There were lights, here and there, in some of the windows of the House of Refuge buildings and there were others, like street-lamps, outside, but all was silence.
The boys themselves had hardly dared to whisper, but now one of them asked:
“Jim, how are we to climb the wall?”
“We won’t climb it,” said Jim. “See! right here! Three empty boxes and a board! We are going over the roof.”
“But we can’t get down on the other side,” whispered another boy.
“Yes, we can,” replied Jim triumphantly, as he held up a coil of small rope that he pulled out of a box. “Wait and see. Let’s pile up these things.”
It was easy work for five strong, active boys, to put those boxes one on top of another, but even then the board only reached from the topmost box to a little above the eaves of the building.
“Now, boys,” said Jim, “soon as I’m up, throw me the end of the rope.”
Not many young fellows could have gone up that board as he did, or, afterward, up the steep, slippery slates of the roof, with a coil of rope in one hand. It was first-rate gymnastics, with a chance for a slide and a heavy fall, but Jim reached the ridge, just as one of his followers came up over the eaves, after making several small failures to climb the board.
“Now for the rope,” said Jim, as he passed it around a chimney that came up through the ridge, tied it at the ends and threw the loop down toward the head of the board. He could hold it steady and it was all they needed. Very quickly, all five were perched in a row, like blackbirds on a fence.
“What’s next?” they asked.
“Glad we all had so much practice on the training ship,” replied Jim. “It takes a sailor to go down by a rope. This one’s long enough to hang down, double, almost to the ground. It won’t be much of a drop, then. I’ll go first. Hold hard! Steady, now!”
Even yet, he had not told them the whole of his plan, but they were learning to trust him and they were eager enough to do just as he said.
On the whole, they had at least learned soldierly obedience and good discipline in the school they were escaping from.
Down went Jim, hand over hand, to the eaves on the outer side of the engine house, and then he disappeared. They had hardly been able to see him, anyhow, and now they waited, half shivering, till a warning tug at the rope told them he had safely reached the ground. He had really found little difficulty in doing that and the hardest share really fell upon the last boy of all, for it seemed to him as if the other four had taken all night for it.
“Wait, now,” said Jim, as he untied the ends of the rope.
“Leave it,” said one of the boys. “We don’t want it any more.”
“I’ll show you,” said Jim, as he drew down the full length of the untied rope, coiled it and made a hank of it. “If they find it on the other side, they won’t know how we got down.”
He threw it with all his might; it cleared the roof-ridge and down it slid into the parade-ground to keep its own secret.
“What are we going to do, now, Jim?”
“Come on!” he said. “Follow me!—The lifeboat on the tug!”
“I just want to yell!” exclaimed the boy he had called Joe. “We’re going to beat ’em, this time.”
“Glad it’s so dark,” said Jim. “Don’t you make a sound! Step carefully!”
Like so many young panthers, prowling in the woods, they went forward, a step at a time, single file, until they had cleared the corner of the main building and were in the broad, well kept grounds between that and the East River. Jim himself wanted to shout when he saw the water and, far beyond it, the glimmering midnight lamps of the city.
There, only a short distance from them, now, was the wharf at which the tug was moored and over the wooden-railed walk leading down to it was a bright gaslight burning.
“Down!” said Jim. “We must creep, now. Not on all fours.—Creep!”
So they did, and a watchman who was patrolling the entire front of the House did not catch a glimpse of them. Head foremost, they followed their leader, down the wooden-railed companion way to the wharf.
“There might have been a man on guard here,” said Jim, “but there isn’t.”
There was a light in the cabin of the tug and another in the engine room, but no living being was to be seen as they scurried up the bit of ladder that took them to the upper deck, the roof, of the tug, where the lifeboat lay.
“Quick, boys!” said Jim. “Over with her! There isn’t a minute to spare!—Don’t you see? There’s a stir in the House! We are missed, already!”
The lifeboat’s fastenings were good, but they were arranged for her easy launching. She was loose in a moment. Then there was a shove, a grating sound, a splash in the water,—but Jim’s exulting:
“Now, boys! Down we go! She’ll float. All we’ve got to do is to bail her out—” was followed by a loud shout from the front door of the main building and through all its corridors there were hurrying feet and rapidly given orders, for the officers had found five sleeping cells wide open and not a boy in one of them.
About the last place in the world where anyone would look for a missing boy, at about two o’clock in the morning, would be in a lifeboat on the outer side of a steam tug in the East River.
The startled officers of the House of Refuge were not at first thinking of the river, but of things inside of their high, strong walls, which no boy could climb over or get through.
Jim and his friends in the little lifeboat were baling her out rapidly. Of course, it had filled on plunging in, but very quickly enough was out for another boy to clamber down and help without sinking her gunwale under. Then they all came down, and they seemed to be one shiver of mingled fear, excitement and exultation. In a minute more, the oars were out, and, just as two or three men with lanterns came hurrying down toward the wharf, Jim exclaimed, under his breath:
“Pull, boys!—I’ll steer out into the dark. We’ll go with the tide. They’ll come after us with the tug. It’s going to be a race!”
Four boys at the oars and one to steer made a fair crew for so small a boat. She was swift, too, and so was the tide that swept her onward, but her pursuers knew, now, that she was gone and steam was already up on the tug. Only a minute or so more was wasted by them in waiting for the engineer, and another minute in casting loose, but every second of those minutes was made the most of by the runaways.
“There goes her whistle!” exclaimed one of the rowers. “She’s after us——”
“She can go faster than we can.”
“We’ve a good start.”
“No talking, boys,” said Jim. “Our chance is good, yet,—Hullo!”
Not far ahead of him, as he sat in the stern of the boat, he could see the lights on a great Sound steamer, as she came puffing along against the tide, but it struck him that she had made her appearance, suddenly, as if she had been hidden.
“Hurrah!” he shouted. “That saves us!”
“Anything happened to the tug?”
“What’s coming?”
“Coming?” said Jim. “Why, we are pulling right into the thickest fog you ever saw. It’ll cover us up so they can’t follow us. It isn’t the tug I’m afraid of, now.”
“What then, Jim?”
“It’s the telegraph!” said Jim. “Our getting out’ll be known at every police station in the city, inside of five minutes. We must get ashore as quick as we can.”
“It’s an awful swift tide,” said Joe. “Why don’t you run right ashore?”
“You can’t tell where you’re going, in this fog,” said Jim, anxiously, for it seemed to him that they had gone more than far enough to have crossed the East River at that narrow place, even in a slanting direction. So they had, and all the while they had heard the steam whistles of all sorts of steamers answering each other through the fog. On, on, they went, the four rowers pulling desperately, until Jim asked, hoarsely, as he looked at something just beyond them:
“Boys!—What’s this?—I don’t know much about New York——”
He was from the country, but three of them were city boys and it was one of these who now responded:
“Hush, Jim! If you haven’t steered right into the Harlem River! That’s the Third Avenue swing-bridge. Go right under it. ’Twasn’t far to come, either.”
Right over their heads, now, for a moment, was the vast shadow of the bridge, and then, as they shot swiftly out beyond it, Joe whispered:
“North shore, Jim. We can get right in among the lumber yards. Best kind of hiding place.—We’re safe!”
It was but a minute, after that, before all five of them were standing on a wharf, looking back at the lifeboat, as she disappeared in the fog, for Jim had shoved her off and the tide had caught her.
“I don’t care where it carries her,” he said. “When they find her, she can’t tell them where she left us.”