Not that the whole of that time had been spent in the great crowded dungeon below. The gendarmes knew better, when a prisoner possessed a little money. The very first morning after Roy’s arrival, he had been conducted above ground, glad enough to go, though grieved to leave little Will Peirce behind; and it had been intimated to him that, if he chose to pay for the benefit, he might be put into a room with a few other prisoners of a better grade. Roy had thankfully availed himself of the chance, and he had done his best to get Will brought up also, but there he had failed.
During more than four months he had lived, monotonously enough, in a barely-furnished room, with half-a-dozen companions—an elderly Naval officer of the rougher sort, a half-pay Colonel, a musician who solaced his own imprisonment and made worse that of others by incessant piping upon a flute, and three well-to-do men in the merchant line. It was a lonely existence for the boy. The men were kind to him, but utterly uncongenial, and they spent most of their time in high play. Roy had no interests, no employments, nothing in common with these men, among whom his lot was cast. The temptation to be drawn in, to find relief from his own thoughts in the excitement of gambling, was often terribly severe; but he remembered always his own reiterated promise to Denham in the past, and he resisted manfully. He was not conquered; and through all his after life Roy Baron was the stronger man for that successful fight in his boyish days. Every victory makes one stronger, every defeat makes one weaker, for the years to follow.
By the end of about four months and a half his money, though carefully husbanded, came to an end; and more had not reached him, as he had confidently expected. He had written repeatedly to his parents and to Ivor; but no answers arrived, and he could not know whether any of his letters had reached their destination. It was as likely as not that all had failed to do so, and that money, sent to him by his father, had been seized en route.
So soon as his means of paying the gendarmes for better prison accommodation ceased, Roy was remanded to the great dungeon.
He took it more quietly than at the first. He was by this time in a manner used to close captivity. Will and the other middies welcomed him warmly; and soon he found that a plan for escape was brewing among them.
No wonder prisoners sought to get away. The life in those dungeons—there were more than one at Bitche—must have been fearful. We, in this more humane age, find it difficult to believe that only ninety years ago imprisonment in noisome dungeons was still in full swing, even in so civilised a country as France. The close damp atmosphere, the crowded space, the lack of quiet, the incessant noise, the absence of subordination among the worse characters of those herded indiscriminately together—all these things were hard to bear.
From eight at night until eight in the morning the three or four hundred prisoners were locked up in their dungeon. At eight in the morning they were turned out—like sheep turned from a pen—into the “yard,” a place about one hundred and thirty paces in length by some thirty in breadth. There they remained until noon, getting what air and exercise they could. At noon once more they were mustered in the dungeon, and at two o’clock they were again turned out into the yard, until the evening. And this is no fancy picture of what went on.
The yard was well known to Roy, since, while living upstairs, he had gone out there daily, meeting many other English prisoners from other rooms, but always at such times as the dungeon inmates were locked in.
The very idea of possible escape from such an existence was naturally welcomed, even though every attempt to get away meant danger to life. Many had escaped; many more were likely enough to do their best for the same end. When Will Peirce, with the consent of his friends, and under strictest vows of secrecy, confided to Roy the plan under discussion, Roy threw himself into it with fervour. Anything to be free!
He stood in the prison-yard one cold day in late autumn, leaning against the wall, with folded arms and abstracted look. A grey sky was overhead, and some drops of half-frozen rain had fallen. Hundreds of prisoners were assembled there; some walking about to keep themselves warm; some leaping or wrestling; some fighting in good earnest; others absorbed in games of chance; while some lounged listlessly, with no spirit to exert themselves. A dull inertia, as of semi-despair, characterised many present.