage than the Secretary of State. If he was one of the American prisoners who had been confined at Pendennis Castle, the justice said, his treatment ordinarily would have been the same as theirs,—that is to say, he would have been taken aboard the Solebay frigate on the 8th of January, and sent back to America as a prisoner of war, subject to exchange (this was Dick's first intimation of what had befallen Allen and the others). But he had broken from custody while he still regarded it as likely that he would be proceeded against for high treason, and he was therefore to be considered as having admitted his guilt of high treason. However, it was the desire of the King to exhibit great clemency to his rebellious American subjects, even in the most aggravated cases; hence the justice dared presume that the Crown would not move against the prisoner on the charge of treason (Dick afterward guessed that the real reason for this self-denial on the Crown's part lay in the difficulty and expense of getting witnesses to the alleged treason). The prisoner had, however, been shown to have sold a stolen suit of clothes; he ought to have known, by the circumstances in which he had acquired the clothes, even if those circumstances were as he alleged, that the clothes had been stolen; his not so knowing was a fault, yet was the fault of no one other than him, hence must be his fault. The justice was, therefore, compelled, on information sworn by the Monmouth Street dealer and by Mr. Charteris's servant, to commit the prisoner for trial on this new charge.

So back to Newgate went Dick, wondering whether matters were improved, after all. At the September sessions he was haled, upon indictment, before the bewigged judges and the stolid jury in the Old Bailey; pleaded not guilty, was tried with great expedition, convicted without delay, and sentenced (at the end of a solemn speech in which he thought at first the judge was driving at nothing less than death by hanging with the next Tyburn batch) to hard labor for three years on the river Thames. It appeared that the prisoner's general honesty, to which his George Street landlady's son voluntarily testified, influenced the judge against a capital sentence. Well, what is three years' hard labor to a man who has seriously contemplated a gibbet for several weeks past?

The vessel on which Dick found himself, in consequence of this manifestation of British justice,—which in those benighted days was almost as dangerous for an honest man to come in contact with as New York City justice is to-day,—resembled an ordinary lighter, though of broader gunwale on the larboard side. A floor about three feet wide ran along the starboard side, for the men to work on, and their duty was to raise ballast, of which the vessel's capacity was twenty-seven tons, by means of windlass and davits. The convicts slept aft, where the vessel was decked in, and the overseer had a cabin in the forecastle.

The men were chained together in pairs, and Dick, to his surprise, recognized his own comrade as none other than the body-snatcher through whom he had accidentally come to try his card tricks in London taverns. This amiable person had been caught while conveying a pauper's body, wrapped in a sack, by hackney coach, from Shoreditch to St. George's hospital, for the use of surgeons. He belonged to a gang that worked for the Resurrectionist, an inhabitant of the Borough, who was a famous trader to the surgeons.

Dick had to work all day, and to eat nothing but ox-cheek, legs and shins of beef, and equally coarse food; to drink only water or small beer, and to wear a mean uniform, which, as autumn wore into winter, ill protected him from the cold. Yet the hard work kept his blood going by day, gave him appetite for the food, and made sleep a pleasure. The fatigues of the day left the convicts no inclination to talk at night. One day was like another, and the monotony of uninteresting toil was endurable only for the prospect of freedom at the end of the three years. Dick had no mind to attempt an escape, for on receiving sentence he had been told that his term might be abridged for good behavior, that it would certainly be doubled on a first attempt to escape, and that on a such second attempt he would be liable to suffer death. So when, in the fifth month of his durance, he was awakened one night by the grave-robber, and a general plot to break away was cautiously broached to him, he resolutely refused to take part or to hear more, and went to sleep again. He observed, the next few days, that he was narrowly watched by the other convicts, who doubtless feared he might inform the overseer; but he had no such intention.

One night in February,—it was between Sunday and Monday,—when the vessel was moored off Woolwich, Dick was violently awakened by a kind of tugging at his leg. Throwing out his hand in the darkness to investigate, he heard a threatening whisper, "If you move or call out, I'll blow your head off with this pistol! Bill the Blacksmith is taking off our irons. You can join us if you like, or you can stay here, but you'll keep quiet!"