"No, I won't, I am a Napoleon—Smith!" he added as an afterthought, as if in loyalty to the father, whose legal and territorial claims he had that day so manfully upheld.
But suddenly what was due to his dignified position as a state prisoner occurred to him. Casanova had struck at the wall till his fingers bled. Latude had gnashed his teeth, howled with anguish, and gnawed the earth.
"I have not done any of these things," said Hugh John; "I don't like it. But I suppose I've got to try!"
However, one solid rap of his knuckles upon the hard limestone of the dungeon wall persuaded him that there were things more amusing in the world than to imitate Casanova in that. And as at the first gnaw his mouth encountered a tiny nettle, he leaped to his feet and declared at the pitch of his voice that both Latude and Casanova were certainly "dasht fools!"
The sound of his own words reminded him that after all he was within a mile of home. He wondered what time it might be. He began to feel hungry, and the cubic capacity of his internal emptiness persuaded him that it must be at least quite his usual dinner-time.
So Hugh John decided that, all things being considered, it would be nothing against his manhood if he called for help, and took his chance of any coming. But he remembered that the mouth of the dungeon was in a very retired part of the castle, in the wing nearest to the river, and shut off from the road across the island by a flanking tower and a thirteen-foot wall. So he was not very sanguine of success. Still he felt that in his perilous position he could not afford to neglect any chance, however slight.
So he shouted manfully, "Help! Help! Murder! Police! Fire!" as loud as he could bawl.
Then he tried the "Coo-ee" which Sergeant Steel had taught him, under the impression that it would carry farther. But the keep of a fourteenth century castle and thirteen feet of shell lime and rubble masonry are proof against the most willing boyish voice in the world. So General Napoleon made no more impression upon his friends than his great original would have done had he summoned the Old Guard from the cliffs of St. Helena.
But the younger warrior was not discouraged. He had tried one plan and it had failed. He sat down again to think what was the next thing to be done.
He remembered the thick "hunk" of bread he had put in the pocket of his jacket in the morning. He could not eat it at breakfast, so greatly had he been excited by the impending conflict; so, to prevent waste, and to make all safe, he had put it in his pocket. Besides, in the absence of his father, it was not always possible to be in for meals. And—well, one never knew what might happen. It was best to be prepared for all emergencies.