Aaron Trow by Anthony Trollope - A complete eBook in pages (3 / 29)

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Aaron Trow by Anthony Trollope
Book, page 3 / 29

present footing, three men did escape from it, and among them a
certain notorious prisoner named Aaron Trow. Trow's antecedents in
England had not been so villanously bad as those of many of his
fellow-convicts, though the one offence for which he was punished
had been of a deep dye: he had shed man's blood. At a period of
great distress in a manufacturing town he had led men on to riot,
and with his own hand had slain the first constable who had
endeavoured to do his duty against him. There had been courage in
the doing of the deed, and probably no malice; but the deed, let its
moral blackness have been what it might, had sent him to Bermuda,
with a sentence against him of penal servitude for life. Had he
been then amenable to prison discipline,--even then, with such a
sentence against him as that,--he might have won his way back, after
the lapse of years, to the children, and perhaps, to the wife, that
he had left behind him; but he was amenable to no rules--to no
discipline. His heart was sore to death with an idea of injury, and
he lashed himself against the bars of his cage with a feeling that
it would be well if he could so lash himself till he might perish in
his fury.

And then a day came in which an attempt was made by a large body of
convicts, under his leadership, to get the better of the officers of
the prison. It is hardly necessary to say that the attempt failed.
Such attempts always fail. It failed on this occasion signally, and
Trow, with two other men, were condemned to be scourged terribly,
and then kept in solitary confinement for some lengthened term of
months. Before, however, the day of scourging came, Trow and his
two associates had escaped.

I have not the space to tell how this was effected, nor the power to
describe the manner. They did escape from the establishment into
the islands, and though two of them were taken after a single day's
run at liberty, Aaron Trow had not been yet retaken even when a week
was over. When a month was over he had not been retaken, and the
officers of the prison began to say that he had got away from them
in a vessel to the States. It was impossible, they said, that he
should have remained in the islands and not been discovered. It was
not impossible that he might have destroyed himself, leaving his
body where it had not yet been found. But he could not have lived
on in Bermuda during that month's search. So, at least, said the

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