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By day we could warm ourselves with exercise and active sports in the courtyard, but at night we shivered under our thin coverlets, and I found myself by and by wishing that my bedfellow Runnles had a little more flesh on his bones, for a lean man is no comfort in bed on a bitter night. Joe was not in my dormitory, or I should certainly have bedded with him.
As to the scheme itself, when I unfolded its details, they were somewhat dubious, and, strangely enough, the most enthusiastic in its favor was little Runnles, the melancholy flute player, and the most doubtful was the bosun, whose physical courage was equal to anything, but who was daunted by what appealed more particularly to the moral qualities of patience and endurance.
I learned afterwards that Runnles had employed himself during the two days in quietly encouraging the others, and I think it was the persistence of the little man that shamed them into perseverance. Night by night for three weeks we toiled on, and then were bountifully rewarded.
One night when Runnles and the bosun were at work, the chisel of the former met with no further obstacle. Enlarging the hole he had made, he set his eye to it, and whispered to the bosun to blow out the candle. Then he crawled back into the room and told me in his quiet way that he had seen the stars.
And then, with a sheepish air that set me a-smiling, Joseph Runnles, my bedfellow, the little silent man of whom I have spoken, drew out of his pocket the parts of a flute, and putting them together, set it to his lips and accompanied Joe through the next stanza, picking up the tune with a facility that spoke well for his musical ear.
I knew now that the deserters of whom they had spoken were actually in the place with them, and found myself pitying the fate of men who had had the ill luck to fall into the hands of so coldly brutal an officer as this captain. Then I turned about with a start, having the strange feeling for I heard nothing that someone was moving behind me. It was Runnles.
Very gently, so as to avoid noise, we began to scrape away at the mortar between the block of stone we had selected for removal and the one below it. Runnles hit upon a capital way of warning us of the approach of the sentry within earshot. He tied a string to Joe's leg, and gave it a tug when he heard the tramp of footsteps above.
Loath as I was to spill blood, I bade the bosun now load the gun with grape, and my qualms were banished when I heard cries of pain, and learned that Runnles and another had been hit by musket shots. The smack that was leading was coming up directly in our wake. "Give it her, Bosun!" I cried.
"There is old John Dilly," I said one day, when we were discussing the subject, "he was good to me aboard the Dolphin; I shouldn't like to leave him behind." "True," says Punchard, "and Runnles is a quiet, good soul; besides his name is Joe." "And the bosun, he's as strong as an ox, and might be a useful man."
It was wonderful how many of the prisoners discovered a talent for music after Punchard and Runnles had thus led the way. Our jailers encouraged this pastime; it was not merely harmless in itself, but it had a quietening effect on the temper of the men, and the squabbles and brawls among them notably diminished.
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