Bob and Jack did not actually see any of this. They heard the narration from those who had mumbled a few words of Psalm 51 and been released and made their way back to the Isle of Dogs. To this point it was nothing they had not heard a hundred times before from friends and casual acquaintances in the neighborhood. But this time there was a new twist at the end of the story: John Cole had asked for the two surviving Shaftoe boys to meet him at the Triple Tree on the morning of his execution.
They went out of curiosity more than anything. Arriving at Tyburn and burrowing their way through an immense crowd by artful shin-kicking, instep-stomping, and groin-elbowing, they found John Cole and the others on a cart beneath the Fateful Nevergreen, elbows tied behind their backs, and nooses pre-knotted around their throats, with long rope-ends trailing behind them. A preacher-the Ordinary of Newgate-was there, urgently trying to make them aware of certain very important technicalities in the Rules of Eternity. But the condemnees, who were so drunk they could barely stand up, were saying all manner of rude and funny things back to him, faster than he could talk back.
Cole, more solemn than the others, explained to Jack and Bob that when the executioner “turned him off,” which was to say, body-checked him off the cart and left him to hang by his neck, Cole would very much appreciate it if Jack could grab his left leg and Bob his right, or the other way round if they preferred, and hang there, pulling him down with their combined weight, so that he’d die faster. In exchange for this service, he told them of a loose board in the floor of a certain shack on the Isle of Dogs beneath which they could find hidden treasure. He laid out the terms of this transaction with admirable coolness, as if he were hanged by the neck until dead every Friday.
They accepted the commission. Jack Ketch was now the man to watch. His office, the gallows, was of admirably simple and spare design: three tall pilings supporting a triangle of heavy beams, each beam long enough that half a dozen men could be hanged from it at once, or more if a bit of crowding could be overlooked.
Jack Ketch’s work, then, consisted of maneuvering the cart below a clear space on one of the beams; selecting a loose rope-end; tossing it over the beam; making it fast with a bit of knot-work; and turning off the bloke at the opposing end of the rope. The cart, now one body lighter, could then be moved again, and the procedure repeated.
John Cole was the eighth of nine men to be hanged on that particular day, which meant that Jack and Bob had the opportunity to watch seven men be hanged before the time came for them to discharge their responsibilities. During the first two or three of these hangings, all they really noticed was the obvious. But after they grew familiar with the general outlines of the rite, they began to notice subtle differences from one hanging to the next. In other words, they started to become connoisseurs of the art, like the ten thousand or so spectators who had gathered around them to watch.
Jack noticed very early that men in good clothes died faster. Watching Jack Ketch shrewdly, he soon saw why: when Jack Ketch was getting ready to turn a well-dressed man off, he would arrange the noose-knot behind the client’s left ear, and leave some slack in the rope, so that he’d fall, and gather speed, for a moment before being brought up short with an audible crack. Whereas men in ragged clothing were given a noose that was loose around the neck (at first, anyway) and very little room to fall.
Now, John Cole-who’d looked a bit of a wretch to begin with, and who’d not grown any snappier, in his appearance and toilette, during the months he’d languished in the Stone Hold of Newgate-was the shabbiest bloke on the cart, and obviously destined for the long slow kicking style of hanging. Which explained why he’d had the foresight to call in the Shaftoe boys. But it did not explain something else.
“See here,” Jack said, elbowing the Ordinary out of the way. He was on the ground below the cart, neck craned to look far up at Jack Ketch, who was slinging John Cole’s neck-rope over the beam with a graceful straight-armed hooking movement. “If you’ve got hidden treasure, why didn’t you give it to him?” And he nodded at Jack Ketch, who was now peering down curiously at Jack Shaftoe through the slits in his hood.
“Er-well I din’t have it on me, did I?” returned John Cole, who was a bit surly in his disposition on the happiest of days. But Jack thought he looked a bit dodgy.
“You could’ve sent someone to fetch it!”
“How’s I to know they wouldn’t nick it?”
“Leave off, Jack,” Bob had said. Since Dick’s demise, he had been, technically, the man of the family; at first he’d made little of it, but lately he was more arrogant every day. “He’s s’posed to be saying his prayers.”
“Let him pray while he’s kicking!”
“He’s not going to be doing any kicking, ’cause you and I are going to be hanging on his legs.”
“But he’s lying about the treasure.”
“I can see that, you think I’m stupid? But as long as we’re here, let’s do a right job of it.”
While they argued, Cole was turned off. He sprawled against the sky just above their heads. They dodged instinctively, but of course he didn’t fall far. They jumped into the air, gained hand-holds on his feet, and ascended, hand-over-hand.
After a few moments of dangling from the rope, Cole began to kick vigorously. Jack was tempted to let go, but the tremors coming down Cole’s legs reminded him of what he’d felt in the rope when poor Dick had been dragged down beneath the river, and he held on by imagining that this was some kind of vengeance. Bob must’ve had the same phant’sy, for both boys gripped their respective legs like stranglers until Cole finally went limp. When they realized he was pissing himself, they both let go at once and tumbled into the f?tid dust below the gibbet. There was applause from the crowd. Before they’d had time to dust themselves off, they were approached by the sister of the one remaining condemned man-also a slow-hanging wretch, by his looks-who offered them cash money to perform the same service. The coins were clipped, worn, and blackened, but they were coins.
John Cole’s loose board turned out not to be loose, and when pried up, to cover shit instead of treasure. They were hardly surprised. It didn’t matter. They were prosperous tradesmen now. On the eve of each hanging-day, Jack and Bob could be found in their new place of business: Newgate Prison.
It took them several visits just to understand the place. Gate in their usage meant a sort of wicket by which humans could pass through a fence around a hog-yard without having to vault over-not that vaulting was such a difficult procedure, but it was dangerous when drunk, and might lead to falling, and being eaten by the hogs. So gates they knew.
They had furthermore absorbed the knowledge that in several parts of London town were large fabricks called Gates, viz. Ludgate, Moorgate, and Bishopsgate. They had even passed through Aldgate a few times, that being their usual way of invading the city. But the connexion between gates of that type, and hog-yard-wickets, was most obscure. A gate in the hog-yard sense of the word made no sense unless built in a wall, fence, or other such formal barrier, as its purpose was to provide a means of passage through same. But none of the large London buildings called Gates appeared to have been constructed in any such context. They bestrode important roads leading into the city, but if you didn’t want to pass through the actual gate, you could usually find a way round.