It Is Never Too Late to Mend. Charles Reade Reade
to the wall, jammed in the strait waistcoat, and throttled in the round saw. Weakened by fever and unnatural exertion, he succumbed sooner than the inquisitors had calculated upon. The next time they came into the yard they found him black in the face, his lips livid, insensible, throttled, and dying. Another half minute and there would have hung a corpse in the Hawes pillory.
When they saw how nearly he was gone they were all at him together. One unclasped the saw collar, one unbraced the waistcoat, another sprinkled water over him—not a bucketful this time, because they would have wetted themselves. Released from the infernal machine, the body of No. 19 fell like a lump of clay upon the men who had reduced him to this condition. Then these worthies were in some little trepidation; for though they had caused the death of many men during the last two years, they had not yet, as it happened, murdered a single one on the spot openly and honestly like this; and they feared they might get into trouble. Adjoining the yard was a bath-room; to this they carried No. 19. They stripped him, and let the water run upon him from the cock, but he did not come to; then they scrubbed him just as they would a brick floor with a hard brush upon the back till his flesh was as red as blood; with this and the water together he began to gasp and sigh and faintly come back from insensibility to a new set of tortures; but so long was the struggle between life and death that these men of business, detained thus unconscionably about a single thief, lost all patience with him; one scrubbed him till the blood came under the bristles, another seized him by the hair of his head and jerked his head violently back several times, and this gave him such pain that he began to struggle instinctively, and, the blood now fairly set in motion, he soon moved. The last thing he remembered was a body full of aching bones; the first he awoke to was the sensation of being flayed alive from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot.
The first word he heard was, “Put his clothes on his shamming carcass
“Shall we dry him, sir?”
“Dry him!” roared the governor, with an oath. “No! Hasn't he given us trouble enough?” (Another oath.)
They flung his clothes upon his red-hot dripping skin, and Hodges gave him a brutal push. “Go to your cell.” Robinson crawled off, often wincing and trying in vain to keep his clothes from rubbing those parts of his person where they had scrubbed the skin off him.
Hawes eyed him with grim superiority. Suddenly he had an inspiration. “Come back!” shouted he. “I never was beat by a prisoner yet, and I never will. Strap him up.” At this command even the turnkeys looked amazed at one another and hesitated. Then the governor swore horribly at them, and Hodges without another word went for the jacket.
They took hold of him; he made no resistance; he never even looked at them. He never took his eye off Hawes; on him his eye fastened like a basilisk. They took him away, and pinioned, jammed and throttled him to the wall again. Hodges was set to watch him, and a bucket of water near to throw over him should he show the least sign of shamming again. In an hour another turnkey came and relieved Hodges—in another hour Fry relieved him, for this was tiresome work for a poor turnkey—in another hour a new hand relieved Fry, but nobody relieved No. 19.
Five mortal hours had he been in the vice without shamming. The pain his skin suffered from the late remedies, and the deadly rage at his heart, gave him unnatural powers of resistance; but at last the infernal machine conquered, and he began to turn dead faint; then Hodges, his sentinel at the time, caught up the bucket and dashed the whole contents over him. The effect was magical; the shock took away his breath for a moment, but the next the blood seemed to glow with fire in his veins and he felt a general access of vigor to bear his torture. When this man had been six hours in the vise the governor and his myrmidons came into the yard and unstrapped him.
“You did not beat me, you see, after all,” said the governor to No. 19. The turnkeys heard and revered their chief. No. 19 looked him full in the face with an eye glittering like a saber, but said no word.
“Sulky brute!” cried the governor, “lock him up” (oath). And that evening, as a warder was rolling the prisoners' supper along the little natural railway made by the two railings of Corridor B, the governor stepped the carriage and asked for 19's tin. It was given him, and he abstracted one half of the man's gruel. “Refractory in the yard to-day; but I'll break him before I've done with him” (oath).
The next day brushes were wanted for the jail. This saved Robinson for that day. It was little Josephs' turn to suffer. The governor put him on a favorite crank of his, and gave him eight thousand turns to do in four hours and a half. He knew the boy could not do it, and this was only a formula he went through previous to pillorying the lad. Josephs had been in the Pillory about an hour when it so happened that the Reverend John Jones, the chaplain of the jail, came into the yard. Seeing a group of warders at the mouth of the labor-cell, he walked up to them, and there was Josephs in peine forte et dure.
“What is this lad's offense?” inquired Mr. Jones.
“Refractory at the crank,” was the reply.
“Why, Josephs,” said the reverend gentleman, “you told me you would always do your best.”
“So I do, your reverence,” gasped Josephs; “but this crank is too heavy for a lad like me, and that is why I am put on it to get punished.”
“Hold your tongue,” said Hodges roughly.
“Why is he to hold his tongue, Mr. Hodges?” said the chaplain quietly; “how is he to answer my question if he holds his tongue? You forget yourself.”
“Ugh! beg your pardon, sir, but this one has always got some excuse or other.”
“What is the matter?” roared a rough voice behind the speakers. This was Hawes, who had approached them unobserved.
“He is gammoning his reverence, sir—that is all.”
“What has he been saying?”
“That the crank is too heavy for him, sir, and the waistcoat is strapped too tight, it seems.”
“Who says so?”
“I think so, Mr. Hawes.”
“Will you take a bit of advice, sir? If you wish a prisoner well don't you come between him and me. It will always be the worse for him, for I am master here and master I will be.”
“Mr. Hawes,” replied the chaplain, “I have never done or said anything in the prison to lessen your authority, but privately I must remonstrate against the uncommon severities practiced upon prisoners in this jail. If you will listen to me I shall be much obliged to you—if not, I am afraid I must, as a matter of conscience, call the attention of the visiting justices to the question.”
“Well, parson, the justices will be in the jail to-day—you tell them your story and I will tell them mine,” said Hawes, with a cool air of defiance.
Sure enough, at five o'clock in the afternoon two of the visiting justices arrived, accompanied by Mr. Wright, a young magistrate. They were met at the door by Hawes, who wore a look of delight at their appearance. They went round the prison with him, while he detained them in the center of the building till he had sent Hodges secretly to undo Josephs and set him on the crank; and here the party found him at work.
“You have been a long time on the crank, my lad,” said Hawes, “you may go to your cell.”
Josephs touched his cap to the governor and the gentlemen and went off.
“That is a nice quiet-looking boy,” said one of the justices; “what is he in for?”
“He is in this time for stealing a piece of beef out of a butcher's shop.”
“This time! what! is he a hardened offender? he does not look it.”
“He has been three times in prison; once for throwing stones, once for orchard-robbing, and this time for the beef.”
“What a young villain! at his age—-”
“Don't say that, Williams,”