While Newgate was burning on the previous night, Barnaby and
his father, having been passed among the crowd from hand to hand, stood in
Smithfield, on the outskirts of the mob, gazing at the flames like men who had
been suddenly roused from sleep. Some moments elapsed before they could
distinctly remember where they were, or how they got there; or recollected that
while they were standing idle and listless spectators of the fire, they had
tools in their hands which had been hurriedly given them that they might free
themselves from their fetters.
Barnaby, heavily ironed as he was, if he had obeyed his first impulse, or if
he had been alone, would have made his way back to the side of Hugh, who to his
clouded intellect now shone forth with the new lustre of being his preserver and
truest friend. But his father's terror of remaining in the streets, communicated
itself to him when he comprehended the full extent of his fears, and impressed
him with the same eagerness to fly to a place of safety.
In a corner of the market among the pens for cattle, Barnaby knelt down, and
pausing every now and then to pass his hand over his father's face, or look up
to him with a smile, knocked off his irons. When he had seen him spring, a free
man, to his feet, and had given vent to the transport of delight which the sight
awakened, he went to work upon his own, which soon fell rattling down upon the
ground, and left his limbs unfettered.
Gliding away together when this task was accomplished, and passing several
groups of men, each gathered round a stooping figure to hide him from those who
passed, but unable to repress the clanking sound of hammers, which told that
they too were busy at the same work,--the two fugitives made towards
Clerkenwell, and passing thence to Islington, as the nearest point of egress,
were quickly in the fields. After wandering about for a long time, they found in
a pasture near Finchley a poor shed, with walls of mud, and roof of grass and
brambles, built for some cowherd, but now deserted. Here, they lay down for the
rest of the night.
They wandered to and fro when it was day, and once Barnaby went off alone to
a cluster of little cottages two or three miles away, to purchase some bread and
milk. But finding no better shelter, they returned to the same place, and lay
down again to wait for night.
Heaven alone can tell, with what vague hopes of duty, and affection; with
what strange promptings of nature, intelligible to him as to a man of radiant
mind and most enlarged capacity; with what dim memories of children he had
played with when a child himself, who had prattled of their fathers, and of
loving them, and being loved; with how many half-remembered, dreamy associations
of his mother's grief and tears and widowhood; he watched and tended this man.
But that a vague and shadowy crowd of such ideas came slowly on him; that they
taught him to be sorry when he looked upon his haggard face, that they
overflowed his eyes when he stooped to kiss him, that they kept him waking in a
tearful gladness, shading him from the sun, fanning him with leaves, soothing
him when he started in his sleep--ah! what a troubled sleep it was--and
wondering when SHE would come to join them and be happy, is the truth. He sat
beside him all that day; listening for her footsteps in every breath of air,
looking for her shadow on the gently-waving grass, twining the hedge flowers for
her pleasure when she came, and his when he awoke; and stooping down from time
to time to listen to his mutterings, and wonder why he was so restless in that
quiet place. The sun went down, and night came on, and he was still quite
tranquil; busied with these thoughts, as if there were no other people in the
world, and the dull cloud of smoke hanging on the immense city in the distance,
hid no vices, no crimes, no life or death, or cause of disquiet--nothing but
clear air.
But the hour had now come when he must go alone to find out the blind man (a
task that filled him with delight) and bring him to that place; taking especial
care that he was not watched or followed on his way back. He listened to the
directions he must observe, repeated them again and again, and after twice or
thrice returning to surprise his father with a light-hearted laugh, went forth,
at last, upon his errand: leaving Grip, whom he had carried from the jail in his
arms, to his care.
Fleet of foot, and anxious to return, he sped swiftly on towards the city,
but could not reach it before the fires began, and made the night angry with
their dismal lustre. When he entered the town--it might be that he was changed
by going there without his late companions, and on no violent errand; or by the
beautiful solitude in which he had passed the day, or by the thoughts that had
come upon him,--but it seemed peopled by a legion of devils. This flight and
pursuit, this cruel burning and destroying, these dreadful cries and stunning
noises, were THEY the good lord's noble cause!
Though almost stupefied by the bewildering scene, still be found the blind
man's house. It was shut up and tenantless.
He waited for a long while, but no one came. At last he withdrew; and as he
knew by this time that the soldiers were firing, and many people must have been
killed, he went down into Holborn, where he heard the great crowd was, to try if
he could find Hugh, and persuade him to avoid the danger, and return with him.
If he had been stunned and shocked before, his horror was increased a
thousandfold when he got into this vortex of the riot, and not being an actor in
the terrible spectacle, had it all before his eyes. But there, in the midst,
towering above them all, close before the house they were attacking now, was
Hugh on horseback, calling to the rest!
Sickened by the sights surrounding him on every side, and by the heat and
roar, and crash, he forced his way among the crowd (where many recognised him,
and with shouts pressed back to let him pass), and in time was nearly up with
Hugh, who was savagely threatening some one, but whom or what he said, he could
not, in the great confusion, understand. At that moment the crowd forced their
way into the house, and Hugh--it was impossible to see by what means, in such a
concourse--fell headlong down.
Barnaby was beside him when he staggered to his feet. It was well he made him
hear his voice, or Hugh, with his uplifted axe, would have cleft his skull in
twain.
'Barnaby--you! Whose hand was that, that struck me down?'
'Not mine.'
'Whose!--I say, whose!' he cried, reeling back, and looking wildly round.
'What are you doing? Where is he? Show me!'
'You are hurt,' said Barnaby--as indeed he was, in the head, both by the blow
he had received, and by his horse's hoof. 'Come away with me.'
As he spoke, he took the horse's bridle in his hand, turned him, and dragged
Hugh several paces. This brought them out of the crowd, which was pouring from
the street into the vintner's cellars.
'Where's--where's Dennis?' said Hugh, coming to a stop, and checking Barnaby
with his strong arm. 'Where has he been all day? What did he mean by leaving me
as he did, in the jail, last night? Tell me, you--d'ye hear!'
With a flourish of his dangerous weapon, he fell down upon the ground like a
log. After a minute, though already frantic with drinking and with the wound in
his head, he crawled to a stream of burning spirit which was pouring down the
kennel, and began to drink at it as if it were a brook of water.
Barnaby drew him away, and forced him to rise. Though he could neither stand
nor walk, he involuntarily staggered to his horse, climbed upon his back, and
clung there. After vainly attempting to divest the animal of his clanking
trappings, Barnaby sprung up behind him, snatched the bridle, turned into
Leather Lane, which was close at hand, and urged the frightened horse into a
heavy trot.
He looked back, once, before he left the street; and looked upon a sight not
easily to be erased, even from his remembrance, so long as he had life.
The vintner's house with a half-a-dozen others near at hand, was one great,
glowing blaze. All night, no one had essayed to quench the flames, or stop their
progress; but now a body of soldiers were actively engaged in pulling down two
old wooden houses, which were every moment in danger of taking fire, and which
could scarcely fail, if they were left to burn, to extend the conflagration
immensely. The tumbling down of nodding walls and heavy blocks of wood, the
hooting and the execrations of the crowd, the distant firing of other military
detachments, the distracted looks and cries of those whose habitations were in
danger, the hurrying to and fro of frightened people with their goods; the
reflections in every quarter of the sky, of deep, red, soaring flames, as though
the last day had come and the whole universe were burning; the dust, and smoke,
and drift of fiery particles, scorching and kindling all it fell upon; the hot
unwholesome vapour, the blight on everything; the stars, and moon, and very sky,
obliterated;--made up such a sum of dreariness and ruin, that it seemed as if
the face of Heaven were blotted out, and night, in its rest and quiet, and
softened light, never could look upon the earth again.
But there was a worse spectacle than this--worse by far than fire and smoke,
or even the rabble's unappeasable and maniac rage. The gutters of the street,
and every crack and fissure in the stones, ran with scorching spirit, which
being dammed up by busy hands, overflowed the road and pavement, and formed a
great pool, into which the people dropped down dead by dozens. They lay in heaps
all round this fearful pond, husbands and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and
daughters, women with children in their arms and babies at their breasts, and
drank until they died. While some stooped with their lips to the brink and never
raised their heads again, others sprang up from their fiery draught, and danced,
half in a mad triumph, and half in the agony of suffocation, until they fell,
and steeped their corpses in the liquor that had killed them. Nor was even this
the worst or most appalling kind of death that happened on this fatal night.
From the burning cellars, where they drank out of hats, pails, buckets, tubs,
and shoes, some men were drawn, alive, but all alight from head to foot; who, in
their unendurable anguish and suffering, making for anything that had the look
of water, rolled, hissing, in this hideous lake, and splashed up liquid fire
which lapped in all it met with as it ran along the surface, and neither spared
the living nor the dead. On this last night of the great riots--for the last
night it was--the wretched victims of a senseless outcry, became themselves the
dust and ashes of the flames they had kindled, and strewed the public streets of
London.
With all he saw in this last glance fixed indelibly upon his mind, Barnaby
hurried from the city which enclosed such horrors; and holding down his head
that he might not even see the glare of the fires upon the quiet landscape, was
soon in the still country roads.
He stopped at about half-a-mile from the shed where his father lay, and with
some difficulty making Hugh sensible that he must dismount, sunk the horse's
furniture in a pool of stagnant water, and turned the animal loose. That done,
he supported his companion as well as he could, and led him slowly forward.
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