"Hooray," shouted the Smoutchy fighting tail; "fetch him along, lads!"
So with no gentle hands Hugh John was seized and hurried away. He was touched up with ironbound clogs in the rear, his arms were pinched underneath where the skin is tender, as well as nearly dragged from their sockets. A useless red cravat was thrust into his mouth by way of a gag--useless, for the prisoner would sooner have died than have uttered one solitary cry.
And all the time Hugh John was saying over and over to himself the confession of his faith:
"I"m glad I didn"t tell--I"m glad I wasn"t "dasht-mean." I"m a soldier. The Scots Greys saluted me; and these fellows _shan"t_ make me cry."
And they didn"t. For the spirit of many generations of stalwart Smiths and fighting Pictons was in him, and perhaps also a spark from the ancestral anvil of the first Smith had put iron into his boyish blood.
So all through the scene which followed--the slow mock trial, the small ingenious tortures, pulling back middle fingers, hanging up by thumbs to a beam with his toes just touching the ground, tying a string about his head and tightening it with a twisted stick--Hugh John never cried a tear, which was the bitterest drop in the cup of Nipper Donnan.
They removed the gag in order that they might question him.
"Say this is not your father"s castle, and we"ll let you down!" cried Nipper.
"It _is_ my father"s and n.o.body else"s! And when it is mine, I shan"t let one of you beasts come near it."
The Smoutchies tried another tack.
"Promise you won"t tell on us if we let you go!"
"I shan"t promise; I will tell every one of your names to the policeman, and get you put in jail--so there! My father has gone to London to see the Queen, and have you all put into prison--yes, and whipped with a cat-o"-nine-tails as soon as ever he comes back!"
answered Hugh John, shamelessly belying both his father and his own intentions.
But he comforted himself and excused the lie, by saying to himself, "It is none of their business whether I tell on them or not. They shan"t think that I don"t tell because I am afraid of them!"
And the great heart of the hero (aged twelve) stood high and unshaken.
At last even Nipper Donnan tired of the cruel sport. It was no great fun when the victim could not be made to cry or appeal for mercy. And even the fighting tail grew vaguely restive, perhaps becoming indistinctly conscious, in spite of their blind admiration for their chief, that by comparison with the steadfast defiance and upright mien of their solitary victim, the slouching, black-pipe-smoking smoutchiness of Nipper Donnan did not appear the truly heroic figure.
"Let"s put him in the dungeon, and leave him there! I can come and let him out after, and then kick the beggar home the way he came! That will learn him to let us alone for ever and ever!"
The fighting tail shouted agreement, and Hugh John was promptly haled to the mouth of the prison-house; a rope was rove about his waist, his hands were tied behind his back, and he was lowered down into the ancient dungeon of the Castle of Windy Standard. This place of confinement had last been used a hundred and fifty years ago for the stragglers of the Bonny Prince"s army after the retreat northward. The dungeon was bottle-necked above, and spread out beneath into a circular vault of thirty or forty feet in diameter. Its depth was about twelve feet; and as the boys had not rope enough to lower their prisoner all the way, they had perforce to let Hugh John drop, and he lighted on his feet, taking of course the rope with him.
"Come on, lads," cried Nipper Donnan, "let"s go and have a smoke at the Black Sheds, and then go up to the Market Hill to see the shows.
The proud swine will do well enough down there till his father comes back from London with the cat-o"-nine-tails!"
He looked over the edge and spat into the dungeon.
"That for you!" he cried. "Will ye say now that the castle is your father"s, and that we have no right here!"
Hugh John tried to give the required information as to ownership, but it was choked in the folds of the red cravat. Nipper went on tauntingly, all unchallenged.
[Ill.u.s.tration: ""WILL YE SAY NOW THAT THE CASTLE IS YOUR FATHER"S, AND THAT WE HAVE NO RIGHT HERE!" SAID NIPPER DONNAN."]
"There"s ethers (adders) down there--and weasels and whopper rats that eat off your fingers and toes. Yes, and my father saw a black beast like an otter, but as big as a calf, run in there out of the Edam Water; and they"ll bite ye and stang ye and suck your blood! And we are never coming back no more, so ye"ll die of starvation besides."
With this pleasing speech by way of farewell and benediction, Nipper Donnan drew off his forces, and Hugh John was left alone.
CHAPTER XVIII.
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 att.i.tude 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 p.r.i.c.k blood from your thumb with a needle), and then I have got to write an account of my sufferings on linen like the abbe, 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 cla.s.s 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.
[Ill.u.s.tration: "HE BENT THE WEIGHT OF HIS BODY THIS WAY AND THAT."]
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.