CHAPTER XXI.
THE BREWING STORM.
Friday was to be the last day of Warden Tapp's tenure, and Robert was aware that the convicts had determined to celebrate his removal by some demonstration of their joy. Everybody was dissatisfied with his government—the public, his deputies, his charges, alike. Stalking about with that inveterate preference for his own company which had won him the nickname of "The Pelican," he gnawed his huge mustache in a manner that seemed to betray that he was not oversatisfied with the results himself.
The prison which he had taken from his predecessor, as orderly as any barracks the world over, he left to his successor (a military man) slovenly, rebellious and tunneled with secret avenues of communication to the outside world. He had begun with leniency and a smiling face. Vice, indolence and a thousand weedy growths flourished up under his elevated chin. When he awoke at last his rigor in uprooting them was intemperate and ineffectual. Several felons escaped. A riot broke out and the warden had been helplessly holding the reins behind a runaway horse ever since.
He had flogged men for not saluting when he passed, yet he was hooted at every time he showed his head to the crowd. He had strung three brushmakers up by the thumbs for idling, yet every shop except the harness-makers, in spite of free labor, showed a deficit for the last half-year. The cells were so littered with storage that it was almost impossible to enter them. Contraband tobacco, gift books, tools, bird cages, shirts and shoes smuggled from the workshops, even knives and revolvers, were found in them.
The "block," or dark dungeon, was always full. If some dozen of the conniving deputies had been sent there, Warden Tapp might have had less to extenuate.
"It's quiet this evening," said Robert to Dobbs on Thursday.
"That's the lull before the storm, my boy," said the cracksman.
"You think we'll have trouble, then?"