Free to the Far Blue Mountains (1976) by Louis - Sackett's 02 L'amour Page B

peered through the tiny window, then went on.
    Once more I returned to the bars. If I could but remove two, at most three, of the uprights, and one of the horizontal bars, I could get myself through. I worked, picked away very carefully. Then I tested one of the bars. My strength served me well now, for the bar gave. Then as I exerted more pressure, the bottom moved outward.
    Very carefully I extracted the top from its socket and placed it on the floor.
    The second bar was more stubborn. Again and again I strained and worked at it.
    At last the bottom came loose and it joined its mate on the floor between myself and the door.
    The horizontal bar was not so deeply set, and the grains of rock came loose each time I scraped with the pick. The wall was old and crumbling. By this time I was soaked with sweat and my knuckles were scraped and torn. It was after midnight before I had removed the third bar, and by that time the prison was quiet.
    Carefully, I moved the heavy bench under the window. I sacrificed my coat to cover the irons on my bed and give some shape of a man lying. My foot was on the bench when suddenly a key rattled and the door behind me opened.
    "Ah!" It was Henry Croppie. "Caught!"
    He sprang to seize me from behind, but his foot landed on the iron bars which rolled under him. His feet shot up and he fell.
    Turning from the bench, I met him as he rose to come at me, and I hit him.
    My fist was a hard one. It caught him on the nose and I felt the bone give way.
    He went almost down, then lunged up, reaching for me with his hands.
    Seizing one of his hands, I wrenched it quickly behind his back and shoved up in a hammerlock, an old wrestling trick. He started to cry out and I slammed him down upon the floor and knocked him out.
    There was nothing for it. To try rushing away down the passage would but lead me to another heavy door, and to more guards. The window it must be.
    Leaping up on the bench, I thrust myself through and pulled my legs up while behind me I heard grunts and spitting and coughing amid the rattle of chains.
    I looked down, and the stomach went out of me. The wall on which I pinned my hopes was at least twenty feet down and scarcely two feet wide. I might drop and reach it, but the chances were greater that I would slip off. For a moment I hesitated. To slip from that wall meant a drop of at least thirty feet. I looked up.
    The edge of the roof was scarcely four feet above my window top. Gripping the bars I turned my back to the outer night and stood up on the outside sill, shifting my hands higher. Gripping a bar with one hand, I reached up, let go the gripping hand, and caught the roofs edge. Very carefully I pulled myself up and over the edge, to lie gasping on the leads.
    Sweat was dripping from me. I rubbed my hands as dry as might be and began to edge myself along the leads. It was very wet and slippery, and if I started to slide there was small hope for me but death on the rocks almost sixty feet below.
    Edging along, I reached the far edge of the building. And there just below me was another leaded roof, not six feet down. I went over the edge and I ran along the peak of the roof for at least fifty feet. There was a small attic window and I tested it with my hands. The wood frame was old and crumbling and I managed to force the window, and stepped into what seemed like an empty room, musty with long dead air. A faint light came from another window. I crossed and opened the door into a hallway.
    If I was still within the bounds of Newgate it must be the quarters of the gaoler. Yet I believed the building was one adjoining the prison. At the end of the hall the door was shut and tight. I could force it in the time allowed me.
    Turning swiftly, I went down the hall to a window at the far end. In a moment I was once more in the cool night air with a faint mist of rain on my face, and I was on the leads of another roof.
    Some distance off, on still another roof, was a lower window. I went