The Count of the Saxon Shore; or The Villa in Vectis.<br />A Tale of the Departure of the Romans fro by Church and Putnam (electric book reader .TXT) 📖

The prisoner seemed to submit to his fate with patience. He thanked the attendant who brought him his rations with a nod and smile, and disposed of the food with an appetite which seemed to indicate a cheerful temper. A visit which the peddler paid him the second day of his imprisonment was apparently received as a welcome relief. The two had a long and friendly conversation, nor did Cedric utter a word of complaint against his treatment.

In reality the young chief was keeping under his rage with an effort almost unbearably painful. That he should be chained like a dog to the wall was an intolerable grievance; he, a free man, and the son of a long line of chiefs which boasted the blood of the great Odin himself! The iron did indeed enter into his soul, and the seeming calm of his outward patience concealed a whole volcano of inward fury. [pg 217]It was only the hope of freedom that kept him calm. It was that he might not diminish this hope, this almost desperate chance, by the very smallest fraction that he ate and drank with such seeming cheerfulness. He would want, he knew, all his strength for an escape. He would support it and husband it to the utmost.

And for an escape, unknown to his keepers, he was steadily preparing. The chain which bound him to the wall was fastened round his right arm and leg, and the fastening would have seemed secure to any ordinary observer. But such an observer would not have made the necessary allowance for the young man’s ordinary vigour and endurance. His hand was large and muscular; far too much so, one would have thought, to pass through the ring which had been welded round the arms. But he possessed an unusual power of contracting it. To exercise this power was indeed a painful effort, causing something like an agonizing cramp; still it was an effort that could be made, and made without disabling the limb. It could not, however, be done twice, because the hand, recovering its shape from the extraordinary pressure to which it had been subjected, would infallibly swell. Cedric, accordingly, after satisfying himself that it could be done, postponed actually doing it till the moment of escape had arrived. The fastening of the leg was less manageable. He [pg 218]would not have scrupled to do as the Spartan prisoner is said to have done, and cut off the foot which impeded his escape, but he had positively nothing with which this could be done. The only alternative was to drag the staple from the wall, and to carry it and the chain along with him. Fortunately, strong as it was, it was light. The staple at first seemed obstinate. It had indeed been subjected to tests which satisfied the villa blacksmith of its capacity of resistance. But repeated efforts, made with all the enormous strength which the young giant could bring to bear, weakened its hold, and at last it gave. The prisoner was prudent enough not to complete the separation of the iron from the walls. It would have been difficult to replace it so as to escape the notice of the attendant. Accordingly the drag was relaxed as soon as the first indications of yielding were felt. The time for attempting the escape was a subject of much anxious deliberation. The obvious course would have been to choose some hour between midnight and dawn; but Cedric had heard from time to time the step of some one walking up and down before his prison, and he guessed that it might be guarded at night, but left during the day-time, on the presumption that the captive would scarcely make an effort to escape while it was light. It was this accordingly that he resolved to do. Shortly after sunrise the attendant paid him his customary visit, [pg 219]