What sort of theatrical entertainment those costumes were intended for, Septimus never discovered. There were women's dresses of some medieval period, men's doublets and hose of patched but brightly-coloured material, a leopard-skin, a Court dress of black satin-knee-breeches and silver-buttoned coatone or two wigs and moustaches, and various paints in small boxes. He had already made a selection of these and allocated to each man a costume. While the captured guards were being secured he was listening at the crack of the door for any sign of an alarm being raised. There was none. He ordered his men into their costumes at once.
There was a good deal of smothered laughter as they dressed. Beamish, in tights and a leopard skin, made an impressive Strong Man. Little Eccles and lumpish Wallace were transformed, with the aid of wigs and gowns, into two highly-painted ladies, while O'Neill and Frith, in doublets and hose with pointed hats above their newlymoustached faces, looked like a pair of lean outlaws horn Sherwood Forest. Dobbs, with a false black beard and a motley costume of ribbons and bows, declared himself to be the Wild Man from Timbuctoo. As for Septimus, he had arrayed himself in the black Court costume and a dark moustache and imperial, adding to this his spectacles to give him confidence and disguise him still more. He had contrived three rough balls out of tightly-bound linen and had been practising his juggling act with them.
When the men were all ready he gathered them round him for a final instruction. They munched bread as they listened, for there was no knowing where their next meal would come from.
"You are my Troupe," he told them, "and I am the Great Enrico. Your order when we get into the streets--if we get that far--you know. You'll follow me closely and no man of you will speak a word of English--you can yell as much as you like. But before that there must be absolute silence until I give the word. You understand?"
Aye aye, sir!"
"Then we'll up anchor at once. Beamish, Dobbs, Frith--follow me in that order."
He opened the door cautiously. Apart from the muffled sound of voices in other rooms of the prison, all was quiet. When they were all out of the room he locked the door and dropped the key into his pocket. Then, moving swiftly and silently in single file, they tiptoed along the passage to the head of the stairs. Here they halted while Septimus bent to peer down into the stone-flagged hall below. He could just see the table which stood on the right of the heavy main door, and a man in the uniform of the prison guards lounging in a chair at the table. His face was turned towards the stairs, and for an instant Septimus thought he had seen the group in the shadows at the stairhead. But the guard continued his occupation of picking his teeth and the midshipman withdrew silently to consider the next move.
They could not start down the stairs without being seen by the guard. There was a pistol on the table in front of the man, and three muskets stood in a rack within arm's length of him.
What was more, he could probably bring other guards into the hall by raising his voice. Was this, after all, to be the end of their attempt?
Septimus felt the hard shape of the key in his pocket, and an idea occurred to him. It was a simple one and might fail, but it was their only chance so far as he could see. He held one finger aloft-the agreed sign to his followers to be ready for instant action-and then, bending down until he was crouching on the top stair, he threw the key through the bannisters so that it fell with a clang into a corner of the hall.
The guard at the table stopped picking his teeth and stood up, peering not up the stairs but into that corner. It was a gloomy hall and he decided-as Septimus had hoped-to investigate the noise. The midshipman waited until he was halfway across the hall and then sped noiselessly down the stairs with his men at his heels.
The guard heard them before they were upon him, but he had no time for more than a surprised grunt before Dobbs's enormous hand was clamped over his mouth. The fist of Tod Beamish descended once upon his skull, and that was enough. They laid the unconscious man in the shadows and Septimus, who had gone straight to the board above the table where keys were hanging on hooks, beckoned them to him. The third key he tried was the right one. The main door swung slowly open--creaking so loudly that it sounded like a voice shrieking that they were escaping--and Septimus peered cautiously out.
He looked first to the left. Fifty paces away along the cobbled yard was the main gate of the prison. It was closed, of course, and its massive bulk prevented anyone passing along the Rue de la Ferronnerie from seeing into the courtyard. To the right, the cobbled way, with the tall spiked wall rising on its left and the wall of the prison on its other side, ran to a right-angled corner. There was no one in sight. Septimus beckoned to his oddly-clad party and they slipped out through the door.
Not a moment could be wasted, for the discovery of the unconscious guard in the hall might be made at any time. In silence, but trotting fast, they rounded the corner and hurried along the back of the building to its next corner. Opposite them now rose the wall beyond which was the alley running down to the main street. That twelve-foot barrier of smooth masonry, with its crowning fringe of iron spikes, was all that stood between them and the streets where men moved freely. They went to work at once, and still in silence, for all this had been practiced in their prison that afternoon.
Frith stood close to the wall and facing it, supporting himself against it with bent anns. He was nearly as tall as Beamish but lean where the other was broad, and his wiry frame shook as the huge seaman mounted to stand on his shoulders. With his hands hooked round the base of the iron spikes, Beamish kicked off so strongly that Frith staggered and almost collapsed, but the "Strong Man" was up and clinging to the spikes with his feet braced against the wall. In a second he was back again--Frith recovering just in time to receive him--crouching on his shipmate's shoulders with a finger to his lips enjoining silence. The footsteps and voices of two men, approaching along the alley and then passing away again, explained his action. When they had gone he hauled himself up once again and, after a swift glance right and left, signalled the coast clear.
Dobbs was already making a "ladder" for Frith, who sprang up to hang from the fence of spikes with one foot braced on the wall-top four feet away from where Beamish was doing the same. Septimus, mounting on Dobbs's broad shoulders, could reach and grasp the hands the men above reached down to him. He swung up like a feather and was soon straddling carefully over the spikes and lowering himself until he hung from their bases with his legs dangling down the outside of the wall. When he let go, the drop seemed a big one although it was only six feet. But he landed with no worse injury than two smarting soles. One by one the rest came over until only Dobbs was left. Beamish lowered himself until Dobbs could grasp his leg, and with a grunt and a struggle the last man was up.
Until they were all down on the cobbles of the alley, Midshipman Quinn passed some very trying moments. The alley was not a frequented one, luckily, and no one came down it or entered from the bottom end. But the Rue de la Ferronnerie ran across that bottom end, distant only about seventy yards, and three people passed the narrow opening while the crossing of the wall was taking place. If one of those three passers-by had glanced up the alley as he passed, the game would have been up. But they did not.
"Oo! 'Ug me tight, dearie!" squeaked the irrepressible Eccles in falsetto tones as he made the descent. And Septimus, turning sharply to reprimand him, had to grin instead when he saw the little Cockney's smirking face in its imitation curls, and his languishing leer as he pretended to collapse into Beamish's arms.