The Surprising Adventures of Sir Toady Lion with Those of General Napoleon Smith

THE CASTLE DUNGEON

FOR some time after Hugh John was thus imprisoned, he stood looking up with a face of set defiance through the narrow aperture above, where he had last seen the triumphant countenances of his foes.

"Who's afraid? They shan't say Hugh John Picton Smith is afraid!" were the words in his proud and angry heart, which kept him from feeling insult and pain, kicks and buffetings. Gradually, however, as the sound of retreating footsteps died away, the rigid attitude of the hero relaxed. He began to be conscious that he was all one great ache, that the ropes were drawn exceedingly tight about his wrists, that the gag in his mouth hurt his cheeks, that he was very tired – and, oh! shame for a hero of battles and martyr in secret torture-chambers, that he wanted badly to sit down and cry.

"But I won't cry – even to myself!" said Hugh John. Yet all the same he sat mournfully down to consider his position. He did not doubt that he had been left there for altogether, and he began at once (perhaps to keep himself from crying) to argue out the chances.

"First," he said, "I must wriggle my hands loose, then I can get the gag out of my mouth easy enough. After that I've got to count my stores, and see if I can find a rusty nail to write my name on the wall and the date of my captivity."

(Hugh John wanted to do everything decently and in order.)

"Then I must find a pin or a needle (a needle if possible – a pin is poisonous, and besides it is so much more easy to prick blood from your thumb with a needle), and then I have got to write an account of my sufferings on linen like the abbé, or on tablets of bread like Latude. As I have no bread, except the lump that was left over at breakfast, I suppose it will need to be written on linen; but bread tablets are much the more interesting. Of course I could make one or two tablets, write secret messages on them, and eat them after."

General Smith would have gone on to make still further arrangements for the future, but the present pain of the blood in his hands and the tightness of the rope at his wrists warned him that he had better begin the practical work of effecting his release.

Now General Smith was not one of that somewhat numerous class of persons who take all day to do nothing, and as soon as he was convinced by indisputable logic of the wisdom of any course, he threw himself heart and soul into the accomplishment of it. On his hands and knees he went half round the circuit of the wall of his prison, but encountered nothing save the bare clammy stones – with the mortar loose and crumbly in the joints, and the moist exudations of the lime congealed into little stony blobs upon the surface which tasted brackish when he put his lips to them.

So Hugh John stood up and began a new search on another level. This time he did find something to the purpose.

About three feet from the ground was a strong nail driven firmly into a joint of the masonry. Probably it owed its position to one of the Highland prisoners of the Forty-five, who had used it to hang his spare clothes on, or for some other purpose. But in his heart Hugh John dated it from the days of the Black Douglas at least.

Either way it proved most useful.

Standing with his back to the wall, the boy could just reach it with his wrists. He had long thin hands with bones which, when squeezed, seemed to have a capacity for fitting still more closely into one another. So it was not difficult for him to open the palms sufficiently to let the head of the nail in. Then biting his teeth upon his lip to keep the pain at a bearable point, he bent the weight of his body this way and that upon the iron pin, so that in five or six minutes he had worked Nipper Donnan's inartistic knots sufficiently loose to slip over his wrists. His hands were free.

His first act was to take the red cravat out of his mouth, and the next after that to lie down with all his weight upon his hands, holding them between the floor of the dungeon and his breast, for the tingling pain of the blood returning into the fingers came nearer to making the hero cry than all that had happened that day. But he still refrained.

"No, I won't, I am a Napoleon – Smith!" he added as an afterthought, as if in loyalty to the father, whose legal and territorial claims he had that day so manfully upheld.

But suddenly what was due to his dignified position as a state prisoner occurred to him. Casanova had struck at the wall till his fingers bled. Latude had gnashed his teeth, howled with anguish, and gnawed the earth.

"I have not done any of these things," said Hugh John; "I don't like it. But I suppose I've got to try!"

However, one solid rap of his knuckles upon the hard limestone of the dungeon wall persuaded him that there were things more amusing in the world than to imitate Casanova in that. And as at the first gnaw his mouth encountered a tiny nettle, he leaped to his feet and declared at the pitch of his voice that both Latude and Casanova were certainly "dasht fools!"

The sound of his own words reminded him that after all he was within a mile of home. He wondered what time it might be. He began to feel hungry, and the cubic capacity of his internal emptiness persuaded him that it must be at least quite his usual dinner-time.

So Hugh John decided that, all things being considered, it would be nothing against his manhood if he called for help, and took his chance of any coming. But he remembered that the mouth of the dungeon was in a very retired part of the castle, in the wing nearest to the river, and shut off from the road across the island by a flanking tower and a thirteen-foot wall. So he was not very sanguine of success. Still he felt that in his perilous position he could not afford to neglect any chance, however slight.

So he shouted manfully, "Help! Help! Murder! Police! Fire!" as loud as he could bawl.

Then he tried the "Coo-ee" which Sergeant Steel had taught him, under the impression that it would carry farther. But the keep of a fourteenth century castle and thirteen feet of shell lime and rubble masonry are proof against the most willing boyish voice in the world. So General Napoleon made no more impression upon his friends than his great original would have done had he summoned the Old Guard from the cliffs of St. Helena.

But the younger warrior was not discouraged. He had tried one plan and it had failed. He sat down again to think what was the next thing to be done.

He remembered the thick "hunk" of bread he had put in the pocket of his jacket in the morning. He could not eat it at breakfast, so greatly had he been excited by the impending conflict; so, to prevent waste, and to make all safe, he had put it in his pocket. Besides, in the absence of his father, it was not always possible to be in for meals. And – well, one never knew what might happen. It was best to be prepared for all emergencies.

With trembling hand he felt for the "hunk." Alas! the jacket pocket was empty, and hung flat and limp against his side. The staff of life must have fallen out in the progress of the fray, or else one of the enemy had despoiled him of his treasure.

A quick thought struck his military mind, accustomed before all else to deal with questions of commissariat. It was just possible that the bread might have fallen out of his pocket when the Smoutchies were letting him down so roughly into the dungeon of the castle.

He went directly underneath the aperture, from which a faint light was distributed over the uneven floor of hard trampled earth whereon a century's dry dust lay ankle deep.

There – there, almost under his feet, was his piece of bread!

Hugh John picked it up, blew the dust carefully off, and wiped the surface with his handkerchief. It was a good solid piece of bread, and would have served Cæsar the Potwalloper for at least two mouthfuls. With care it might sustain life for an indefinite period – perhaps as much as twenty-four hours.

So, in accordance with the best traditions, the prisoner divided his provision with his pocketknife, as accurately as possible under the circumstances. He cut it into cubes of about an inch square, exactly as if he had been going to lay down rat poison.

Napoleon Smith was decidedly beginning to recover his spirits. For one thing, he thought how very few boys had ever had his chances. A Latude of twelve was somewhat unusual in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and even in the adjacent islands. He began at once to write his memoirs in his head, but found that he could not get on very well, because he could not remember which one of his various great-grandmothers had danced with Bonny Prince Charlie at Edinburgh. This for a loyal prisoner was insuperable, so he gave the memoirs up.

CHAPTER XIX

THE DROP OF WATER

FROM fruitless genealogy he turned to the further consideration of his supplies. He wanted water, and in a dungeon surrounded by lime-stone walls and founded upon a rock, it seemed likely he would continue to want it. But at the farthest corner, just where the roof approached most closely to the floor, Hugh John could hear a pat, pat at regularly recurring intervals. He put his hand forward into the darkness, and immediately a large drop of water fell on the back of it. He set his tongue to it, and it tasted cool and good after the fustiness of the woollen gag.

Hugh John thrust forward his hand again, palm upwards this time, and was rewarded by finding that every time he counted ten slowly a large drop, like those in the van of a thunder storm, splashed into the hollow. It was tedious work, but then a dungeon is a slow place, and he had plenty of time. He crawled forward to be nearer to the source of supplies, and while trying to insinuate his head sideways underneath like a dog at a spout, to catch the drop in his mouth without the intervention of a warm hand, he felt that his knee was wet. He had inadvertently placed it in a small natural basin into which the drop had been falling for ages. Hugh John set his lips to it, and never did even soda-water-and-milk, that nectar of the meagre and uncritical gods of boyhood, taste sweeter or more refreshing. After he had taken a good solid drink he cleaned the sand from the bottom carefully, and there, ready to his hand, was a stone cup hollowed out of a projecting piece of the rock on which the castle was built. This well-anchored drinking-cup was shaped like the pecten-shell of pilgrimage, and set with the broad fluted end towards him.

Thus fortified with meat and drink, for he had devoured the first of his rat-poison squares, or rather bolted it like a pill, General Napoleon sat down to reckon up his resources. He found himself in possession of some ten feet of fairly good cord, which had evidently been used for bringing cattle to the fatal Black Sheds of butcher Donnan. The prisoner carefully worked out all the knots, in order to get as much length as possible. He did not, indeed, see how such a thing could help him to escape, but that was not his business, for in the authorities a rope was always conveyed into the cell of the pining captive, generally in an enormous pie.

Hugh John felt that he was indeed a pining captive, but it was the pie and not the rope he pined for. His dungeon was downstairs, and he did not see how a rope could possibly help him to get out, unless there was somebody at the top of the bottle ready to haul him up.

He tried his voice again, and made the castle ring in vain. Alas! only the echoes came back, the pert jackdaws cried out insolently far above him and mocked him in a clamorous crowd from the ruined gables.

Then his mind went off all of itself to the pleasant dining-room of the house of Windy Standard, where Prissy and Sir Toady Lion would even now be sitting down to tea. He could smell the nice refreshing bouquet of the hot china pot as Janet Sheepshanks poured the tea into the cups in a golden brown jet, and then "doused" in the cream with a liberal hand.

"I declare I could drink up the whole tea-pot full without ever stopping," said Hugh John aloud, and then started at the sound of his own voice.

He waited as long as possible, and then ate the second of his squares of bread. Then he drank the mouthful of water which had gathered in the stone shell. While he was in there underneath the dungeon eaves, he put out his hand to feel how far off the wall was. He expected easily to reach it, but in this he failed entirely. His hand was merely stretched out into space, while the drop fell upon his head, and then upon his neck, as he leaned farther and farther over in his efforts to find a boundary wall.

He had noticed from the first that the floor immediately beneath the cup was quite dry all round, but it had not occurred to him before that if the drop fell constantly and regularly the basin must overflow in some direction. Hugh John was not logical. It is true that he liked finding out things by his five senses, but then that is a very different affair. Sammy Carter tried to argue with him sometimes, and make matters clear to him by pure reason. The first time Hugh John usually told him to "shut it." The second he simply hammered the logician.

Finally, to solve the mystery, Hugh John crawled completely over his drinking fountain and kneeled in the damp sand at the back of the basin. Still he could discover no wall. Next, he put his hand forward as far as it would reach out, and – he could feel no floor.

Very gingerly he put his foot over the edge, and at once found himself on the top step of a steep, narrow, and exceedingly uneven stair. The explorer's heart beat fast within him. He knew what it was now that he had found – a secret passage, perhaps ending in an enchanted cave; perhaps (who knew) in a pirate's den. He thought of Nipper Donnan's last words about the beast as big as a calf which his father had seen going down into the dungeon. It was a lie, of course; it must be, because Nipper Donnan said it; but still it was certainly very dark and dismal down there.

Hugh John listened with his ear pointed down the stair, and his mouth open. He certainly did hear a low, rushing, hissing sound, which might be the Edam water surrounding the old tower, or – the breathing of the Black Beast.

If Hugh John had had even Toady Lion with him, he would have felt no fears; but to be alone in silence and darkness is fitted to shake stronger nerves than those of a twelve-year-old boy. It was getting late, as he knew by the craving ache in his stomach, and also by the gradual dusking of the hole twelve feet above his head, through whose narrow throat he had been let down in the forenoon.

Now at first the Smoutchy boys had not meant to leave Hugh John in the dungeon all night, but only to give him a thorough fright for his hardihood in daring to attack their citadel. But Nipper Donnan's natural resolution was ever towards cruelty of all sorts, and it was turned to adamant upon discovering that Donald, the captured hostage and original cause of conflict, had in some mysterious way escaped.

This unexpected success of the attacking party he attributed, of course, to Hugh John, whom, in spite of his youth, he well knew to be the leading spirit. Sir Toady Lion was never so much as suspected – a fact which would have pleased that doughty warrior but little had he known it.

In the afternoon Nipper had gone to Halkirk Tryst to bring home two bullocks, which Butcher Donnan had bought there the day before; but his father becoming involved in some critical cattle-dealing transaction, for which he was unable to obtain satisfaction in cash, resolved that Nipper should wait till the next day, when he hoped to be able to accompany him home in person. So engrossed was Nipper with the freaks of the fair, the Aunt-Sallies, the shooting-galleries, and miscellaneous side-shows and ghost illusions, that he quite forgot all about our hero immured in the dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard. Even had he remembered, he would certainly have said to himself that some of the other boys would be sure to go and let him out (for which interference with his privileges he would assuredly punch their heads to-morrow!) – and that in any case it served the beggar right.

Probably, however, his father (had Nipper thought fit to mention the matter to him), would have taken quite a different view of the situation; for the butcher, with all his detestation of the owner of the Windy Standard estate, held Mr. Picton Smith in a wholesome awe which almost amounted to reverence.