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_ Breaking the silence they had hitherto preserved, they raised a
great cry as soon as they were ranged before the jail, and demanded
to speak to the governor. This visit was not wholly unexpected,
for his house, which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded,
the wicket-gate of the prison was closed up, and at no loophole or
grating was any person to be seen. Before they had repeated their
summons many times, a man appeared upon the roof of the governor's
house, and asked what it was they wanted.
Some said one thing, some another, and some only groaned and
hissed. It being now nearly dark, and the house high, many persons
in the throng were not aware that any one had come to answer them,
and continued their clamour until the intelligence was gradually
diffused through the whole concourse. Ten minutes or more elapsed
before any one voice could be heard with tolerable distinctness;
during which interval the figure remained perched alone, against
the summer-evening sky, looking down into the troubled street.
'Are you,' said Hugh at length, 'Mr Akerman, the head jailer here?'
'Of course he is, brother,' whispered Dennis. But Hugh, without
minding him, took his answer from the man himself.
'Yes,' he said. 'I am.'
'You have got some friends of ours in your custody, master.'
'I have a good many people in my custody.' He glanced downward, as
he spoke, into the jail: and the feeling that he could see into
the different yards, and that he overlooked everything which was
hidden from their view by the rugged walls, so lashed and goaded
the mob, that they howled like wolves.
'Deliver up our friends,' said Hugh, 'and you may keep the rest.'
'It's my duty to keep them all. I shall do my duty.'
'If you don't throw the doors open, we shall break 'em down,' said
Hugh; 'for we will have the rioters out.'
'All I can do, good people,' Akerman replied, 'is to exhort you to
disperse; and to remind you that the consequences of any
disturbance in this place, will be very severe, and bitterly
repented by most of you, when it is too late.'
He made as though he would retire when he said these words, but he
was checked by the voice of the locksmith.
'Mr Akerman,' cried Gabriel, 'Mr Akerman.'
'I will hear no more from any of you,' replied the governor,
turning towards the speaker, and waving his hand.
'But I am not one of them,' said Gabriel. 'I am an honest man,
Mr Akerman; a respectable tradesman--Gabriel Varden, the locksmith.
You know me?'
'You among the crowd!' cried the governor in an altered voice.
'Brought here by force--brought here to pick the lock of the great
door for them,' rejoined the locksmith. 'Bear witness for me, Mr
Akerman, that I refuse to do it; and that I will not do it, come
what may of my refusal. If any violence is done to me, please to
remember this.'
'Is there no way (if helping you?' said the governor.
'None, Mr Akerman. You'll do your duty, and I'll do mine. Once
again, you robbers and cut-throats,' said the locksmith, turning
round upon them, 'I refuse. Ah! Howl till you're hoarse. I
refuse.'
'Stay--stay!' said the jailer, hastily. 'Mr Varden, I know you for
a worthy man, and one who would do no unlawful act except upon
compulsion--'
'Upon compulsion, sir,' interposed the locksmith, who felt that the
tone in which this was said, conveyed the speaker's impression that
he had ample excuse for yielding to the furious multitude who beset
and hemmed him in, on every side, and among whom he stood, an old
man, quite alone; 'upon compulsion, sir, I'll do nothing.'
'Where is that man,' said the keeper, anxiously, 'who spoke to me
just now?'
'Here!' Hugh replied.
'Do you know what the guilt of murder is, and that by keeping that
honest tradesman at your side you endanger his life!'
'We know it very well,' he answered, 'for what else did we bring
him here? Let's have our friends, master, and you shall have your
friend. Is that fair, lads?'
The mob replied to him with a loud Hurrah!
'You see how it is, sir?' cried Varden. 'Keep 'em out, in King
George's name. Remember what I have said. Good night!'
There was no more parley. A shower of stones and other missiles
compelled the keeper of the jail to retire; and the mob, pressing
on, and swarming round the walls, forced Gabriel Varden close up to
the door.
In vain the basket of tools was laid upon the ground before him,
and he was urged in turn by promises, by blows, by offers of
reward, and threats of instant death, to do the office for which
they had brought him there. 'No,' cried the sturdy locksmith, 'I
will not!'
He had never loved his life so well as then, but nothing could move
him. The savage faces that glared upon him, look where he would;
the cries of those who thirsted, like wild animals, for his blood;
the sight of men pressing forward, and trampling down their
fellows, as they strove to reach him, and struck at him above the
heads of other men, with axes and with iron bars; all failed to
daunt him. He looked from man to man, and face to face, and still,
with quickened breath and lessening colour, cried firmly, 'I will
not!'
Dennis dealt him a blow upon the face which felled him to the
ground. He sprung up again like a man in the prime of life, and
with blood upon his forehead, caught him by the throat.
'You cowardly dog!' he said: 'Give me my daughter. Give me my
daughter.'
They struggled together. Some cried 'Kill him,' and some (but they
were not near enough) strove to trample him to death. Tug as he
would at the old man's wrists, the hangman could not force him to
unclench his hands.
'Is this all the return you make me, you ungrateful monster?' he
articulated with great difficulty, and with many oaths.
'Give me my daughter!' cried the locksmith, who was now as fierce
as those who gathered round him: 'Give me my daughter!'
He was down again, and up, and down once more, and buffeting with a
score of them, who bandied him from hand to hand, when one tall
fellow, fresh from a slaughter-house, whose dress and great thigh-
boots smoked hot with grease and blood, raised a pole-axe, and
swearing a horrible oath, aimed it at the old man's uncovered head.
At that instant, and in the very act, he fell himself, as if struck
by lightning, and over his body a one-armed man came darting to the
locksmith's side. Another man was with him, and both caught the
locksmith roughly in their grasp.
'Leave him to us!' they cried to Hugh--struggling, as they spoke,
to force a passage backward through the crowd. 'Leave him to us.
Why do you waste your whole strength on such as he, when a couple
of men can finish him in as many minutes! You lose time. Remember
the prisoners! remember Barnaby!'
The cry ran through the mob. Hammers began to rattle on the walls;
and every man strove to reach the prison, and be among the foremost
rank. Fighting their way through the press and struggle, as
desperately as if they were in the midst of enemies rather than
their own friends, the two men retreated with the locksmith between
them, and dragged him through the very heart of the concourse.
And now the strokes began to fall like hail upon the gate, and on
the strong building; for those who could not reach the door, spent
their fierce rage on anything--even on the great blocks of stone,
which shivered their weapons into fragments, and made their hands
and arms to tingle as if the walls were active in their stout
resistance, and dealt them back their blows. The clash of iron
ringing upon iron, mingled with the deafening tumult and sounded
high above it, as the great sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed
and plated door: the sparks flew off in showers; men worked in
gangs, and at short intervals relieved each other, that all their
strength might be devoted to the work; but there stood the portal
still, as grim and dark and strong as ever, and, saving for the
dints upon its battered surface, quite unchanged.
While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toilsome
task; and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to
clamber to the summit of the walls they were too short to scale;
and some again engaged a body of police a hundred strong, and beat
them back and trod them under foot by force of numbers; others
besieged the house on which the jailer had appeared, and driving in
the door, brought out his furniture, and piled it up against the
prison-gate, to make a bonfire which should burn it down. As soon
as this device was understood, all those who had laboured hitherto,
cast down their tools and helped to swell the heap; which reached
half-way across the street, and was so high, that those who threw
more fuel on the top, got up by ladders. When all the keeper's
goods were flung upon this costly pile, to the last fragment, they
smeared it with the pitch, and tar, and rosin they had brought, and
sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round the
prison-doors they did the like, leaving not a joist or beam
untouched. This infernal christening performed, they fired the
pile with lighted matches and with blazing tow, and then stood by,
awaiting the result.
The furniture being very dry, and rendered more combustible by wax
and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The
flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison-wall, and
twining up its loftly front like burning serpents. At first they
crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their
looks: but when it grew hotter and fiercer--when it crackled,
leaped, and roared, like a great furnace--when it shone upon the
opposite houses, and lighted up not only the pale and wondering
faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each habitation--
when through the deep red heat and glow, the fire was seen sporting
and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate surface, now
gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into the sky,
anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to its
ruin--when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock
of St Sepulchre's so often pointing to the hour of death, was
legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top
glittered in the unwonted light like something richly jewelled--
when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep
reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting the
longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of
brightness--when wall and tower, and roof and chimney-stack, seemed
drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger--
when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view,
and things the most familiar put on some new aspect--then the mob
began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and shouts, and
clamour, such as happily is seldom heard, bestirred themselves to
feed the fire, and keep it at its height.
Although the heat was so intense that the paint on the houses over
against the prison, parched and crackled up, and swelling into
boils, as it were from excess of torture, broke and crumbled away;
although the glass fell from the window-sashes, and the lead and
iron on the roofs blistered the incautious hand that touched them,
and the sparrows in the eaves took wing, and rendered giddy by the
smoke, fell fluttering down upon the blazing pile; still the fire
was tended unceasingly by busy hands, and round it, men were going
always. They never slackened in their zeal, or kept aloof, but
pressed upon the flames so hard, that those in front had much ado
to save themselves from being thrust in; if one man swooned or
dropped, a dozen struggled for his place, and that although they
knew the pain, and thirst, and pressure to be unendurable. Those
who fell down in fainting-fits, and were not crushed or burnt,
were carried to an inn-yard close at hand, and dashed with water
from a pump; of which buckets full were passed from man to man
among the crowd; but such was the strong desire of all to drink,
and such the fighting to be first, that, for the most part, the
whole contents were spilled upon the ground, without the lips of
one man being moistened.
Meanwhile, and in the midst of all the roar and outcry, those who
were nearest to the pile, heaped up again the burning fragments
that came toppling down, and raked the fire about the door, which,
although a sheet of flame, was still a door fast locked and barred,
and kept them out. Great pieces of blazing wood were passed,
besides, above the people's heads to such as stood about the
ladders, and some of these, climbing up to the topmost stave, and
holding on with one hand by the prison wall, exerted all their
skill and force to cast these fire-brands on the roof, or down into
the yards within. In many instances their efforts were successful;
which occasioned a new and appalling addition to the horrors of the
scene: for the prisoners within, seeing from between their bars
that the fire caught in many places and thrived fiercely, and being
all locked up in strong cells for the night, began to know that
they were in danger of being burnt alive. This terrible fear,
spreading from cell to cell and from yard to yard, vented itself in
such dismal cries and wailings, and in such dreadful shrieks for
help, that the whole jail resounded with the noise; which was
loudly heard even above the shouting of the mob and roaring of the
flames, and was so full of agony and despair, that it made the
boldest tremble.
It was remarkable that these cries began in that quarter of the
jail which fronted Newgate Street, where, it was well known, the
men who were to suffer death on Thursday were confined. And not
only were these four who had so short a time to live, the first to
whom the dread of being burnt occurred, but they were, throughout,
the most importunate of all: for they could be plainly heard,
notwithstanding the great thickness of the walls, crying that the
wind set that way, and that the flames would shortly reach them;
and calling to the officers of the jail to come and quench the
fire from a cistern which was in their yard, and full of water.
Judging from what the crowd outside the walls could hear from time
to time, these four doomed wretches never ceased to call for help;
and that with as much distraction, and in as great a frenzy of
attachment to existence, as though each had an honoured, happy
life before him, instead of eight-and-forty hours of miserable
imprisonment, and then a violent and shameful death.
But the anguish and suffering of the two sons of one of these men,
when they heard, or fancied that they heard, their father's voice,
is past description. After wringing their hands and rushing to and
fro as if they were stark mad, one mounted on the shoulders of his
brother, and tried to clamber up the face of the high wall, guarded
at the top with spikes and points of iron. And when he fell among
the crowd, he was not deterred by his bruises, but mounted up
again, and fell again, and, when he found the feat impossible,
began to beat the stones and tear them with his hands, as if he
could that way make a breach in the strong building, and force a
passage in. At last, they cleft their way among the mob about the
door, though many men, a dozen times their match, had tried in vain
to do so, and were seen, in--yes, in--the fire, striving to prize
it down, with crowbars.
Nor were they alone affected by the outcry from within the prison.
The women who were looking on, shrieked loudly, beat their hands
together, stopped their ears; and many fainted: the men who were
not near the walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing,
tore up the pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and
fury they could not have surpassed if that had been the jail, and
they were near their object. Not one living creature in the throng
was for an instant still. The whole great mass were mad.
A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why, or what it
meant. But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield, and
drop from its topmost hinge. It hung on that side by but one, but
it was upright still, because of the bar, and its having sunk, of
its own weight, into the heap of ashes at its foot. There was now
a gap at the top of the doorway, through which could be descried a
gloomy passage, cavernous and dark. Pile up the fire!
It burnt fiercely. The door was red-hot, and the gap wider. They
vainly tried to shield their faces with their hands, and standing
as if in readiness for a spring, watched the place. Dark figures,
some crawling on their hands and knees, some carried in the arms of
others, were seen to pass along the roof. It was plain the jail
could hold out no longer. The keeper, and his officers, and their
wives and children, were escaping. Pile up the fire!
The door sank down again: it settled deeper in the cinders--
tottered--yielded--was down!
As they shouted again, they fell back, for a moment, and left a
clear space about the fire that lay between them and the jail
entry. Hugh leapt upon the blazing heap, and scattering a train of
sparks into the air, and making the dark lobby glitter with those
that hung upon his dress, dashed into the jail.
The hangman followed. And then so many rushed upon their track,
that the fire got trodden down and thinly strewn about the street;
but there was no need of it now, for, inside and out, the prison
was in flames. _
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