"Call?" repeated Schwartz, with a roar of laughter. "Do you think they can hear us at the overseer's, through a courtyard, and a waiting-room, and a grand hall, and another courtyard, and another waiting-room beyond? Not if we were twenty men all bawling together till we were hoarse! I'll show you how we can make the master hear us—if that miraculous revival of yours happens," he added facetiously in a whisper to himself.
He led the way back into the passage, and held up his lantern so as to show the cornice. A row of fire-buckets was suspended there by books. Midway between them, a stout rope hung through a metal-lined hole in the roof.
"Do you see that?" said Schwartz. "You have only to pull, and there's an iron tongue in the belfry above that will speak loud enough to be heard at the city gate. The overseer will come tumbling in, with his bunch of keys, as if the devil was at his heels, and the two women-servants after him—old and ugly, Jack!—they attend to the bath, you know, when a woman wants it. Wait a bit! Take the light into the bedroom, and get a chair for yourself—we haven't much accommodation for evening visitors. Got it? that's right. Would you like to see where the mad watchman hung himself? On the last hook at the end of the row there. We've got a song he made about the Deadhouse. I think it's in the drawer of the table. A gentleman had it printed and sold, for the benefit of the widow and children. Wait till we are well warmed with our liquor, and I'll tell you what I'll do—I'll sing you the mad watchman's song; and Jacky, my man, you shall sing the chorus! Tow-row-rub-a-dub-boom—that's the tune. Pretty, isn't it? Come along back to our snuggery." He led the way to the Watchman's Chamber.
CHAPTER XIX
Jack looked eagerly into the cell again. There was no change—not a sign of that happy waking in which he so firmly believed.
Schwartz opened the drawer of the table. Tobacco and pipes; two or three small drinking-glasses; a dirty pack of playing-cards; the mad watchman's song, with a woodcut illustration of the suicide—all lay huddled together. He took from the drawer the song, and two of the drinking-glasses, and called to his little guest to come out of the cell.
"There;" he said, filling the glasses, "you never tasted such wine as that in all your life. Off with it!"
Jack turned away with a look of disgust. "What did you say of wine, when I drank with you the other night?" he asked reproachfully. "You said it would warm my heart, and make a man of me. And what did it do? I couldn't stand on my legs. I couldn't hold up my head—I was so sleepy and stupid that Joseph had to take me upstairs to bed. I hate your wine! Your wine's a liar, who promises and doesn't perform! I'm weary enough, and wretched enough in my mind, as it is. No more wine for me!"
"Wrong!" remarked Schwartz, emptying his glass, and smacking his lips after it.