CHAPTER XXVIII.
That a prisoner should break bounds in the evening, return again thenext morning, and be present each time the roll is called, with fettersproperly rivetted on hands and feet seems, humanly speaking, animpossible feat to achieve.
But Papis was quite ready to tell how he had managed it. While thegaoler had been occupied with testing the fetters of each prisoner, hehad crawled noiselessly into the bucket which stood close at hand. Inthe half-dark cell no one could have noted his disappearance.
When the examination was over, two prisoners lifted the bucket andcarried it to the well, which was one worked by means of a pulley, thechains which let the bucket up and down clanked, and the axle creaked soloudly that under cover of the noise, and unseen in the tub, Papis couldstrip off his fetters, for there were no rings too narrow for the pliantgipsy to draw his hands and feet through. Then the carriers removed thelid of the receptacle and began to fill it from that of the well-bucket,taking care the while that the heydukes could not see there was anythingelse inside. They had of course to pour the water over the gipsy, andas it came up to his chin when the bucket was full, he held his missivestightly between his jaws.
The two prisoners then carried it into the assembly house, where it wasemptied into a water-tub. If a maidservant happened to be lounging inthe kitchen by any chance, the two men would deliberately frighten heraway by their foul talk. The water-tub stood close to the mouth of anoven; whilst the two others transferred the water from the bucket intothe tub, the gipsy slipped away as nimbly as a squirrel into the oven,clambered up the chimney, and waited there till the coast was clear.
As soon as he heard the pass-word shouted from the guard in thecourtyard below, he knew that it must be ten o'clock. So he clambered upout of the top of the chimney on to the roof of the Assembly House, asfar as the gable-end. In the yard of the building stood an ancientpear-tree, which the governor would not cut down, as it bore anexcellent crop of pears every year, although it was obviously dangerousin the neighbourhood of prisoners. Papis swung himself dexterously fromthe roof on to this tree, whose branches jutted out over the two fathomsof wall which shut in the court towards the street, that had now to bescaled.
But the returning was a more difficult matter than the setting out inthis case, for Papis had not only to break out of prison, but the nextmorning to break in again, which is a different matter.
And this was how he managed it. The pear-tree had a great hollow in itstrunk, and in this a rope-ladder was hidden; this, the gipsy wound roundan overhanging bough, laid himself flat on the edge of the wall, andwaited till the guard, who patrolled the space below, had turned hisback. Then he let down the ladder, and slid along it into the streetbelow.
But this would doubtless have been seen by the sentry the next time hepassed by, so to obviate this peril, the cunning Papis fastened a stringto the other end of the ladder. As soon as he reached _terra firma_, hethrew the ladder back. The dun-coloured string which fell down over thewall no one was likely to notice in the dark.
By the time the sentry had returned, the gipsy was in the neighbouringstreet. From there it was easy to reach the Jewry direct, and find theway to Abraham Rotheisel's.
He returned by the way he had come up the ladder over the wall, over thepear-tree on to the roof, through the chimney into the kitchen of theAssembly House, and into the bucket again, and so back into the dungeon.When the gaoler came for his morning rounds, Papis lay fettered hand andfoot in his accustomed place.