University of Virginia Library

42. CHAPTER XLII.

Here his reflections were interrupted by the opening of
the outer door of his cell, and a voice somewhat sternly
pronouncing his name.

It was a regulation of the prison, that twice a day an
official should visit each cell, to prevent the possibility of the
tenant's attempting to escape, or hold communication with
neighboring prisoners. This duty was commonly discharged
by non-commissioned officers of certain corps in the garrison.
Each cell had two doors. The outer one was of massive
wood, guarded by iron plates and rivets. The inner door,
though much less ponderous, was secured with equal care;
but in the middle of it was an oblong aperture, much like
that of a post office letter box, though shorter and wider.
The visiting official opened the outer door, and without opening
the inner, could see the prisoner by applying his eye to
this aperture.

“What are you doing there?” demanded the voice, in the
usual form of the visitor's challenge.

The voice was different from that to which Morton had

been accustomed; and, as he gave the usual answer, he
looked towards the opening. Here he saw a full, clear, blue
eye, with a brown eyebrow, very well formed; altogether a
different eye from that which had formerly presented itself, —
a contracted, blackish, or mud-colored organ, furrowed round
about with the wrinkles called “crow's feet;” — altogether
a mean and vulgar-looking eye, belonging, indeed, to a
rugged old soldier, whose skull might safely have been
warranted sabre-proof.

Morton looked at the eye, and the eye looked at him, with
great intentness, seemingly, for some twenty seconds. Then
it disappeared, but returned, and resumed its scrutiny for
some moments longer.

“A new broom sweeps clean,” thought Morton; “that
fellow means to do his duty.”

The eye vanished at length, the door closed, and the step
of the retiring visitor sounded along the flag-stones.

Morton thought little more of the matter, but busied himself
with his usual masculine employment of stocking knitting,
till seven in the evening, when the visitor came on his
second round, and the same voice challenged him through the
opening. He looked up, and saw the eye again; when to
his astonishment, the low, hissing sound — “s — s — t” —
used by Italians and some other Europeans when they wish
to attract attention, sounded from the soldier's lips. At the
next instant, however, something seemed to have alarmed
him; for the eye disappeared, and the door closed abruptly.

Morton perplexed himself greatly with conjectures about
this incident, and had half persuaded himself that the whole

was a cheat of the fancy; when, on the next morning, as he
was led back, under a guard, from his walk on the rampart,
he saw, on entering a long gallery of the prison, a tall man
approaching from the farther end. He recognized him at
once. It was Max Kubitski, the corporal, who long before
had guarded him to his sham execution, and whose friendly
whisper in his cell had wakened in him a short gleam of
hope. As the corporal passed, his eye met Morton's for an
instant, with, as the latter thought, a glance of recognition.

In vain he tried to reason down the new hope that, in
spite of himself, this meeting kindled. Of one thing he was
sure; the corporal's eye was the eye that looked in upon
him through the hole in the door; and he felt assured, moreover,
that, from whatever cause, the corporal inclined to
befriend him.

He waited, in great expectancy and some agitation, for the
next visit; and at the stated hour, the outer door was
opened, and the eye appeared.

Morton, as he replied to the challenge, made a gesture of
friendly recognition.

“You remember me, eh?” whispered a voice, in broken
French; “be always close to the door when I come. I shall
have something to tell you.”

The moustached lips whence the whisper issued were
withdrawn from the opening, and Morton was left to his
reflections.

To have a friend near him, however humble, was much,
and the hope, slender as it seemed, that this friend might aid
him, filled him with a feverish excitement. Why the corporal

should interest himself in his behalf, he could not imagine;
and he waited restlessly for his next coming.

In due time, the eye appeared.

“Look here,” whispered Max, and thrust a paper through
the opening, waiting only long enough to see Morton pick
it up.

The chirography was worse, if possible, than the spelling;
but Morton at last deciphered words to the following purport.

“You are brave. Don't despair. I shall help you, if I
can. Long live America! Down with the emperor! Only
be patient. Be sure to chew this paper, and swallow it.”

The last injunction had its objections, and the prisoner
compromised the matter by tearing the paper into small
pieces, and stuffing them into the crevices of the floor.

At the next appearance of the eye, Morton, in a few rapid
words, expressed his gratitude; adding that if the corporal
would help him to escape, and go with him to America, he
would make him rich for life.

The intimation probably had its effect; and yet in the case
of Max it was not needed. Though his tastes and habits
savored of the barrack, the corporal was one of the most
simple-hearted and generous of men, with, besides, much of
that kind of enthusiasm of character which is apt to be rather
ornamental than useful to its owner. His birth and connections
were not quite so low as might have been argued from
his mean station in the service, in which his life had been
spent from boyhood. He was a native of Gallicia. Several
of his brothers, and others of his relatives, had been deeply
compromised in the Polish rising of 1831, and had suffered

heavy and humiliating penalties in consequence. His eldest
brother, however, had escaped in time, and gone to America,
where, being very different in character from Max, he had
thriven wonderfully. After a long absence, he had reappeared,
travelling with a United States passport, as an
American, inveighing against European despotisms, and dilating
on the glories of his adopted country. Max, the only
auditor of these declamations, was greatly excited by them.
He had long been tired of his thankless position in the Austrian
service; and listening to his brother's persuasions, he
agreed to desert, and go with him to America, the seat, as he
began to imagine, of more than earthly beatitude. But before
he could find opportunity, his cautious brother took alarm;
and seeing some indications that his identity was suspected
by the police, decamped with the promptness and alacrity
which had always distinguished him in times of danger.
Max, therefore, was left alone; his adviser, for fear of compromising
him, not daring to attempt any communication.

It was soon after this, that, being on guard in the commissioner's
inquest room at Ehrenberg, Max first saw Morton,
brought in for examination, and learned from the questions
and replies, that the prisoner was an American. His interest
was greatly stirred; for he had never seen one of the favored
race before; and, like the commissioner, he had no doubt that
Morton had come on a revolutionary mission. His interest
was inflamed to enthusiasm, when, being ordered to guard
Morton to his execution, he saw the calmness with which the
latter faced his expected fate. Indeed, his soldier heart was
moved so deeply, that in the flush of the moment he conceived

the idea of helping Morton to escape, and going with
him to the land of promise. It was an idea more easily conceived
than executed; and before he could find an opportunity,
his corps was removed from the castle, and sent on duty
elsewhere.

Max had always detested the life of a garrison, and especially
of a prison garrison, and the change proved very agreeable
to him. Though brave as the bravest, he had not much
energy or forecast, and commonly let his affairs take care of
themselves. He lived on from day to day, neither abandoning
his plan of desertion, nor acting upon it; until, after
more than two years, he was remanded to Ehrenberg, where
his old disgust returned in greater force than ever. In this
state of his mind, the duty of visitor was assigned to him,
thus bringing him in contact with Morton, reviving his half-forgotten
feeling, and, at the same time, promising him an
opportunity to carry his former scheme into effect.

To this time, Morton had borne his troubles with as much
philosophy as could reasonably have been expected; but now
that something like a tangible hope began to open on him,
the excitement became intense. He waited the daily visits
of the soldier with a painful eagerness and suspense. At the
stated hours, Max always came; and, at each return, some
whispered word of friendship greeted the prisoner's ear.

Two days after the first paper, he thrust in another; and
Morton read as follows: —

“We must wait; but our time will come; perhaps in ten
days; perhaps in a week. I shall watch for a chance. Only
be patient.”

Five long and anxious days succeeded; when, on the forenoon
of the sixth, Max thrust in a third paper; and Morton,
with a beating heart, read, —

“When the jailer comes this afternoon, make him talk with
you, and keep him with his back to the door. I shall come.
Be cool and steady. I shall tell you what to do.”

Illness and long confinement had wrought upon Morton's
system in a manner which made it doubly difficult to preserve
the coolness which the emergency demanded; but he summoned
his utmost resolution to meet this crisis of his fate.

The jailer was nowise addicted to conversation; and how
to engage him in it, was a problem of some difficulty. There
was only one topic on which Morton had ever seen him at all
animated. This was the battle of Wagram, in which, in his
youth, he had taken part, and where he had received a sabre
cut, which had left a ghastly blue scar across his cheek. In
dilating on this momentous passage of his life, the old German
would sometimes be roused into a great excitement; and
Morton had often amused himself with trying to comprehend
the jargon which he poured out, in thick gobbling tones,
about cannonading and charging, sabres and bombshells,
pointing continually at his scar, and laboring to impress his
hearer with the conviction, immovably fixed in his own mind,
that he, Jacob, was one of the chief heroes of the day.

At his usual hour, about the middle of the afternoon,
Jacob appeared. As he came in, he closed the outer door,
which secured itself by a latch. This latch could be moved
back from within or without, by a species of key in the jailer's
keeping, Max also, as visitor, having a duplicate. The

jailer alone had the key of the inner door; but this, during
his stay in the cell, he never thought it necessary to close.

Jacob went through his ordinary routine, breathing deeply,
meanwhile, and talking unconsciously to himself, after his
usual manner.

“Do you know, Jacob,” said Morton, seating himself on a
stool in the farther corner, “I was dreaming the other night
of you and the battle of Wagram.”

“Eh!” grunted the jailer.

“What you have been telling me about it is a lie. You
were never in that battle at all.”

“Eh!”

“You were frightened, and ran off before the fighting
began.”

“Run! I run off!” growled Jacob, the idea slowly penetrating
his brain.

Morton nodded assent.

The jailer turned and stared at him for a moment with open
eyes and mouth. Then, as his wrath slowly mounted, he
began to pour forth a flood of denial, mixed with invective
against his assailant, appealing to his scar as proof positive
of his valor.

“A sabre never made that scar,” said Morton, as the other
paused in his eloquence.

Jacob stared at him, speechless.

“You got it in a drunken row.”

At this Jacob's rage seemed to choke his utterance; and
Morton thought he would attack him bodily, as he stood before
him, shaking his fists, and stamping on the pavement.

This pantomime was brought to a sudden close by a pair
of strong hands clinched around Jacob's neck from behind,
with the gripe of a vice.

“Shut the door,” whispered Max.

On entering, he had left it ajar. Morton hastened to close
it. The corporal meanwhile laid Jacob flat on the floor of
the cell.

“Take my bayonet, and run it through him if he makes a
sound.”

Morton drew the bayonet from its sheath at the belt of
Max, and kneeling on the jailer's breast, pressed the point of
the weapon against his throat. Max then loosed his grasp,
and gagged him effectually with a piece of wood and a cord
which he had brought for the purpose. Jacob lay, during the
whole, quite motionless, glaring upward with glassy, bloodshot
eyes, stupefied with fright and astonishment.

“You must put on his clothes,” said Max.

They accordingly took off the jailer's outer garments,
which Morton substituted for his own, drawing the deep-visored
cap over his eyes. Max, at the same time, bound the
jailer, hand and foot, with strings of leather, which he took
from his pocket.

“Look out into the gallery,” he said, unclosing the door,
“and see if there's any body in the way.”

Morton, in his jailer's dress, went out, and, looking back,
reported that the coast was clear. Max followed, and closed
the door. The helpless Jacob remained a prisoner, till some
other functionary of the castle should come to his relief.

They passed along the gallery, down one flight of steps,

and up another, meeting no one but a soldier, to whom Max
gave a careless nod of recognition. There were several private
outlets to the castle, but each was guarded by a sentinel;
and it was chiefly his preparation against this difficulty that
had caused Max's delay.

Among his acquaintance was an old soldier, called Peter,
— a Prussian by birth. He had learned to read and write,
and being inordinately vain of his superior acquirements,
looked upon himself as the most learned of men. When off
duty, he was commonly to be found in a corner of the barrack,
poring over a greasy little book, which he always carried
in his pocket. As his temper was exceedingly sour and
disagreeable, he was no favorite; indeed, he was the general
butt of his brother soldiers, who delighted to exasperate his
crusty mood. Max, however, with a view to the furtherance
of his scheme, had of late courted his good graces, flattering
him on his learning, often asking him to drink, and otherwise
cajoling him. Finding that, on this day, Peter's turn had
come to stand guard at a certain postern of the prison, he
had contrived to drug him with a strong dose of opium,
mixed with a dram of bitters. Max, who was a singular
compound of simplicity and finesse, the former the result of
nature, the latter of circumstance, plumed himself greatly on
this exploit.

As they approached the narrow door in question, Max
stooped and took off his shoes, motioning Morton to do the
same. At a few paces farther on, they saw the sentinel,
walking to and fro on his post, with no very military gait.

Max, who was wonderfully cool and composed, pressed
Morton's arm.

“Voilà, monsieur,” — he was now and hereafter very respectful
in his manner towards the man he was saving, —
“voilà; look at the old booby; how he reels and staggers
about — ah! do you see?”

Peter had stopped in his walk, and was leaning against the
wall, nodding his head with a look indescribably sleepy and
silly. Meanwhile his musket was slowly slipping down between
his arm and his side, in spite of one or two efforts to
clutch it. At last the butt struck on the pavement. The
sound roused the sentinel from his torpor. He shook himself,
and began his walk again; but in a few moments
stopped, leaned his shoulder against the wall, on the farther
side of the door, let his musket this time rest fairly on the
floor, and began nodding and butting his head, in a most
ludicrous manner, into an angle of the wall.

Max again pressed Morton's arm, and gliding on tiptoe
past the drugged sentinel, they went out at the door without
alarming him. They were now in an obscure and narrow
precinct of the castle, flanked on one side by a high wall of
ancient masonry, and on the other by the rear of various outbuildings.
The place did no great credit to the neatness of
the garrison, being littered with a variety of refuse; but no
living thing was visible; none, that is, but a gray cat sneaking
along under the wall of a shed, with a newly-killed rat
dangling from her mouth.

They next passed into a wider area, overlooked on the left
by the rear of the principal range of barracks.

“Hallo, Max, where are you going?” cried a voice.

Max looked up, and saw a brother corporal leaning out at

one of the barrack windows, with a fatigue cap on one side
of his head, and a German pipe between his moustached lips.

“To the village.”

“Who gave you leave?”

“The lieutenant.”

“It's good company you are in. What are you going to
do below?”

“Get me a pipe. Mine is broke. What is a man fit for
without his pipe?”

The other at the window replied by a joke, not very refined,
levelled at Max and his companion. Max retorted
only by a ludicrous gesture of derision, which drew a horse
laugh from a soldier at another window, under cover of which
they passed out of the area, and reached a pathway leading
down the height.

A natural gully, or shallow ravine, twisted and zigzagged
down the side of the rock. In wet weather, it became a
little watercourse, conducting all the rain that fell on the
western roofs of the castle down to the filthy and picturesque
hamlet of Ehrenberg, with its dirty population of five hundred
Wallack and Croat peasants, and a horde of dirtier
gypsies, nested in the outskirts. In dry weather, the gully
served as a pathway, which the soldiers often used in their
descents to the village.

Max began to descend, and Morton followed at his heels.
The fresh wind, the open view, the unwonted sense of treading
mother earth, wrought on him strangely; not, as on
the wrestler of old, to nerve him with renewed force. He
grew faint, dizzy, and half blind; and as he staggered after

his guide, he felt for the first time how the prison had sapped
away his strength.

In ten minutes, they were at the bottom, and picking their
way past the rear of the squalid cottages, among rickety out-houses,
broken fences, heaps of litter, pigs, children, and
other impediments. Most of the men were absent; a few
women only stared at them as they passed. With one very
pretty Wallack girl, Max, for the sake of appearances, exchanged
a few words of bantering gallantry. She stood
looking after him admiringly. Behind the next cottage, a
yellow Hungarian shepherd dog, large as a wolf, jumped suddenly
from a heap of rotten straw, on which he had been
dozing, and made a fierce dash at Max's leg; but the latter
gave him a kick in the teeth, which sent him off yelping,
followed by a brickbat, and a curse from the Wallack damsel.

Beyond the village, the ground was without trees or shrubs
for a full half mile; yet it was uneven, — not to say broken;
and Max, who had made a careful reconnaissance, knew that
if they could but reach unnoticed a hollow some twenty rods
from the skirts of the hamlet, no eye from the ramparts could
see them. Towards this, therefore, he walked, with an air
of great nonchalance, Morton following, his heart in his
throat. Their movements were either unseen, or failed to
excite suspicion; and taking a beaten track into the hollow,
they came upon a spring at the foot of a rock, where three
women were pounding clothes on a stone with clubs, by way
of washing them; while a lazy boor, in a broad felt hat, lay
on the ground listlessly watching the process.

In five minutes more, the hollow ceased to conceal them;

and, to Morton's great dismay, they stood again within eye-shot
of the castle. Max, however, with the skill of an old
deer stalker, soon managed to place, first, a large rock, then
the rugged shoulder of a hill, between themselves and the
detested battlements. Next they gained the partial shelter
of the scattered scrub oaks and pines which formed a ragged
outskirt to the deeper forest behind, and, in a few moments
more, reached the dark asylum of its matted boughs and
underwood.

Thus far they had walked at the leisurely pace of a pair of
idle strollers; but no sooner were they well out of sight,
than Max cried, “Come on!” and set out at a run. When
he turned, however, and saw the pale face of Morton, already
tired with unwonted effort, he took a flask of brandy from
his pocket. The fiery draught strung Morton's sinews afresh.
They pushed on, over hills and hollows, by cattle paths and
brooks, across open glades, and through wooded tracts, dense
and breathless as an American forest.

“Look!” said Max, stopping on a rising ground, and
pointing back over the woods. Three miles off, the rock of
Ehrenberg rose in view, bearing aloft its heavy load of battlements
and towers. Morton gave it one look, prayed it
might be the last, and motioned his companion forward
again.

They came to a lazy brook, stealing out of a marsh. In
the mud by its side was the slough where a wild boar had
wallowed. The solitude and savageness of the place shot a
fresh life through Morton's failing veins. The sense came
upon him that his fate was now in his own hands; the

resolve that he would never be taken alive. He called Max
to stop.

“Have you any weapon besides your bayonet?”

Max produced a pair of pistols, which he had contrived to
appropriate; and, keeping one of them, handed the other to
Morton.

It was dusk before they stopped, in the depth of the woods,
on a grassy spot, shut in by a tall cliff, and a growth of old
beeches, oaks, and evergreens. Morton threw himself on the
ground. Max made a fire, by plugging up the touch-hole of
his flint-lock pistol, and placing in the pan, by way of tinder, a
piece of cotton rag, rubbed with a little wet gunpowder.
Morton roused himself, and breaking off small branches of the
firs and spruces, piled them for beds. The loaf which the jailer
had brought for his next day's meal, with some more solid
viands which Max produced, served them for supper; and,
for drink, they scooped water in their hands from the neighboring
brook.

It grew dark, and as they sat together by the fire, the red
light flared against the jagged rock, the shaggy fir boughs,
and knotty limbs of the oaks. It seemed to Morton as if
time and space were done away; as if the prison were a
dream; and as if, once more on some college ramble, he were
seated by a camp fire in the familiar forests of America. But
instead of a vagabond Indian, or the hardy face of a Penobscot
lumberman, the flame fell on the frogged uniform and
long, waxed moustache of Corporal Max, as he sat cross-legged,
like a Turk, on the pile of evergreens.

As Morton looked on his manly face, and thought of the

boundless debt he owed him, his heart warmed towards him,
and he poured forth his gratitude as well as he could, in the
patchwork of languages which Max himself had used as his
medium of communication.

The latter soon fell asleep, and lay snoring lustily. With
his companion sleep was impossible. He lay watching the
stars, and the dull folds of smoke that half hid them, listening
to the wind, and the mysterious sounds of the forest, and,
as the night drew on, shivering with the damp and cold. His
mind was a maze of confused emotions, suspense, and delight,
hope, and fear, mingling in a dreamy chaos; till at last
fatigue prevailed, and he, too, fell asleep; a sleep haunted by
hideous images, yet with its intervals of deep peace and
repose.

He woke, shivering; and rising in the twilight, stirred the
half-dead embers, and crouched over them for warmth. But,
as the fresh odors of the morning reached his senses, they
brought so vividly upon him the memory of his youthful
health, and hope, and liberty, that his spirits rose almost to
defiance of the peril around him. He woke Max, whose
slumbers were noisy as ever, and they pushed forward again
on a well-beaten cattle path, leading westward.

About sunrise they found a cow, one of the gray, long-horned
breed of the country, grazing very peacefully. Max
looked about him, and began to move with caution. The
cow was wild, and would not let them pass her, but walked
before them along the path. In a few minutes, a great number
of cattle appeared, grazing on an open glade, with two
men watching them. They were of the half-savage herdsmen

of this district, little better than banditti. One of them
sat on a rock, the other lounged on the grass. Both were
dressed in coarse linen shirts and trousers, short, heavy woollen
cloaks thrown over their shoulders, a kind of rude
sandals, and broad felt hats. For weapons, one carried a
club, the other a hatchet, the long handle of which served
him for a walking stick.

Max whispered to Morton; and stealing unperceived
through the bushes, they suddenly appeared before the two
men, much, as it seemed, to their amazement. Max, in a
language quite new to his companion, desired them to change
clothes with Morton and himself. The voice and air of the
applicant, and the butt of a pistol protruding from the breast
pocket of each of the strangers, gave warning that the wish
could not wisely be slighted. The boors complied, the more
willingly as they would be great gainers by the bargain.
Max threw off his uniform, and put on the dress of the taller
herdsman. Morton satisfied himself with the woollen cloak
of the other, in exchange for the jailer's coat.

The exchange made, he signed to the man to give him the
hatchet which he carried; but the boor hesitated, scowling
very sullenly. Max hastened to interpose, and offered a silver
coin in return for the hatchet, which its owner at once
surrendered. It was by no means any love of abstract justice
which dictated this procedure; but a desire, on Max's part,
to leave the men in good humor, lest, being offended, they
might set the soldiers on the track of the fugitives.

They parted on the best terms, and Max and Morton
betook themselves again to the woods.