Part 59 (1/2)
By now the street beneath the girls was half filled with people; it echoed to a babble of voices, to the shuffle and tread of a coming mult.i.tude, and an instant later out of every thoroughfare which fronted upon the grim old prison structure streamed the people of New Orleans.
”See! They are unarmed!” Oliveta's fingers sank into her sister's wrist.
Then through the press came a body of silent men, four abreast and shoulder to shoulder. The crowd opened to let them through, cheering frenziedly. They wore an air of sober responsibility; they carried guns, and looked to neither right nor left. Directly beneath the waiting women they pa.s.sed, and at their head marched Norvin Blake and Bernie Dreux together with two men unknown to the girls.
Vittoria leaned forward horror-stricken, and although she tried to call she did not hear her voice above the confusion; Oliveta clutched her, murmuring distractedly.
The avenues were jammed from curb to curb; telegraph-poles, lamp-posts, trees held a burden of human forms; windows and house-tops were filling in every direction; a continuous roar beat thunderously against the prison walls.
The army of vigilantes drew up before the main gate, and a man smote it with the b.u.t.t of his shotgun, demanding entrance. The crowd, antic.i.p.ating a volley from within, surged back, leaving them isolated.
A dozen bluecoats struggled to clear the sidewalks next the structure, but they might as well have tried to stem a rising tide with their naked hands; they were buffeted briefly, then swallowed up.
In answer to a command, the armed men scattered, surrounding the building with a cordon of steel; then the main body renewed its a.s.sault. But the oaken barrier, stoutly reinforced, withstood them gallantly, and a brief colloquy occurred, after which they made their way to a small side door which directly faced the two women across the street. This was not so heavily constructed as the front gate and promised an easier entrance; but it was likewise locked and barred.
Then some one spied the wagon and its load of timbers, now hopelessly wedged into the press, and a rush was made toward it. A beam was raised upon willing shoulders, and with this as a battering-ram a breach was begun.
Every crash was the signal for a shout from the mult.i.tude, and when the door finally gave way a triumphant roar arose. The armed men swarmed into the opening and disappeared one by one, all but two who stood with backs to the door and faced the crowd warningly. It was evident that some sort of order prevailed among them, and that this was more than an unorganized a.s.sault.
Through the close-packed ranks, on and on around the ma.s.sive pile, ran the word that the vigilantes were within; it was telegraphed from house-top to house-top. Then a silence descended, the more sinister and ominous because of the pandemonium which had preceded it.
Thus far Vittoria and her companion had seen and heard all that occurred, for their position commanded a view of both fronts of the building; but now they had only their ears to guide them.
”Come, let us leave now! We have seen enough.” Vittoria cried, and strove to drag Oliveta from her post. But the girl would not yield, she did not seem to hear, her eyes were fixed with strained and fascinated horror upon that shattered aperture which showed like a gaping wound. Her bloodless lips were whispering; her fingers, where they gripped the iron railing, were like claws.
”Quickly! Quickly!” moaned Vittoria. ”We did not come to see this monstrous thing. Oliveta, spare yourself!” In the silence her voice sounded so loudly and shrilly that people on the adjoining balcony turned curious, uncomprehending faces toward her.
Moment after moment that hush continued, then from within came a renewed hammering, hollow, measured; above it sounded the faint cries of terrified prisoners. This died away after a time, and some one said:
”They're into the corridors at last. It won't be long now.”
A moment later a dull, unmistakable reverberation rolled forth like the smothered sound of a subterranean explosion; it was followed by another and another--gunshots fired within brick walls and flag-paved courtyards.
It shattered that sickening, unending suspense which caused the pulse to flutter and the breath to lag; the crowd gave tongue in a howl of hoa.r.s.e delight. Then followed a peculiar shrilling chorus--that familiar signal known as the ”dago whistle”--which was like the piercing cry of lost souls. ”Who killa da Chief?” screamed the hoodlums, then puckered their lips and piped again that mocking signal. As the booming of the guns continued, now singly, now in volley, the maddened populace squeezed toward that narrow entrance through which the avengers had disappeared; but they were halted by the guards and forced to content themselves by greeting every shot with an exultant cry. The streets in all directions were tossing and billowing like the waves of the sea; men capered and flung their arms aloft, shrieking; women and children waved their ap.r.o.ns and kerchiefs, sobbing and spent with excitement. It was a wild and grotesque scene, unspeakably terrible, inhumanly ferocious.
Through it the two Sicilian girls clung to each other, fainting, revolted, fascinated. When they could summon strength they descended to the street and fought their way out of the bedlam.
Norvin Blake was not a willing partic.i.p.ant in the lynching, although he had gone to the meeting at Clay Statue determined to do what he considered his duty. He had felt no doubt as to the outcome of the ma.s.s-meeting even before he saw its giant proportions, and even before it had sounded its approval of the first speaker's words, for he knew how deeply his townspeople were stirred by the astounding miscarriage of justice. At the rally of the Committee on the afternoon previous it had been urged to proceed with the execution at once, and the counsel of the more conservative had barely prevailed. Blake knew perhaps better than his companions to what lengths the rage of a mob will go, and he confessed to a secret fear of the result. Therefore, although he marched in the vanguard of the storming party, it was more to exercise a restraining influence and to prevent violence against unoffending foreigners, than to take part in the demonstration. As for the actual shedding of blood, his instinct revolted from it, while his reason recognized its necessity and defended it.
Bernie Dreux's amazing a.s.sumption of dictators.h.i.+p had relieved him of the duty of heading the mob, a thing for which he was profoundly grateful. When the main body of vigilantes had armed itself, he fell in beside his friend with some notion of helping and protecting him.
But the little man proved amply equal to the occasion. He was unwaveringly grim and determined It was he who faced the oaken gate and demanded entrance in the name of the people; it was he who suggested the use of the battering-ram; and it was he who first fought his way through the breach, at the risk of bullets from within. Blake followed to find him with his fowling-piece at the head of the prison captain, and demanding the keys to the cells.
The posse had gained a partial entrance, but another iron-ribbed door withheld them from the body of the prison, and there followed a delay while this was broken down. Meanwhile, from within came the sound of turning locks and of clanging steel doors, also a shuffling of many feet and cries of mortal terror, which told that the prisoners had been freed to s.h.i.+ft for themselves in this extremity.
In truth, a scene was being enacted within more terrible than that outside, for as the deputies released the prisoners, commanding them to save themselves if they could, a frightful confusion ensued. Not only did the eleven Sicilians cry to G.o.d, but the other inmates of the place who feared their crimes had overtaken them joined in the appeal.
Men and women, negroes and whites, felons and minor evil-doers, rushed to and fro along the galleries and pa.s.sageways, fighting with one another, tearing one another from places of refuge, seeking new and securer points of safety. They huddled in dark corners; they crept under beds, beneath stairways, and into barrels. They burrowed into rubbish piles only to be dragged out by the hair or the heels and to see their jealous companions seize upon these sanctuaries.
Terror is swiftly contagious; the whole place became a seething pit of dismay. Some knelt and prayed, while others trampled upon them; they rose from their knees to beat with bleeding fists upon barred doors and blind part.i.tions; but as their fear of death increased and the chorus of their despair mounted higher there came another pounding, nearer, louder--the sound of splitting wood and of rending metal. To escape was impossible; to remain was madness; of hiding-places there was a fearful scarcity.
The regulators came rus.h.i.+ng into the prison proper, with footsteps echoing loudly through the barren corridors. Out into the open court they swarmed, then up the iron stairways to the galleries that ringed it about, peering into cells as they went, ousting the wretched inmates from remotest corners. But the chamber in which they knew their quarry had been housed was empty, so they paused undecided, while from all sides came the smothered sounds of terror like the mewling and squeaking of mice hidden in a wall.