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of a little river. Much of the territory I traversed was covered with
thick woods, though here and there were the remnants of clearings
that must once have been farms which were not yet entirely
reclaimed by nature. Now and again I passed those gaunt and
lonely towers in which the ancients stored the winter feed for their
stock. Those that have endured were of concrete, and some
showed but little the ravages of time, other than the dense vines
that often covered them from base to capital, while several were in
the midst of thick forests with old trees almost entwining them, so
quickly does nature reclaim her own when man has been
displaced.
After I passed Joliet I had to make inquiries, and this I did
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boldly of the few men I saw laboring in the tiny fields scattered
along my way. They were poor clods, these descendants of ancient
America's rich and powerful farming class those people of olden
times whose selfishness had sought to throw the burden of taxation
upon the city dwellers where the ignorant foreign classes were
most numerous and had thus added their bit to fomenting the
discontent that had worked the downfall of a glorious nation. They
themselves suffered much before they died, but nothing by
comparison with the humiliation and degradation of their
descendants an illiterate, degraded, starving race.
Early in the second morning I came within sight of the stockade
about the mines. Even at a distance I could see that it was a weak,
dilapidated thing and that the sentries pacing along its top were all
that held the prisoners within. As a matter of fact, many escaped;
but they were soon hunted down and killed as the farmers in the
neighborhood always informed on them, since the commandant at
the prison had conceived the fiendish plan of slaying one farmer
for every prisoner who escaped and was not recaught.
I hid until night and then cautiously I approached the stockade,
leaving Red Lightning securely tied in the woods. It was no trick
to reach the stockade, so thoroughly was I hidden by the rank
vegetation growing upon the outside. From a place of concealment
I watched the sentry, a big fellow, but apparently a dull clod who
walked with his chin upon his breast and with the appearance of
being half asleep.
The stockade was not high and the whole construction was
similar to that of the prison pen at Chicago, evidently having been
designed by the same commandant in years gone by. I could hear
the prisoners conversing in the shed beyond the wall and presently,
when one came near to where I listened, I tried to attract his
attention by making a hissing sound.
After what seemed a long time to me, he heard me; but even then
it was some time before he appeared to grasp the idea that
someone was trying to attract his attention. When he did he moved
closer and tried to peer through one of the cracks; but as it was
dark outside he could see nothing.
"Are you a Yank?" I asked. "If you are, I am a friend."
"I am a Yank," he replied. "Did you expect to find a Kalkar
working in the mines?"
"Do you know a prisoner called Julian 8th?" I inquired.
He seemed to be thinking for a moment and then he said:
"I seem to have heard the name. What do you want of him?"
"I want to speak to him I am his son."
"Waiti" he whispered. "I think that I heard a man speak that
name today. I will find out he is near by."
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I waited for perhaps ten minutes when I heard someone ap-
proaching from the inside and presently a voice asked if I was still
there.
"Yes," I said; "is that you. Father?" for I thought that the tones
were his.
"Julian, my soni" came to me almost as a sob. "What are you
doing here?"
Briefly I told him and then of my plan. "Have the convicts the
courage to attempt it?" I asked in conclusion.
"I do not know," he said, and I could not but note the tone of
utter hopelessness in his voice. "They would wish to; but here our
spirits and our bodies both are broken. I do not know how many
would have the courage to attempt it. Wait and I will talk with
some of them all are loyal; but just weak from overwork,
starvation and abuse."
I waited for the better part of an hour before he returned. "Some
will help," he said, "from the first, and others if we are successful.
Do you think it worth the risk they will kill you if you fail they
will kill us all."
"And what is death to that which you are suffering?" I asked.
"I know," he said; "but the worm impaled upon the hook still
struggles and hopes for life. Turn back, my son, we can do nothing
against them."
"I shall not turn back," I whispered. "I shall not turn back."
"I will help you; but I cannot speak for the others."
We had spoken only when the sentry had been at a distance,
falling into silence each time he approached the point where we
stood. In the intervals of silence I could hear the growing restless-
ness of the prisoners and I guessed that what I had said to the first
man was being passed around from mouth to mouth within until
already the whole adjacent shed was seething with something akin
to excitement. I wondered if it would arouse their spirit sufficiently
to carry them through the next ten minutes. If it did, success was
assured.
Father had told me all that I wanted to know the location of the
guard house and the barracks and the number of Kash Guard
posted here only fifty men to guard five thousandl How much
more eloquently than words did this fact bespeak the humiliation
of the American people and the utter contempt in which our
scurvy masters held us fifty men to guard five thousand!
And then I started putting my plan into execution a mad plan
which had only its madness to recommend it. The sentry
approached and came opposite where I stood, and I leaped for the
eaves as I had leaped for the eaves of the prison pen at Chicago,
only this time I leaped from the outside where the eaves are closer
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to the ground and so the task was easier. I leaped for them and
caught them, and then I scrambled up behind the sentry and
before his dull wits told him that there was someone behind him I
was upon his back and the same fingers that threw a mad bull
closed upon his wind pipe. The struggle was brief-he died quickly
and I lowered him to the roof. Then I took his uniform from him
and donned it, with his ammunition belt, and I took his bayonetted
rifle and started out upon his post, walking with slow tread and
with my chin upon my breast as he had walked.
At the end of my post I waited for the sentry I saw coming upon
the next and when he was close to me I turned back and he turned
back away from me and then I wheeled and struck him an awful
blow upon the head with my rifle. He died more quickly than the
other instantly, I should say.
I took his rifle and ammunition from him and lowered them
inside the pen to waiting hands, and then I went on to the next
sentry and the next, until I had slain five more and passed their
rifles to the prisoners below and while I was doing this, five
prisoners who had volunteered to Father climbed to the roof of the
shed and stripped the dead men of their uniforms and donned
them.
It was all done quietly and in the black night none might see what
was going on fifty feet away. I had to stop when I came near to the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] - zanotowane.pl
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