By the time the matter of the spade was settled, the great bell rang,
the gangs went marching over the old familiar level, up the old path in
the grass-mound on which the Palace stands, and so, in lax order, like
shabby French conscripts, powdered, toil-worn, into the gates.
Then the search on parade: during which, as Black busily searched him,
Hogarth said: “Search well”.
They were then led up to cells.
And the moment Hogarth's door closed upon him, he put his skilly-can on
the floor, and, with one stamp, stamped it out of shape; also he broke
his cup, and pocketed two fragments of it.
A few minutes afterwards, before cocoa, Black, trotting in heavy haste
here and there in the gallery, looked in to say: “Bath to-night”.
And Hogarth: “Warder! a word with you! sorry, I have trodden on my
can....”
Upon which Black went stooping to look, the can now standing on the low
shelf; and as he said “I shall report this”, Hogarth, stooping, with
quick deftness had the vials picked from the thick pocket.
“Well, fall in”, said Black to him; “better take your precious can, and
give it to a bath-room warder for the store-keeper to change”.
Hogarth, as he passed out, placed the vials on the shelf over his
door, where they were secure, since cells were never searched; and, the
bathers having formed in single file, five feet between man and man,
away they moved and down--away and down--lost in space, treading the
journey of galleries, till, at the bottom, they passed up a vaulted
corridor, monastically dim, across a yard open to starry sky, and
into the door of a semi-detached, steep-roofed building, which was the
bath-house.
A row of thirty-five baths; a very long bench for undressing; in the
space between bench and baths three warders walking: such was the
bath-house: all whitewashed, galvanized iron, and rigour; but for its
old record of uneventfulness a scandal was preparing that night.
Outside the door a fourth officer paced, and a cord within rang a little
bell in one click, to tell when, the bathing over, the door should be
unlocked outside.
After giving up his can near the door to a warder, who laid it on the
bench, Hogarth undressed slowly; got off his boots; and now had on only
knickerbockers and stockings: he got off his stockings.
And the moment his bare soles touched the floor, he felt himself once
more agile on the ratlines, larky for a shore-row, handy in any squall.
Let them all come, therefore! He smiled; passed his palms down his crib
of lean ribs.
“Good gracious, why don't you hurry up there...?” an officer came
asking, stooping.
At “there” he saw stars-and-stripes, dropped upon his back: Hogarth was
away toward the door, while the bathers started with shouts, though in
no bosom arose any impulse to follow, the bath-house being the centre of
a maze of twenty unscaleable walls, prison within prison.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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