Having no great pleasure in conversing with his own thoughts, he dressed himself with all convenient despatch, being attended by one of the occasional valets of the place, who had formerly been a rich mercer in the city; and, this operation being performed, he went to breakfast at the coffee-house, where he happened to meet with his friend the clergyman and several persons of genteel appearance, to whom the doctor introduced him as a new messmate. By these gentlemen he was conducted to a place where they spent the forenoon in playing at fives, an exercise in which our hero took singular delight; and about one o'clock a court was held, for the trial of two delinquents, who had transgressed the laws of honesty and good order. The first who appeared at the bar was an attorney, accused of having picked a gentleman's pocket of his handkerchief. And the fact being proved by incontestable evidence, he received sentence. In consequence of which, he was immediately carried to the public pump, and subjected to a severe cascade of cold water. This cause being discussed, they proceeded to the trial of the other offender, who was a lieutenant of a man-of-war, indicted for a riot, which he had committed in company with a female, not yet taken, against the laws of the place, and the peace of his fellow-prisoners. The culprit had been very obstreperous, and absolutely refused to obey the summons, with many expressions of contempt and defiance against the authority of the court; upon which the constables were ordered to bring him to the bar, vi et armis; and he was accordingly brought before the judge, after having made a most desperate resistance with a hanger, by which one of the officers was dangerously wounded. This outrage was such an aggravation of his crime, that the court would not venture to decide upon it, but remitted him to the sentence of the warden; who, by virtue of his dictatorial power, ordered the rioter to be loaded with irons, and confined in the strong room, which is a dismal dungeon, situated upon the side of the ditch, infested with toads and vermin, surcharged with noisome damps, and impervious to the least ray of light.
Justice being done upon these criminals, our adventurer and his company adjourned to the ordinary, which was kept at the coffee-house; and he found, upon inquiry, that his messmates consisted of one officer, two underwriters, three projectors, an alchemist, an attorney, a parson, a brace of poets, a baronet, and a knight of the Bath. The dinner, though not sumptuous, nor very elegantly served up, was nevertheless substantial, and pretty well dressed. The wine was tolerable, and all the guests as cheerful as if they had been utter strangers to calamity; so that our adventurer began to relish the company, and mix in the conversation, with that sprightliness and ease which were peculiar to his disposition. The repast being ended, the reckoning paid, and part of the gentlemen withdrawn to cards, or other avocations, those who remained, among whom Peregrine made one, agreed to spend the afternoon in conversation over a bowl of punch; and the liquor being produced, they passed the time very socially in various topics of discourse, including many curious anecdotes relating to their own affairs. No man scrupled to own the nature of the debt for which he was confined, unless it happened to be some piddling affair, but, on the contrary, boasted of the importance of the sum, as a circumstance that implied his having been a person of consequence in life; and he who made the most remarkable escapes from bailiffs, was looked upon as a man of superior genius and address.
Among other extraordinary adventures of this kind, none was more romantic than the last elopement achieved by the officer; who told them he had been arrested for a debt of two hundred pounds, at a time when he could not command as many pence, and conveyed to the bailiff's house, in which he continued a whole fortnight, moving his lodgings higher and higher, from time to time, in proportion to the decay of his credit; until, from the parlour, he had made a regular ascent to the garret. There, while he ruminated on his next step, which would have been to the Marshalsea, and saw the night come on, attended with hunger and cold, the wind began to blow, and the tiles of the house rattled with the storm. His imagination was immediately struck with the idea of escaping unperceived, amidst the darkness and noise of the tempest, by creeping out of the window of his apartment, and making his way over the tops of the adjoining houses. Glowing with this prospect, he examined the passage, which, to his infinite mortification, he found grated with iron bars on the outside; but even this difficulty did not divert him from his purpose. Conscious of his own strength, he believed himself able to make a hole through the roof, which seemed to be slender and crazy; and, on this supposition, he barricaded the door with the whole furniture of the room; then setting himself to work with a poker, he in a few minutes effected a passage for his hand, with which he gradually stripped off the boards and tiling, so as to open a sallyport for his whole body, through which he fairly set himself free, groping his way towards the next tenement. Here, however, he met with an unlucky accident. His hat being blown off his head, chanced to fall into the court just as one of the bailiff's followers was knocking at the door; and this myrmidon, recognizing it, immediately gave the alarm to his chief, who, running up-stairs to the garret, forced open the door in a twinkling, notwithstanding the precautions which the prisoner had taken, and, with his attendant, pursued the fugitive through his own track. “After this chase had continued some time,” said the officer, “to the imminent danger of all three, I found my progress suddenly stopped by a skylight, through which I perceived seven tailors sitting at work upon a board. Without the least hesitation, or previous notice, I plunged among them with my backside foremost. Before they could recollect themselves from the consternation occasioned by such a strange visit, I told them my situation, and gave them to understand that there was no time to be lost. One of the number, taking the hint, led me instantly down-stairs, and dismissed me at the street door; while the bailiff and his follower, arriving at the breach, were deterred from entering by the brethren of my deliverer, who, presenting their shears, like a range of chevaux de frise, commanded them to retire, on pain of immediate death. And the catchpole, rather than risk his carcase, consented to discharge the debt, comforting himself with the hope of making me prisoner again. There, however, he was disappointed. I kept snug, and laughed at his escape-warrant, until I was ordered abroad with the regiment, when I conveyed myself in a hearse to Gravesend, where I embarked for Flanders; but, being obliged to come over again on the recruiting service, I was nabbed on another score. And all the satisfaction my first captor has been able to obtain, is a writ of detainer, which, I believe, will fix me in this place, until the parliament, in its great goodness, shall think proper to discharge my debts by a new act of insolvency.”
Everybody owned that the captain's success was equal to the hardiness of his enterprise, which was altogether in the style of a soldier; but one of the merchants observed, that he must have been a bailiff of small experience, who would trust a prisoner of that consequence in such an unguarded place. “If the captain,” said he, “had fallen into the hands of such a cunning rascal as the fellow that arrested me, he would not have found it such an easy matter to escape; for the manner in which I was caught is perhaps the most extraordinary that ever was practised in these realms. You must know, gentlemen, I suffered such losses by insuring vessels during the war, that I was obliged to stop payment, though my expectations were such as encouraged me to manage one branch of business, without coming to an immediate composition with my creditors, and, in short, I received consignments from abroad as usual, that I might not be subject to the visits of those catchpoles, I never stirred abroad; but, turning my first floor into a warehouse, ordered all my goods to be hoisted up by a crane fixed to the upper story of my house. Divers were the stratagems practised by those ingenious ferrets, with a view of decoying me from the walls of my fortification. I received innumerable messages from people, who wanted to see me at certain taverns, upon particular business. I was summoned into the country, to see my own mother, who was said to be at the point of death. A gentlewoman, one night, was taken in labour on my threshold. At another time I was disturbed with the cry of murder in the street; and once I was alarmed by a false fire. But, being still upon my guard, I baffled all their attempts, and thought myself quite secure from their invention, when one of those bloodhounds, inspired, I believe, by the devil himself, contrived a snare by which I was at last entrapped. He made it his business to inquire into the particulars of my traffic; and, understanding that, among other things, there were several chests of Florence entered at the custom house on my behalf, he ordered himself to be enclosed in a box of the same dimensions, with air-holes in the bottom, for the benefit of breathing, and marked upon the cover; and, being conveyed to my door in a cart, among other goods, was, in his turn, hoisted up to my warehouse, where I stood with a hammer, in order to open the chests, that I might compare the contents with the invoice. You may guess my surprise and consternation, when, upon uncovering the box, I saw a bailiff rearing up his head, like Lazarus from the grave, and heard him declare that he had a writ against me for a thousand pounds. Indeed, I aimed the hammer at his head, but, in the hurry of my confusion, missed my mark; before I could repeat the blow, he started up with great agility, and executed his office in sight of several evidences whom he had assembled in the street for that purpose; so that I could not possibly disentangle myself from the toil without incurring an escape-warrant, from which I had no protection. But, had I known the contents of the chest, by all that's good! I would have ordered my porter to raise it up as high as the crane would permit, and then have cut the rope by accident.”
“That expedient,” said the knight with the red ribbon, “would have discouraged him from such hazardous attempts for the future, and would have been an example in terrorem of all his brethren. The story puts me in mind of a deliverance achieved by Tom Hackabout, a very stout, honest fellow, an old acquaintance of mine, who had been so famous for maiming bailiffs, that another gentleman having been ill-used at a spunging-house, no sooner obtained his liberty, than, with a view of being revenged upon the landlord, he, for five shillings, bought one of Tom's notes, which sold at a very large discount, and, taking out a writ upon it, put it into the hands of the bailiff who had used him ill. The catchpole, after a diligent search, had an opportunity of executing the writ upon the defendant, who, without ceremony, broke one of his arms, fractured his skull, and belaboured him in such a manner, that he lay without sense or motion on the spot. By such exploits, this hero became so formidable, that no single bailiff would undertake to arrest him; so that he appeared in all public places untouched. At length, however, several officers of the Marshalsea court entered into a confederacy against him; and two of the number, attended by three desperate followers, ventured to arrest him one day in the Strand, near Hungerford-market. He found it impossible to make resistance, because the whole gang sprung upon him at once, like so many tigers, and pinioned his arms so fast, that he could not wag a finger. Perceiving himself fairly overpowered, he desired to be conducted forthwith to jail, and was stowed in a boat accordingly; by the time they had reached the middle of the river, he found means to overset the wherry by accident, and every man, disregarding the prisoner, consulted his own safety. As for Hackabout, to whom that element was quite familiar, he mounted astride upon the keel of the boat, which was uppermost, and exhorted the bailiffs to swim for their lives; protesting before God, that they had no other chance to be saved.
“The watermen were immediately taken up by some of their own friends, who, far from yielding any assistance to the catchpoles, kept aloof, and exulted in their calamity. In short, two of the five went to the bottom, and never saw the light of God's sun, and the other three, with great difficulty, saved themselves by laying hold on the rudder of a dung-barge, to which they were carried by the stream, while Tom, with great deliberation, swam across to the Surrey shore. After this achievement, he was so much dreaded by the whole fraternity, that they shivered at the very mention of his name; and this character, which some people would think an advantage to a man in debt, was the greatest misfortune that could possibly happen to him; because no tradesman would give him credit for the least trifle, on the supposition that he could not indemnify himself in the common course of law.”
The parson did not approve of Mr. Hackabout's method of escaping, which he considered as a very unchristian attempt upon the lives of his fellow-subjects. “It is enough,” said he, “that we elude the laws of our country, without murdering the officers of justice. For my own part, I can lay my hand upon my heart, and safely say, that I forgive from my soul the fellow by whom I was made a prisoner, although the circumstances of his behaviour were treacherous, wicked, and profane. You must know, Mr. Pickle, I was one day called into my chapel, in order to join a couple in the holy bands of matrimony; and, my affairs being at that time so situated, as to lay me under apprehensions of an arrest, I cautiously surveyed the man through a lattice which was made for that purpose, before I would venture to come within his reach. He was clothed in a seaman's jacket and trousers, and had such an air of simplicity in his countenance, as divested me of all suspicion. I therefore, without further scruple, trusted myself in his presence, began to exercise the duty of my function, and had actually performed one half of the ceremony, when the supposed woman, pulling out a paper from her bosom, exclaimed, with a masculine voice, 'Sir, you are my prisoner; I have got a writ against you for five hundred pounds.' I was thunderstruck at this declaration, not so much on account of my own misfortune, which, thank Heaven, I can bear with patience and resignation, as at the impiety of the wretch, first, in disguising such a worldly aim under the cloak of religion; and, secondly, in prostituting the service, when there was no occasion for so doing, his design having previously taken effect. Yet I forgive him, poor soul! because he knew not what he did; and I hope you, Sir Simple, will exert the same Christian virtue towards the man by whom you were likewise overreached.”
“Oh! d— the rascal,” cried the knight; “were I his judge, he should be condemned to flames everlasting. A villain! to disgrace me in such a manner, before almost all the fashionable company in town.” Our hero expressing a curiosity to know the particulars of this adventure, the knight gratified his desire, by telling him, that one evening, while he was engaged in a party of cards, at a drum in the house of a certain lady of quality, he was given to understand by one of the servants, that a stranger, very richly dressed, was just arrived in a chair, preceded by five footmen with flambeaux, and that he refused to come upstairs, until he should be introduced by Sir Simple. “Upon this notice,” continued the knight, “I judged it was some of my quality friends; and, having obtained her ladyship's permission to bring him up, went down to the hall, and perceived a person, whom, to the best of my recollection, I had never seen before. However, his appearance was so magnificent, that I could not harbour the least suspicion of his true quality; and, seeing me advance, he saluted me with a very genteel bow, observing, that though he had not the honour of my acquaintance, he could not dispense with waiting upon me, even on that occasion, in consequence of a letter which he had received from a particular friend. So saying, he put a paper into my hand, intimating that he had got a writ against me for ten thousand pounds, and that it would be my interest to submit without resistance, for he was provided with a guard of twenty men, who surrounded the door in different disguises, determined to secure me against all opposition. Enraged at the scoundrel's finesse, and trusting to the assistance of the real footmen assembled in the hall, 'So you are a rascally bailiff,' said I, 'who have assumed the garb of a gentleman, in order to disturb her ladyship's company. Take this fellow, my lads, and roll him in the kennel. Here are ten guineas for your trouble.' These words were no sooner pronounced, than I was seized, lifted up, placed in a chair, and carried off in the twinkling of an eye; not but that the servants of the house, and some other footmen, made a motion towards my rescue, and alarmed all the company above. But the bailiff affirming with undaunted effrontery, that I was taken up upon an affair of state, and so many people appearing in his behalf, the countess would not suffer the supposed messenger to be insulted; and he carried me to the county jail without further let or molestation.”