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Barnaby Rudge
CHAPTER 64
Charles Dickens
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       _ Breaking the silence they had hitherto preserved, they raised a
       great cry as soon as they were ranged before the jail, and demanded
       to speak to the governor. This visit was not wholly unexpected,
       for his house, which fronted the street, was strongly barricaded,
       the wicket-gate of the prison was closed up, and at no loophole or
       grating was any person to be seen. Before they had repeated their
       summons many times, a man appeared upon the roof of the governor's
       house, and asked what it was they wanted.
       Some said one thing, some another, and some only groaned and
       hissed. It being now nearly dark, and the house high, many persons
       in the throng were not aware that any one had come to answer them,
       and continued their clamour until the intelligence was gradually
       diffused through the whole concourse. Ten minutes or more elapsed
       before any one voice could be heard with tolerable distinctness;
       during which interval the figure remained perched alone, against
       the summer-evening sky, looking down into the troubled street.
       'Are you,' said Hugh at length, 'Mr Akerman, the head jailer here?'
       'Of course he is, brother,' whispered Dennis. But Hugh, without
       minding him, took his answer from the man himself.
       'Yes,' he said. 'I am.'
       'You have got some friends of ours in your custody, master.'
       'I have a good many people in my custody.' He glanced downward, as
       he spoke, into the jail: and the feeling that he could see into
       the different yards, and that he overlooked everything which was
       hidden from their view by the rugged walls, so lashed and goaded
       the mob, that they howled like wolves.
       'Deliver up our friends,' said Hugh, 'and you may keep the rest.'
       'It's my duty to keep them all. I shall do my duty.'
       'If you don't throw the doors open, we shall break 'em down,' said
       Hugh; 'for we will have the rioters out.'
       'All I can do, good people,' Akerman replied, 'is to exhort you to
       disperse; and to remind you that the consequences of any
       disturbance in this place, will be very severe, and bitterly
       repented by most of you, when it is too late.'
       He made as though he would retire when he said these words, but he
       was checked by the voice of the locksmith.
       'Mr Akerman,' cried Gabriel, 'Mr Akerman.'
       'I will hear no more from any of you,' replied the governor,
       turning towards the speaker, and waving his hand.
       'But I am not one of them,' said Gabriel. 'I am an honest man,
       Mr Akerman; a respectable tradesman--Gabriel Varden, the locksmith.
       You know me?'
       'You among the crowd!' cried the governor in an altered voice.
       'Brought here by force--brought here to pick the lock of the great
       door for them,' rejoined the locksmith. 'Bear witness for me, Mr
       Akerman, that I refuse to do it; and that I will not do it, come
       what may of my refusal. If any violence is done to me, please to
       remember this.'
       'Is there no way (if helping you?' said the governor.
       'None, Mr Akerman. You'll do your duty, and I'll do mine. Once
       again, you robbers and cut-throats,' said the locksmith, turning
       round upon them, 'I refuse. Ah! Howl till you're hoarse. I
       refuse.'
       'Stay--stay!' said the jailer, hastily. 'Mr Varden, I know you for
       a worthy man, and one who would do no unlawful act except upon
       compulsion--'
       'Upon compulsion, sir,' interposed the locksmith, who felt that the
       tone in which this was said, conveyed the speaker's impression that
       he had ample excuse for yielding to the furious multitude who beset
       and hemmed him in, on every side, and among whom he stood, an old
       man, quite alone; 'upon compulsion, sir, I'll do nothing.'
       'Where is that man,' said the keeper, anxiously, 'who spoke to me
       just now?'
       'Here!' Hugh replied.
       'Do you know what the guilt of murder is, and that by keeping that
       honest tradesman at your side you endanger his life!'
       'We know it very well,' he answered, 'for what else did we bring
       him here? Let's have our friends, master, and you shall have your
       friend. Is that fair, lads?'
       The mob replied to him with a loud Hurrah!
       'You see how it is, sir?' cried Varden. 'Keep 'em out, in King
       George's name. Remember what I have said. Good night!'
       There was no more parley. A shower of stones and other missiles
       compelled the keeper of the jail to retire; and the mob, pressing
       on, and swarming round the walls, forced Gabriel Varden close up to
       the door.
       In vain the basket of tools was laid upon the ground before him,
       and he was urged in turn by promises, by blows, by offers of
       reward, and threats of instant death, to do the office for which
       they had brought him there. 'No,' cried the sturdy locksmith, 'I
       will not!'
       He had never loved his life so well as then, but nothing could move
       him. The savage faces that glared upon him, look where he would;
       the cries of those who thirsted, like wild animals, for his blood;
       the sight of men pressing forward, and trampling down their
       fellows, as they strove to reach him, and struck at him above the
       heads of other men, with axes and with iron bars; all failed to
       daunt him. He looked from man to man, and face to face, and still,
       with quickened breath and lessening colour, cried firmly, 'I will
       not!'
       Dennis dealt him a blow upon the face which felled him to the
       ground. He sprung up again like a man in the prime of life, and
       with blood upon his forehead, caught him by the throat.
       'You cowardly dog!' he said: 'Give me my daughter. Give me my
       daughter.'
       They struggled together. Some cried 'Kill him,' and some (but they
       were not near enough) strove to trample him to death. Tug as he
       would at the old man's wrists, the hangman could not force him to
       unclench his hands.
       'Is this all the return you make me, you ungrateful monster?' he
       articulated with great difficulty, and with many oaths.
       'Give me my daughter!' cried the locksmith, who was now as fierce
       as those who gathered round him: 'Give me my daughter!'
       He was down again, and up, and down once more, and buffeting with a
       score of them, who bandied him from hand to hand, when one tall
       fellow, fresh from a slaughter-house, whose dress and great thigh-
       boots smoked hot with grease and blood, raised a pole-axe, and
       swearing a horrible oath, aimed it at the old man's uncovered head.
       At that instant, and in the very act, he fell himself, as if struck
       by lightning, and over his body a one-armed man came darting to the
       locksmith's side. Another man was with him, and both caught the
       locksmith roughly in their grasp.
       'Leave him to us!' they cried to Hugh--struggling, as they spoke,
       to force a passage backward through the crowd. 'Leave him to us.
       Why do you waste your whole strength on such as he, when a couple
       of men can finish him in as many minutes! You lose time. Remember
       the prisoners! remember Barnaby!'
       The cry ran through the mob. Hammers began to rattle on the walls;
       and every man strove to reach the prison, and be among the foremost
       rank. Fighting their way through the press and struggle, as
       desperately as if they were in the midst of enemies rather than
       their own friends, the two men retreated with the locksmith between
       them, and dragged him through the very heart of the concourse.
       And now the strokes began to fall like hail upon the gate, and on
       the strong building; for those who could not reach the door, spent
       their fierce rage on anything--even on the great blocks of stone,
       which shivered their weapons into fragments, and made their hands
       and arms to tingle as if the walls were active in their stout
       resistance, and dealt them back their blows. The clash of iron
       ringing upon iron, mingled with the deafening tumult and sounded
       high above it, as the great sledge-hammers rattled on the nailed
       and plated door: the sparks flew off in showers; men worked in
       gangs, and at short intervals relieved each other, that all their
       strength might be devoted to the work; but there stood the portal
       still, as grim and dark and strong as ever, and, saving for the
       dints upon its battered surface, quite unchanged.
       While some brought all their energies to bear upon this toilsome
       task; and some, rearing ladders against the prison, tried to
       clamber to the summit of the walls they were too short to scale;
       and some again engaged a body of police a hundred strong, and beat
       them back and trod them under foot by force of numbers; others
       besieged the house on which the jailer had appeared, and driving in
       the door, brought out his furniture, and piled it up against the
       prison-gate, to make a bonfire which should burn it down. As soon
       as this device was understood, all those who had laboured hitherto,
       cast down their tools and helped to swell the heap; which reached
       half-way across the street, and was so high, that those who threw
       more fuel on the top, got up by ladders. When all the keeper's
       goods were flung upon this costly pile, to the last fragment, they
       smeared it with the pitch, and tar, and rosin they had brought, and
       sprinkled it with turpentine. To all the woodwork round the
       prison-doors they did the like, leaving not a joist or beam
       untouched. This infernal christening performed, they fired the
       pile with lighted matches and with blazing tow, and then stood by,
       awaiting the result.
       The furniture being very dry, and rendered more combustible by wax
       and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The
       flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison-wall, and
       twining up its loftly front like burning serpents. At first they
       crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their
       looks: but when it grew hotter and fiercer--when it crackled,
       leaped, and roared, like a great furnace--when it shone upon the
       opposite houses, and lighted up not only the pale and wondering
       faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each habitation--
       when through the deep red heat and glow, the fire was seen sporting
       and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate surface, now
       gliding off with fierce inconstancy and soaring high into the sky,
       anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to its
       ruin--when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock
       of St Sepulchre's so often pointing to the hour of death, was
       legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top
       glittered in the unwonted light like something richly jewelled--
       when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep
       reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting the
       longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of
       brightness--when wall and tower, and roof and chimney-stack, seemed
       drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger--
       when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view,
       and things the most familiar put on some new aspect--then the mob
       began to join the whirl, and with loud yells, and shouts, and
       clamour, such as happily is seldom heard, bestirred themselves to
       feed the fire, and keep it at its height.
       Although the heat was so intense that the paint on the houses over
       against the prison, parched and crackled up, and swelling into
       boils, as it were from excess of torture, broke and crumbled away;
       although the glass fell from the window-sashes, and the lead and
       iron on the roofs blistered the incautious hand that touched them,
       and the sparrows in the eaves took wing, and rendered giddy by the
       smoke, fell fluttering down upon the blazing pile; still the fire
       was tended unceasingly by busy hands, and round it, men were going
       always. They never slackened in their zeal, or kept aloof, but
       pressed upon the flames so hard, that those in front had much ado
       to save themselves from being thrust in; if one man swooned or
       dropped, a dozen struggled for his place, and that although they
       knew the pain, and thirst, and pressure to be unendurable. Those
       who fell down in fainting-fits, and were not crushed or burnt,
       were carried to an inn-yard close at hand, and dashed with water
       from a pump; of which buckets full were passed from man to man
       among the crowd; but such was the strong desire of all to drink,
       and such the fighting to be first, that, for the most part, the
       whole contents were spilled upon the ground, without the lips of
       one man being moistened.
       Meanwhile, and in the midst of all the roar and outcry, those who
       were nearest to the pile, heaped up again the burning fragments
       that came toppling down, and raked the fire about the door, which,
       although a sheet of flame, was still a door fast locked and barred,
       and kept them out. Great pieces of blazing wood were passed,
       besides, above the people's heads to such as stood about the
       ladders, and some of these, climbing up to the topmost stave, and
       holding on with one hand by the prison wall, exerted all their
       skill and force to cast these fire-brands on the roof, or down into
       the yards within. In many instances their efforts were successful;
       which occasioned a new and appalling addition to the horrors of the
       scene: for the prisoners within, seeing from between their bars
       that the fire caught in many places and thrived fiercely, and being
       all locked up in strong cells for the night, began to know that
       they were in danger of being burnt alive. This terrible fear,
       spreading from cell to cell and from yard to yard, vented itself in
       such dismal cries and wailings, and in such dreadful shrieks for
       help, that the whole jail resounded with the noise; which was
       loudly heard even above the shouting of the mob and roaring of the
       flames, and was so full of agony and despair, that it made the
       boldest tremble.
       It was remarkable that these cries began in that quarter of the
       jail which fronted Newgate Street, where, it was well known, the
       men who were to suffer death on Thursday were confined. And not
       only were these four who had so short a time to live, the first to
       whom the dread of being burnt occurred, but they were, throughout,
       the most importunate of all: for they could be plainly heard,
       notwithstanding the great thickness of the walls, crying that the
       wind set that way, and that the flames would shortly reach them;
       and calling to the officers of the jail to come and quench the
       fire from a cistern which was in their yard, and full of water.
       Judging from what the crowd outside the walls could hear from time
       to time, these four doomed wretches never ceased to call for help;
       and that with as much distraction, and in as great a frenzy of
       attachment to existence, as though each had an honoured, happy
       life before him, instead of eight-and-forty hours of miserable
       imprisonment, and then a violent and shameful death.
       But the anguish and suffering of the two sons of one of these men,
       when they heard, or fancied that they heard, their father's voice,
       is past description. After wringing their hands and rushing to and
       fro as if they were stark mad, one mounted on the shoulders of his
       brother, and tried to clamber up the face of the high wall, guarded
       at the top with spikes and points of iron. And when he fell among
       the crowd, he was not deterred by his bruises, but mounted up
       again, and fell again, and, when he found the feat impossible,
       began to beat the stones and tear them with his hands, as if he
       could that way make a breach in the strong building, and force a
       passage in. At last, they cleft their way among the mob about the
       door, though many men, a dozen times their match, had tried in vain
       to do so, and were seen, in--yes, in--the fire, striving to prize
       it down, with crowbars.
       Nor were they alone affected by the outcry from within the prison.
       The women who were looking on, shrieked loudly, beat their hands
       together, stopped their ears; and many fainted: the men who were
       not near the walls and active in the siege, rather than do nothing,
       tore up the pavement of the street, and did so with a haste and
       fury they could not have surpassed if that had been the jail, and
       they were near their object. Not one living creature in the throng
       was for an instant still. The whole great mass were mad.
       A shout! Another! Another yet, though few knew why, or what it
       meant. But those around the gate had seen it slowly yield, and
       drop from its topmost hinge. It hung on that side by but one, but
       it was upright still, because of the bar, and its having sunk, of
       its own weight, into the heap of ashes at its foot. There was now
       a gap at the top of the doorway, through which could be descried a
       gloomy passage, cavernous and dark. Pile up the fire!
       It burnt fiercely. The door was red-hot, and the gap wider. They
       vainly tried to shield their faces with their hands, and standing
       as if in readiness for a spring, watched the place. Dark figures,
       some crawling on their hands and knees, some carried in the arms of
       others, were seen to pass along the roof. It was plain the jail
       could hold out no longer. The keeper, and his officers, and their
       wives and children, were escaping. Pile up the fire!
       The door sank down again: it settled deeper in the cinders--
       tottered--yielded--was down!
       As they shouted again, they fell back, for a moment, and left a
       clear space about the fire that lay between them and the jail
       entry. Hugh leapt upon the blazing heap, and scattering a train of
       sparks into the air, and making the dark lobby glitter with those
       that hung upon his dress, dashed into the jail.
       The hangman followed. And then so many rushed upon their track,
       that the fire got trodden down and thinly strewn about the street;
       but there was no need of it now, for, inside and out, the prison
       was in flames. _