Escape! by Robert Carse

Book Details

Three stories of men in horrible conditions, condemned to death or worse, and their attempts to escape to freedom. French Guiana was one of the most horrible places in the world and so it became a dumping ground for French convicts. Even if they weren’t condemned to death, they might as well have been. Escape and a return to freedom were all these men had to live for. Even if “freedom” was the freedom of death.

Jungle (1928)
A Novelette of a Remarkable Escape from the French Penal Camp in Darkest Guiana
A four chapter novelette.

Escape (1929)
Do you remember “Jungle“? Here is an even more powerful story of that dire place of forgotten men, the French Penal Colony of Guiana

The Web (1932)
Betrayed by his liberators, James, an escaped convict from the hell of a Guiana prison, finds a strange ally in an American reporter. A grim novel of an ex-convict who beat Guiana.
Chapter I. – A Voice From The Past.
Chapter II. – Told In The Hello Sailor.
Chapter III. – The Snake Ring.
Chapter IV. – Martin’s Story.
Chapter V. – Action.
Chapter VI. – Turned Down.
Chapter VII. – Trapped.
Chapter VIII. – Two Victories.

Robert Carse (1902-1971) was first published around 1928 and most frequently published in Argosy Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post. He was a prolific writer of French Foreign Legion stories as well as swashbuckling pirate stories.

Escape! has 15 illustrations.

Files:

1. Carse-Escape.epub

Excerpt: Escape

OUTSIDE, furiously, the tropic rain drummed down into the courtyard; but through it Laman could hear them at their work—the barked shouts of the executioner, the rap of hammers, the creak of ropes and tackle as the last heavy beams of the guillotine were lifted into place.

Those sounds fascinated Laman. All night they had been going on, and all night he had been awake. It was within a half hour of dawn now. Within a half hour the “Squirrel”, Pomeret, would die, make reparation for his killing of the quarter-breed Tonkinois guard who had taunted him beyond any shred of sanity.

Almost all the prison—nearly every one in the penal barracks of L’Ile de Nou— was aware that Pomeret was to die. Every one but Pomeret himself, and the other five white faced men in the condemned cells. That one of their number was going to be brought forth to pay for his crime at dawn all the six knew, for they, too, had heard the executioner and his assistants working in the courtyard throughout the long, rain-clamorous night. But which one? It was that which the six did not know, and that which was tearing at their brains with the sharp fangs of fear right now.

Name of a name, of a sacred name! Laman uttered it whisperingly aloud— not as a curse, but as a sort of involuntary prayer—to the God he knew only as an avenger, as a grim and terrible omnipresence, greater than the director of the prisons; greater, even, than the Republic of France itself …

There! Laman drew back farther into the shadows of his wooden bunk, coldly rigid, only his bright eyes moving. In the covered corridor outside tramped a small body of men; through the bars of the big cell block he could see them. First, in gleaming solar helmet and perfect whites, the square shouldered commandant of the prison. At his heels, the Marist priest, head bowed, hands crossed on the breast of his dark robe. Behind him, Bachin, the dog faced executioner.

They were past; had turned the corner into the corridor of the condemned cells. Laman swung forward, careful not to wake the sleeping men about him. The guillotine was finished now; the work on it had halted, and he could hear almost perfectly what went on before condemned cell No. 3.

Heavy keys clanking; that was the “screw” opening the cell door. Then the commandant’s voice—

“C’est pour ce matin, Pomeret!”

A low, a terrible cry from Pomeret. A growl from the guard in warning to the frantic man. A moment’s silence. The soft intonations of the Marist brother, attempting to make peace with Pomeret’s God for him—that God which the Squirrel did not know any better than he, Laman. Another silence. The executioner was doing his work now, cutting away the neck of Pomeret’s canvas jumper so that the knife … lashing his hands loosely but securely behind his back; lashing the feet so that he could just walk …

Other heavy booted feet echoed down the concrete corridor; drums beat stirringly in command; guards were at the doors of the cell block now, shouting, shoving at the sleepy ones. Sullenly they fell into line, answered to their names, marched out in squads of four down the steel steps, through one corridor, another, then out into the rain of the courtyard.

Laman’s squad fell in at attention within five yards of the stone base of the guillotine. Close at hand stood their white clad guards, fingers on the butts of their revolvers, holster flaps open. In a hollow square, at strict attention in the rain, stood a company of tirailleurs, bayoneted and loaded rifles in their right hands, a living wall of death between those who stood so stiffly in waiting before the guillotine and the high white wall of the courtyard.

Inch by inch, Laman turned his head so that he might stare about him, for never had he seen an execution by the knife, although eleven of his twenty-six years had been spent in prisons, in France, and here, in New Caledonia.

Directly ahead was the guillotine, which, mentally, he had seen built all during the night. Just to his right was a small wooden platform graced by three plain chairs and the white uniformed figures of three men. The director of penal administration, red eyed, red faced, his body a square, stolid block of flesh upholding the square, thick block of the somber head. The procurator-general, a dainty man, with down curving nose, small eyes, the mouth of an adolescent boy and the mannerisms of a cabaret gigolo—a soft silk handkerchief drooping from his tunic cuff. Then the greffier, the clerk of the maritime tribunal, a misplaced old soldier, mustache like a small black bar of metal across his thick jawed face, official papers held clumsily in blunt hands, the Medaille Militaire, Tonking and Colonial ribbons across his tunic breast.

These, Laman told himself, staring, were the rulers of L’Ile de Nou. Under them, under their tremendous power of life, death and hope of freedom, lived nine thousand men and women, the dregs, the outcasts and habitual criminals of the Republic of France. And two of that three seemed as hard bitten, as careless of life and death, as those whom they ruled.

Excerpt From: Robert Carse. “Escape! – Three Stories of the Penal Colonies.”