 CHAPTER FIVE, SYLVIA Oh, said Freyre, as they went in, you'll be out of it soon. You can get all ready to start by the end of the month, and I'll bring on Mrs. Vickers afterwards." "'What is it that you say about me?' asked the sprightly Mrs. Vickers from within. You wicked men, leaving me alone all this time!" "'Mr. Freyre has kindly offered to bring you and Sylvia after us in the Osprey. I shall, of course, have to take the lady-bird.' "'You are most kind, Mr. Freyre, really you are,' says Mrs. Vickers, every recollection of her flirtation with a certain young lieutenant, six years before, tinging her cheeks. It is really most considerate of you. Won't it be nice, Sylvia, to go with Mr. Freyre and mamma to Hobart Town?' "'Mr. Freyre,' says Sylvia, coming from out of a corner of the room, "'I am very sorry for what I said just now. Will you forgive me?' She asked the question in such a prim, old-fashioned way, standing in front of him with her golden locks streaming over her shoulders, and her hands clasped on her black silk apron. Julia Vickers had her own notions about dressing her daughter, that Freyre was again inclined to laugh. "'Of course, I'll forgive you, my dear,' he said. "'You didn't mean it, I know.' "'Oh, but I did mean it, and that's why I'm sorry. I am a very naughty girl sometimes, though you wouldn't think so.' This, for the charming consciousness of her own beauty. Especially with Roman history, I don't think the Romans were half as brave as the Carthaginians, do you, Mr. Freyre?' Morris, somewhat staggered by this question, could only ask, "'Why not?' "'Well, I don't like them half so well, myself,' says Sylvia, with feminine disdain of reasons. They always had so many soldiers, that the others were so cruel when they conquered.' "'Were they?' says Freyre. "'Were they? Goodness gracious! Yes. Didn't they cut poor Regulus's eyelids off, and roll him down hill in a barrel full of nails? What do you call that, I should like to know?' And Mr. Freyre, shaking his red head with vast assumption of classical learning, could not but admit that that was not kind on the part of the Carthaginians. "'You are a great scholar, Miss Sylvia,' he remarked, with a consciousness that this self-possessed girl was rapidly taking him out of his depth. "'Are you fond of reading?' "'Very.' "'And what books do you read?' "'Oh, lots! Paul and Virginia, and Paradise Lost, and Shakespeare's plays and Robinson Crusoe, and Blair's Sermons, and the Tasmanian Ormanac, and the Book of Beauty, and Tom Jones. "'A somewhat miscellaneous collection, I fear,' said Mrs. Vickers, with a sickly smile. She, like Gallio, cared for none of these things. But her little library is necessarily limited, and I am not a great reader.' "'John, my dear, Mr. Freyre would like another glass of brandy and water.' "'Oh, don't apologize. I am a soldier's wife, you know. Sylvia, my love, so good night to Mr. Freyre and retire. "'Good night, Miss Sylvia. Will you give me a kiss?' "'No!' "'Sylvia, don't be rude.' "'I'm not rude,' cried Sylvia, indignant at the way in which her literary confidence had been received. "'He is rude. I won't kiss you. Kiss you indeed, my goodness gracious!' "'Won't you, you little beauty?' cried Freyre, suddenly leaning forward and putting his arm round the child. "'Then I must kiss you.' To his astonishment, Sylvia, finding herself thus seized and kissed despite herself, flushed scarlet, and, lifting up her tiny fist, struck him on the cheek with all her force. The blow was so sudden, and the momentary pain so sharp, that Morris nearly slipped into his native coarseness and wrapped out an oath. "'My dear, Sylvia!' cried Vickers, in tones of grave reproof. But Freyre laughed, caught both the child's hands in one of his own, and kissed her again and again, despite her struggles. "'There,' he said, for the sort of triumph in his tone, "'you got nothing by that, you see!' Vickers roared, with annoyance visible on his face, to draw the child away. And as he did so, she, gasping for breath and sobbing with rage, wrenched her wrist free, and in a storm of childish passions struck her tormentor again and again. "'Man!' she cried, with flaming eyes, "'Let me go! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!' "'I am very sorry for this,' Freyre said Vickers, when the door was closed again. "'I hope she did not hurt you.' "'Not she! I like her spirit! Ha! Ha! That's the way with women all the world over, nothing like showing them that they'd got a master.' Vickers hastened to turn the conversation, and amid recollections of old days and speculations as to future prospects, the little incident was forgotten. But when an hour later Mr. Freyre traversed the passage that led to his bedroom, he found himself confronted by a little figure wrapped in a shawl. It was his childish enemy. "'I've waited for you, Mr. Freyre,' said she, to beg pardon. "'I ought not to have struck you. I am a wicked girl. Don't say no, because I am, and if I don't grow better, I shall never go to heaven.' Thus addressing him, the child produced a piece of paper folded like a letter from beneath the shawl, and handed it to him. "'What's this?' he asked. "'Go back to bed, my dear. You'll catch cold.' "'It's a written apology, and I shan't catch cold, because I've got my stockings on. If you don't accept it,' she added, with an arching of the brows, "'It is not my fault. I have struck you, but I apologise. Being a woman, I can't offer you satisfaction in the usual way.' Mr. Freyre stifled the impulse to laugh, and made his courteous adversary a low bow. "'I accept your apology, Miss Sylvia,' said he. "'Then,' returned Miss Sylvia, in a lofty manner, "'there is nothing more to be said, and I have the honour to bid you good-night, sir.' The little maiden drew his shawl around her with immense dignity, and marched down the passage as calmly as though she had been emidous of gall himself. Freyre, gaining his room choking with laughter, opened the folded paper by the light of the tallow candle, and read in a quaint childish hand, "'Sir, I have struck you. I apologise in writing. Your humble servant to command, Sylvia Vickers.' "'I wonder what book she took that out of,' he said. "'Pon my word, she must be a little cracked. "'It's a queer life for a child in this place, and no mistake.' End of Chapter 5, Book 2. CHAPTER 6. A Leap in the Dark. Two or three mornings after the arrival of the Ladybird, the solitary prisoner of the grummet rock noticed mysterious movements along the shore of the island's settlement. The prison boats, which had put off every morning at sunrise to the foot of the timbered ranges on the other side of the harbour, had not appeared for some days. The building of a pier or breakwater running from the western point of the settlement was discontinued, and all hands appeared to be occupied with the newly built osprey which was lying on the slicks. Parties of soldiers also daily left the Ladybird, and assisted at the mysterious work in progress. Rufus doors, walking his little round each day, in vain, wondered what this unusual commotion portended. Unfortunately, no one came to enlighten his ignorance. A fortnight after this, about the 15th of December, he observed another curious fact. All the boats on the island put off one morning to the opposite side of the harbour, and in the course of the day a great smoke arose on the side of the hills. The next day the same was repeated, and on the fourth day the boats returned, towing behind them a huge raft. This raft, made fast to the side of the Ladybird, proved to be composed of planks, beams and joists, all of which were duly hoisted up and stowed in the hold of the brig. This set Rufus doors, thinking, could it possibly be that the timber cutting was to be abandoned, and that the government had hit upon some other method of utilising its convict labour? He had hewn timber and built boats, and tanned hides and made shoes. Was it possible that some new trade was to be initiated? Before he had settled this point to his satisfaction, he was started by another boat expedition. Three boats' crews went down the bay, and returned after a day's absence, with an addition to their number in the shape of four strangers and a quantity of stores and farming implements. Rufus doors, catching sight of these last, came to the conclusion that the boats had been to Philip Island, where the garden was established, and had taken off the gardeners and garden produce. Rufus doors decided that the Ladybird had brought a new commandant. His sight, trained by his half-savage life, had already distinguished Mr. Morris Freyre, and that these mysteries were improvements under the new rule. When he arrived at this point of reasoning, another conjecture, assuming his first to have been correct, followed as a natural consequence. Lieutenant Freyre would be a more severe commandant than Major Vickers. Now, severity had already reached its height so far as he was concerned. So the unhappy man took a final resolution. He would kill himself. Before we exclaim against the sin of such a determination, let us endeavour to set before us what the sinner had suffered during the past six years. We have already a notion of what life on a convict ship means, and we have seen through what a furnace Rufus doors had passed before he set foot on the barren shore of Hell's gates. But to appreciate in its intensity, the agony he had suffered since that time, we must multiply the infamy of the twin decks of the Malabar and Hundredfold. In that prison was at least some ray of light. All were not abominable, all were not utterly lost to shame and manhood. Stifling though the prison, infamous the companionship, terrible the memory of past happiness, there was yet ignorance of the future, there was yet hope. But at Macquarie Harbour was poured out the very dregs of this cup of desolation. The worst had come, and the worst must forever remain. The pit of torment was so deep that one could not even see heaven. There was no hope there so long as life remained. Death alone kept the keys of that island prison. Is it possible to imagine, even for a moment, what an innocent man, gifted with ambition, endowed with power to love and to respect, must have suffered during one week of such punishment? We ordinary men, leading ordinary lives, walking, riding, laughing, marrying and giving in marriage, can form no notion of such misery as this. Some dim ideas we may have about the sweetness of liberty and the loathing that evil company inspires, but that is all. We know that where we chained and degraded, fed like dogs, employed as beasts of burden, driven to our daily toil with threats and blows, and herded with wretches among whom all that savors of decency and manliness is held in an open scorn, we should die, perhaps, or go mad. But we do not know, and we can never know, how unutterably loathsome life must become when shared with such beings as those who dragged the tree trunks to the banks of the gordon, and toiled, blaspheming, in their irons on the dismal sandpit of Sarah Island. No human creature could describe to what depth of personal abasement and self-loathing one week of such a life would plunge him. Even if he had the power to write, he dared not. As one who, in a desert, seeking for a face, should come to a pool of blood, and seeing his own reflection, fly, so would such a one hasten from the contemplation of his own degrading agony. Imagine such torment endured for six years. Ignorant that the sights and sounds about him were symptoms of the final abandonment of the settlement, and that the ladybird was sent down to bring away the prisoners, Rufus Dors decided upon getting rid of that burden of life which pressed upon him so heavily. For six years he had hewn wood and drawn water, for six years he had hoped against hope, for six years he had lived in the valley of the shadow of death. He dared not recapitulate to himself what he had suffered. Indeed, his senses were deadened and dulled by torture. He cared to remember only one thing, that he was a prisoner for life. In vain had been his first dream of freedom. He had done his best by good conduct to win release, but the villainy of vets and wrecks had deprived him of the fruit of his labour. Instead of gaining credit by his exposure of the plot on board the Malabar, he was himself deemed guilty and condemned despite his asseverations of innocence. The knowledge of his treachery, for so it was deemed among his associates, while it gained for him no credit with the authorities, produced for him the detestation and ill-will of the monsters among whom he found himself. On his arrival at Hell's Gates he was a mocked man, a pariah among those beings who were a pariahs to all the world beside. Thrice, his life was attempted, but he was not then quite tired of living and he defended it. This defence was construed by an overseer into a brawl, and the irons from which he had been relieved were replaced. His strength, brute attribute that alone could avail him, made him respected after this and he was left at peace. At first this treatment was congenial to his temperament, but by and by it became annoying, then painful, then almost unendurable. Tugging at his awe, digging up to his waist in slime or bending beneath his burden of pine wood, he looked greedily for some excuse to be addressed. He would take double weight when forming part of the human caterpillar along his back lay a pine tree for a word of fellowship. He would work double tides to gain a kindly sentence from a conrade. In his utter desolation he agonised for the friendship of robbers and murderers. Then the reaction came and he hated the very sound of their voices. He never spoke and refused to answer when spoken to. He would even take his scanty supper alone did his chain so permit him. He gained the reputation of a sullen, dangerous, half crazy ruffian. Captain Barton, the superintendent, took pity on him and made him his gardener. He accepted the pity for a week or so, and then Barton, coming down one morning, found the few shrubs pulled up by the roots, the flowerbeds trampled into barrenness and his gardener sitting on the ground among the fragments of his gardening tools. For this act of wanton mischief he was flogged. At the triangles his behaviour was considered curious. He wept and prayed to be released, fell on his knees to Barton and implored pardon. Barton would not listen, and at the first blow the prisoner was silent. From that time he became more sullen than ever, only at times he was observed when alone, to fling himself on the ground and cry like a child. It was generally thought that his brain was affected. When vicar's came, doors sought an interview and begged to be sent back to Hobart town. This was refused of course, but he was put to work on the osprey. After working there for some time and being released from his irons he concealed himself on the ship and in the evening swam across the harbour. He was pursued, retaken and flogged. Then he ran the dismal round of punishment. He burnt lime, dragged timber, and tugged at the ore. The heaviest and most degrading tasks were always his. Shunned and hated by his companions, feared by the convict overseers and regarded with unfriendly eyes by the authorities, Riffer Storz was at the very bottom of that abyss of woe into which he had voluntarily cast himself. Goaded to desperation by his own thoughts he had joined with Gabbart and the unlucky three in their desperate attempt to escape, but as Vickers stated he had been captured almost instantly. He was blamed by the heavy-irony war, and though Gabbart, with a strained eagerness for which after events accounted, insisted that he could make good his flight, the unhappy man fell in the first hundred yards of the terrible race, and was seized by two volunteers before he could rise again. His capture helped to secure the brief freedom of his comrades, for Mr. Troke, content with one prisoner, checked a pursuit which the nature of the ground rendered dangerous, and triumphantly brought doors back to the settlement as his peace offering for the negligence which had resulted in the loss of the other four. For this madness the refractory convict had been condemned to the solitude of the grummet rock. In that dismal hermitage, his mind, praying on itself, had become disordered. He saw visions and dreamt dreams, who would lie for hours motionless, staring at the sun or the sea. He held converse with imaginary beings. He enacted the scene with his mother over again. He harangued the rocks and called upon the stones about him to witness his innocence and his sacrifice. He was visited by the phantoms of his early friends, and sometimes thought his present life a dream. Whenever he awoke, however, he was commanded by a voice within himself to leap into the surges which washed the walls of his prison, and to dream these sad dreams no more. In the midst of this lethargy of body and brain, the unusual occurrences along the shore of the settlement roused in him a still fiercer hatred of life. He saw in them something incomprehensible and terrible, and read in them threats of an increase of misery. Had he known that the ladybird was preparing for sea, and that it had been already decided to fetch him from this rock and iron him with the rest for safe passage to Hobart town he might have paused, but he knew nothing, saved that the burden of life was insupportable, and that the time had come for him to be rid of it. In the meantime, the settlement was in a fever of excitement. In less than three weeks from the announcement made by Vickers, all had been got ready. The commandant had finally arranged for as to the course of his action. He himself would accompany the ladybird with the main body. His wife and daughter were to remain until the sailing of the Osprey, which Mr. Frey, charged with the task of final destruction, was to bring up as soon as possible. I will leave you a corporal's guard and 10 prisoners as a crew, Vickers said. You can work her easily with that number. To which Frey, smiling at Mrs. Vickers in a self-satisfied way, had replied that he could do with five prisoners if necessary, for he knew he had to get double work out of the lazy dogs. Among the incidents which took place during the breaking up was one which it is necessary to chronicle. Near Phillips Island on the north side of the harbor is situated Cole Head, where a party had been lately at work. This party, hastily withdrawn by Vickers to assist in the business of devastation, had left behind it some tools and timber. And at the 11th hour, a boat's crew was sent to bring away the debris. The tools were duly collected and the pine logs were 25 shillings apiece in Hobart town, duly raftered and chained. The timber was secured and the convicts towing it after them, pulled for the ship just as the sun sank. In the general relaxation of discipline and haste, the raft had not been made with as much care as usual and the strong current against which the boat was laboring assisted the negligence of the convicts. The logs began to loosen and though the onward motion of the boats kept the chain taut, when the rowers slacked their exertions, the mass parted, and Mr. Troak, hooking himself onto the side of the ladybird, saw a huge log slip out from its fellows and disappear into the darkness. Gazing after it with an indignant and disgusted stare as though it had been a refractory prisoner he merited two days solitary, he thought he heard a cry from their direction in which it had been borne. He would have paused the listen, but all his attention was needed to save the timber and to prevent the boat from being swamped by the struggling mass at her stern. The cry had proceeded from Rufus's doors. From his solitary rock, he had watched the boat pass him and make for the ladybird in Channel and he had decided with that curious childishness into which the mind relapses on such supreme occasions that the moment when the gathering gloom swallowed her up should be the moment when he would plunge into the surge below him. The heavily laboring boat grew dimmer and dimmer as each tug of the oars took her further from him. Presently, only the figure of Mr. Troak in the stern sheets was visible. Then that also disappeared and as the nose of the timber raft rose on the swell of the next wave, Rufus's doors flung himself into the sea. He was heavily ironed and he sank like a stone. He had resolved not to attempt to swim and for the first moment kept his arms raised above his head in order to sink the quicker. But as the short, sharp agony of suffocation caught him and the shock of the icy water dispelled the mental intoxication under which he was laboring, he desperately struck out and despite the weight of his irons gained a surface for an instant. As he did so, all bewildered and with the one savage instinct of self-preservation predominant over all other thoughts, he became conscious of a huge black mass surging upon him out of the darkness. An instant's buffet with the current, an ineffectual attempt to dive beneath it, a horrible sense that the weight of his feet was dragging him down and the huge log loosened from the raft was upon him, crushing him beneath its rough and ragged sides. All thoughts of self-murder vanished with the presence of actual peril and uttering that despairing cry which had been faintly heard by Troak, he flung up his arms to clutch the monster that was pushing him down to death. The log passed completely over him, thrusting him beneath the water, but his hand, scraping along the splintered side, came in contact with the loop of hide rope that yet hung round the mass and clutched it with a tenacity of a death grip. In another instant, he got his head above water and making good his hold twisted himself by a violent effort across the log. For a moment he saw the lights from the stern windows of the anchored vessels low in the distance. Gromit Rock disappeared on his left, then, exhausted, breathless and bruised, he closed his eyes and the drifting log bore him swiftly and silently away into the darkness. At daylight the next morning, Mr. Troak, landing on the prison rock, found it deserted. The prisoner's cap was lying on the edge of the little cliff, but the prisoner himself had disappeared. Pulling back to the ladybird, the intelligent Troak pondered on the circumstance and in delivering his report to Vickers mentioned the strange cry he had heard the night before. My belief said that he was trying to swim the bay, he said. He must have gone to the bottom anyhow, for he couldn't swim five yards with them irons. Vickers, busily engaged in getting underway, accepted this very natural supposition without question. The prisoner had met his death either by his own act or by accident. It was either a suicide or an attempt to escape and the former conduct of roof of stores rendered the latter explanation a more probable one. In any case, he was dead. As Mr. Troak rightly surmised, no man could swim the bay in irons. And when the ladybird an hour later passed the grummet rock, all on board her believed that the corpse of its late occupant was lying beneath the waves that see that it's base. End of chapter six, book two. Section 19 of For the Term of His Natural Life. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clarke. Book two, Macquarie Harbour, 1833. Chapter seven, The Last of Macquarie Harbour. Riffus Thors was believed to be dead by the party on board the ladybird, and his strange escape was unknown to those still at Sarah Island. Morris Freyre, if he bestowed a thought upon the refractory prisoner of the rock, believed him to be safely stowed in the hold of the schooner and already halfway to Hobart Town, while not one of the eighteen persons on board the Osprey suspected that the boat which had put off for the marooned man had returned without him. Indeed, the party had little leisure for thought. Mr. Freyre, eager to prove his ability and energy, was making strenuous exertions to get away, and kept his unlucky tens so hard at work that within a week from the departure of the ladybird, the Osprey was ready for sea. Mrs. Vickers and the child, having watched with some excusable regret the process of demolishing their old home, had settled down in their small cabin in the brig, and on the evening of the eleventh of January, Mr. Bates, the pilot, who after his master, informed the crew that Lieutenant Freyre had given orders to weigh anchor at daybreak. At daybreak accordingly, the brig set sail with a light breeze from the south-west, and by three o'clock in the afternoon anchored safely outside the gates. Unfortunately, the wind shifted to the north-west, which caused a heavy swell in the bar, and prudent Mr. Bates, having consideration for Mrs. Vickers and the child, ran back ten miles into Wellington Bay, and anchored there again at seven o'clock in the evening. The tide was running strongly, and the brig rolled a good deal. Mrs. Vickers kept her cabin, and sent Sylvia to entertain Lieutenant Freyre. Sylvia went, but was not entertaining. She had conceived for Freyre one of those violent antipathies which children sometimes own without reason, and since the memorable night of the Apology had been barely civil to him. In vain did he peth her and compliment her. She was not to be flattered into liking him. "'I do not like you, sir,' she said in her stilted fashion, "'but that need make no difference to you. You occupy yourself with your prisoners. I can amuse myself without you. Thank you.' "'All right,' said Freyre. I don't want to interfere, but he felt a little nettle'd nevertheless. On this particular evening, the young lady relaxed her severity of demeanour. Her father away, and her mother sick, the little maiden felt lonely, and as a last resource accepted her mother's commands and went to Freyre. He was walking up and down the deck, smoking. "'Mr. Freyre, I am sent to talk to you.' "'Are you? All right, go on.' "'Oh, dear, no! It is the gentleman's place to entertain. Be amusing!' "'Come and sit down, then, and we'll talk,' said Freyre, who was in good humour at the success of his arrangements. "'What shall we talk about?' "'You stupid man, as if I knew. It is your place to talk. Tell me a fairy story.' "'Jack and the Beanstalk?' suggested Freyre. "'Jack and the grandmother! Nonsense! Make one up out of your head, you know.' Freyre laughed. "'I can't,' he said. I never did such a thing in my life. "'Then why not begin? I shall go away if you don't begin.' Freyre rubbed his brows. "'Well, have you read—have you read Robinson Crusoe? As if the idea was the most brilliant one in the world.' "'Of course I have,' returned Sylvia, pouting. "'Reddit? Yes! Everybody's read Robinson Crusoe. "'Oh, have they? Well, I didn't know. Let me see now.' And pulling hard at his pipe, he plunged into literary reflection. Sylvia, sitting beside him, eagerly watching for the happy thought that never came, pouted, and said, "'What a stupid, stupid man you are! I shall be so glad to get back to Papar again. He knows all sorts of stories—nearly as many as old Denny.' Denny knows some, then. "'Denny?' with as much surprise as if she had said, "'Walter Scott?' "'Of course he does. I suppose now, putting your head on one side with an amusing expression of superiority, you never heard the story of the banshee?' "'No, I never did. "'Nor the white horse of the peppers?' "'No.' "'No, I suppose not. Nor the changeling. Nor the leprechaun. "'No.'" Sylvia got off the skylight on which she had been sitting, and surveyed the smoking animal beside her with profound contempt. "'Mr. Frey, you are really a most ignorant person—excuse me, if I hurt your feelings, I have no wish to do that—but really, you are a most ignorant person—for your age, of course.' Morris Frey grew a little angry. "'You are very impertinent, Sylvia,' said he. "'Miss Vickers is my name, Lieutenant Frey, and I shall go and talk to Mr. Bates.'" Which threat she carried out on the spot, and Mr. Bates, who had filled the dangerous office of pilot, told her about divers and coral reefs and some adventures of his—a little apocryphal—in the China seas. Frey resumed his smoking, half angry with himself and half angry with the provoking little Frey. This elfin creature had a fascination for him which he could not account for. However, he saw her no more that evening, and at breakfast the next morning she received him with quaint haughtiness. "'When shall we be ready to sail? Mr. Frey, I'll take some marmalade, thank you.' "'I don't know, Missy,' said Bates. "'It's very rough on the bar. Me and Mr. Frey were the sounder of it this morning, and it ain't safe yet.' "'Well,' said Sylvia, "'I do hope and trust we shan't be shipwrecked and have to swim miles and miles for our lives.' "'Ho, ho, la, Frey, don't be afraid. I'll take care of you.' "'Can you swim, Mr. Bates?' asked Sylvia. "'Yes, Miss, I can. "'Well, then, you shall take me. I like you. Mr. Frey can take me more. We'll go and live on a desert island, Mr. Bates, won't we, and grow coconuts and breadfruit and—what nasty hard biscuits! I'll be Robinson Crusoe, and you shall be man Friday. I'd like to live on a desert island, if I was sure there were no savages, and plenty to eat and drink. That would be right enough, my dear, but you don't find them sorts of islands every day.' "'Then,' said Sylvia, with a decided nod, we won't be shipwrecked, will we? "'I hope not, my dear.' "'Put a biscuit in your pocket, Sylvia, in case of accidents,' suggested Frey, with a grin. "'Oh, you know my opinion of you, sir. Don't speak. I don't want any argument.' "'Don't you? That's right.' "'Mr. Frey,' said Sylvia, gravely pausing at her mother's cub-and-door, if I were Richard the Third, do you know what I would do with you?' "'No,' says Frey, eating complacently, what would you do?' "'Why, I'd make you stand at the door of St. Paul's Cathedral in a white sheet, with a lighted candle in your hand, until you gave up your wicked aggravating ways. You man!' The picture of Mr. Frey in a white sheet, with a lighted candle in his hand, at the door of St. Paul's Cathedral, was too much for Mr. Bates' gravity, and he roared with laughter. "'She's a queer child, ain't she, sir? A born natural, and yet a good-nated little soul.' "'Won't you all be able to get away, Mr. Bates?' asked Frey, whose dignity was wounded by the mirth of the Pilots. Bates felt the change of tone, and hastened to accommodate himself to his office's humour. "'Lopes by evening, sir,' said he, "'if the tide sluckens there, I'll risk it, but it's no use trying it now.' "'The men were wanting to go ashore to wash their clothes,' said Frey. "'If we are going to stop here till evening, you had better let them go after dinner.' "'All right, sir,' said Bates. The afternoon passed off auspiciously. The ten prisoners went ashore and washed their clothes. Their names were James Barker, James Leslie, John Lyon, Benjamin Riley, William Cheshire, Henry Shears, William Russon, James Porter, John Fair, and John Racks. This last scandal had come on board latest of all. He had behaved himself a little better recently, and during the work attendant upon the departure of the Ladybird had been conspicuously useful. His intelligence and influence among his fellow prisoners combined to make him a somewhat important personage, and Vickers had allowed him privileges from which he had hitherto been debarred. Mr. Frey, however, who superintended the shipment of some stores, seemed to be resolved to take advantage of Racks's evident willingness to work. He never ceased to hurry and find fault with him. He vowed that he was lazy, soul-key, or impertinent. It was Racks, come here! Do this! Do that!" As the prisoners declared among themselves, it was evident that Mr. Frey had a down on the dandy. The day before the Ladybird sailed, Racks, rejoicing in the hope of speedy departure, had suffered himself to reply to some more-than-usually galling remark, and Mr. Frey had complained to Vickers. "'The fellow's too ready to get away,' said he, "'let him stop for the Osprey, it'll be a lesson to him.' Vickers assented, and John Racks was informed that he was not to sail with the first party. His comrades vowed that this order was an act of tyranny, but he himself said nothing. He only redoubled his activity, and, despite all his wish to the country, Frey was unable to find fault. He even took credit to himself for taming the convict's spirit, and pointed out Racks, silent and obedient, as a proof of the excellence of severe measures. To the convicts, however, he knew John Racks better, this silent activity was ominous. He returned with the rest, however, on the evening of the thirteenth in apparently cheerful mood. Indeed, Mr. Frey, who, wearied by the delay, had decided to take the whale-boat in which the prisoners had returned, and catch a few fish before dinner, observed him laughing with some of the others, and again congratulated himself. The time wore on, darkness was closing in, and Mr. Bates, walking the deck, kept a look-out for the boat, with the intention of weighing anchor and making for the bar. All was secure, Mrs. Vickers and the child were safely below. The two remaining soldiers, two had gone with Frey, were upon deck, and the prisoners in the forecastle were singing. The wind was fair, and the sea had gone down. In less than an hour the osprey would be safely outside the harbour. Chapter 8 The Power of the Wilderness The drifting log that had so strangely served as a means of saving Reef's doors, swam with a current that was running out of the bay. For some time the burden that it bore was an insensible one. Exhausted with his desperate struggle for life, the convict lay along the rough bark of this heaven-sent raft without motion, almost without breath. At length, a violent shock awoke him to consciousness, and he perceived that the log had become stranded on a sandy point, the extremity of which was lost in darkness. Painfully raising himself from his uncomfortable posture, he staggered to his feet, and crawling a few paces up the beach, flung himself upon the ground and slept. When morning dawned, he recognised his position. The log had, in passing under the lee of Philip Island, been cast upon the sullen point of coal-head, and some three hundred yards from him were the mutilated sheds of the coal-gang. For some time he lay still, basking in the warm rays of the rising sun, and scarcely caring to move his bruised and shattered limbs. The sensation of rest was so exquisite that it overpowered all other considerations, and he did not even trouble himself to conjecture the reason for the apparent desertion of the huts close by him. If there was no one there, well and good. If the coal-party had not gone he would be discovered in a few moments, and brought back to his island prison. In his exhaustion of misery he accepted the alternative and slept again. As he laid down his aching head, Mr. Troak was reporting his death to Vickers, and while he still slept, the lady-bird on her way out passed him so closely that anyone on board her might with a good glass have aspired his slumbering figure as it lay upon the sand. When he woke it was past midday, and the sun poured its full rays upon him. His clothes were dry in all places, save the sight on which he had been lying, and he rose to his feet refreshed by his long sleep. He scarcely comprehended as yet his true position. He had escaped it was true, but not for long. He was versed in the history of escapes, and knew that a man alone on that barren coast was face to face with starvation or recapture. Glancing up at the sun, he wondered indeed how it was that he had been free so long. Then the coal-sheds caught his eye, and he understood that they were untenanted. This astonished him, and he began to tremble with vague apprehension. Entering he looked around, expecting every moment to see some lurking constable or armed soldier. After his glance fell upon the loaves which lay in the corner where the departing convicts had flung them the night before. At such a moment this discovery seemed like a direct revelation from heaven. He would not have been surprised had they disappeared. Had he lived in another age he would have looked around for the angel who had brought them. By and by, having eaten of this miraculous provinder, the poor creature began, reckoning by his convict experience, to understand what had taken place. The coal-workings were abandoned. The new commandant had probably other work for his beasts of burden to execute. Then Absconda would be safe here for a few hours at least, but he must not stay. For him there was no rest. If he thought to escape it behoved him to commence his journey at once. As he contemplated the meat and bread something like a ray of hope entered his gloomy soul. Here was provision for his needs. The food before him represented the rations for six men. Was it not possible to cross the desert that lay between him and freedom on such a fair? The very supposition made his heart beat faster. It surely was possible. He must husband his resources, walk much and eat little, spread out the food for one day and did the food for three. Here was six men's food for one day, or one men's food for six days. He would live on a third of this, and he would have rations for eighteen days. Eighteen days? What could he not do in eighteen days? He could walk thirty miles a day, forty miles a day. That would be six hundred miles and more. Let's say he must not be too sanguine. The road was difficult. The scrub was in place as impenetrable. He would have to make detours and turn upon his tracks to waste precious time. He would be moderate and say twenty miles a day. Twenty miles a day was very easy walking. Taking a piece of stick from the ground he made the calculation in the sand. Eighteen days and twenty miles a day, three hundred and sixty miles. More than enough to take him to freedom. It could be done. With prudence it could be done. He must be careful and abstemious. Abstemious! He had already eaten too much, and he hastily pulled a barely-tasted piece of meat from his mouth and replaced it with the rest. The action which at any other time would have seemed disgusting, was, in the case of this poor creature, merely pitiable. Having come to this resolution, the next thing was to disencomber himself of his irons. This was more easily done than he expected. He found in the shed an iron guard, and with that and a stone he drove out the rivets. The rings were too strong to be ovelled, or he would have been three long ago. He packed the meat and the bread together, and then pushing the guard into his belt, it might be needed as a weapon of defence, he set out on his journey. His intention was to get round the settlement to the coast, reach the settled districts, and buy some tale of shipwreck or of wandering, procure assistance. As to what was particularly to be done when he found himself among three men, he did not pause to consider. At that point his difficulty seemed to him to end. Let him but traverse the desert that was before him, and he would trust to his own ingenuity, or the chance of fortune to avert suspicion. The peril of immediate detection was so imminent that beside it all other fears were dwarfed into insignificance. Before dawn next morning he had travelled ten miles, and by husbanding his food he succeeded by the night of the fourth day in accomplishing forty more. What soar and weary he lay in the thicket of the thorny melliluca, and felt at last that he was beyond pursuit. The next day he advanced more slowly. The bush was unpropitious, dense scrub and savage jungle impeded his path, barren and stony mountain ranges arose before him. He was lost in gullies, entangled in thickets, bewildered in morasses. The sea that had his itchy gleam, salt glittering and hungry upon his right hand, now shifted to his left. He had mistaken his course, and he must turn again. For two days did this bewilderment last, and on the third he came to a mighty cliff that pierced with its blunt pinnacle the clustering bush. He must go over or round this obstacle, and he decided to go round it. A natural pathway wound about its foot. Here and there branches were broken, and it seemed to the poor wretch fainting under the weight of his lessening burden, that his were not the first footsteps which had children there. The path terminated in a glade, and at the bottom of this glade was something that fluttered. Riffer stores pressed forward, and stumbled over a corpse. In the terrible stillness of that solitary place he felt suddenly as though a voice had called to him. All the hideous fantastic tales of murder which he had read or heard seemed to take visible shape in the person of the lowly carcass before him, clad in the yellow dress of a convict, and lying flung together on the ground as though struck down. Stooping over it, impelled by an irresistible impulse to know the worst, he found the body was mangled, one arm was missing, and the skull had been beaten in by some heavy instrument. The first thought that this heap of rags and bones was a mute witness to the folly of his own undertaking, the corpse of some starved absconder, gave place to a second more horrible suspicion. He recognized the number imprinted on the coarse cloth as that which had designated the younger of the two men who had escaped with Gabbett. He was standing on the place where a murder had been committed. A murder? And what else? Thank God the food he carried was not yet exhausted. He turned and fled, looking back fearfully as he went. He could not breathe in the shadow of that awful mountain. Crashing through this grub and break, torn, bleeding, and wild with terror, he reached a spur of the range and looked around him. Above him rose the iron hills, below him lay the panorama of the bush. The white cone of the Frenchman's cup was on his right hand. On his left, a succession of rangers seemed to barf further progress. A gleam as of a lake streaked the eastward. Gigantic pine trees reared their graceful heads against the opal of the evening sky, and at their feet the dense scrub through which he had so painfully toiled, spread without break and without flaw. It seemed as though he could leap from where he stood upon a solid mass of treetops. He raised his eyes and right against him like a long dull sword, lay the narrow steel-blue reach of the harbour from which he had escaped. One darker speck moved on the dark water. It was the osprey making for the gates. It seemed that he could throw a stone upon her deck. A faint cry of rage escaped him. During the last three days in the bush he must have retraced his steps and turned upon his own track to the settlement. More than half his allotted time had passed and he was not yet thirty miles from his prison. Death had waited to overtake him in this barbarous wilderness. As a cat allows a mouse to escape her for a while, so had he been permitted to trifle with his faith and lull himself into a false security. Escape was hopeless now. He never caught escape. And as the unhappy man raised his despairing eyes, he saw that the sun, redly sinking behind a lofty pine which topped the opposite hill, shot a ray of crimson light into the glade below him. It was though a bloody finger pointed at the corpse which lay there, and roofed its doors, shuddering at the dismal omen, averting his face, plunged again into the forest. For four days he wandered aimlessly through the bush. He had given up all hopes of making the overland journey, and yet as long as his scanty supply of food held out, he strove to keep away from the settlement. Unable to resist the pangs of hunger, he had increased his daily ration, and though the salted meat, exposed to rain and heat, had began to turn putrid, he never looked at it, but he was seized with the desire to eat his fill. The coarse lumps of carrion and the hard rylos were to him delicious morsels fit for the table of an emperor. Once or twice he was constrained to pluck and eat the tops of tea trees and peppermint jobs. These had an aromatic taste, and suffice to say the cravings of hunger for a while, but they induced a raging thirst, which he slaked at the icy mountain springs. Had it not been for the frequency of these streams, he must have died in a few days. At last on the twelfth day from his departure from the coal head, he found himself at the foot of Mount Direction, at the head of the peninsula which makes the western side of the harbor. His terrible wandering had but led him to make a complete circuit of the settlement, and the next night brought him round the shores of Bircher's Inlet, to the landing-place opposite to Sarah Island. His stock of provisions had been exhausted for two days, and he was savage with hunger. He no longer thought of suicide. His dominant idea was now to get food. He would do as many others had done before him, give himself up to be flogged and fed. When he reached the landing-place, however, the guard-house was empty. He looked across at the island prison and saw no signs of life. The settlement was deserted. The shock of this discovery almost deprived him of reason. For days that had seemed centuries, he had kept life in his jaded and lacerated body solely by the strength of his fierce determination to reach the settlement. And now that he had reached it, after a journey of unparalleled horror, he found it deserted. He struck himself to see if he was not dreaming. He refused to believe his eyesight. He shouted, screamed, and waved his tattered garments in the air. Exhausted by these paroxysms, he said to himself, quite calmly, that the sun beating on his unprotected head had dazed his brain, and that in a few moments he should see well-remembered boats pulling towards him. Then, when no boat came, he argued that he was mistaken in the place. The island yonder was not Sarah Island, but some other island like it, and that in a second or so he would be able to detect the difference. But the inexorable mountain, so hideously familiar for six weary years, made mute reply, and the sea, crawling at his feet, seemed to grin at him with a thin-lipped hungry mouth. Yet the fact of the desertion seemed so inexplicable that he could not realize it. He felt as might have felt that wanderer in the enchanted mountains, who, returning in the morning to look for his companions, found them turned to stone. At last the dreadful truth forced itself upon him. He retired a few paces, and then, with a horrible cry of furious despair, stumbled forward towards the edge of the little reef that fringed the shore. Just as he was about to fling himself for the second time into the dark water, his eyes, sweeping in a last long look around the bay, caught sight of a strange appearance on the left horn of the sea-beach. A thin blue streak, uprising from behind the western arm of the little inlet, hung in the still air. It was the smoke of a fire. The dying wretch felt inspired with a new hope. God had sent him a direct sign from heaven. The tiny column of bluish vapour seemed to him as glorious as the pillar of fire that led the Israelites. There were yet human beings near him. Entering his face from the hungry sea, he tottered with the last effort of his failing strength towards the blessed token of their presence. CHAPTER IX THE CESAR OF THE ORDSPRAY Freya's fishing expedition had been unsuccessful, and in consequence prolonged. The obstinacy of his character appeared in the most trifling circumstances, and though the fast-deepening shade of an Australian evening urged him to return, yet he lingered, unwilling to come back empty-handed. At last the peremptory signal warned him. It was the sound of a musket fired on board the brig. Mr. Bates was getting impatient, and with a scull, Freya drew up his lines and ordered the two soldiers to pull for the vessel. The osprey yet sat motionless on the water, and her bare mask gave no sign of making sail. To the soldiers, pulling with their backs to her, the musket shot seemed the most ordinary occurrence in the world. Eager to quit the dismal prison-bay, they had viewed Mr. Freya's persistent fishing with disgust, and had for the previous half hour long to hear the signal of recall which had just startled them. Suddenly, however, they noticed a change of expression in the sullen face of their commander. Freya, sitting in the stern-sheets with his face to the osprey, had observed a peculiar appearance on her decks. The bulwarks were every now and then topped by strange figures, who disappeared as suddenly as they came, and a faint memory of voices floated across the intervening sea. Presently the report of another musket shot echoed among the hills, and something dark fell from the side of the vessel into the water. Freya was an implication of mingled alarm and indignation sprang to his feet, and shading his eyes with his hand looked towards the brig. The soldiers, resting on their oars, imitated his gesture, and the whale-boat, thus thrown out of trim, rocked from side to side dangerously. A moment's anxious pause, and then another musket shot, followed by a woman's shrill scream, explained all. The prisoners had seized the brig. "'Give way!' cried Freya, pale with rage and apprehension, and the soldiers realising at once the full terror of their men, forced the heavy whale-boat through the water as fast as the one miserable pair of oars could take her. Mr. Bates, affected by the insidious influence of the hour, and lulled into a sense of false security, had gone below to tell his little playmate that she would soon be on her way to the Hobart town of which she had heard so much, and, taking advantage of his absence, the soldier not on guard went to the forecastle to hear the prisoners singing. He found the ten together in high good humour. Singing to a shanty, sung by three of their number. The voices were melodious enough, and the words of the ditty, chanted by many stark fellows in many a forecastle before and since, of that character which pleases the soldier nature. Private Grimes forgot all about the unprotected state of the dirk, and sat down to listen. While he listened, absorbed in tender recollections, James Leslie, William Cheshire, William Russon, John Fair, and James Barker, slipped to the hatchway and got upon deck. Barker reached the aft hatchway as the soldier who was on guard turned to complete his walk, and passing his arm round his neck pulled him down before he could utter a cry. In the confusion of the moment, the men loosed his grasp of the musket to grapple with his unseen antagonist, and Fair, snatching up the weapon, swore to blow his brains out if he raised a finger. Seeing this entry thus secured, Cheshire, as if in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, leapt down the aft hatchway and passed up the muskets from the arm-rack to Leslie and Russon. There were three muskets in addition to the one taken from the sentry, and Barker, leaving his prisoner in charge of Fair, seized one of them, and ran to the companion latter. Russon, left unarmed by this manoeuvre, appeared to know his own duty. He came back to the forecastle, and passing behind the listening soldier, touched the singer on the shoulder. This was the appointed signal, and John Rex, suddenly determining his song with a laugh, presented his fist in the face of the gaping grimes. "'No noise,' he cried. "'The big zows!' And there, grimes could reply, he was seized by Lyon and Riley, and bound securely. "'Come on, lads,' says Rex, and pass the prisoner down here. "'We've got it this time. I'll go bail.' In obedience to this order, the now-guarded sentry was flung down the fore-hatchway, and the hatch secured. "'Stand on the hatchway, Porter,' cries Rex again, and if those fellows come up, knock them down with a hand-spike. Leslie and Russon forward to the companion latter. Lyon, keep a look out for the boat, and if she comes too near, fire.' As he spoke, the report of the first musket rang out. Barker had apparently fired up the companion hatchway. When Mr. Bates had gone below, he found Sylvia curled upon the cushions of the stateroom, reading. "'Well, Missy,' he said, "'we'll soon be on our way to Papal.' Sylvia answered by asking a question altogether foreign to the subject. "'Mr. Bates,' said she, pushing the hair out of her blue eyes. "'What's a coracle?' "'A witch,' asked Mr. Bates. "'A coracle. C-O-R-A-C-L-E,' said she, spelling it slowly. "'I want to know.' The bewildered Bates took his head. "'Never heard of one, Missy,' said he, bending over the book. "'What does it say?' "'The ancient Britons,' said Sylvia, reading gravely, "'were little better than barbarians. They painted their bodies with woad. That's blue stuff, you know, Mr. Bates. And seated in their light coracles of skin stretched upon slender wooden frames must have presented a wild and savage appearance.' "'Ha,' said Mr. Bates, when this remarkable passage was read to him. "'That's very mysterious, that is. A coracle. A cora—a bright light burst upon him. "'A coracle, you mean, Miss. It's a carriage. I've seen him in high park, with young bloods a-driving of them.' "'What are young bloods?' asked Sylvia, rushing at this new opening. "'Oh, knobs! Swell coves, don't you know,' returned poor Bates, thus again attacked. "'Young men of fortune, that is, that's given to doin' at grand.' "'I see,' said Sylvia, waving her little hand graciously. Noblemen and princes, and that sort of people. Quite so. But what about the coracle?' "'Well,' said the humbled Bates. "'I think it's a carriage, Missy. A sort of pheaton. As they call it.' Sylvia, hardly satisfied, returned to the book. It was a little mean-looking volume, a child's history of England, and after perusing at a while with knitted brows, she burst into a childish laugh. "'Why, my dear, Mr. Bates,' she cried, waving the history above her head in triumph. "'What a pair of geese we are! A carriage! Oh, you silly man! It's a boat!' "'Is it?' said Mr. Bates, in admiration of the intelligence of his companion. "'Who'd her thought that, now? Why couldn't they call it a boat at once, then, and had done with it?' And he was about to laugh also, when raising his eyes, he saw in the open doorway the figure of James Barker, with a musket in his hand. "'Hello? What's this? What do you do here, sir?' "'Sorry to disturb you,' says the convict, with a grin. "'But you must come along a me, Mr. Bates.' "'Bates, at once comprehending that some terrible misfortune had occurred, did not lose his presence of mind. One of the cushions of the carriage was under his right hand, and snatching it up, he flung it across the little cabin, full in the face of the escaped prisoner. The soft mass struck the man with force sufficient to blind him for an instant. The musket exploded harmlessly in the air, and ere the astonished Barker could recover his footing. Bates had hurled him out of the cabin, and crying, "'Mutiny!' Locked the cabin door on the inside. The noise brought out Mrs. Vickers from her birth, and the poor little student of English history ran into her arms. "'Good heavens, Mr. Bates! What is it?' Bates, furious with rage, so far forgot himself as to swear. "'It's a mutiny, ma'am,' said he. "'Go back to your cabin and lock the door. Those bloody villains have risen on us!' Julia Vickers felt her heart-gross sick. Was she never to escape out of this dreadful life? "'Go into your cabin, ma'am,' says Bates again, "'and don't move a finger till I tell you. Maybe it ain't so bad as it looks. "'I've got my pistols with me, thank God, and Mr. Farrill hear the shot, anyway.' "'Mutiny! On deck there!' he cried at the full pitch of his voice, and his brow grew damp with dismay when a mocking laugh from above was the only response. Thrusting the woman and child into the state berth, the bewildered pilot cocked a pistol, and snatching a cutlass from the arm-stand fixed to the butt of the mast which penetrated the cabin, he burst open the door with his foot and rushed to the companion ladder. Bacca had retreated to the deck, and for an instant he thought the way was clear, but Leslie and Russon thrust him back with the muzzles of loaded muskets. He struck at Russon with a cutlass, missed him, and seeing the hopelessness of the attack was feigned to retreat. In the meanwhile, Grimes and the other soldier had loosed themselves from their bonds, and encouraged by the firing, which seemed to them a sign that all was not yet lost, made shift to force up the forehatch. Porter, his courage was none of the fiercest, and who had been for years given over to that terror of discipline which servitude induces, made but a feeble attempt at resistance, and forcing the hand-spike from him, the sentry, Jones, rushed off to help the pilot. As Jones reached the waist, Cheshire, a cold-blooded blue-eyed man, shot him dead. Grimes fell over the corpse, and Cheshire, clubbing the musket, had he another barrel he would have fired, coolly battered his head as he lay, and then seizing the body of the unfortunate Jones in his arms, tossed it into the sea. "'Porter, your lover,' he cried, exhausted with the effort to lift the body, "'come here and bear a hand with this other one.' Porter advanced aghast, but just then another occurrence claimed a villain's attention, and poor Grimes's life was spared for that time. Rex, inwardly raging at this unexpected resistance on the part of the pilot, flung himself on the skylight and tore it up bodily. As he did so, Barko, who had reloaded his musket, fired down into the cabin. The ball passed through the stateroom door, and splintering the wood, buried itself close to the golden curls of poor little Sylvia. It was this Hezbeth's escape which drew from the agonised mother that shriek, which, peeling through the open-stern window, had roused the soldiers in the boat. Rex, who by the virtue of his dandyism yet possessed some abhorrence of useless crime, imagined that the cry was one of pain, and that Barko's bullet had taken deadly effect. "'You've killed the child, you villain,' he cried. "'What's the odds?' asked Barko, sulkily. "'You must die anyway, sooner or later.'" Rex put his head down the skylight, and called on Bates to surrender, but Bates only drew his other pistol. "'Would you commit murder?' he asked, looking around with desperation in his glerns. "'No, no,' cried some of the men, willing to blink the death of poor Jones. "'It's no use making things worse than they are. "'Bit him come up, and we'll do him no harm.' "'Come up, Mr. Bates,' says Rex, and I'll give you my word, you shan't be injured.' "'Will you set the major's lady and child ashore, then?' asked Bates, sturdily facing the scowling brows above him. "'Yes.' "'Without injury?' continued the other, bargaining as it were at the very muzzles of the muskets. "'Aye, aye, it's all right,' returned Russon. "'It's our liberty, we want, that's all.' Bates, hoping against hope for the return of the boat, endeavoured to gain time. "'Shut down the skylight, then,' he said, with the ghost of an authority in his voice, until he asked the lady. "'This, however, John Rex refused to do. "'You can ask well enough where you are,' he said. But there was no need for Mr. Bates to put a question. The door of the state room opened, and Mrs. Vickers appeared, trembling, with Sylvia by her side. "'Accept, Mr. Bates,' she said, since it must be so. "'We shall gain nothing by refusing. We are at their mercy. God help us.' "'Amen to that,' says Bates, under his breath, and then allowed. "'We agree. "'Put your pistols on the table, and come up, then,' says Rex, covering the table with his musket as he spoke. "'Nobody shall hurt you.' Chapter 9 Section 22 of For The Term of His Natural Life This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. For The Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clark Book 2, Macquarie Harbor, 1833 Chapter 10, John Rex's Revenge Mrs. Vickers, pale and sick with terror, yet sustained by that strange courage of which we have before spoken, passed rapidly under the open skylight and prepared to ascend. Sylvia, her romance crushed by too dreadful reality, clung to her mother with one hand and with the other pressed close to her little bosom the English history. In her all-absorbing fear she had forgotten to lay it down. "'Get a shawl, ma'am, or something,' said Bates, and a hat for Missy.' Mrs. Vickers looked back across the space between the open skylight and, shuddering, shook her head. The men above swore impatiently at the delay, and the three hastened on deck. "'Whose to command the brig now?' asked undaunted Bates as they came up. "'I am,' said John Rex, and with these brave fellows, I'll take her round the world. The touch of bombast was not out of place. It jumped so far with the humor of the convicts that they set up a feeble cheer at which Sylvia frowned. Frightened as she was, the prison-bred child was as much astonished at hearing convicts cheer as a fashionable lady would be to hear her footmen quote poetry. Bates, however, practical and calm, took quite another view of the case. The bold project, so boldly avowed, seemed to him a sheer absurdity. The dandy and a crew of nine convicts navigate a brig round the world, preposterous. Why, not a man aboard could work a reckoning. His nautical fancy pictured the osprey helplessly rolling on a swell of the southern ocean, or hopelessly locked in the ice of the Antarctic seas, and he dimly guessed at the fate of the deluded ten. Even if they got safe to port, the chances of final escape were all against them. For what account could they give of themselves? Overpowered by these reflections, the honest fellow made one last effort to charm his captors back to their pristine bondage. Fools, he cried, do you know what you are about to do? You will never escape. Give up the brig, and I will declare before my God upon the Bible that I will say nothing, but give all good characters. Leslie and another burst into a laugh at this wild proposition, but Rex, who had weighed his chances well beforehand, felt the force of the pilot's speech and answered seriously. It's no use talking, he said, shaking his stillhandsome head. We have got the brig, and we mean to keep her. I can navigate her, though I am no seaman, so you needn't talk further about it, Mr. Bates. It's liberty we require. What are you going to do with us? asked Bates. Leave you behind. Bates' face blanched. What, here? Yes, it don't look a picturesque spot, does it? And yet I've lived here for some years, and he grinned. Bates was silent. The logic of that grin was unanswerable. Come, cried the dandy, shaking off his momentary melancholy, look alive there. Lower away the jolly boat. Mrs. Vickers, go down to your cabin and get anything you want. I am compelled to put you ashore, but I have no wish to leave you without clothes. Bates listened in a sort of dismal admiration at this courtly convict. He could not have spoken like that had life depended on it. Now, my little lady, continued Rex, run down with your mama and don't be frightened. Sylvia flashed, burning red at this indignity. Frightened? If there had been anybody else here but women, you would never have taken the break. Frightened? Let me pass, prisoner. The whole deck burst into a great laugh at this, and poor Mrs. Vickers paused, trembling for the consequences of the child's temerity. To thus taunt the desperate convict who held their lives in his hands seemed sheer madness. In the boldness of the speech, however, lay its safeguard. Rex, whose politeness was mere bravado, was stung to the quick by the reflection upon his courage, and the bitter accent with which the child had pronounced the word prisoner, the generic name of convicts, made him bite his lips with rage. Had he had his will, he would have struck the little creature to the deck, but the horse laugh of his companions warned him to forbear. There is public opinion even among convicts, and Rex dared not vent his passion on so helpless an object. As men do in such cases, he veiled his anger beneath an affictation of amusement. In order to show that he was not moved by the taunt, he smiled upon the taunter more graciously than ever. Your daughter has her father's spirit, madam, said he to Mrs. Vickers with a bow. Bates opened his mouth to listen. His ears were not large enough to take in the words of this complimentary convict. He began to think that he was the victim of a nightmare. He absolutely felt that John Rex was a greater man at that moment than John Bates. As Mrs. Vickers descended the hatchway, the boat with Freyr and the soldiers came within musket range, and Leslie, according to orders, fired his musket over their heads, shouting to them to lay too. But Freyr, boiling with rage at the manner in which the tables had been turned on him, had determined not to resign his lost authority without a struggle. Disregarding the summons, he came straight on, with his eyes fixed on the vessel. It was now nearly dark, and the figures on the deck were indistinguishable. The indignant lieutenant could but guess at the condition of affairs. Suddenly, from out of the darkness, a voice hailed him. Hold water! Back water! It cried, and was then seemingly choked in its owner's throat. The voice was the property of Mr. Bates. Standing near the side, he had observed Rex and Faire bringing up a great pig of iron, erstused as part of the ballast of the brig, and poised it on the rail. Their intention was but too evident, and honest Bates, like a faithful watchdog, barked to warn his master. Bloodthirsty Cheshire caught him by the throat, and Faire, unheeding, ran the boat alongside, under the very nose of the revengeful Rex. The mass of iron fell half-inboard upon the now-stayed boat, and gave her sternway with a splinter plank. Villains, cried Faire, would you swamp us? Aye, laughed Rex, and a dozen such as ye. The brig's ours, can't you see, and we're your masters now. Faire, stifling in exclamation of rage, cried to the bow to hook on, but the bow had driven the boat backward, and she was already beyond arm's length of the brig. Looking up, he saw Cheshire's savage face, and heard the click of the lock as he cocked his piece. The two soldiers, exhausted by their long pull, made no effort to stay the progress of the boat, and almost before the swell caused by the plunge of the mass of iron had ceased to agitate the water, the deck of the osprey had become invisible in the darkness. Faire stuck his fist upon the thwart in sheer impotence of rage. The scoundrels, he said, between his teeth. They've mastered us. What do they mean to do next? The answer came pat to the question. From the dark hull of the brig broke a flash and a report, and a musket ball cut the water beside them with a chirping noise. Between the black, indistinct mass which represented the brig, and the glimmering water, was visible a white speck which gradually neared them. Come alongside with ye, held a voice, or it will be the worst for ye. They want to murder us, says Faire. Give way, men. But the two soldiers, exchanging glances, one with another, pulled the boat's head round and made for the vessel. It's no use, Mr. Faire, said the man nearest him. We can do no good now, and they won't hurt us, I daresay. You dogs, you are in league with them, burst out Faire, purple with indignation. Do you mutiny? Come, come, sir, returned the soldier sulkily. This ain't the time to bully. And as for mutiny, why, one man's about as good as another just now. This speech from the lips of the man who, but a few minutes before, would have risked his life to obey orders of his officer, did more than an hour's reasoning to convince Maurice Faire of the hopelessness of resistance. His authority, born of circumstance, and supported by adventitious aid, had left him. The musket shot had reduced him to the ranks. He was now no more than anyone else. Indeed, he was less than many. For those who held the firearms were the ruling powers. With the groan, he resided himself to his fate. And looking at the sleeve of the undressed uniform he wore, it seemed to him that virtue had gone out of it. When they reached the brig, they found that the jolly boat had been lowered and laid alongside. In her were eleven persons, Bates with forehead gashed and hands bound, the stunned grimes, Russon and Faire pulling, Lion, Riley, Cheshire, and Leslie with muskets, and John Rex in the stern sheets, with Bates' pistols and his trousers belt, and a loaded musket across his knees. The white object which had been seen by the men in the whale boat was a large white shawl which wrapped Mrs. Vickers and Sylvia. Faire muttered an oath of relief when he saw this white bundle. He had feared that the child was injured. By the direction of Rex, the whale boat was brought alongside the jolly boat, and Cheshire and Leslie boarded her. Leslie then gave his musket to Rex, and bound Faire's hands behind him in the same manner as had been done for Bates. Faire attempted to resist this indignity, but Cheshire, clapping his musket to his ear, swore he would blow out his brains if he uttered another syllable. Faire, catching the malignant eye of John Rex, remembered how easily a twitch of the finger would pay off old scores, and was silent. Step in here, sir, if you please, said Rex, with polite irony. I am sorry to be compelled to tie you, but I must consult my own safety as well as your convenience. Faire scowled, and stepping awkwardly unto the jolly boat fell. Pinyon, as he was, he could not rise without assistance, and Russon pulled him roughly to his feet with a coarse laugh. In his present frame of mind, that laugh galled him worse than his bonds. Poor Mrs. Vickers, with a woman's quick instinct, saw this, and even amid her own trouble, found leisure to console him. The wretches, she said under her breath, as Faire was flung down beside her, to subject you to such indignity. Sylvia said nothing, and seemed to shrink from the lieutenant. Perhaps in her childish fancy, she had pictured him as coming to her rescue, armed Keppa Pea, and clad in dazzling mail, or at the very least, as a muscular hero, who would settle affairs out of hand by sheer personal prowess. If she had entertained any such notion, the reality must have struck coldly upon her senses. Mr. Faire, purple, clumsy, and bound, was not at all heroic. Now, my lads, says Rex, who seemed to have endured the cast-off authority of Faire, we give you your choice. Stay at Hell's gates, or come with us. The soldiers paused, irresolute. To join the mutineers meant a certainty of hard work, with a chance of ultimate hanging. Yet to stay with the prisoners was, as far as they could see, to incur the inevitable fate of starvation on a barren coast. As is often the case on such occasions, a trifle suffice to turn the scale. The wounded grimes, who is slowly recovering from his stupor, dimly caught the meaning of the sentence, and in his obfuscated condition of intellect, must needs make a comment on it. Go with him, ye beggars, said he, and leave us honest men. Oh, ye'll get a tie and up for this. The phrase, tying up, brought with it recollection of the worst portion of military discipline, a cat, and revived in the minds of the pair already disposed to break the oak that sat so heavily upon them, a train of dismal memories. The life of a soldier on a convict station was, at that time, a hard one. He was often stinted in rations, and of necessity deprived of all rational recreation, while punishment for offenses was prompt and severe. The companies drafted to the penal settlements were not composed of the best material, and the pair had good precedent for the course they were about to take. Come, says Rex, I can't wait here all night. The wind is freshening, and we must make the bar. Which is it to be? We'll go with you, says the man who had pulled the stroke in the whale boat, spitting into the water with averted face. Upon which utterance, the convicts burst into joyous oaths, and the pair were received with much handshaking. Then Rex, with Lyon and Riley as a guard, got into the whale boat, and having loosed the two prisoners from their bonds, ordered them to take the place of Russon and Faire. The whale boat was manned by the seven mutineers, Rex Steering, Faire, Russon, and the two recruits pulling, and the other four standing up, with their muskets leveled at the Jolly Boat. Their long slavery had begotten such a dread of authority in these men that they feared it even when it was bound and menaced by four muskets. Keep your distance, shouted Cheshire, as Faire and Bates, in obedience to orders, began to pull the Jolly Boat towards the shore, and in this fashion was the dismal little party conveyed to the mainland. It was night when they reached it, but the clear sky began to thrill with the late moon as yet unrisen, and the waves, breaking gently upon the beach, glimmered with the radiance born of their own motion. Faire and Bates, jumping ashore, helped out Mrs. Vickers, Sylvia, and the wounded Grimes. This being done under the muzzles of the muskets, Rex commanded that Bates and Faire should push the Jolly Boat as far as they could from the shore, and Riley catching her by a boat hook as she came towards them, she was taken in tow. Now boys, says Cheshire, with a savage delight, three achieves for old England and liberty, upon which a great shout went up, echoed by the grim hills which had witnessed so many miseries. To the wretched five, this exultant mirth sounded like the knell of death. Great God! cried Bates, running up to his knees in water after the departing boats. Would you leave us here to starve? The only answer was the jerk and dip of the retreating wars. End of Book 2, Chapter 10 Section 23 of For the Term of His Natural Life This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. For the Term of His Natural Life by Marcus Clark Book 2, Macquarie Harbor, 1833 Chapter 11 Left at Hell's Gates There is no need to dwell upon the mental agonies of that miserable night. Perhaps, of all the five, the one least qualified to endure it, realized the prospect of suffering most acutely. Mrs. Vickers, lay figure and noodle as she was, had the keen instinct of approaching danger, which is in her sex a sixth sense. She was a woman and a mother, and owned a double capacity for suffering. Her feminine imagination pictured all the horrors of death by famine, and having realized her own torments, her maternal love forced her to live them over again in the person of her child. Rejecting Bates' offer of a P-jacket and Faire's vague tenders of assistance, the poor woman withdrew behind a rock that faced the sea, and, with her daughter in her arms, resigned herself to her torturing thoughts. Sylvia, recovered from her terror, was almost content, and, curled in her mother's shawl, slept. To her little soul, this midnight mystery of boats and muskets, had all the flavor of a romance. With Bates, Faire and her mother so close to her, it was impossible to be afraid. Besides, it was obvious that Papa, the supreme being of the settlement, must at once return and severely punish the impertinent prisoners, who had dared to insult his wife and child. And as Sylvia dropped off to sleep, she caught herself, with some indignation, pitying the mutineers for the tremendous scrape they had got themselves into. How they would be flogged when Papa came back. In the meantime, this sleeping in the open air was novel and rather pleasant. Honest Bates produced a piece of biscuit, and, with all the generosity of his nature, suggested that this should be set aside for the sole use of the two females. But Mrs. Vickers would not hear of it. We must all share alike, said she, with something of the spirit that she knew her husband would have displayed under like circumstance. And Faire wondered at her apparent strength of mind. Had he been gifted with more acuteness, he would not have wondered. For when a crisis comes to one of two persons who have lived much together, the influence of the nobler spirit makes itself felt. Faire had a tinderbox in his pocket, and he made a fire with some dry leaves and sticks. Grimes fell asleep, and the two men sitting at their fire discussed the chances of escape. Neither liked to openly broach the supposition that they had finally been deserted. It was concluded between them that unless the brig sailed in the night, and the now risen moon showed her yet lying at anchor, the convicts would return and bring them food. This supposition proved correct. For about an hour after daylight, they saw the whale boat pulling towards them. A discussion had arisen among the mutineers as to the propriety of it once making sail. But Barker, who had been one of the pilot boat crew, and knew the dangers of the bar, vowed that he would not undertake to steer the brig through the gates until morning. And so the boats being secured astern, a strict watch was set, lest the helpless baits should attempt to rescue the vessel. During the evening, the excitement attended upon the outbreak having passed away, and the magnitude of the task before them being more fully apparent to their minds, a feeling of pity for the unfortunate party on the mainland took possession of them. It was quite possible that the osprey might be recaptured, in which case five useless murders would have been committed. And however callous in bloodshed were the majority of the ten, not one of them could contemplate in cold blood, without a twinge of remorse, the death of the harmless child of the commandant. John Rex, seeing how matters were going, made haste to take to himself the credit of mercy. He ruled, and had always ruled, his Ruffians not so much by suggesting to them the course that they should take, as by leading them on the way they had already chosen for themselves. I propose, said he, that we divide the Prisvisions. There are five of them and twelve of us, then nobody can blame us. I, said Porter, mindful of a similar exploit, and if we're taken, they can tell what we have done. Don't let our affair be like that of the Cyprus, to leave them to starve. I, I, says Barker, you're right. When Ferguson was topped at Hobart Town, I heard old Troakes say that if he's not refused to set the Tucker ashore, he might have got off with a whole skin. Thus urged, by self-interest as well as sentiment, to mercy, the provision was got upon deck by daylight, and a division was made. The soldiers, with generosity borne of remorse, were forgiving half to the marooned men, but Barker exclaimed against this. When the schooner finds they don't get to headquarters, she's bound to come back and look for him, said he, and will want all the Tucker we can get, maybe, before we sight's land. This reasoning was admitted and acted upon. There was, in the harness, cask, about 50 pounds of salt meat, and a third of this quantity, together with half a small sack of flour, some tea and sugar mixed together in a bag, and an iron kettle and panicin, was placed in the whaleboat. Rex, fearful of excesses among his crew, had also lowered down one of the two small punches of rum, which the storeroom contained. Cheshire disputed this, and stumbling over a goat that had been taken on board from Phillips Island, caught the creature by the leg and threw it into the sea, bidding Rex take that with him also. Rex dragged the poor beast into the boat, and with this miscellaneous cargo pushed off to the shore. The poor goat, shivering, began to bleed piteously, and the men laughed. To a stranger it would have appeared that the boat contained a happy party of fishermen, or coast settlers, returning with the proceeds of a day's marketing. Laying off as the water shallowed, Rex called debates to come for the cargo, and three men with muskets standing up as before, ready to resist any attempt at capture. The provisions, goat and all, were carried ashore. There, says Rex, you can't say we've used you badly, for we've divided the provisions. The sight of this almost unexpected sucker revived the courage of the five, and they felt grateful. After the horrible anxiety they had endured all that night, they were prepared to look with kindly eyes upon the men who had come to their assistance. Men, said Bates, with something like a sob in his voice, I didn't expect this. You are good fellows, for there ain't much Tucker aboard, I know. Yes, affirmed fair, you're good fellows. Rex burst into a savage laugh. Shut your mouth, you tyrant, said he, forgetting his dandy-ism in the recollection of his former suffering. It ain't for your benefit. You may thank the lady and child for it. Julia Vickers hastened to propitiate the arbiter of her daughter's fate. We are obliged to you, she said, with a touch of quiet dignity resembling her husband's, and if I ever get back safely, I will take care that your kindness shall be known. The swindler and forager took off his leather cap with quite an air. It was five years since a lady had spoken to him, and the old time when he was Mr. Lionel Crofton, a gentleman sportsman, came back for an instant. At that moment, with liberty in his hand and fortune all before him, he felt his self-respect return, and he looked the lady in the face without flinching. I sincerely trust, madam, said he, that you will get back safely. May I hope for your good wishes for myself and my companions? Listening, Bates burst into a roar of astonished enthusiasm. What a dog it is, he cried. John Rex, John Rex, you were never made to be a convict man. Rex smiled, goodbye, Mr. Bates, and God preserve you. Goodbye, says Bates, rubbing his hat off his face. And I, I, damn, I hope you'll get safe off, there, for liberty's sweet to every man. Goodbye, prisoners, said Sylvia, waving her handkerchief, and I hope they won't catch you, too. So, with cheers and waving of handkerchiefs, the boat departed. In the emotion which the apparently disinterested conduct of John Rex had occasioned the exiles, all earnest thought of their own position had vanished, and, strange to say, the prevailing feeling was that of anxiety for the ultimate fate of the mutineers. But as the boat grew smaller and smaller in the distance, so did their consciousness of their own situation grow more and more distinct. And when at last the boat had disappeared in the shadow of the brig, all started, as if from a dream, to the wakeful contemplation of their own case. A council of war was held, with Mr. Flair at the head of it, and the possessions of the little party were thrown into common stock. The salt, meat, flour, and tea were placed in a hollow rock at some distance from the beach. And Mr. Bates was appointed purser to a portion to each without fear or favor, his stated allowance. The goat was tethered to a piece of fishing line sufficiently long to allow her to browse. The cask of rum, by special agreement, was placed in the innermost recess of the rock, and it was resolved that its contents should not be touched except in case of sickness or in last extremity. There was no lack of water, for a spring ran bubbling from the rocks within a hundred yards of the spot where their party had landed. They calculated that, with prudence, their provisions would last them for nearly four weeks. It was found, upon a review of their possessions, that they had among them three pocket knives, a ball of string, two pipes, matches, and a fig of tobacco, fishing lines with hooks, and a big jackknife which Flair had taken to gut the fish he had expected to catch. But they saw with dismay that there was nothing which could be used ax-wise among the party. Mrs. Vickers had her shawl and baits a P-jacket, but Flair and Grimes were without extra clothing. It was agreed that each should retain his own property, with the exception of the fishing lines which were confiscated to the commonwealth. Having made these arrangements, the kettle, filled with water from the spring, was slung from three green sticks over the fire, and a panikin of weak tea, together with a biscuit, served out to each of the party, save Grimes, who declared himself unable to eat. Breakfast over, baits made a damper, which was cooked in the ashes, and then another council was held as to future habitation. It was clearly evident that they could not sleep in the open air. It was the middle of summer, and though no annoyance from rain was apprehended, the heat in the middle of the day was most oppressive. Moreover, it was absolutely necessary that Mrs. Vickers and the child should have some place to themselves. At a little distance from the beach was a sandy rise, that led up to the face of the cliff, and on the eastern side of this rise grew a forest of young trees. Flair proposed to cut down these trees and make a sort of hut with them. It was soon discovered, however, that the pocket knives were insufficient for this purpose. But by dint of notching the young saplings and then breaking them down, they succeeded in a couple of hours in collecting wood enough to roof over a space between the hollow rock which contained the provisions and another rock in shape like a hammer, which jutted out within the five yards of it. Mrs. Vickers and Sylvia were to have this hut as a sleeping place, and Flair and Bates, lying at the mouth of the larder, would at once act as a guard to it and them. Grimes was to make for himself another hut, where the fire had been lighting on the previous night. When they got back to dinner, inspired by this resolution, they found poor Mrs. Vickers in great alarm. Grimes, who, by reason of the dint in his skull, had been left behind, was walking about the sea beach, talking mysteriously, and shaking his fist at an imaginary foe. On going up to him, they discovered that the blow had affected his brain, for he was delirious. Flair endeavored to soothe him without effect, and at last, by Bates' advice, the poor fellow was rolled in the sea. The cold bath quelled his violence, and being laid beneath the shade of a rock hard by, he fell into a condition of great muscular exhaustion and slept. The damper was then portioned out by Bates, and, together with a small piece of meat, it formed the dinner of the party. Mrs. Vickers reported that she had observed a great commotion on board the brig, and thought that the prisoners must be throwing overboard such portions of the cargo as were not absolutely necessary to them, in order to lighten her. This notion Bates declared to be correct, and further pointed out that the mutineers had got out a kedge anchor, and by hauling on the kedge line were gradually warping the brig down the harbor. Before dinner was over, a light breeze sprang up, and the osprey, running up the Union Jack reversed, fired a musket, either in farewell or triumph, and, spreading her sails, disappeared around the western horn of the harbor. Mrs. Vickers, taking Sylvia with her, went away a few paces, and, leaning against the rugged wall of her future home, wept bitterly. Bates and Freyre affected cheerfulness, but each felt that he had hitherto regarded the presence of the brig as a sort of safeguard, and had never fully realized his own loneliness until now. The necessity for work, however, admitted of no indulgence of vain sorrow, and Bates setting the example, the pair worked so hard that by nightfall they had torn down and dragged together sufficient brushwood to complete Mrs. Vickers' hut. During the progress of this work, they were often interrupted by grimes, who persisted in vague rushes at them, exclaiming loudly against their supposed treachery and leaving him at the mercy of the mutineers. Bates also complained of the pain caused by the wound in his forehead, and that he was afflicted with the giddiness which he knew not how to avert. By dint of frequently bathing his head at the spring, however, he succeeded in keeping on his legs, until the work of dragging together the boughs was complete, when he threw himself on the ground and declared that he could rise no more. Freyre applied to him that remedy that had been so successfully tried upon grimes, but the salt water inflamed his wound and rendered his condition worse. Mrs. Vickers recommended that a little spirit and water should be used to wash the hut, and the cask was got out and broached for that purpose. Tea and damper formed their evening meal, and by the light of a blazing fire, their condition looked less desperate. Mrs. Vickers had set the panakin on a flat stone, and dispensed the tea with an affectation of dignity, which would have been absurd had it not been heart-rending. She had smoothed her hair and pinned the white shawl about her coquettishly. She even ventured to lament to Mr. Freyre that she had not brought more clothes. Sylvia was in high spirits, and scorned to confess hunger. When the tea had been drunk, she fetched water from the spring in the kettle, and bathed Bates' head in it. It was resolved that, on the morrow, a search should be made for some place from which to cast the fishing line, and that one of the numbers should fish daily. The condition of the unfortunate grimes now gave cause for the greatest uneasiness. From wandering foolishly, he had taken to absolute violence, and had to be watched by Freyre. After much muttering and groaning, the poor fellow at last dropped off to sleep, and Freyre, having assisted Bates to his sleeping place in front of the rock, and laid him down on the heap of green brushwood, prepared to snatch a few hours slumber. Weirred by the excitement and the labours of the day, he slept heavily, but towards morning was awakened by a strange noise. Grimes, whose delirium had apparently increased, had succeeded in forcing his way through the rude fence of brushwood, and had thrown himself upon Bates with the ferocity of insanity. Growling to himself, he had seized the unfortunate pilot by the throat, and the pair were struggling together. Bates, weakened by the sickness that had followed upon his wound in the head, was quite unable to cope with his desperate assailant, but calling feebly upon Freyre for help had made shift to lay hold upon the jackknife of which we have before spoken. Freyre, starting to his feet, rushed to the assistance of the pilot, but it was too late. Grimes, enraged by the sight of the knife, tore it from Bates's grasp, and before Freyre could catch his arm, plunged it twice into the unfortunate man's breast. I'm a dead man, cried Bates faintly. The sight of the blood, together with the exclamation of his victim, recalled Grimes to his consciousness. He looked in bewilderment at the bloody weapon, and then, flinging it from him, rushed away towards the sea into which he plunged headlong. Freyre, aghast at this sudden and terrible tragedy, gazed after him, and saw from the out-the-placid water, sparkling in the bright beams of mourning, a pair of arms, without stretched tans, emerge. A black spot that was ahead, uproased between these stiffening arms, and then, with a horrible cry, the hole disappeared, and the bright water sparkled as placidly as before. The eyes of the terrified Freyre, traveling back to the wounded man, saw, midway between the sparkling water and the knife that lay on the sand, an object that went far to explain the maniac's sudden burst of fury. The rum cask lay on its side by the remnants of last night's fire, and close to it was a clout, with which the head of the wounded man had been bound. It was evident that the poor creature, wandering in his delirium, had come across the rum cask, drunk a quantity of its contents, and had been maddened by the fiery spirit. Freyre hurried to the side of Bates, and, lifting him up, strove to staunch the blood that flowed from his chest. It would seem that he had been resting himself on his left elbow, and that grimes, snatching the knife from his right hand, had stabbed him twice in the right breast. He was pale and senseless, and Freyre feared that the wound was mortal. Tearing off his neck handkerchief, he endeavored to bandage the wound, but found that the strip of silk was insufficient for the purpose. The noise had roused Mrs. Vickers, who, stifling her terror, made haste to tear off a portion of her desk, and with this a bandage of sufficient width was made. Freyre went to the cask to see if, happily, he could obtain from it a little spirit with which to moisten the lips of the dying man, but it was empty. Grimes, after drinking his fill, had overturned the unheaded punchin, and the greedy sand had absorbed every drop of liquor. Sylvia brought some water from the spring, and Mrs. Vickers bathing Bates' head with this, he revived a little. By and by, Mrs. Vickers milked the goat. She had never done such a thing before in all her life, and the milk being given to Bates in a panicin, he drank it eagerly, but vomited almost instantly. It was evident that he was sinking from some internal injury. None of the party had much appetite for breakfast, but Freyre, whose sensibilities were less acute than those of the others, ate a piece of salt, meat, and damper. It struck him with a curious feeling of pleasant selfishness, but now Grimes had gone, the allowance of provisions would be increased, and that if Bates went also, it would be increased still further. He did not give utterance to these thoughts, however, but sat with the wounded man's head on his knees, and brushed the settling flies from his face. He hoped, after all, that the pilot would not die, for he should then be left alone to look after the women. Perhaps some such thought was agitating Mrs. Vickers also. As for Sylvia, she made no secret of her anxiety. Don't die, Mr. Bates. Oh, don't die! she said, standing piteously near, but afraid to touch him. Don't leave Mama and me alone in this dreadful place. Poor Bates, of course, said nothing, but Freyre frowned heavily, and Mrs. Vickers said, reprovingly, Sylvia, just as if they had been in the old house on distant Sarah Island. In the afternoon, Freyre went away to drag together some wood for the fire, and when he returned, he found the pilot near his end. Mrs. Vickers said that for an hour he had lain without motion, and almost without breath. The major's wife had seen more than one deathbed, and was calm enough, but for little Sylvia, sitting on a stone hard by, shook with terror. She had a dim notion that death must be accompanied by violence. As the sun sank, Bates rallied, but the two watchers knew that it was but the final flicker of the expiring candle. He's going, said Freyre, at length, under his breath, as though fearful of awaking his half-slumbering soul. Mrs. Vickers, her eyes streaming with silent tears, lifted the honest head, and moistened the parched lips with her soaked handkerchief. A tremor shook the once stalwart limbs, and the dying man opened his eyes. For an instant he seemed bewildered, and then, looking from one to the other, intelligence returned to his glance, and it was evident that he remembered all. His gaze rested upon the pale face of the affrighted Sylvia, and then turned to Freyre. There could be no mistaking the mute appeal of those eloquent eyes. Yes, I'll take care of her, said Freyre. Bates smiled, and then, observing that the blood from his wound had stained the white shawl of Mrs. Vickers, he made an effort to move his head. It was not fitting that a lady's shawl should be stained with the blood of a poor fellow like himself. The fashionable fribble, with quick instinct, understood the gesture, and gently drew the head back upon her bosom. In the presence of death the woman was womanly. For a moment all was silent, and they thought he had gone, but all at once he opened his eyes and looked round for the sea. Turned my face to it once more, he whispered, and as they raised him, he inclined his ear to listen. It's calm enough here, God bless it, he said, but I can hear the waves breaking hard upon the bar. And so his head dropped, and he died. As Freyre relieved Mrs. Vickers from the weight of the corpse, Sylvia ran to her mother. Oh mama, mama, she cried. Why did God let him die when we wanted him so much? Before it grew dark, Freyre made shift to carry the body to the shelter of some rocks at a little distance, and spreading the jacket over the face. He piled stones upon it to keep it steady. The march of events had been so rapid that he scarcely realized that since the previous evening two of the five human creatures left in this wilderness had escaped from it. As he did realize it, he began to wonder whose turn it would be next. Mrs. Vickers, worn out by the fatigue and excitement of the day, retired to rest early, and Sylvia, refusing to speak to Freyre, followed her mother. This manifestation of unaccountable disliked on the part of the child hurt Marys more than he cared to own. He felt angry with her for not loving him, and yet he took no pains to conciliate her. It was with a curious pleasure that he remembered how she must soon look up to him as her chief protector. Had Sylvia been just a few years older, the young man would have thought himself in love with her. The following day passed gloomily. It was hot and sultry, and a dull haze hung over the mountains. Freyre spent the morning in scooping a grave in the sand, in which to inter poor base. Practically awake to his own necessities, he removed such portions of the clothing from the body as would be useful to him, but hid them under a stone, not liking to let Mrs. Vickers see what he had done. Having completed the grave by midday, he placed the corpse therein, and rolled as many stones as possible to the sides of the mound. In the afternoon, he cast the fishing line from the point of a rock he had marked the day before, but caught nothing. Passing by the grave on his return, he noticed that Mrs. Vickers had placed at the head of it a rude cross formed by tying two pieces of stick together. After supper, the usual salt meat and damper, he lit an economical pipe and tried to talk to Sylvia. Why won't you be friends with me, Missy? he asked. I don't like you, said Sylvia. You frighten me. Why? You are not kind. I don't mean that you do cruel things, but you are—oh, I wish Papa was here. Wishing won't bring him, says Frere, pressing his hoarded tobacco together with prudent forefinger. There, that's what I mean. Is that kind? Wishing won't bring him. Oh, if only it would. I didn't mean it unkindly, says Frere. What a strange child you are. There are persons, said Sylvia, who have no affinity for each other. I read about it in a book Papa had, and I suppose that's what it is. I have no affinity for you. I can't help it, can I? Rubbish, Frere returned. Come here, and I'll tell you a story. Mrs. Vickers had gone back to her cave, and the two were alone by the fire, near which stood the kettle and the newly made damper. The child, with some show of hesitation, came to him, and he caught and placed her on his knee. The moon had not yet risen, and the shadows cast by the flickering fire seemed weird and monstrous. The wicked wish to frighten this helpless creature came to Morrie's frayre. There was once, said he, a castle in an old wood, and in this castle there lived an ogre, with great goggle eyes. You silly man, said Sylvia, struggling to be free, you are trying to frighten me. And this ogre lived on the bones of little girls. One day, a little girl was traveling the wood, and she heard the ogre coming. Mr. Faire, let me down. She was terribly frightened, and she ran, and ran, and ran, until all of a sudden she saw a piercing scream burst from his companion. Oh, oh, what's that? she cried, and clung to her persecutor. Beyond the fire stood the figure of a man. He staggered forward, and then, falling on his knees, stretched out his hands, and hoarsely articulated one word. Food! It was Rufus Dawes. The sound of a human voice broke the spell of terror that was on the child, and as the glow from the fire fell upon the tattered yellow garments, she guessed at once the whole story. Not so, Morrie's frayre. He saw before him a new danger, a new mouth to share the scanty provision, and snatching a brand from the fire he kept the convict at bay. But Rufus Dawes, glaring round with wolfish eyes, caught sight of the damper resting against the iron kettle, and made a clutch at it. Faire dashed the brand in his face. Stand back, he cried. We have no food to spare. The convict uttered a savage cry, and raising the iron gad, plunged forward desperately to attack this new enemy. But, quick as thought, the child glided past Faire, and, snatching the loaf, placed it in the hands of the starving man with, here, poor prisoner, eat. And then, turning to Faire, she cast upon him a glance so full of horror, indignation, and surprise, that the man blushed and threw down the brand. As for Rufus Dawes, the sudden apparition of this golden-haired girl seemed to have transformed him. Allowing the loaf to slip through his fingers, he gazed with haggard eyes at the retreating figure of the child, and as it vanished into the darkness outside the circle of firelight, the unhappy man sank his face upon his blackened, horny hands, and burst into tears.