New York Dispatch

TERRIBLE ADVENTURES
NUMBER FOUR
Jean Polyme and his Companions.

On the 5th of July, 1817, there started from the city of Tours, in France, the monthly chain-gang of convicted felons for the Bagne of Toulon. These chain-gangs were relics of that barbarism which, until a recent period, characterized the criminal laws of France. The poor sinners were placed in a line, and then a heavy beam was raised behind them on a level with their necks. Attached to this beam were ten curved irons, of the shape of handcuffs, but about twice as large. The end that hung down was raised up, the iron was passed round the neck of the convict, and then the whole of the irons were fastened by means of an iron bar fixed in the beam, and closed with a heavy padlock.

In this horrible condition, the tortures of which are simply indescribable, the convicts had to march twenty miles a day, escorted by four mounted and well-armed guards—fed on scanty, coarse provisions, and jeered at and insulted by the populace wherever they made their appearance.

Victor Hugo justly says, "The savage tortures his captive, but not for eighteen or twenty days, as our chain-gang is. Has God ever counted the sighs uttered by the poor wretches against us who subjected them to a fate, compared to which the pillory, the stocks, and ordinary shackles are inflictions of mercy?"

Many of the wretches have dropped dead on the highway, and instances have occurred when the surviving culprits had to drag their dead fellow-convicts along until they reached the next village. The guards, as a general thing, were hardened, pitiless men, who treated the members of the chain-gang more like wild beasts than human beings, and who resented the slightest murmur on the part of the convicts with the long whips with which they were armed.

On the above-mentioned occasion there were six convicts in the chain-gang. Their names were Jean Polyme, Paul Victure, Armand Arras, Nantoul Frigeur, Salomon Weiss and Charlot Courrignon. The first four of them had been convicted of manslaughter, and were to go to the Bagne for life; Weiss and Courrignon were old burglars, and were to serve for twenty years.

Before going any further in the terrible events which we are about to relate, we have to say a few words in regard to Jean Polyme, the central figure in this group of wretched men. He was about six feet in height, powerfully built, about thirty years old, with prepossessing features, and a graceful bearing, which even the beam and the neck-chain could not entirely conceal. What had this handsome young man done to be reduced to so DEGRADING A POSITION?

Six months before he had been a journeyman locksmith, of exemplary habits. He had saved some money, and intended to marry a pretty servant-girl, named Marie Silbert, and then start in business for himself.

Marie Silbert lived in the family of a merchant named Mallot, in Tours. Mallot, a lecherous scoundrel, tried to seduce her. She resisted his libidinous advances, and told him, if he did not leave her alone, she would speak to her affianced, Jean Polyme, about it. To disgrace her forever, Mallot had the girl arrested on a charge of theft. Vainly did she protest her innocence; her villainous employer swore positively against her, and the judges found her guilty.

Domestics who robbed their employers were at that time cruelly punished in France, and so poor Marie Silbert was sentenced to stand for an hour on the scaffold with a grotesque paper cap, bearing the inscription, "Domestic Thief," on her head, and then to be branded with a red-hot iron on her left shoulder.

The poor girl tried to commit suicide in her despair, but was prevented from so doing, and had to undergo her unjust punishment. She told Jean Polyme all about the sad affair. He went to Mallot, and killed him with a hammer. For this act he was sentenced to hard labor in the Bagne for life.

The chain-gang started from Tours on the 5th of July, 1817. As may be imagined, the six convicts were all deeply dejected. After walking ten miles, the guards allowed them to rest, the day being oppressively hot. It was at the village inn of Beaune. Three of the guards went inside to get a drink; the fourth guard, a dark-visaged man, named Roullier, remained with the convicts. The latter lay stretched out at full-length on a couch of fresh hay.

SUCCOR FOR JEAN.

Jean Polyme begged for a drink of water. Roullier raised his whip menacingly.

"Hold your tongue, dog of a galley-slave," he growled out fiercely, "or you will get the whip across your mouth,"

A boy, in the garb of the peasants, stepped up at this moment, and offered to get water for the convicts. Roullier reluctantly allowed him to do so.

The boy returned with a pail of water and a tin cup. He stooped down to Jean Polyme, with the tin cup. As he did so, he whispered to Polyme:

"Courage, Jean! I am following you—Marie! Feel to your left."

Polyme's eyes almost devoured the face of the boy. In his excitement, he began to cough out the water.

The boy went quietly to the next convict. Jean Polyme passed his left hand over the hay on that side. He felt a small package.—So small, indeed, that he could close his hand over it. This he did.

Then he fixed his eyes for a second or two intently on the peasant-boy, who seemed no longer to take any notice of him. Polyme heaved a deep sigh, as if greatly relieved.

Half an hour afterward the guards ordered the convicts to rise and move on. At six o'clock in the evening the chain-gang reached the small town of Vechez. The convicts received a chunk of bread and a basin of gruel. Then they were pushed into a dark room in the town jail, to sleep on a couch of straw.

Weiss had been in the Bagne before. He taught the other convicts how to lie down without hurting one another. Jean Polyme now opened the small package which the mysterious boy had dropped on the hay by his side.

In the paper was a very small and FINE STEEL SAW AND A FILE.

"God be praised!" he murmured. "There is hope, then."

"What do you say?" asked Weiss, his next neighbor in the chain-gang. "Hope? You must be demented, friend Jean."

Jean Polyme then told his companions in misery what he had received.

"Diantre!" exclaimed Weiss. "That is something, indeed, Polyme. A saw and a file! But you must use it to-night; for at daybreak our infernal drivers will search us all, and woe to him with whom they find anything like that."

Jean Polyme told them that he knew how to use the saw and file; and so he went immediately to work filing through his neck-iron.

It was terribly hard work for the poor, exhausted devil. The perspiration ran down his cheeks while he was laboring in this arduous manner. But he was cheered up about eight o'clock by a sweet soprano voice, who sang a little ditty.

"It is Marie! My poor, dear Marie!" whispered Polyme. And he told them his betrothed was near him, in disguise, and that she would help them further.

At ten o'clock two of the guards stepped in. All the convicts feigned sleep.

"We must get them out at half-past five o'clock to-morrow morning, to make up for lost time," said one of the guards.

When they had left the room, Polyme went on with his work. At length, at one o'clock, when he was half dead with exhaustion, the file had cut clear through the iron.

Another tremendous effort, and Jean Polyme's neck was free. He raised himself from the ground, and in the dark groped his way to the padlock. As a locksmith, he had no difficulty in opening it, dark as it was. In the course of fifteen minutes the five other convicts were relieved of their shackles. But, what was to be done now? The door of the room was not very heavy, and, by a joint effort, they might have burst it open. But that would have certainly made TOO MUCH NOISE, and the guards, once aroused, they knew very well, would have unhesitatingly shot them dead.

After some reflection, Polyme said:

"Let me try to force open the door with this iron bar (the one with which the neck-irons had been fastened to the beam). I believe I can do so in a noiseless manner. There is evidently no guard outside."

He tried it cautiously in several places. At last he quickly used the iron as a crow-bar. The hinges of the door were evidently eaten up by rust. They gave way immediately. Three of the convicts easily removed the door.

The room into which it opened was dimly lighted by an oil-lamp. It was on the ground floor of the jail. The windows were grated. The door led directly into the street. The convicts could hardly restrain their joy. But they became fairly exultant when they found, lying on the large table in the corner of the room, the pistols and swords of their guards.

Now the chances were all at once entirely in their favor, even if the guards should discover that the prisoners had freed themselves from their shackles. For there were four heavy double-barreled pistols, and as many good swords, against which, in the hands of desperate men, the guards would have been, unarmed as they were, little better than powerless.

They held a long deliberation as to what they should do next. Polyme tried the door, and found that it had been bolted and locked on the outside. The window bars, too, could not be reached. At last the convicts determined to withdraw into the inner room with the pistols and swords, and wait for the guards to enter the ante-room at half-past 5 o'clock, in order to get their arms and arouse the prisoners they had in charge. Then they were to rush at them simultaneously, and force their way, as best they could into the open air.

They anxiously counted the minutes as time rolled on. At last the first light streaks of daylight became visible in the sky, and they re-entered the room into which they had been thrust the night before. Polyme choosing the iron bar and one of the pistols for his weapons, offered to lead the ATTACK UPON THE GUARD.

"Mind you," he said, "not to use your pistols except in the last extremity. Strike the guards in the legs with your swords. That will not kill them, but will thoroughly disable them."

They kept the door of their room, which they had placed against the aperture, ajar. At last they distinctly heard the town clock strike five. Thenceforth they listened with breathless attention for all sounds that might penetrate to them from the outside.

Suddenly they heard a key in the lock of the front door. It was turned, and a bolt was drawn back. Then the four guards stepped into the room, where it was quite dark yet. They were half sleepy yet, they yawned, and cursed their bad luck in having to get up at so early an hour.

No sooner were they fairly in the room than Jean Polyme whispered to his fellow convicts:

"Now, at them boys!"

He hurled the door back, and, with the iron bar in one hand, and the double-barreled pistol in the other, he rushed at the guards, followed by the other convicts.

Before the officers were able to recover from their surprise at this utterly unexpected attack, Polyme had dealt the guard Roullier two terrible blows with the iron bar across his knees and the lower parts of his legs, causing Roullier to fall down with a YELL OF PAIN, while Weiss, Courrignon, Victure, Arras and Frigeur cut the remaining officers with their swords, or struck them with the butt-ends of their pistols.

In a few minutes, the guards lay helpless on the floor, and the road to liberty was open to the convicts.

"Quick! quick!" exclaimed Polyme. "Let us flee! Not a moment is to be lost! Quick! quick! For Heaven's sake!"

But his companions were not disposed to obey him so readily this time.

"Wait a moment, my friend," said Weiss; "here is Monsieur Sanche, who struck me twice with his whip yesterday. I will hamstring him for that."

The other convicts received this cruel suggestion with a shout of approval. In a minute the terrible operation had been performed with the swords, and the guards were crippled for life.

Jean Polyme had meanwhile rushed into the court-yard. There was a drowsy old watchman at the outer gate. Polyme struck him down, and then he stepped out into the street.

He shouted aloud, "Marie! Marie!"

For some time there was no answer, but at last a peasant boy hastened to him. It was Marie Silbert, the faithful girl, who had secretly followed the chain-gang in disguise, and who now wept tears of joy in the convulsive embrace of her AFFIANCED LOVER!

But Jean Polyme had no time to lose. Fortunately for him the streets of the small town were at this early hour entirely deserted, and the good people of Vechez had no idea of the terrible scene that had just been enacted at their town jail.

Polyme and his disguised fiancee hurried almost at a run out of the town. The environs of Vechez are hilly and wooded. It was easy for them to find, after several hours walk, a place of concealment in the thicket. There was the less danger of immediate detection, as the other five convicts had undoubtedly scattered in various directions.

In effect, they remained unmolested until nightfall, when they set out for Limoges. Marie Silbert had a little money with her. This enabled them to stop at several inns during the daytime. From Limoges they went to Paris, where they were married, and Jean Polyme obtained work under an assumed name. As soon as he had amassed sufficient money, he went with his wife to a foreign land.

His fellow convicts did not fare as well as he. Weiss was recaptured the same day. Roullier was the only one of the four guards that was able to speak. He identified Weiss fully as the man who had "hamstrung" one of the guards. Two of the latter died in a few days of the injuries they had received during the terrible scene in the jail at Vechez.

The gendarmerie of the whole department was sent out in pursuit of the fugitives. Arras was recaptured a few days later. Two weeks afterward Frigeur and Courrignon were apprehended at Blois. They used their pistols, but without effect. Victure alone, beside Polyme, making good his escape.

Weiss, Arras, Frigeur, and Courrignon, were taken in irons to Tours, and tried there on the 9th of November, 1817, for the murder of the two guards. A reward of five thousand francs was offered for the apprehension of either Polyme or Victure.

The four prisoners were found guilty, and sentenced to be branded with "T. F." (Travaux Forces—Penal Servitude) on the back, on their former conviction, and then to be guillotined. They died manfully. Weiss made a singular speech before he was attached to the fatal plank.

"Not a moment," he said, "do I regret what I have done. I have been all my life long treated with extreme cruelty. I have had my revenge. Brutal jailers, remember the fate of the hamstrung guards!"

Then he placed himself of his own accord against the plank, and was beheaded.