The Incendiary: A Story of Mystery

by William Augustine Leahy

CHAPTER XXII.

A BATTLE IN THE ROTUNDA.

At 2 o'clock the alarm bell rang out thirteen ominous notes. This was the fire-box of the prison. The flames had broken out in the wicker-workers' shop, where the younger and lighter convicts plaited summer chairs, flower-stands and all kinds of basket articles. On a high throne set against the middle of one wall sat Johann Koerber, the deputy in charge, overseeing everything, pistol in hand. He was a Titan of 300 pounds, who might have proved admirable in his proper work of putting maniacs in strait-jackets. But his selection as overseer of the work-rooms was another instance of Tapp's want of judgment. For all his formidable strength, Koerber lacked the power to govern. The slenderest boy did not fear him, while even "papa," the giant negro who loaded the teams, stood in awe of "Slim" Butler, the lightweight deputy who had charge of the harness-makers. Right under Koerber's eye, the match was applied in several places, and almost before he smelled smoke the canes and osiers were on fire.

Then came the wild riot. In every shop but "Slim" Butler's the officer in charge was overpowered before the alarm bell had ceased ringing. Butler held his men down by sheer strength of will, until the sight of others rushing about in the yard below drove the men at the windows to frenzy, and with the loss of one of their number the brave deputy was disarmed, mangled, crushed. Brushmakers, tailors, shoemakers, saddlers, teamsters and handy men, all streamed from the workshop doors, making by concert toward the wire pole in the middle of the yard. Here the Right Spur was executing a dangerous but ingenious maneuver.

Astride of the cross-bars of the pole, which he had climbed in full view of a dozen deputies, he was cutting the thick telephone wire with a huge pair of shears. The thing could be done in twenty seconds if his confederates mobbed the keepers below, and it might mean a delay of twenty minutes in the arrival of re-enforcements from the nearest station. Stupefied and absorbed, the convict crew were gazing upward at their chief on his perilous perch, when the tall form of Hawkins was seen striding down from the bath-room entrance. The other deputies had contented themselves with fronting the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, rifles leveled, like a herd of musk-bulls with lowered horns defending their females against wolves or men. Hawkins raised his rifle and fired.

The bullet missed its mark and the crack of the powder roused the convicts from their stupor. With a bestial cry and faces on fire, the forward rank, pushed on by those behind, swept down on the group of deputies. Chisels, mallets, hammers, tools and weapons of all kinds from a wheel-spoke to a blunderbuss were brandished in their hands. One volley and the deputies fled—all but Hawkins. Almost simultaneously, it seemed, the second barrel of his rifle hurled its missile, the Right Spur was seen to drop from his post, dragging the severed wire with him to the ground, and "Longlegs" himself was felled, bleeding and senseless, with a heavy bottle.

The mob would have been glad to outrage his body, but time was precious and Dickon Harvey had already sped to the north corner of the "bastile" and was beckoning and summoning his men to follow. They rushed in his wake, turned one corner of the bastile and then another, gave a great shout of joy as they saw the wide outlet of freedom before them.

The bastile was the great granite castle which contained the cells, a continuation of the rotunda. It projected into the yard, leaving a wide space at one end and at both sides. On the opposite side from that in which the shops were located stood the greenhouses, where Robert Floyd was accustomed to work whenever he wearied of writing. He had been crouching under the slant glass roof of the conservatory, snipping off the dead leaves, when the alarm bell sounded. The cries on the other side of the bastile brought him out on the open grass plot, and he was standing there, scissors in hand, when the convict pack swept toward him around the angle 100 yards away. At the same time he heard the impatient bells of the fire-engines jingling up the street.

The riot had been ably planned. Over on this side of the yard stood the entrance for teams. It was this point that the fire engines from without and the convicts from within were making for together. The alternative offered was that of letting the workshops burn or of emptying the jail of its inmates. Outside there was a ponderous iron gate, guarded by a deputy. Within this a stout one of oak wood, which a convict was detailed to open and shut. This convict was no other than Minister Slick, who had persuaded the warden to assign him to this light duty on the score of advancing age and feebleness.

Minister Slick's door was only open a crack. He was too cunning to give the deputy outside a view of the convicts racing down the yard. Not until the outer iron gate was swung back and the fire horses came galloping along did he throw his own gate in, without any marked evidence of "feebleness." The fire engine burst through; the convicts were at hand. Before the heavy iron gate outside could be shut they would be down upon its guardian and he would be swept aside like a sapling before the moose.