CHAPTER XXXVII
AN AWFUL PREDICAMENT

SLEEP? It was impossible. It would naturally
have been impossible in that noisome cavern of
a jail, with its mangy crowd of drunken, quarrelsome,
and song-singing rapscallions. But the thing that
made sleep all the more a thing not to be dreamed of,
was my racking impatience to get out of this place and
find out the whole size of what might have happened
yonder in the slave-quarters in consequence of that
intolerable miscarriage of mine.

It was a long night, but the morning got around at
last. I made a full and frank explanation to the court.
I said I was a slave, the property of the great Earl
Grip, who had arrived just after dark at the Tabard
inn in the village on the other side of the water, and
had stopped there over night, by compulsion, he being
taken deadly sick with a strange and sudden disorder.
I had been ordered to cross to the city in all haste and
bring the best physician; I was doing my best;
naturally I was running with all my might; the night
was dark, I ran against this common person here, who
seized me by the throat and began to pummel me,
although I told him my errand, and implored him, for
the sake of the great earl my master's mortal peril --

The common person interrupted and said it was a
lie; and was going to explain how I rushed upon him
and attacked him without a word --

"Silence, sirrah!" from the court. "Take him
hence and give him a few stripes whereby to teach
him how to treat the servant of a nobleman after a
different fashion another time. Go!"

Then the court begged my pardon, and hoped I
would not fail to tell his lordship it was in no wise the
court's fault that this high-handed thing had happened.
I said I would make it all right, and so took my leave.
Took it just in time, too; he was starting to ask me
why I didn't fetch out these facts the moment I was
arrested. I said I would if I had thought of it --
which was true -- but that I was so battered by that
man that all my wit was knocked out of me -- and
so forth and so on, and got myself away, still mumbling.
I didn't wait for breakfast. No grass grew under
my feet. I was soon at the slave quarters. Empty --
everybody gone! That is, everybody except one body
-- the slave-master's. It lay there all battered to pulp;
and all about were the evidences of a terrific fight.
There was a rude board coffin on a cart at the door,
and workmen, assisted by the police, were thinning a
road through the gaping crowd in order that they
might bring it in.

I picked out a man humble enough in life to conde-
scend to talk with one so shabby as I, and got his ac-
count of the matter.

"There were sixteen slaves here. They rose against
their master in the night, and thou seest how it ended."

"Yes. How did it begin?"

"There was no witness but the slaves. They said
the slave that was most valuable got free of his bonds
and escaped in some strange way -- by magic arts
'twas thought, by reason that he had no key, and the
locks were neither broke nor in any wise injured.
When the master discovered his loss, he was mad with
despair, and threw himself upon his people with his
heavy stick, who resisted and brake his back and in
other and divers ways did give him hurts that brought
him swiftly to his end."

"This is dreadful. It will go hard with the slaves,
no doubt, upon the trial."

"Marry, the trial is over."

"Over!"

"Would they be a week, think you -- and the
matter so simple? They were not the half of a quarter
of an hour at it."

"Why, I don't see how they could determine which
were the guilty ones in so short a time."

"WHICH ones? Indeed, they considered not par-
ticulars like to that. They condemned them in a body.
Wit ye not the law? -- which men say the Romans left
behind them here when they went -- that if one slave
killeth his master all the slaves of that man must die for it."

"True. I had forgotten. And when will these die?"

"Belike within a four and twenty hours; albeit some
say they will wait a pair of days more, if peradventure
they may find the missing one meantime."

The missing one! It made me feel uncomfortable.

"Is it likely they will find him?"

"Before the day is spent -- yes. They seek him
everywhere. They stand at the gates of the town,
with certain of the slaves who will discover him to
them if he cometh, and none can pass out but he will
be first examined."

"Might one see the place where the rest are confined?"

"The outside of it -- yes. The inside of it -- but
ye will not want to see that."

I took the address of that prison for future reference
and then sauntered off. At the first second-hand
clothing shop I came to, up a back street, I got a
rough rig suitable for a common seaman who might be
going on a cold voyage, and bound up my face with a
liberal bandage, saying I had a toothache. This con-
cealed my worst bruises. It was a transformation. I
no longer resembled my former self. Then I struck
out for that wire, found it and followed it to its den.
It was a little room over a butcher's shop -- which
meant that business wasn't very brisk in the telegraphic
line. The young chap in charge was drowsing at his
table. I locked the door and put the vast key in my
bosom. This alarmed the young fellow, and he was
going to make a noise; but I said:

"Save your wind; if you open your mouth you are
dead, sure. Tackle your instrument. Lively, now!
Call Camelot."

"This doth amaze me! How should such as you
know aught of such matters as --"

"Call Camelot! I am a desperate man. Call
Camelot, or get away from the instrument and I will
do it myself."

"What -- you?"

"Yes -- certainly. Stop gabbling. Call the palace."

He made the call.

"Now, then, call Clarence."

"Clarence WHO?"

"Never mind Clarence who. Say you want Clar-
ence; you'll get an answer."

He did so. We waited five nerve-straining minutes
-- ten minutes -- how long it did seem! -- and then
came a click that was as familiar to me as a human
voice; for Clarence had been my own pupil.

"Now, my lad, vacate! They would have known
MY touch, maybe, and so your call was surest; but I'm
all right now."

He vacated the place and cocked his ear to listen --
but it didn't win. I used a cipher. I didn't waste
any time in sociabilities with Clarence, but squared
away for business, straight-off -- thus:

"The king is here and in danger. We were cap-
tured and brought here as slaves. We should not be
able to prove our identity -- and the fact is, I am not
in a position to try. Send a telegram for the palace
here which will carry conviction with it."

His answer came straight back:

"They don't know anything about the telegraph;
they haven't had any experience yet, the line to Lon-
don is so new. Better not venture that. They might
hang you. Think up something else."

Might hang us! Little he knew how closely he was
crowding the facts. I couldn't think up anything for
the moment. Then an idea struck me, and I started it along:

"Send five hundred picked knights with Launcelot
in the lead; and send them on the jump. Let them
enter by the southwest gate, and look out for the man
with a white cloth around his right arm."

The answer was prompt:

"They shall start in half an hour."

"All right, Clarence; now tell this lad here that I'm
a friend of yours and a dead-head; and that he must
be discreet and say nothing about this visit of mine."

The instrument began to talk to the youth and I
hurried away. I fell to ciphering. In half an hour it
would be nine o'clock. Knights and horses in heavy
armor couldn't travel very fast. These would make
the best time they could, and now that the ground was
in good condition, and no snow or mud, they would
probably make a seven-mile gait; they would have to
change horses a couple of times; they would arrive
about six, or a little after; it would still be plenty light
enough; they would see the white cloth which I should
tie around my right arm, and I would take command.
We would surround that prison and have the king out
in no time. It would be showy and picturesque
enough, all things considered, though I would have
preferred noonday, on account of the more theatrical
aspect the thing would have.

Now, then, in order to increase the strings to my
bow, I thought I would look up some of those people
whom I had formerly recognized, and make myself
known. That would help us out of our scrape, with-
out the knights. But I must proceed cautiously, for it
was a risky business. I must get into sumptuous
raiment, and it wouldn't do to run and jump into it.
No, I must work up to it by degrees, buying suit after
suit of clothes, in shops wide apart, and getting a little
finer article with each change, until I should finally
reach silk and velvet, and be ready for my project.
So I started.

But the scheme fell through like scat! The first
corner I turned, I came plump upon one of our slaves,
snooping around with a watchman. I coughed at the
moment, and he gave me a sudden look that bit right
into my marrow. I judge he thought he had heard
that cough before. I turned immediately into a shop
and worked along down the counter, pricing things
and watching out of the corner of my eye. Those
people had stopped, and were talking together and
looking in at the door. I made up my mind to get
out the back way, if there was a back way, and I asked
the shopwoman if I could step out there and look for
the escaped slave, who was believed to be in hiding
back there somewhere, and said I was an officer in
disguise, and my pard was yonder at the door with
one of the murderers in charge, and would she be good
enough to step there and tell him he needn't wait, but
had better go at once to the further end of the back
alley and be ready to head him off when I rousted him out.

She was blazing with eagerness to see one of those
already celebrated murderers, and she started on the
errand at once. I slipped out the back way, locked
the door behind me, put the key in my pocket and
started off, chuckling to myself and comfortable.

Well, I had gone and spoiled it again, made another
mistake. A double one, in fact. There were plenty
of ways to get rid of that officer by some simple and
plausible device, but no, I must pick out a picturesque
one; it is the crying defect of my character. And
then, I had ordered my procedure upon what the
officer, being human, would NATURALLY do; whereas
when you are least expecting it, a man will now and
then go and do the very thing which it's NOT natural
for him to do. The natural thing for the officer to do,
in this case, was to follow straight on my heels; he
would find a stout oaken door, securely locked, be-
tween him and me; before he could break it down, I
should be far away and engaged in slipping into a suc-
cession of baffling disguises which would soon get me
into a sort of raiment which was a surer protection
from meddling law-dogs in Britain than any amount of
mere innocence and purity of character. But instead
of doing the natural thing, the officer took me at my
word, and followed my instructions. And so, as I
came trotting out of that cul de sac, full of satisfaction
with my own cleverness, he turned the corner and I
walked right into his handcuffs. If I had known it was
a cul de sac -- however, there isn't any excusing a
blunder like that, let it go. Charge it up to profit and loss.

Of course, I was indignant, and swore I had just
come ashore from a long voyage, and all that sort of
thing -- just to see, you know, if it would deceive that
slave. But it didn't. He knew me. Then I reroached him
for betraying me. He was more surprised
than hurt. He stretched his eyes wide, and said:

"What, wouldst have me let thee, of all men, escape
and not hang with us, when thou'rt the very CAUSE of
our hanging? Go to!"

"Go to" was their way of saying "I should smile!"
or "I like that!" Queer talkers, those people.

Well, there was a sort of bastard justice in his view
of the case, and so I dropped the matter. When you
can't cure a disaster by argument, what is the use to
argue? It isn't my way. So I only said:

"You're not going to be hanged. None of us are."

Both men laughed, and the slave said:

"Ye have not ranked as a fool -- before. You
might better keep your reputation, seeing the strain
would not be for long."

"It will stand it, I reckon. Before to-morrow we
shall be out of prison, and free to go where we will, besides."

The witty officer lifted at his left ear with his thumb,
made a rasping noise in his throat, and said:

"Out of prison -- yes -- ye say true. And free
likewise to go where ye will, so ye wander not out of
his grace the Devil's sultry realm."

I kept my temper, and said, indifferently:

"Now I suppose you really think we are going to
hang within a day or two."

"I thought it not many minutes ago, for so the
thing was decided and proclaimed."

"Ah, then you've changed your mind, is that it?"

"Even that. I only THOUGHT, then; I KNOW, now."

I felt sarcastical, so I said:

"Oh, sapient servant of the law, condescend to tell
us, then, what you KNOW."

"That ye will all be hanged TO-DAY, at mid-after-
noon! Oho! that shot hit home! Lean upon me."

The fact is I did need to lean upon somebody. My
knights couldn't arrive in time. They would be as
much as three hours too late. Nothing in the world
could save the King of England; nor me, which was
more important. More important, not merely to me,
but to the nation -- the only nation on earth standing
ready to blossom into civilization. I was sick. I said
no more, there wasn't anything to say. I knew what
the man meant; that if the missing slave was found,
the postponement would be revoked, the execution
take place to-day. Well, the missing slave was found.

****

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