IV
BEHIND BOLTS AND BARS
Bedtime at the House of Refuge was quite an affair. Wherever there might be a squad of boys, in any part of the buildings or grounds, at the tap of the drum, they were expected to “fall in,” like soldiers, and march toward the dormitory. Each detachment was sure to have its own officer, a boy promoted, for good behavior and trustworthiness, to be corporal, sergeant, or lieutenant.
The dormitory itself was a remarkable sleeping place. It contained a separate room for each boy, but the rooms were not arranged like those of a hotel or a dwelling. There was one immense room, with plenty of windows for daylight and plenty of burners for gaslight. All around the sides of this room ran a broad, empty space, or passage-way, and inside of this, up and down the middle, had been constructed two tiers, one above another, of little bedrooms. Each tier was composed of two rows of rooms, set back to back with their faces toward the outer windows. The face or front of each room was made of slender, upright steel bars, not much more than two inches apart, and each room had a door, made in the same way, shutting with a strong, spring lock. Of course, each room was small and the beds were only wide enough for one boy, but they were very clean and comfortable. There was plenty of light when light was needed; plenty of air, always; and then perfect silence to sleep soundly in was secured by the rule which forbade talking or any kind of skylarking in the dormitory.
Watchmen patrolling around the upper or lower tier of cells, or rooms, could at any time see the entire inside of each, as they walked by. The outer doors of the dormitory closed with strong and intricate locks, of a peculiar pattern. Beyond these were other doors, with watchmen, and beyond all was the open parade-ground inclosure and its high stone wall. Beyond this was the chilling, rushing, impassable tide of the deep and pitiless East River. No boy could hope to get out from one of those sleeping cells and into the city,—into liberty and the world until the appointed time should come for him.
The dormitory was as still as still could be, that night, when Jim lay upon his bed and thought of it all, and he grew bitter at heart with the seeming impossibility of even getting a chance to try Whether or not he could climb the outer wall.
“I’m about the best climber on the training ship, when they send us into the rigging,” he said to himself. “I could go up on a rope or anything. If I could have some of the other fellows with me! Some things I guess I couldn’t do alone. I don’t want any but plucky fellows and good climbers. I don’t belong here. I never did it and I’ve been here long enough. I’m going to get out, if I can.—There, he’s just gone by.”
That meant the passage of a watchman, on his patrol, and Jim obeyed a strong, angry impulse, to jump out of bed and stare after him through the grated door of his cage.
“It’s just like what they put wild animals in, in a menagerie,” he thought, fiercely, as his fingers griped the slim, but strong steel rods.