For the Term of His Natural Life
by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke · English · Gutenberg #3424 · 1,042,540 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: For the Term of His Natural Life
Author: Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke
Release date: September 1, 2002 [eBook #3424]
Most recently updated: March 15, 2018
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE ***
Produced by Col Choat
FOR THE TERM OF HIS NATURAL LIFE
By Marcus Clarke
DEDICATION TO SIR CHARLES GAVAN DUFFY
My Dear Sir Charles, I take leave to dedicate this work to you, not
merely because your nineteen years of political and literary life in
Australia render it very fitting that any work written by a resident in
the colonies, and having to do with the history of past colonial
days, should bear your name upon its dedicatory page; but because the
publication of my book is due to your advice and encouragement.
The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or
at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end
to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by
reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his
experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior
of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how
a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But
no writer--so far as I am aware--has attempted to depict the dismal
condition of a felon during his term of transportation.
I have endeavoured in “His Natural Life” to set forth the working and
the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered
and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the
manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the
inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded
together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public
opinion, and to be submitted to a discipline which must necessarily
depend for its just administration upon the personal character and
temper of their gaolers.
Your critical faculty will doubtless find, in the construction and
artistic working of this book, many faults. I do not think, however,
that you will discover any exaggerations. Some of the events narrated
are doubtless tragic and terrible; but I hold it needful to my purpose
to record them, for they are events which have actually occurred, and
which, if the blunders which produced them be repeated, must infallibly
occur again. It is true that the British Government have ceased to
deport the criminals of England, but the method of punishment, of which
that deportation was a part, is still in existence. Port Blair is a Port
Arthur filled with Indian-men instead of Englishmen; and, within the
last year, France has established, at New Caledonia, a penal settlement
which will, in the natural course of things, repeat in its annals the
history of Macquarie Harbour and of Norfolk Island.
With this brief preface I beg you to accept this work. I would that its
merits were equal either to your kindness or to my regard.
I am,
My dear Sir Charles,
Faithfully yours,
MARCUS CLARKE
THE PUBLIC LIBRARY, MELBOURNE
CONTENTS
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
BOOK I.--THE SEA. 1827.
I. THE PRISON SHIP
II. SARAH PURFOY
III. THE MONOTONY BREAKS
IV. THE HOSPITAL
V. THE BARRACOON
VI. THE FATE OF THE “HYDASPES”
VII. TYPHUS FEVER
VIII. A DANGEROUS CRISIS
IX. WOMAN'S WEAPONS
X. EIGHT BELLS
XI. DISCOVERIES AND CONFESSIONS
XII. A NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH
BOOK II.--MACQUARIE HARBOUR. 1833.
I. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND
II. THE SOLITARY OF “HELL'S GATES”
III. A SOCIAL EVENING
IV. THE BOLTER
V. SYLVIA
VI. A LEAP IN THE DARK
VII. THE LAST OF MACQUARIE HARBOUR
VIII. THE POWER OF THE WILDERNESS
IX. THE SEIZURE OF THE “OSPREY”
X. JOHN REX'S REVENGE
XI. LEFT AT “HELL'S GATES”
XII. “MR.” DAWES
XIII. WHAT THE SEAWEED SUGGESTED
XIV. A WONDERFUL DAY'S WORK
XV. THE CORACLE
XVI. THE WRITING ON THE SAND
XVII. AT SEA
BOOK III.--PORT ARTHUR. 1838.
I. A LABOURER IN THE VINEYARD
II. SARAH PURFOY'S REQUEST
III. THE STORY OF TWO BIRDS OF PREY
IV. “THE NOTORIOUS DAWES”
V. MAURICE FRERE'S GOOD ANGEL
VI. MR. MEEKIN ADMINISTERS CONSOLATION
VII. RUFUS DAWES'S IDYLL
VIII. AN ESCAPE
IX. JOHN REX'S LETTER HOME
X. WHAT BECAME OF THE MUTINEERS OF THE “OSPREY”
XI. A RELIC OF MACQUARIE HARBOUR
XII. AT PORT ARTHUR
XIII. THE COMMANDANT'S BUTLER
XIV. MR. NORTH'S INDISPOSITION
XV. ONE HUNDRED LASHES
XVI. KICKING AGAINST THE PRICKS
XVII. CAPTAIN AND MRS. FRERE
XVIII. IN THE HOSPITAL
XIX. THE CONSOLATIONS OF RELIGION
XX. A NATURAL PENITENTIARY
XXI. A VISIT OF INSPECTION
XXII. GATHERING IN THE THREADS
XXIII RUNNING THE GAUNTLET
XXIV. IN THE NIGHT
XXV. THE FLIGHT
XXVI. THE WORK OF THE SEA
XXVII. THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH
BOOK IV.--NORFOLK ISLAND. 1846.
I. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH
II. THE LOST HEIR
III. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH
IV. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH
V. MR. RICHARD DEVINE SURPRISED
VI. IN WHICH THE CHAPLAIN IS TAKEN ILL
VII. BREAKING A MAN'S SPIRIT
VIII. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH
IX. THE LONGEST STRAW
X. A MEETING
XI. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH
XII. THE STRANGE BEHAVIOUR OF MR. NORTH
XIII. MR. NORTH SPEAKS
XIV. GETTING READY FOR SEA
XV. THE DISCOVERY
XVI. FIFTEEN HOURS
XVII. THE REDEMPTION
XVIII. THE CYCLONE
EPILOGUE
APPENDIX
HIS NATURAL LIFE.
PROLOGUE.
On the evening of May 3, 1827, the garden of a large red-brick
bow-windowed mansion called North End House, which, enclosed in spacious
grounds, stands on the eastern height of Hampstead Heath, between
Finchley Road and the Chestnut Avenue, was the scene of a domestic
tragedy.
Three persons were the actors in it. One was an old man, whose white
hair and wrinkled face gave token that he was at least sixty years
of age. He stood erect with his back to the wall, which separates the
garden from the Heath, in the attitude of one surprised into sudden
passion, and held uplifted the heavy ebony cane upon which he
was ordinarily accustomed to lean. He was confronted by a man of
two-and-twenty, unusually tall and athletic of figure, dresses in rough
seafaring clothes, and who held in his arms, protecting her, a lady
of middle age. The face of the young man wore an expression of
horror-stricken astonishment, and the slight frame of the grey-haired
woman was convulsed with sobs.
These three people were Sir Richard Devine, his wife, and his only son
Richard, who had returned from abroad that morning.
“So, madam,” said Sir Richard, in the high-strung accents which in
crises of great mental agony are common to the most self-restrained of
us, “you have been for twenty years a living lie! For twenty years
you have cheated and mocked me. For twenty years--in company with
a scoundrel whose name is a byword for all that is profligate and
base--you have laughed at me for a credulous and hood-winked fool; and
now, because I dared to raise my hand to that reckless boy, you confess
your shame, and glory in the confession!”
“Mother, dear mother!” cried the young man, in a paroxysm of grief, “say
that you did not mean those words; you said them but in anger! See, I am
calm now, and he may strike me if he will.”
Lady Devine shuddered, creeping close, as though to hide herself in the
broad bosom of her son.
The old man continued: “I married you, Ellinor Wade, for your beauty;
you married me for my fortune. I was a plebeian, a ship's carpenter; you
were well born, your father was a man of fashion, a gambler, the friend
of rakes and prodigals. I was rich. I had been knighted. I was in favour
at Court. He wanted money, and he sold you. I paid the price he asked,
but there was nothing of your cousin, my Lord Bellasis and Wotton, in
the bond.”
“Spare me, sir, spare me!” said Lady Ellinor faintly.
“Spare you! Ay, you have spared me, have you not? Look ye,” he cried,
in sudden fury, “I am not to be fooled so easily. Your family are proud.
Colonel Wade has other daughters. Your lover, my Lord Bellasis, even
now, thinks to retrieve his broken fortunes by marriage. You have
confessed your shame. To-morrow your father, your sisters, all the
world, shall know the story you have told me!”
“By Heaven, sir, you will not do this!” burst out the young man.
“Silence, bastard!” cried Sir Richard. “Ay, bite your lips; the word is
of your precious mother's making!”
Lady Devine slipped through her son's arms and fell on her knees at her
husband's feet.
“Do not do this, Richard. I have been faithful to you for two-and-twenty
years. I have borne all the slights and insults you have heaped upon me.
The shameful secret of my early love broke from me when in your rage,
you threatened him. Let me go away; kill me; but do not shame me.”
Sir Richard, who had turned to walk away, stopped suddenly, and his
great white eyebrows came together in his red face with a savage scowl.
He laughed, and in that laugh his fury seemed to congeal into a cold and
cruel hate.
“You would preserve your good name then. You would conceal this disgrace
from the world. You shall have your wish--upon one condition.”
“What is it, sir?” she asked, rising, but trembling with terror, as she
stood with drooping arms and widely opened eyes.
The old man looked at her for an instant, and then said slowly, “That
this impostor, who so long has falsely borne my name, has wrongfully
squandered my money, and unlawfully eaten my bread, shall pack! That he
abandon for ever the name he has usurped, keep himself from my sight,
and never set foot again in house of mine.”
“You would not part me from my only son!” cried the wretched woman.
“Take him with you to his father then.”
Richard Devine gently loosed the arms that again clung around his neck,
kissed the pale face, and turned his own--scarcely less pale--towards
the old man.
“I owe you no duty,” he said. “You have always hated and reviled me.
When by your violence you drove me from your house, you set spies to
watch me in the life I had chosen. I have nothing in common with you.
I have long felt it. Now when I learn for the first time whose son I
really am, I rejoice to think that I have less to thank you for than
I once believed. I accept the terms you offer. I will go. Nay, mother,
think of your good name.”
Sir Richard Devine laughed again. “I am glad to see you are so well
disposed. Listen now. To-night I send for Quaid to alter my will. My
sister's son, Maurice Frere, shall be my heir in your stead. I give
you nothing. You leave this house in an hour. You change your name; you
never by word or deed make claim on me or mine. No matter what strait
or poverty you plead--if even your life should hang upon the issue--the
instant I hear that there exists on earth one who calls himself Richard
Devine, that instant shall your mother's shame become a public scandal.
You know me. I keep my word. I return in an hour, madam; let me find him
gone.”
He passed them, upright, as if upborne by passion, strode down the
garden with the vigour that anger lends, and took the road to London.
“Richard!” cried the poor mother. “Forgive me, my son! I have ruined
you.”
Richard Devine tossed his black hair from his brow in sudden passion of
love and grief.
“Mother, dear mother, do not weep,” he said. “I am not worthy of your
tears. Forgive! It is I--impetuous and ungrateful during all your years
of sorrow--who most need forgiveness. Let me share your burden that
I may lighten it. He is just. It is fitting that I go. I can earn a
name--a name that I need not blush to bear nor you to hear. I am strong.
I can work. The world is wide. Farewell! my own mother!”
“Not yet, not yet! Ah! see he has taken the Belsize Road. Oh, Richard,
pray Heaven they may not meet.”
“Tush! They will not meet! You are pale, you faint!”
“A terror of I know not what coming evil overpowers me. I tremble for
the future. Oh, Richard, Richard! Forgive me! Pray for me.”
“Hush, dearest! Come, let me lead you in. I will write. I will send you
news of me once at least, ere I depart. So--you are calmer, mother!”
* * * * *
Sir Richard Devine, knight, shipbuilder, naval contractor, and
millionaire, was the son of a Harwich boat carpenter. Early left an
orphan with a sister to support, he soon reduced his sole aim in life to
the accumulation of money. In the Harwich boat-shed, nearly fifty years
before, he had contracted--in defiance of prophesied failure--to build
the Hastings sloop of war for His Majesty King George the Third's Lords
of the Admiralty. This contract was the thin end of that wedge which
eventually split the mighty oak block of Government patronage into
three-deckers and ships of the line; which did good service under
Pellew, Parker, Nelson, Hood; which exfoliated and ramified into huge
dockyards at Plymouth, Portsmouth, and Sheerness, and bore, as its buds
and flowers, countless barrels of measly pork and maggoty biscuit. The
sole aim of the coarse, pushing and hard-headed son of Dick Devine was
to make money. He had cringed and crawled and fluttered and blustered,
had licked the dust off great men's shoes, and danced attendance in
great men's ante-chambers. Nothing was too low, nothing too high for
him. A shrewd man of business, a thorough master of his trade, troubled
with no scruples of honour or of delicacy, he made money rapidly, and
saved it when made. The first hint that the public received of his
wealth was in 1796, when Mr. Devine, one of the shipwrights to the
Government, and a comparatively young man of forty-four or thereabouts,
subscribed five thousand pounds to the Loyalty Loan raised to prosecute
the French war. In 1805, after doing good, and it was hinted not
unprofitable, service in the trial of Lord Melville, the Treasurer
of the Navy, he married his sister to a wealthy Bristol merchant, one
Anthony Frere, and married himself to Ellinor Wade, the eldest daughter
of Colonel Wotton Wade, a boon companion of the Regent, and uncle by
marriage of a remarkable scamp and dandy, Lord Bellasis. At that time,
what with lucky speculations in the Funds--assisted, it was whispered,
by secret intelligence from France during the stormy years of '13, '14,
and '15--and the legitimate profit on his Government contracts, he had
accumulated a princely fortune, and could afford to live in princely
magnificence. But the old-man-of-the-sea burden of parsimony and avarice
which he had voluntarily taken upon him was not to be shaken off,
and the only show he made of his wealth was by purchasing, on his
knighthood, the rambling but comfortable house at Hampstead, and
ostensibly retiring from active business.
His retirement was not a happy one. He was a stern father and a severe
master. His servants hated, and his wife feared him. His only son
Richard appeared to inherit his father's strong will and imperious
manner. Under careful supervision and a just rule he might have been
guided to good; but left to his own devices outside, and galled by
the iron yoke of parental discipline at home, he became reckless and
prodigal. The mother--poor, timid Ellinor, who had been rudely torn from
the love of her youth, her cousin, Lord Bellasis--tried to restrain him,
but the head-strong boy, though owning for his mother that strong love
which is often a part of such violent natures, proved intractable, and
after three years of parental feud, he went off to the Continent, to
pursue there the same reckless life which in London had offended Sir
Richard. Sir Richard, upon this, sent for Maurice Frere, his sister's
son--the abolition of the slave trade had ruined the Bristol House of
Frere--and bought for him a commission in a marching regiment, hinting
darkly of special favours to come. His open preference for his nephew
had galled to the quick his sensitive wife, who contrasted with some
heart-pangs the gallant prodigality of her father with the niggardly
economy of her husband. Between the houses of parvenu Devine and
long-descended Wotton Wade there had long been little love. Sir Richard
felt that the colonel despised him for a city knight, and had heard that
over claret and cards Lord Bellasis and his friends had often lamented
the hard fortune which gave the beauty, Ellinor, to so sordid a
bridegroom. Armigell Esme Wade, Viscount Bellasis and Wotton, was a
product of his time. Of good family (his ancestor, Armigell, was reputed
to have landed in America before Gilbert or Raleigh), he had inherited
his manor of Bellasis, or Belsize, from one Sir Esme Wade, ambassador
from Queen Elizabeth to the King of Spain in the delicate matter of
Mendoza, and afterwards counsellor to James I, and Lieutenant of the
Tower. This Esme was a man of dark devices. It was he who negotiated
with Mary Stuart for Elizabeth; it was he who wormed out of Cobham the
evidence against the great Raleigh. He became rich, and his sister (the
widow of Henry de Kirkhaven, Lord of Hemfleet) marrying into the family
of the Wottons, the wealth of the house was further increased by the
union of her daughter Sybil with Marmaduke Wade. Marmaduke Wade was a
Lord of the Admiralty, and a patron of Pepys, who in his diary [July
17,1668] speaks of visiting him at Belsize. He was raised to the peerage
in 1667 by the title of Baron Bellasis and Wotton, and married for
his second wife Anne, daughter of Philip Stanhope, second Earl of
Chesterfield. Allied to this powerful house, the family tree of Wotton
Wade grew and flourished.
In 1784, Philip, third Baron, married the celebrated beauty, Miss Povey,
and had issue Armigell Esme, in whose person the family prudence seemed
to have run itself out.
The fourth Lord Bellasis combined the daring of Armigell, the
adventurer, with the evil disposition of Esme, the Lieutenant of the
Tower. No sooner had he become master of his fortune than he took
to dice, drink, and debauchery with all the extravagance of the last
century. He was foremost in every riot, most notorious of all the
notorious “bloods” of the day.
Horace Walpole, in one of his letters to Selwyn in 1785, mentions a
fact which may stand for a page of narrative. “Young Wade,” he says, “is
reported to have lost one thousand guineas last night to that vulgarest
of all the Bourbons, the Duc de Chartres, and they say the fool is not
yet nineteen.” From a pigeon Armigell Wade became a hawk, and at thirty
years of age, having lost together with his estates all chance of
winning the one woman who might have saved him--his cousin Ellinor--he
became that most unhappy of all beings, a well-born blackleg. When he
was told by thin-lipped, cool Colonel Wade that the rich shipbuilder,
Sir Richard Devine, had proposed an alliance with fair-haired gentle
Ellinor, he swore, with fierce knitting of his black brows, that no
law of man nor Heaven should further restrain him in his selfish
prodigality. “You have sold your daughter and ruined me,” he said; “look
to the consequences.” Colonel Wade sneered at his fiery kinsman: “You
will find Sir Richard's house a pleasant one to visit, Armigell; and he
should be worth an income to so experienced a gambler as yourself.” Lord
Bellasis did visit at Sir Richard's house during the first year of his
cousin's marriage; but upon the birth of the son who is the hero of this
history, he affected a quarrel with the city knight, and cursing him
to the Prince and Poins for a miserly curmudgeon, who neither diced nor
drank like a gentleman, departed, more desperately at war with fortune
than ever, for his old haunts. The year 1827 found him a hardened,
hopeless old man of sixty, battered in health and ruined in pocket; but
who, by dint of stays, hair-dye, and courage, yet faced the world with
undaunted front, and dined as gaily in bailiff-haunted Belsize as he had
dined at Carlton House. Of the possessions of the House of Wotton Wade,
this old manor, timberless and bare, was all that remained, and its
master rarely visited it.
On the evening of May 3, 1827, Lord Bellasis had been attending a pigeon
match at Hornsey Wood, and having resisted the importunities of his
companion, Mr. Lionel Crofton (a young gentleman-rake, whose position
in the sporting world was not the most secure), who wanted him to go on
into town, he had avowed his intention of striking across Hampstead to
Belsize. “I have an appointment at the fir trees on the Heath,” he said.
“With a woman?” asked Mr. Crofton.
“Not at all; with a parson.”
“A parson!”
“You stare! Well, he is only just ordained. I met him last year at Bath
on his vacation from Cambridge, and he was good enough to lose some
money to me.”
“And now waits to pay it out of his first curacy. I wish your lordship
joy with all my soul. Then, we must push on, for it grows late.”
“Thanks, my dear sir, for the 'we,' but I must go alone,” said Lord
Bellasis dryly. “To-morrow you can settle with me for the sitting of
last week. Hark! the clock is striking nine. Good night.”
* * * * *
At half-past nine Richard Devine quitted his mother's house to begin the
new life he had chosen, and so, drawn together by that strange fate of
circumstances which creates events, the father and son approached each
other.
* * * * *
As the young man gained the middle of the path which led to the Heath,
he met Sir Richard returning from the village. It was no part of his
plan to seek an interview with the man whom his mother had so deeply
wronged, and he would have slunk past in the gloom; but seeing him thus
alone returning to a desolated home, the prodigal was tempted to utter
some words of farewell and of regret. To his astonishment, however, Sir
Richard passed swiftly on, with body bent forward as one in the act of
falling, and with eyes unconscious of surroundings, staring straight
into the distance. Half-terrified at this strange appearance, Richard
hurried onward, and at a turn of the path stumbled upon something which
horribly accounted for the curious action of the old man. A dead body
lay upon its face in the heather; beside it was a heavy riding whip
stained at the handle with blood, and an open pocket-book. Richard took
up the book, and read, in gold letters on the cover, “Lord Bellasis.”
The unhappy young man knelt down beside the body and raised it.
The skull had been fractured by a blow, but it seemed that life yet
lingered. Overcome with horror--for he could not doubt but that his
mother's worst fears had been realized--Richard knelt there holding his
murdered father in his arms, waiting until the murderer, whose name he
bore, should have placed himself beyond pursuit. It seemed an hour to
his excited fancy before he saw a light pass along the front of the
house he had quitted, and knew that Sir Richard had safely reached his
chamber. With some bewildered intention of summoning aid, he left the
body and made towards the town. As he stepped out on the path he heard
voices, and presently some dozen men, one of whom held a horse, burst
out upon him, and, with sudden fury, seized and flung him to the ground.
At first the young man, so rudely assailed, did not comprehend his own
danger. His mind, bent upon one hideous explanation of the crime, did
not see another obvious one which had already occurred to the mind of
the landlord of the Three Spaniards.
“God defend me!” cried Mr. Mogford, scanning by the pale light of
the rising moon the features of the murdered man, “but it is Lord
Bellasis!--oh, you bloody villain! Jem, bring him along here, p'r'aps
his lordship can recognize him!”
“It was not I!” cried Richard Devine. “For God's sake, my lord say--”
then he stopped abruptly, and being forced on his knees by his captors,
remained staring at the dying man, in sudden and ghastly fear.
Those men in whom emotion has the effect of quickening circulation
of the blood reason rapidly in moments of danger, and in the terrible
instant when his eyes met those of Lord Bellasis, Richard Devine had
summed up the chances of his future fortune, and realized to the full
his personal peril. The runaway horse had given the alarm. The
drinkers at the Spaniards' Inn had started to search the Heath, and had
discovered a fellow in rough costume, whose person was unknown to
them, hastily quitting a spot where, beside a rifled pocket-book and a
blood-stained whip, lay a dying man.
The web of circumstantial evidence had enmeshed him. An hour ago escape
would have been easy. He would have had but to cry, “I am the son of Sir
Richard Devine. Come with me to yonder house, and I will prove to
you that I have but just quitted it,”--to place his innocence beyond
immediate question. That course of action was impossible now. Knowing
Sir Richard as he did, and believing, moreover, that in his raging
passion the old man had himself met and murdered the destroyer of
his honour, the son of Lord Bellasis and Lady Devine saw himself in
a position which would compel him either to sacrifice himself, or to
purchase a chance of safety at the price of his mother's dishonour and
the death of the man whom his mother had deceived. If the outcast son
were brought a prisoner to North End House, Sir Richard--now doubly
oppressed of fate--would be certain to deny him; and he would be
compelled, in self-defence, to reveal a story which would at once bring
his mother to open infamy, and send to the gallows the man who had been
for twenty years deceived--the man to whose kindness he owed education
and former fortune. He knelt, stupefied, unable to speak or move.
“Come,” cried Mogford again; “say, my lord, is this the villain?”
Lord Bellasis rallied his failing senses, his glazing eyes stared into
his son's face with horrible eagerness; he shook his head, raised a
feeble arm as though to point elsewhere, and fell back dead.
“If you didn't murder him, you robbed him,” growled Mogford, “and you
shall sleep at Bow Street to-night. Tom, run on to meet the patrol, and
leave word at the Gate-house that I've a passenger for the coach!--Bring
him on, Jack!--What's your name, eh?”
He repeated the rough question twice before his prisoner answered, but
at length Richard Devine raised a pale face which stern resolution had
already hardened into defiant manhood, and said “Dawes--Rufus Dawes.”
* * * * *
His new life had begun already: for that night one, Rufus Dawes, charged
with murder and robbery, lay awake in prison, waiting for the fortune of
the morrow.
Two other men waited as eagerly. One, Mr. Lionel Crofton; the other, the
horseman who had appointment with the murdered Lord Bellasis under the
shadow of the fir trees on Hampstead Heath. As for Sir Richard Devine,
he waited for no one, for upon reaching his room he had fallen senseless
in a fit of apoplexy.
BOOK I.--THE SEA. 1827.
CHAPTER I. THE PRISON SHIP.
In the breathless stillness of a tropical afternoon, when the air was
hot and heavy, and the sky brazen and cloudless, the shadow of the
Malabar lay solitary on the surface of the glittering sea.
The sun--who rose on the left hand every morning a blazing ball, to move
slowly through the unbearable blue, until he sank fiery red in mingling
glories of sky and ocean on the right hand--had just got low enough to
peep beneath the awning that covered the poop-deck, and awaken a young
man, in an undress military uniform, who was dozing on a coil of rope.
“Hang it!” said he, rising and stretching himself, with the weary sigh
of a man who has nothing to do, “I must have been asleep”; and then,
holding by a stay, he turned about and looked down into the waist of the
ship.
Save for the man at the wheel and the guard at the quarter-railing,
he was alone on the deck. A few birds flew round about the vessel, and
seemed to pass under her stern windows only to appear again at her bows.
A lazy albatross, with the white water flashing from his wings, rose
with a dabbling sound to leeward, and in the place where he had been
glided the hideous fin of a silently-swimming shark. The seams of the
well-scrubbed deck were sticky with melted pitch, and the brass plate of
the compass-case sparkled in the sun like a jewel. There was no breeze,
and as the clumsy ship rolled and lurched on the heaving sea, her idle
sails flapped against her masts with a regularly recurring noise, and
her bowsprit would seem to rise higher with the water's swell, to
dip again with a jerk that made each rope tremble and tauten. On the
forecastle, some half-dozen soldiers, in all varieties of undress, were
playing at cards, smoking, or watching the fishing-lines hanging over
the catheads.
So far the appearance of the vessel differed in no wise from that of an
ordinary transport. But in the waist a curious sight presented itself.
It was as though one had built a cattle-pen there. At the foot of the
foremast, and at the quarter-deck, a strong barricade, loop-holed and
furnished with doors for ingress and egress, ran across the deck from
bulwark to bulwark. Outside this cattle-pen an armed sentry stood on
guard; inside, standing, sitting, or walking monotonously, within range
of the shining barrels in the arm chest on the poop, were some sixty men
and boys, dressed in uniform grey. The men and boys were prisoners of
the Crown, and the cattle-pen was their exercise ground. Their prison
was down the main hatchway, on the 'tween decks, and the barricade,
continued down, made its side walls.
It was the fag end of the two hours' exercise graciously permitted each
afternoon by His Majesty King George the Fourth to prisoners of the
Crown, and the prisoners of the Crown were enjoying themselves. It was
not, perhaps, so pleasant as under the awning on the poop-deck, but
that sacred shade was only for such great men as the captain and his
officers, Surgeon Pine, Lieutenant Maurice Frere, and, most important
personages of all, Captain Vickers and his wife.
That the convict leaning against the bulwarks would like to have been
able to get rid of his enemy the sun for a moment, was probable enough.
His companions, sitting on the combings of the main-hatch, or crouched
in careless fashion on the shady side of the barricade, were laughing
and talking, with blasphemous and obscene merriment hideous to
contemplate; but he, with cap pulled over his brows, and hands thrust
into the pockets of his coarse grey garments, held aloof from their
dismal joviality.
The sun poured his hottest rays on his head unheeded, and though every
cranny and seam in the deck sweltered hot pitch under the fierce heat,
the man stood there, motionless and morose, staring at the sleepy sea.
He had stood thus, in one place or another, ever since the groaning
vessel had escaped from the rollers of the Bay of Biscay, and the
miserable hundred and eighty creatures among whom he was classed had
been freed from their irons, and allowed to sniff fresh air twice a day.
The low-browed, coarse-featured ruffians grouped about the deck cast
many a leer of contempt at the solitary figure, but their remarks were
confined to gestures only. There are degrees in crime, and Rufus Dawes,
the convicted felon, who had but escaped the gallows to toil for all his
life in irons, was a man of mark. He had been tried for the robbery and
murder of Lord Bellasis. The friendless vagabond's lame story of finding
on the Heath a dying man would not have availed him, but for the curious
fact sworn to by the landlord of the Spaniards' Inn, that the murdered
nobleman had shaken his head when asked if the prisoner was his
assassin. The vagabond was acquitted of the murder, but condemned to
death for the robbery, and London, who took some interest in the
trial, considered him fortunate when his sentence was commuted to
transportation for life.
It was customary on board these floating prisons to keep each man's
crime a secret from his fellows, so that if he chose, and the caprice of
his gaolers allowed him, he could lead a new life in his adopted
home, without being taunted with his former misdeeds. But, like other
excellent devices, the expedient was only a nominal one, and few out of
the doomed hundred and eighty were ignorant of the offence which their
companions had committed. The more guilty boasted of their superiority
in vice; the petty criminals swore that their guilt was blacker than it
appeared. Moreover, a deed so bloodthirsty and a respite so unexpected,
had invested the name of Rufus Dawes with a grim distinction, which his
superior mental abilities, no less than his haughty temper and powerful
frame, combined to support. A young man of two-and-twenty owning to no
friends, and existing among them but by the fact of his criminality,
he was respected and admired. The vilest of all the vile horde penned
between decks, if they laughed at his “fine airs” behind his back,
cringed and submitted when they met him face to face--for in a convict
ship the greatest villain is the greatest hero, and the only nobility
acknowledged by that hideous commonwealth is that Order of the Halter
which is conferred by the hand of the hangman.
The young man on the poop caught sight of the tall figure leaning
against the bulwarks, and it gave him an excuse to break the monotony of
his employment.
“Here, you!” he called with an oath, “get out of the gangway!” Rufus
Dawes was not in the gangway--was, in fact, a good two feet from it, but
at the sound of Lieutenant Frere's voice he started, and went obediently
towards the hatchway.
“Touch your hat, you dog!” cries Frere, coming to the quarter-railing.
“Touch your damned hat! Do you hear?”
Rufus Dawes touched his cap, saluting in half military fashion. “I'll
make some of you fellows smart, if you don't have a care,” went on the
angry Frere, half to himself. “Insolent blackguards!”
And then the noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him,
grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts. A thin, tall,
soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features, came out of
the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected, mincing lady,
of middle age. Captain Vickers, of Mr. Frere's regiment, ordered for
service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck to get an
appetite for dinner.
Mrs. Vickers was forty-two (she owned to thirty-three), and had been
a garrison-belle for eleven weary years before she married prim John
Vickers. The marriage was not a happy one. Vickers found his wife
extravagant, vain, and snappish, and she found him harsh, disenchanted,
and commonplace. A daughter, born two years after their marriage, was
the only link that bound the ill-assorted pair. Vickers idolized little
Sylvia, and when the recommendation of a long sea-voyage for his failing
health induced him to exchange into the --th, he insisted upon bringing
the child with him, despite Mrs. Vickers's reiterated objections on the
score of educational difficulties. “He could educate her himself, if
need be,” he said; “and she should not stay at home.”
So Mrs. Vickers, after a hard struggle, gave up the point and her dreams
of Bath together, and followed her husband with the best grace she could
muster. When fairly out to sea she seemed reconciled to her fate, and
employed the intervals between scolding her daughter and her maid, in
fascinating the boorish young Lieutenant, Maurice Frere.
Fascination was an integral portion of Julia Vickers's nature;
admiration was all she lived for: and even in a convict ship, with her
husband at her elbow, she must flirt, or perish of mental inanition.
There was no harm in the creature. She was simply a vain, middle-aged
woman, and Frere took her attentions for what they were worth. Moreover,
her good feeling towards him was useful, for reasons which will shortly
appear.
Running down the ladder, cap in hand, he offered her his assistance.
“Thank you, Mr. Frere. These horrid ladders. I really--he, he--quite
tremble at them. Hot! Yes, dear me, most oppressive. John, the
camp-stool. Pray, Mr. Frere--oh, thank you! Sylvia! Sylvia! John, have
you my smelling salts? Still a calm, I suppose? These dreadful calms!”
This semi-fashionable slip-slop, within twenty yards of the wild beasts'
den, on the other side of the barricade, sounded strange; but Mr. Frere
thought nothing of it. Familiarity destroys terror, and the incurable
flirt, fluttered her muslins, and played off her second-rate graces,
under the noses of the grinning convicts, with as much complacency as
if she had been in a Chatham ball-room. Indeed, if there had been
nobody else near, it is not unlikely that she would have disdainfully
fascinated the 'tween-decks, and made eyes at the most presentable of
the convicts there.
Vickers, with a bow to Frere, saw his wife up the ladder, and then
turned for his daughter.
She was a delicate-looking child of six years old, with blue eyes and
bright hair. Though indulged by her father, and spoiled by her
mother, the natural sweetness of her disposition saved her from being
disagreeable, and the effects of her education as yet only showed
themselves in a thousand imperious prettinesses, which made her the
darling of the ship. Little Miss Sylvia was privileged to go anywhere
and do anything, and even convictism shut its foul mouth in her
presence. Running to her father's side, the child chattered with all the
volubility of flattered self-esteem. She ran hither and thither, asked
questions, invented answers, laughed, sang, gambolled, peered into the
compass-case, felt in the pockets of the man at the helm, put her tiny
hand into the big palm of the officer of the watch, even ran down to the
quarter-deck and pulled the coat-tails of the sentry on duty.
At last, tired of running about, she took a little striped leather ball
from the bosom of her frock, and calling to her father, threw it up
to him as he stood on the poop. He returned it, and, shouting with
laughter, clapping her hands between each throw, the child kept up the
game.
The convicts--whose slice of fresh air was nearly eaten--turned with
eagerness to watch this new source of amusement. Innocent laughter and
childish prattle were strange to them. Some smiled, and nodded with
interest in the varying fortunes of the game. One young lad could hardly
restrain himself from applauding. It was as though, out of the sultry
heat which brooded over the ship, a cool breeze had suddenly arisen.
In the midst of this mirth, the officer of the watch, glancing round the
fast crimsoning horizon, paused abruptly, and shading his eyes with his
hand, looked out intently to the westward.
Frere, who found Mrs. Vickers's conversation a little tiresome, and
had been glancing from time to time at the companion, as though in
expectation of someone appearing, noticed the action.
“What is it, Mr. Best?”
“I don't know exactly. It looks to me like a cloud of smoke.” And,
taking the glass, he swept the horizon.
“Let me see,” said Frere; and he looked also.
On the extreme horizon, just to the left of the sinking sun, rested, or
seemed to rest, a tiny black cloud. The gold and crimson, splashed
all about the sky, had overflowed around it, and rendered a clear view
almost impossible.
“I can't quite make it out,” says Frere, handing back the telescope. “We
can see as soon as the sun goes down a little.”
Then Mrs. Vickers must, of course, look also, and was prettily affected
about the focus of the glass, applying herself to that instrument with
much girlish giggling, and finally declaring, after shutting one eye
with her fair hand, that positively she “could see nothing but sky, and
believed that wicked Mr. Frere was doing it on purpose.”
By and by, Captain Blunt appeared, and, taking the glass from his
officer, looked through it long and carefully. Then the mizentop was
appealed to, and declared that he could see nothing; and at last the sun
went down with a jerk, as though it had slipped through a slit in the
sea, and the black spot, swallowed up in the gathering haze, was seen no
more.
As the sun sank, the relief guard came up the after hatchway, and the
relieved guard prepared to superintend the descent of the convicts. At
this moment Sylvia missed her ball, which, taking advantage of a sudden
lurch of the vessel, hopped over the barricade, and rolled to the feet
of Rufus Dawes, who was still leaning, apparently lost in thought,
against the side.
The bright spot of colour rolling across the white deck caught his eye;
stooping mechanically, he picked up the ball, and stepped forward to
return it. The door of the barricade was open and the sentry--a young
soldier, occupied in staring at the relief guard--did not notice the
prisoner pass through it. In another instant he was on the sacred
quarter-deck.
Heated with the game, her cheeks aglow, her eyes sparkling, her golden
hair afloat, Sylvia had turned to leap after her plaything, but even as
she turned, from under the shadow of the cuddy glided a rounded white
arm; and a shapely hand caught the child by the sash and drew her back.
The next moment the young man in grey had placed the toy in her hand.
Maurice Frere, descending the poop ladder, had not witnessed this little
incident; on reaching the deck, he saw only the unexplained presence of
the convict uniform.
“Thank you,” said a voice, as Rufus Dawes stooped before the pouting
Sylvia.
The convict raised his eyes and saw a young girl of eighteen or nineteen
years of age, tall, and well developed, who, dressed in a loose-sleeved
robe of some white material, was standing in the doorway. She had black
hair, coiled around a narrow and flat head, a small foot, white skin,
well-shaped hands, and large dark eyes, and as she smiled at him, her
scarlet lips showed her white even teeth.
He knew her at once. She was Sarah Purfoy, Mrs. Vickers's maid, but he
never had been so close to her before; and it seemed to him that he was
in the presence of some strange tropical flower, which exhaled a heavy
and intoxicating perfume.
For an instant the two looked at each other, and then Rufus Dawes was
seized from behind by his collar, and flung with a shock upon the deck.
Leaping to his feet, his first impulse was to rush upon his assailant,
but he saw the ready bayonet of the sentry gleam, and he checked himself
with an effort, for his assailant was Mr. Maurice Frere.
“What the devil do you do here?” asked the gentleman with an oath. “You
lazy, skulking hound, what brings you here? If I catch you putting your
foot on the quarter-deck again, I'll give you a week in irons!”
Rufus Dawes, pale with rage and mortification, opened his mouth to
justify himself, but he allowed the words to die on his lips. What was
the use? “Go down below, and remember what I've told you,” cried Frere;
and comprehending at once what had occurred, he made a mental minute of
the name of the defaulting sentry.
The convict, wiping the blood from his face, turned on his heel without
a word, and went back through the strong oak door into his den. Frere
leant forward and took the girl's shapely hand with an easy gesture, but
she drew it away, with a flash of her black eyes.
“You coward!” she said.
The stolid soldier close beside them heard it, and his eye twinkled.
Frere bit his thick lips with mortification, as he followed the girl
into the cuddy. Sarah Purfoy, however, taking the astonished Sylvia by
the hand, glided into her mistress's cabin with a scornful laugh, and
shut the door behind her.
CHAPTER II. SARAH PURFOY.
Convictism having been safely got under hatches, and put to bed in its
Government allowance of sixteen inches of space per man, cut a little
short by exigencies of shipboard, the cuddy was wont to pass some not
unpleasant evenings. Mrs. Vickers, who was poetical and owned a guitar,
was also musical and sang to it. Captain Blunt was a jovial, coarse
fellow; Surgeon Pine had a mania for story-telling; while if Vickers was
sometimes dull, Frere was always hearty. Moreover, the table was well
served, and what with dinner, tobacco, whist, music, and brandy and
water, the sultry evenings passed away with a rapidity of which the
wild beasts 'tween decks, cooped by sixes in berths of a mere five feet
square, had no conception.
On this particular evening, however, the cuddy was dull. Dinner fell
flat, and conversation languished.
“No signs of a breeze, Mr. Best?” asked Blunt, as the first officer came
in and took his seat.
“None, sir.”
“These--he, he!--awful calms,” says Mrs. Vickers. “A week, is it not,
Captain Blunt?”
“Thirteen days, mum,” growled Blunt.
“I remember, off the Coromandel coast,” put in cheerful Pine, “when we
had the plague in the Rattlesnake--”
“Captain Vickers, another glass of wine?” cried Blunt, hastening to cut
the anecdote short.
“Thank you, no more. I have the headache.”
“Headache--um--don't wonder at it, going down among those fellows. It is
infamous the way they crowd these ships. Here we have over two hundred
souls on board, and not boat room for half of 'em.”
“Two hundred souls! Surely not,” says Vickers. “By the King's
Regulations--”
“One hundred and eighty convicts, fifty soldiers, thirty in ship's crew,
all told, and--how many?--one, two three--seven in the cuddy. How many
do you make that?”
“We are just a little crowded this time,” says Best.
“It is very wrong,” says Vickers, pompously. “Very wrong. By the King's
Regulations--”
But the subject of the King's Regulations was even more distasteful to
the cuddy than Pine's interminable anecdotes, and Mrs. Vickers hastened
to change the subject.
“Are you not heartily tired of this dreadful life, Mr. Frere?”
“Well, it is not exactly the life I had hoped to lead,” said Frere,
rubbing a freckled hand over his stubborn red hair; “but I must make the
best of it.”
“Yes, indeed,” said the lady, in that subdued manner with which one
comments upon a well-known accident, “it must have been a great shock to
you to be so suddenly deprived of so large a fortune.”
“Not only that, but to find that the black sheep who got it all sailed
for India within a week of my uncle's death! Lady Devine got a letter
from him on the day of the funeral to say that he had taken his passage
in the Hydaspes for Calcutta, and never meant to come back again!”
“Sir Richard Devine left no other children?”
“No, only this mysterious Dick, whom I never saw, but who must have
hated me.”
“Dear, dear! These family quarrels are dreadful things. Poor Lady
Devine, to lose in one day a husband and a son!”
“And the next morning to hear of the murder of her cousin! You know that
we are connected with the Bellasis family. My aunt's father married a
sister of the second Lord Bellasis.”
“Indeed. That was a horrible murder. So you think that the dreadful man
you pointed out the other day did it?”
“The jury seemed to think not,” said Mr. Frere, with a laugh; “but I
don't know anybody else who could have a motive for it. However, I'll go
on deck and have a smoke.”
“I wonder what induced that old hunks of a shipbuilder to try to cut
off his only son in favour of a cub of that sort,” said Surgeon Pine to
Captain Vickers as the broad back of Mr. Maurice Frere disappeared up
the companion.
“Some boyish follies abroad, I believe; self-made men are always
impatient of extravagance. But it is hard upon Frere. He is not a bad
sort of fellow for all his roughness, and when a young man finds that an
accident deprives him of a quarter of a million of money and leaves him
without a sixpence beyond his commission in a marching regiment under
orders for a convict settlement, he has some reason to rail against
fate.”
“How was it that the son came in for the money after all, then?”
“Why, it seems that when old Devine returned from sending for his lawyer
to alter his will, he got a fit of apoplexy, the result of his rage, I
suppose, and when they opened his room door in the morning they found
him dead.”
“And the son's away on the sea somewhere,” said Mr. Vickers “and knows
nothing of his good fortune. It is quite a romance.”
“I am glad that Frere did not get the money,” said Pine, grimly sticking
to his prejudice; “I have seldom seen a face I liked less, even among my
yellow jackets yonder.”
“Oh dear, Dr. Pine! How can you?” interjected Mrs. Vickers. “'Pon my
soul, ma'am, some of them have mixed in good society, I can tell you.
There's pickpockets and swindlers down below who have lived in the best
company.”
“Dreadful wretches!” cried Mrs. Vickers, shaking out her skirts. “John,
I will go on deck.”
At the signal, the party rose.
“Ecod, Pine,” says Captain Blunt, as the two were left alone together,
“you and I are always putting our foot into it!”
“Women are always in the way aboard ship,” returned Pine.
“Ah! Doctor, you don't mean that, I know,” said a rich soft voice at his
elbow.
It was Sarah Purfoy emerging from her cabin.
“Here is the wench!” cries Blunt. “We are talking of your eyes, my
dear.” “Well, they'll bear talking about, captain, won't they?” asked
she, turning them full upon him.
“By the Lord, they will!” says Blunt, smacking his hand on the table.
“They're the finest eyes I've seen in my life, and they've got the
reddest lips under 'm that--”
“Let me pass, Captain Blunt, if you please. Thank you, doctor.”
And before the admiring commander could prevent her, she modestly swept
out of the cuddy.
“She's a fine piece of goods, eh?” asked Blunt, watching her. “A spice
o' the devil in her, too.”
Old Pine took a huge pinch of snuff.
“Devil! I tell you what it is, Blunt. I don't know where Vickers picked
her up, but I'd rather trust my life with the worst of those ruffians
'tween decks, than in her keeping, if I'd done her an injury.”
Blunt laughed.
“I don't believe she'd think much of sticking a man, either!” he said,
rising. “But I must go on deck, doctor.” Pine followed him more slowly.
“I don't pretend to know much about women,” he said to himself, “but
that girl's got a story of her own, or I'm much mistaken. What brings
her on board this ship as lady's-maid is more than I can fathom.” And
as, sticking his pipe between his teeth, he walked down the now deserted
deck to the main hatchway, and turned to watch the white figure gliding
up and down the poop-deck, he saw it joined by another and a darker one,
he muttered, “She's after no good, I'll swear.”
At that moment his arm was touched by a soldier in undress uniform, who
had come up the hatchway. “What is it?”
The man drew himself up and saluted.
“If you please, doctor, one of the prisoners is taken sick, and as the
dinner's over, and he's pretty bad, I ventured to disturb your honour.”
“You ass!” says Pine--who, like many gruff men, had a good heart under
his rough shell--“why didn't you tell me before?” and knocking the ashes
out of his barely-lighted pipe, he stopped that implement with a twist
of paper and followed his summoner down the hatchway.
In the meantime the woman who was the object of the grim old fellow's
suspicions was enjoying the comparative coolness of the night air.
Her mistress and her mistress's daughter had not yet come out of their
cabin, and the men had not yet finished their evening's tobacco. The
awning had been removed, the stars were shining in the moonless sky, the
poop guard had shifted itself to the quarter-deck, and Miss Sarah Purfoy
was walking up and down the deserted poop, in close tête-à-tête with no
less a person than Captain Blunt himself. She had passed and repassed
him twice silently, and at the third turn the big fellow, peering into
the twilight ahead somewhat uneasily, obeyed the glitter of her great
eyes, and joined her.
“You weren't put out, my wench,” he asked, “at what I said to you
below?”
She affected surprise.
“What do you mean?”
“Why, at my--at what I--at my rudeness, there! For I was a bit rude, I
admit.”
“I? Oh dear, no. You were not rude.”
“Glad you think so!” returned Phineas Blunt, a little ashamed at what
looked like a confession of weakness on his part.
“You would have been--if I had let you.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw it in your face. Do you think a woman can't see in a man's face
when he's going to insult her?”
“Insult you, hey! Upon my word!”
“Yes, insult me. You're old enough to be my father, Captain Blunt, but
you've no right to kiss me, unless I ask you.”
“Haw, haw!” laughed Blunt. “I like that. Ask me! Egad, I wish you would,
you black-eyed minx!”
“So would other people, I have no doubt.” “That soldier officer, for
instance. Hey, Miss Modesty? I've seen him looking at you as though he'd
like to try.”
The girl flashed at him with a quick side glance.
“You mean Lieutenant Frere, I suppose. Are you jealous of him?”
“Jealous! Why, damme, the lad was only breeched the other day. Jealous!”
“I think you are--and you've no need to be. He is a stupid booby, though
he is Lieutenant Frere.”
“So he is. You are right there, by the Lord.”
Sarah Purfoy laughed a low, full-toned laugh, whose sound made Blunt's
pulse take a jump forward, and sent the blood tingling down to his
fingers ends.
“Captain Blunt,” said she, “you're going to do a very silly thing.”
He came close to her and tried to take her hand.
“What?”
She answered by another question.
“How old are you?”
“Forty-two, if you must know.”
“Oh! And you are going to fall in love with a girl of nineteen.”
“Who is that?”
“Myself!” she said, giving him her hand and smiling at him with her rich
red lips.
The mizen hid them from the man at the wheel, and the twilight of
tropical stars held the main-deck. Blunt felt the breath of this strange
woman warm on his cheek, her eyes seemed to wax and wane, and the hard,
small hand he held burnt like fire.
“I believe you are right,” he cried. “I am half in love with you
already.”
She gazed at him with a contemptuous sinking of her heavily fringed
eyelids, and withdrew her hand.
“Then don't get to the other half, or you'll regret it.”
“Shall I?” asked Blunt. “That's my affair. Come, you little vixen, give
me that kiss you said I was going to ask you for below,” and he caught
her in his arms.
In an instant she had twisted herself free, and confronted him with
flashing eyes.
“You dare!” she cried. “Kiss me by force! Pooh! you make love like a
schoolboy. If you can make me like you, I'll kiss you as often as you
will. If you can't, keep your distance, please.”
Blunt did not know whether to laugh or be angry at this rebuff. He was
conscious that he was in rather a ridiculous position, and so decided to
laugh.
“You're a spitfire, too. What must I do to make you like me?”
She made him a curtsy.
“That is your affair,” she said; and as the head of Mr. Frere appeared
above the companion, Blunt walked aft, feeling considerably bewildered,
and yet not displeased.
“She's a fine girl, by jingo,” he said, cocking his cap, “and I'm hanged
if she ain't sweet upon me.”
And then the old fellow began to whistle softly to himself as he paced
the deck, and to glance towards the man who had taken his place with no
friendly eyes. But a sort of shame held him as yet, and he kept aloof.
Maurice Frere's greeting was short enough.
“Well, Sarah,” he said, “have you got out of your temper?”
She frowned.
“What did you strike the man for? He did you no harm.”
“He was out of his place. What business had he to come aft? One must
keep these wretches down, my girl.”
“Or they will be too much for you, eh? Do you think one man could
capture a ship, Mr. Maurice?”
“No, but one hundred might.”
“Nonsense! What could they do against the soldiers? There are fifty
soldiers.”
“So there are, but--”
“But what?”
“Well, never mind. It's against the rules, and I won't have it.”
“'Not according to the King's Regulations,' as Captain Vickers would
say.”
Frere laughed at her imitation of his pompous captain.
“You are a strange girl; I can't make you out. Come,” and he took her
hand, “tell me what you are really.”
“Will you promise not to tell?”
“Of course.”
“Upon your word?”
“Upon my word.”
“Well, then--but you'll tell?”
“Not I. Come, go on.”
“Lady's-maid in the family of a gentleman going abroad.”
“Sarah, you can't be serious?” “I am serious. That was the advertisement
I answered.”
“But I mean what you have been. You were not a lady's-maid all your
life?”
She pulled her shawl closer round her and shivered.
“People are not born ladies' maids, I suppose?”
“Well, who are you, then? Have you no friends? What have you been?”
She looked up into the young man's face--a little less harsh at
that moment than it was wont to be--and creeping closer to him,
whispered--“Do you love me, Maurice?”
He raised one of the little hands that rested on the taffrail, and,
under cover of the darkness, kissed it.
“You know I do,” he said. “You may be a lady's-maid or what you like,
but you are the loveliest woman I ever met.”
She smiled at his vehemence.
“Then, if you love me, what does it matter?” “If you loved me, you would
tell me,” said he, with a quickness which surprised himself.
“But I have nothing to tell, and I don't love you--yet.”
He let her hand fall with an impatient gesture; and at that moment
Blunt--who could restrain himself no longer--came up.
“Fine night, Mr. Frere?”
“Yes, fine enough.”
“No signs of a breeze yet, though.”
“No, not yet.”
Just then, from out of the violet haze that hung over the horizon, a
strange glow of light broke.
“Hallo,” cries Frere, “did you see that?”
All had seen it, but they looked for its repetition in vain. Blunt
rubbed his eyes.
“I saw it,” he said, “distinctly. A flash of light.” They strained their
eyes to pierce through the obscurity.
“Best saw something like it before dinner. There must be thunder in the
air.”
At that instant a thin streak of light shot up and then sank again.
There was no mistaking it this time, and a simultaneous exclamation
burst from all on deck. From out the gloom which hung over the horizon
rose a column of flame that lighted up the night for an instant, and
then sunk, leaving a dull red spark upon the water.
“It's a ship on fire,” cried Frere.
CHAPTER III. THE MONOTONY BREAKS.
They looked again, the tiny spark still burned, and immediately over it
there grew out of the darkness a crimson spot, that hung like a lurid
star in the air. The soldiers and sailors on the forecastle had seen
it also, and in a moment the whole vessel was astir. Mrs. Vickers, with
little Sylvia clinging to her dress, came up to share the new sensation;
and at the sight of her mistress, the modest maid withdrew discreetly
from Frere's side. Not that there was any need to do so; no one heeded
her. Blunt, in his professional excitement, had already forgotten her
presence, and Frere was in earnest conversation with Vickers.
“Take a boat?” said that gentleman. “Certainly, my dear Frere, by all
means. That is to say, if the captain does not object, and it is not
contrary to the Regulations.”
“Captain, you'll lower a boat, eh? We may save some of the poor
devils,” cries Frere, his heartiness of body reviving at the prospect of
excitement.
“Boat!” said Blunt, “why, she's twelve miles off and more, and there's
not a breath o' wind!”
“But we can't let 'em roast like chestnuts!” cried the other, as the
glow in the sky broadened and became more intense.
“What is the good of a boat?” said Pine. “The long-boat only holds
thirty men, and that's a big ship yonder.”
“Well, take two boats--three boats! By Heaven, you'll never let 'em burn
alive without stirring a finger to save 'em!”
“They've got their own boats,” says Blunt, whose coolness was in strong
contrast to the young officer's impetuosity; “and if the fire gains,
they'll take to 'em, you may depend. In the meantime, we'll show 'em
that there's someone near 'em.” And as he spoke, a blue light flared
hissing into the night.
“There, they'll see that, I expect!” he said, as the ghastly flame rose,
extinguishing the stars for a moment, only to let them appear again
brighter in a darker heaven.
“Mr. Best--lower and man the quarter-boats! Mr. Frere--you can go in
one, if you like, and take a volunteer or two from those grey jackets
of yours amidships. I shall want as many hands as I can spare to man the
long-boat and cutter, in case we want 'em. Steady there, lads! Easy!”
and as the first eight men who could reach the deck parted to the
larboard and starboard quarter-boats, Frere ran down on the main-deck.
Mrs. Vickers, of course, was in the way, and gave a genteel scream as
Blunt rudely pushed past her with a scarce-muttered apology; but her
maid was standing erect and motionless, by the quarter-railing, and as
the captain paused for a moment to look round him, he saw her dark eyes
fixed on him admiringly. He was, as he said, over forty-two, burly
and grey-haired, but he blushed like a girl under her approving gaze.
Nevertheless, he said only, “That wench is a trump!” and swore a little.
Meanwhile Maurice Frere had passed the sentry and leapt down into the
'tween decks. At his nod, the prison door was thrown open. The air was
hot, and that strange, horrible odour peculiar to closely-packed human
bodies filled the place. It was like coming into a full stable.
He ran his eye down the double tier of bunks which lined the side of the
ship, and stopped at the one opposite him.
There seemed to have been some disturbance there lately, for instead of
the six pair of feet which should have protruded therefrom, the gleam of
the bull's-eye showed but four.
“What's the matter here, sentry?” he asked.
“Prisoner ill, sir. Doctor sent him to hospital.”
“But there should be two.”
The other came from behind the break of the berths. It was Rufus Dawes.
He held by the side as he came, and saluted.
“I felt sick, sir, and was trying to get the scuttle open.”
The heads were all raised along the silent line, and eyes and ears were
eager to see and listen. The double tier of bunks looked terribly like a
row of wild beast cages at that moment.
Maurice Frere stamped his foot indignantly.
“Sick! What are you sick about, you malingering dog? I'll give you
something to sweat the sickness out of you. Stand on one side here!”
Rufus Dawes, wondering, obeyed. He seemed heavy and dejected, and passed
his hand across his forehead, as though he would rub away a pain there.
“Which of you fellows can handle an oar?” Frere went on. “There, curse
you, I don't want fifty! Three'll do. Come on now, make haste!”
The heavy door clashed again, and in another instant the four
“volunteers” were on deck. The crimson glow was turning yellow now, and
spreading over the sky.
“Two in each boat!” cries Blunt. “I'll burn a blue light every hour for
you, Mr. Best; and take care they don't swamp you. Lower away, lads!” As
the second prisoner took the oar of Frere's boat, he uttered a groan and
fell forward, recovering himself instantly. Sarah Purfoy, leaning over
the side, saw the occurrence.
“What is the matter with that man?” she said. “Is he ill?”
Pine was next to her, and looked out instantly. “It's that big fellow in
No. 10,” he cried. “Here, Frere!”
But Frere heard him not. He was intent on the beacon that gleamed ever
brighter in the distance. “Give way, my lads!” he shouted. And amid a
cheer from the ship, the two boats shot out of the bright circle of the
blue light, and disappeared into the darkness.
Sarah Purfoy looked at Pine for an explanation, but he turned abruptly
away. For a moment the girl paused, as if in doubt; and then, ere his
retreating figure turned to retrace its steps, she cast a quick glance
around, and slipping down the ladder, made her way to the 'tween decks.
The iron-studded oak barricade that, loop-holed for musketry, and
perforated with plated trapdoor for sterner needs, separated soldiers
from prisoners, was close to her left hand, and the sentry at its
padlocked door looked at her inquiringly. She laid her little hand on
his big rough one--a sentry is but mortal--and opened her brown eyes at
him.
“The hospital,” she said. “The doctor sent me”; and before he could
answer, her white figure vanished down the hatch, and passed round the
bulkhead, behind which lay the sick man.
CHAPTER IV. THE HOSPITAL.
The hospital was nothing more nor less than a partitioned portion of the
lower deck, filched from the space allotted to the soldiers. It ran fore
and aft, coming close to the stern windows, and was, in fact, a sort of
artificial stern cabin. At a pinch, it might have held a dozen men.
Though not so hot as in the prison, the atmosphere of the lower deck was
close and unhealthy, and the girl, pausing to listen to the subdued hum
of conversation coming from the soldiers' berths, turned strangely sick
and giddy. She drew herself up, however, and held out her hand to a man
who came rapidly across the misshapen shadows, thrown by the sulkily
swinging lantern, to meet her. It was the young soldier who had been
that day sentry at the convict gangway.
“Well, miss,” he said, “I am here, yer see, waiting for yer.”
“You are a good boy, Miles; but don't you think I'm worth waiting for?”
Miles grinned from ear to ear.
“Indeed you be,” said he.
Sarah Purfoy frowned, and then smiled.
“Come here, Miles; I've got something for you.”
Miles came forward, grinning harder.
The girl produced a small object from the pocket of her dress. If Mrs.
Vickers had seen it she would probably have been angry, for it was
nothing less than the captain's brandy-flask.
“Drink,” said she. “It's the same as they have upstairs, so it won't
hurt you.”
The fellow needed no pressing. He took off half the contents of the
bottle at a gulp, and then, fetching a long breath, stood staring at
her.
“That's prime!”
“Is it? I dare say it is.” She had been looking at him with unaffected
disgust as he drank. “Brandy is all you men understand.” Miles--still
sucking in his breath--came a pace closer.
“Not it,” said he, with a twinkle in his little pig's eyes. “I
understand something else, miss, I can tell yer.”
The tone of the sentence seemed to awaken and remind her of her errand
in that place. She laughed as loudly and as merrily as she dared, and
laid her hand on the speaker's arm. The boy--for he was but a boy, one
of those many ill-reared country louts who leave the plough-tail for
the musket, and, for a shilling a day, experience all the “pomp
and circumstance of glorious war”--reddened to the roots of his
closely-cropped hair.
“There, that's quite close enough. You're only a common soldier, Miles,
and you mustn't make love to me.”
“Not make love to yer!” says Miles. “What did yer tell me to meet yer
here for then?”
She laughed again.
“What a practical animal you are! Suppose I had something to say to
you?”
Miles devoured her with his eyes.
“It's hard to marry a soldier,” he said, with a recruit's proud
intonation of the word; “but yer might do worse, miss, and I'll work for
yer like a slave, I will.”
She looked at him with curiosity and pleasure. Though her time was
evidently precious, she could not resist the temptation of listening to
praises of herself.
“I know you're above me, Miss Sarah. You're a lady, but I love yer, I
do, and you drives me wild with yer tricks.”
“Do I?”
“Do yer? Yes, yer do. What did yer come an' make up to me for, and then
go sweetheartin' with them others?”
“What others?”
“Why, the cuddy folk--the skipper, and the parson, and that Frere. I see
yer walkin' the deck wi' un o' nights. Dom 'um, I'd put a bullet through
his red head as soon as look at un.”
“Hush! Miles dear--they'll hear you.”
Her face was all aglow, and her expanded nostrils throbbed. Beautiful as
the face was, it had a tigerish look about it at that moment.
Encouraged by the epithet, Miles put his arm round her slim waist, just
as Blunt had done, but she did not resent it so abruptly. Miles had
promised more.
“Hush!” she whispered, with admirably-acted surprise--“I heard a noise!”
and as the soldier started back, she smoothed her dress complacently.
“There is no one!” cried he.
“Isn't there? My mistake, then. Now come here, Miles.”
Miles obeyed.
“Who is in the hospital?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, I want to go in.”
Miles scratched his head, and grinned.
“Yer carn't.”
“Why not? You've let me in before.” “Against the doctor's orders. He
told me special to let no one in but himself.”
“Nonsense.”
“It ain't nonsense. There was a convict brought in to-night, and
nobody's to go near him.”
“A convict!” She grew more interested. “What's the matter with him?”
“Dunno. But he's to be kep' quiet until old Pine comes down.”
She became authoritative.
“Come, Miles, let me go in.”
“Don't ask me, miss. It's against orders, and--”
“Against orders? Why, you were blustering about shooting people just
now.”
The badgered Miles grew angry. “Was I? Bluster or no bluster, you don't
go in.” She turned away. “Oh, very well. If this is all the thanks I get
for wasting my time down here, I shall go on deck again.”
Miles became uneasy.
“There are plenty of agreeable people there.”
Miles took a step after her.
“Mr. Frere will let me go in, I dare say, if I ask him.”
Miles swore under his breath.
“Dom Mr. Frere! Go in if yer like,” he said. “I won't stop yer, but
remember what I'm doin' of.”
She turned again at the foot of the ladder, and came quickly back.
“That's a good lad. I knew you would not refuse me”; and smiling at the
poor lad she was befooling, she passed into the cabin.
There was no lantern, and from the partially-blocked stern windows came
only a dim, vaporous light. The dull ripple of the water as the ship
rocked on the slow swell of the sea made a melancholy sound, and the
sick man's heavy breathing seemed to fill the air. The slight noise
made by the opening door roused him; he rose on his elbow and began to
mutter. Sarah Purfoy paused in the doorway to listen, but she could make
nothing of the low, uneasy murmuring. Raising her arm, conspicuous by
its white sleeve in the gloom, she beckoned Miles.
“The lantern,” she whispered, “bring me the lantern!”
He unhooked it from the rope where it swung, and brought it towards her.
At that moment the man in the bunk sat up erect, and twisted himself
towards the light. “Sarah!” he cried, in shrill sharp tones. “Sarah!”
and swooped with a lean arm through the dusk, as though to seize her.
The girl leapt out of the cabin like a panther, struck the lantern out
of her lover's hand, and was back at the bunk-head in a moment. The
convict was a young man of about four-and-twenty. His hands--clutched
convulsively now on the blankets--were small and well-shaped, and the
unshaven chin bristled with promise of a strong beard. His wild black
eyes glared with all the fire of delirium, and as he gasped for breath,
the sweat stood in beads on his sallow forehead.
The aspect of the man was sufficiently ghastly, and Miles, drawing
back with an oath, did not wonder at the terror which had seized Mrs.
Vickers's maid. With open mouth and agonized face, she stood in the
centre of the cabin, lantern in hand, like one turned to stone, gazing
at the man on the bed.
“Ecod, he be a sight!” says Miles, at length. “Come away, miss, and shut
the door. He's raving, I tell yer.”
The sound of his voice recalled her.
She dropped the lantern, and rushed to the bed.
“You fool; he's choking, can't you see? Water! give me water!”
And wreathing her arms around the man's head, she pulled it down on her
bosom, rocking it there, half savagely, to and fro.
Awed into obedience by her voice, Miles dipped a pannikin into a small
puncheon, cleated in the corner of the cabin, and gave it her; and,
without thanking him, she placed it to the sick prisoner's lips. He
drank greedily, and closed his eyes with a grateful sigh.
Just then the quick ears of Miles heard the jingle of arms. “Here's the
doctor coming, miss!” he cried. “I hear the sentry saluting. Come away!
Quick!”
She seized the lantern, and, opening the horn slide, extinguished it.
“Say it went out,” she said in a fierce whisper, “and hold your tongue.
Leave me to manage.”
She bent over the convict as if to arrange his pillow, and then glided
out of the cabin, just as Pine descended the hatchway.
“Hallo!” cried he, stumbling, as he missed his footing; “where's the
light?”
“Here, sir,” says Miles, fumbling with the lantern. “It's all right,
sir. It went out, sir.”
“Went out! What did you let it go out for, you blockhead!” growled the
unsuspecting Pine. “Just like you boobies! What is the use of a light if
it 'goes out', eh?” As he groped his way, with outstretched arms, in the
darkness, Sarah Purfoy slipped past him unnoticed, and gained the upper
deck.
CHAPTER V. THE BARRACOON.
In the prison of the 'tween decks reigned a darkness pregnant with
murmurs. The sentry at the entrance to the hatchway was supposed to
“prevent the prisoners from making a noise,” but he put a very liberal
interpretation upon the clause, and so long as the prisoners refrained
from shouting, yelling, and fighting--eccentricities in which they
sometimes indulged--he did not disturb them. This course of conduct was
dictated by prudence, no less than by convenience, for one sentry was
but little over so many; and the convicts, if pressed too hard, would
raise a sort of bestial boo-hoo, in which all voices were confounded,
and which, while it made noise enough and to spare, utterly precluded
individual punishment. One could not flog a hundred and eighty men, and
it was impossible to distinguish any particular offender. So, in
virtue of this last appeal, convictism had established a tacit right to
converse in whispers, and to move about inside its oaken cage.
To one coming in from the upper air, the place would have seemed
in pitchy darkness, but the convict eye, accustomed to the sinister
twilight, was enabled to discern surrounding objects with tolerable
distinctness. The prison was about fifty feet long and fifty feet wide,
and ran the full height of the 'tween decks, viz., about five feet ten
inches high. The barricade was loop-holed here and there, and the planks
were in some places wide enough to admit a musket barrel. On the aft
side, next the soldiers' berths, was a trap door, like the stoke-hole of
a furnace. At first sight this appeared to be contrived for the
humane purpose of ventilation, but a second glance dispelled this weak
conclusion. The opening was just large enough to admit the muzzle of
a small howitzer, secured on the deck below. In case of a mutiny, the
soldiers could sweep the prison from end to end with grape shot. Such
fresh air as there was, filtered through the loopholes, and came, in
somewhat larger quantity, through a wind-sail passed into the prison
from the hatchway. But the wind-sail, being necessarily at one end only
of the place, the air it brought was pretty well absorbed by the twenty
or thirty lucky fellows near it, and the other hundred and fifty did not
come so well off. The scuttles were open, certainly, but as the row of
bunks had been built against them, the air they brought was the peculiar
property of such men as occupied the berths into which they penetrated.
These berths were twenty-eight in number, each containing six men. They
ran in a double tier round three sides of the prison, twenty at each
side, and eight affixed to that portion of the forward barricade
opposite the door. Each berth was presumed to be five feet six inches
square, but the necessities of stowage had deprived them of six inches,
and even under that pressure twelve men were compelled to sleep on
the deck. Pine did not exaggerate when he spoke of the custom of
overcrowding convict ships; and as he was entitled to half a guinea
for every man he delivered alive at Hobart Town, he had some reason to
complain.
When Frere had come down, an hour before, the prisoners were all snugly
between their blankets. They were not so now; though, at the first clink
of the bolts, they would be back again in their old positions, to all
appearances sound asleep. As the eye became accustomed to the foetid
duskiness of the prison, a strange picture presented itself. Groups
of men, in all imaginable attitudes, were lying, standing, sitting, or
pacing up and down. It was the scene on the poop-deck over again; only,
here being no fear of restraining keepers, the wild beasts were a little
more free in their movements. It is impossible to convey, in words, any
idea of the hideous phantasmagoria of shifting limbs and faces which
moved through the evil-smelling twilight of this terrible prison-house.
Callot might have drawn it, Dante might have suggested it, but a minute
attempt to describe its horrors would but disgust. There are depths in
humanity which one cannot explore, as there are mephitic caverns into
which one dare not penetrate.
Old men, young men, and boys, stalwart burglars and highway robbers,
slept side by side with wizened pickpockets or cunning-featured
area-sneaks. The forger occupied the same berth with the body-snatcher.
The man of education learned strange secrets of house-breakers' craft,
and the vulgar ruffian of St. Giles took lessons of self-control from
the keener intellect of the professional swindler. The fraudulent clerk
and the flash “cracksman” interchanged experiences. The smuggler's
stories of lucky ventures and successful runs were capped by the
footpad's reminiscences of foggy nights and stolen watches. The poacher,
grimly thinking of his sick wife and orphaned children, would start as
the night-house ruffian clapped him on the shoulder and bade him, with a
curse, to take good heart and “be a man.” The fast shopboy whose love
of fine company and high living had brought him to this pass, had
shaken off the first shame that was on him, and listened eagerly to the
narratives of successful vice that fell so glibly from the lips of his
older companions. To be transported seemed no such uncommon fate. The
old fellows laughed, and wagged their grey heads with all the glee of
past experience, and listening youth longed for the time when it might
do likewise. Society was the common foe, and magistrates, gaolers, and
parsons were the natural prey of all noteworthy mankind. Only fools were
honest, only cowards kissed the rod, and failed to meditate revenge on
that world of respectability which had wronged them. Each new-comer was
one more recruit to the ranks of ruffianism, and not a man penned in
that reeking den of infamy but became a sworn hater of law, order, and
“free-men.” What he might have been before mattered not. He was now
a prisoner, and--thrust into a suffocating barracoon, herded with
the foulest of mankind, with all imaginable depths of blasphemy
and indecency sounded hourly in his sight and hearing--he lost his
self-respect, and became what his gaolers took him to be--a wild beast
to be locked under bolts and bars, lest he should break out and tear
them.
The conversation ran upon the sudden departure of the four. What could
they want with them at that hour?
“I tell you there's something up on deck,” says one to the group nearest
him. “Don't you hear all that rumbling and rolling?”
“What did they lower boats for? I heard the dip o' the oars.”
“Don't know, mate. P'r'aps a burial job,” hazarded a short, stout
fellow, as a sort of happy suggestion.
“One of those coves in the parlour!” said another; and a laugh followed
the speech.
“No such luck. You won't hang your jib for them yet awhile. More like
the skipper agone fishin'.”
“The skipper don't go fishin', yer fool. What would he do
fishin'?--special in the middle o' the night.”
“That 'ud be like old Dovery, eh?” says a fifth, alluding to an old
grey-headed fellow, who--a returned convict--was again under sentence
for body-snatching.
“Ay,” put in a young man, who had the reputation of being the smartest
“crow” (the “look-out” man of a burglars' gang) in London--“'fishers of
men,' as the parson says.”
The snuffling imitation of a Methodist preacher was good, and there was
another laugh.
Just then a miserable little cockney pickpocket, feeling his way to the
door, fell into the party.
A volley of oaths and kicks received him.
“I beg your pardon, gen'l'men,” cries the miserable wretch, “but I want
h'air.”
“Go to the barber's and buy a wig, then!” says the “Crow”, elated at the
success of his last sally.
“Oh, sir, my back!”
“Get up!” groaned someone in the darkness. “Oh, Lord, I'm smothering!
Here, sentry!”
“Vater!” cried the little cockney. “Give us a drop o' vater, for mercy's
sake. I haven't moist'ned my chaffer this blessed day.”
“Half a gallon a day, bo', and no more,” says a sailor next him.
“Yes, what have yer done with yer half-gallon, eh?” asked the Crow
derisively. “Someone stole it,” said the sufferer.
“He's been an' blued it,” squealed someone. “Been an' blued it to buy
a Sunday veskit with! Oh, ain't he a vicked young man?” And the speaker
hid his head under the blankets, in humorous affectation of modesty.
All this time the miserable little cockney--he was a tailor by
trade--had been grovelling under the feet of the Crow and his
companions.
“Let me h'up, gents” he implored--“let me h'up. I feel as if I should
die--I do.”
“Let the gentleman up,” says the humorist in the bunk. “Don't yer see
his kerridge is avaitin' to take him to the Hopera?”
The conversation had got a little loud, and, from the topmost bunk on
the near side, a bullet head protruded.
“Ain't a cove to get no sleep?” cried a gruff voice. “My blood, if I
have to turn out, I'll knock some of your empty heads together.”
It seemed that the speaker was a man of mark, for the noise ceased
instantly; and, in the lull which ensued, a shrill scream broke from the
wretched tailor.
“Help! they're killing me! Ah-h-h-!”
“Wot's the matter,” roared the silencer of the riot, jumping from his
berth, and scattering the Crow and his companions right and left. “Let
him be, can't yer?”
“H'air!” cried the poor devil--“h'air; I'm fainting!”
Just then there came another groan from the man in the opposite bunk.
“Well, I'm blessed!” said the giant, as he held the gasping tailor by
the collar and glared round him. “Here's a pretty go! All the blessed
chickens ha' got the croup!”
The groaning of the man in the bunk redoubled.
“Pass the word to the sentry,” says someone more humane than the rest.
“Ah,” says the humorist, “pass him out; it'll be one the less. We'd
rather have his room than his company.”
“Sentry, here's a man sick.”
But the sentry knew his duty better than to reply. He was a young
soldier, but he had been well informed of the artfulness of convict
stratagems; and, moreover, Captain Vickers had carefully apprised
him “that by the King's Regulations, he was forbidden to reply to any
question or communication addressed to him by a convict, but, in the
event of being addressed, was to call the non-commissioned officer on
duty.” Now, though he was within easy hailing distance of the guard
on the quarter-deck, he felt a natural disinclination to disturb those
gentlemen merely for the sake of a sick convict, and knowing that, in
a few minutes, the third relief would come on duty, he decided to wait
until then.
In the meantime the tailor grew worse, and began to moan dismally.
“Here! 'ullo!” called out his supporter, in dismay. “Hold up 'ere! Wot's
wrong with yer? Don't come the drops 'ere. Pass him down, some of yer,”
and the wretch was hustled down to the doorway.
“Vater!” he whispered, beating feebly with his hand on the thick oak.
“Get us a drink, mister, for Gord's sake!”
But the prudent sentry answered never a word, until the ship's bell
warned him of the approach of the relief guard; and then honest old
Pine, coming with anxious face to inquire after his charge, received
the intelligence that there was another prisoner sick. He had the door
unlocked and the tailor outside in an instant. One look at the flushed,
anxious face was enough.
“Who's that moaning in there?” he asked.
It was the man who had tried to call for the sentry an hour back, and
Pine had him out also; convictism beginning to wonder a little.
“Take 'em both aft to the hospital,” he said; “and, Jenkins, if there
are any more men taken sick, let them pass the word for me at once. I
shall be on deck.”
The guard stared in each other's faces, with some alarm, but said
nothing, thinking more of the burning ship, which now flamed furiously
across the placid water, than of peril nearer home; but as Pine went up
the hatchway he met Blunt.
“We've got the fever aboard!”
“Good God! Do you mean it, Pine?”
Pine shook his grizzled head sorrowfully.
“It's this cursed calm that's done it; though I expected it all along,
with the ship crammed as she is. When I was in the Hecuba--”
“Who is it?”
Pine laughed a half-pitying, half-angry laugh.
“A convict, of course. Who else should it be? They are reeking like
bullocks at Smithfield down there. A hundred and eighty men penned
into a place fifty feet long, with the air like an oven--what could you
expect?”
Poor Blunt stamped his foot.
“It isn't my fault,” he cried. “The soldiers are berthed aft. If the
Government will overload these ships, I can't help it.”
“The Government! Ah! The Government! The Government don't sleep, sixty
men a-side, in a cabin only six feet high. The Government don't get
typhus fever in the tropics, does it?”
“No--but--”
“But what does the Government care, then?”
Blunt wiped his hot forehead.
“Who was the first down?”
“No. 97 berth; ten on the lower tier. John Rex he calls himself.”
“Are you sure it's the fever?”
“As sure as I can be yet. Head like a fire-ball, and tongue like a strip
of leather. Gad, don't I know it?” and Pine grinned mournfully. “I've
got him moved into the hospital. Hospital! It is a hospital! As dark as
a wolf's mouth. I've seen dog kennels I liked better.”
Blunt nodded towards the volume of lurid smoke that rolled up out of the
glow.--“Suppose there is a shipload of those poor devils? I can't refuse
to take 'em in.”
“No,” says Pine gloomily, “I suppose you can't. If they come, I must
stow 'em somewhere. We'll have to run for the Cape, with the first
breeze, if they do come, that is all I can see for it,” and he turned
away to watch the burning vessel.
CHAPTER VI. THE FATE OF THE “HYDASPES”.
In the meanwhile the two boats made straight for the red column that
uprose like a gigantic torch over the silent sea.
As Blunt had said, the burning ship lay a good twelve miles from the
Malabar, and the pull was a long and a weary one. Once fairly away from
the protecting sides of the vessel that had borne them thus far on
their dismal journey, the adventurers seemed to have come into a new
atmosphere. The immensity of the ocean over which they slowly moved
revealed itself for the first time. On board the prison ship, surrounded
with all the memories if not with the comforts of the shore they had
quitted, they had not realized how far they were from that civilization
which had given them birth. The well-lighted, well-furnished cuddy, the
homely mirth of the forecastle, the setting of sentries and the changing
of guards, even the gloom and terror of the closely-locked prison,
combined to make the voyagers feel secure against the unknown dangers of
the sea. That defiance of Nature which is born of contact with humanity,
had hitherto sustained them, and they felt that, though alone on the
vast expanse of waters, they were in companionship with others of their
kind, and that the perils one man had passed might be successfully dared
by another. But now--with one ship growing smaller behind them, and the
other, containing they knew not what horror of human agony and human
helplessness, lying a burning wreck in the black distance ahead of
them--they began to feel their own littleness. The Malabar, that huge
sea monster, in whose capacious belly so many human creatures lived and
suffered, had dwindled to a walnut-shell, and yet beside her bulk how
infinitely small had their own frail cockboat appeared as they shot out
from under her towering stern! Then the black hull rising above them,
had seemed a tower of strength, built to defy the utmost violence of
wind and wave; now it was but a slip of wood floating--on an unknown
depth of black, fathomless water. The blue light, which, at its first
flashing over the ocean, had made the very stars pale their lustre, and
lighted up with ghastly radiance the enormous vault of heaven, was now
only a point, brilliant and distinct it is true, but which by its very
brilliance dwarfed the ship into insignificance. The Malabar lay on
the water like a glow-worm on a floating leaf, and the glare of the
signal-fire made no more impression on the darkness than the candle
carried by a solitary miner would have made on the abyss of a coal-pit.
And yet the Malabar held two hundred creatures like themselves!
The water over which the boats glided was black and smooth, rising into
huge foamless billows, the more terrible because they were silent. When
the sea hisses, it speaks, and speech breaks the spell of terror; when
it is inert, heaving noiselessly, it is dumb, and seems to brood over
mischief. The ocean in a calm is like a sulky giant; one dreads that it
may be meditating evil. Moreover, an angry sea looks less vast in extent
than a calm one. Its mounting waves bring the horizon nearer, and
one does not discern how for many leagues the pitiless billows repeat
themselves. To appreciate the hideous vastness of the ocean one must see
it when it sleeps.
The great sky uprose from this silent sea without a cloud. The stars
hung low in its expanse, burning in a violent mist of lower ether. The
heavens were emptied of sound, and each dip of the oars was re-echoed in
space by a succession of subtle harmonies. As the blades struck the
dark water, it flashed fire, and the tracks of the boats resembled
two sea-snakes writhing with silent undulations through a lake of
quicksilver.
It had been a sort of race hitherto, and the rowers, with set teeth and
compressed lips, had pulled stroke for stroke. At last the foremost
boat came to a sudden pause. Best gave a cheery shout and passed her,
steering straight into the broad track of crimson that already reeked on
the sea ahead.
“What is it?” he cried.
But he heard only a smothered curse from Frere, and then his consort
pulled hard to overtake him.
It was, in fact, nothing of consequence--only a prisoner “giving in”.
“Curse it!” says Frere, “What's the matter with you? Oh, you, is
it?--Dawes! Of course, Dawes. I never expected anything better from such
a skulking hound. Come, this sort of nonsense won't do with me. It isn't
as nice as lolloping about the hatchways, I dare say, but you'll have to
go on, my fine fellow.”
“He seems sick, sir,” said (with) compassionate bow.
“Sick! Not he. Shamming. Come, give way now! Put your backs into it!”
and the convict having picked up his oar, the boat shot forward again.
But, for all Mr. Frere's urging, he could not recover the way he had
lost, and Best was the first to run in under the black cloud that hung
over the crimsoned water.
At his signal, the second boat came alongside.
“Keep wide,” he said. “If there are many fellows yet aboard, they'll
swamp us; and I think there must be, as we haven't met the boats,” and
then raising his voice, as the exhausted crew lay on their oars, he
hailed the burning ship.
She was a huge, clumsily-built vessel, with great breadth of beam, and
a lofty poop-deck. Strangely enough, though they had so lately seen the
fire, she was already a wreck, and appeared to be completely deserted.
The chief hold of the fire was amidships, and the lower deck was one
mass of flame. Here and there were great charred rifts and gaps in her
sides, and the red-hot fire glowed through these as through the bars of
a grate. The main-mast had fallen on the starboard side, and trailed a
blackened wreck in the water, causing the unwieldy vessel to lean
over heavily. The fire roared like a cataract, and huge volumes of
flame-flecked smoke poured up out of the hold, and rolled away in a
low-lying black cloud over the sea.
As Frere's boat pulled slowly round her stern, he hailed the deck again
and again.
Still there was no answer, and though the flood of light that dyed the
water blood-red struck out every rope and spar distinct and clear, his
straining eyes could see no living soul aboard. As they came nearer,
they could distinguish the gilded letters of her name.
“What is it, men?” cried Frere, his voice almost drowned amid the roar
of the flames. “Can you see?”
Rufus Dawes, impelled, it would seem, by some strong impulse of
curiosity, stood erect, and shaded his eyes with his hand.
“Well--can't you speak? What is it?”
“The Hydaspes!”
Frere gasped.
The Hydaspes! The ship in which his cousin Richard Devine had sailed!
The ship for which those in England might now look in vain! The Hydaspes
which--something he had heard during the speculations as to this missing
cousin flashed across him.
“Back water, men! Round with her! Pull for your lives!”
Best's boat glided alongside.
“Can you see her name?”
Frere, white with terror, shouted a reply.
“The Hydaspes! I know her. She is bound for Calcutta, and she has five
tons of powder aboard!”
There was no need for more words. The single sentence explained the
whole mystery of her desertion. The crew had taken to the boats on the
first alarm, and had left their death-fraught vessel to her fate. They
were miles off by this time, and unluckily for themselves, perhaps, had
steered away from the side where rescue lay.
The boats tore through the water. Eager as the men had been to come,
they were more eager to depart. The flames had even now reached the
poop; in a few minutes it would be too late. For ten minutes or more not
a word was spoken. With straining arms and labouring chests, the
rowers tugged at the oars, their eyes fixed on the lurid mass they were
leaving. Frere and Best, with their faces turned back to the terror
they fled from, urged the men to greater efforts. Already the flames had
lapped the flag, already the outlines of the stern carvings were blurred
by the fire.
Another moment, and all would be over. Ah! it had come at last. A dull
rumbling sound; the burning ship parted asunder; a pillar of fire,
flecked with black masses that were beams and planks, rose up out of
the ocean; there was a terrific crash, as though sea and sky were coming
together; and then a mighty mountain of water rose, advanced, caught,
and passed them, and they were alone--deafened, stunned, and breathless,
in a sudden horror of thickest darkness, and a silence like that of the
tomb.
The splashing of the falling fragments awoke them from their stupor, and
then the blue light of the Malabar struck out a bright pathway across
the sea, and they knew that they were safe.
* * * * *
On board the Malabar two men paced the deck, waiting for dawn.
It came at last. The sky lightened, the mist melted away, and then a
long, low, far-off streak of pale yellow light floated on the eastern
horizon. By and by the water sparkled, and the sea changed colour,
turning from black to yellow, and from yellow to lucid green. The man at
the masthead hailed the deck. The boats were in sight, and as they came
towards the ship, the bright water flashing from the labouring oars, a
crowd of spectators hanging over the bulwarks cheered and waved their
hats.
“Not a soul!” cried Blunt. “No one but themselves. Well, I'm glad
they're safe anyway.”
The boats drew alongside, and in a few seconds Frere was upon deck.
“Well, Mr. Frere?”
“No use,” cried Frere, shivering. “We only just had time to get away.
The nearest thing in the world, sir.”
“Didn't you see anyone?”
“Not a soul. They must have taken to the boats.”
“Then they can't be far off,” cried Blunt, sweeping the horizon with his
glass. “They must have pulled all the way, for there hasn't been enough
wind to fill a hollow tooth with.” “Perhaps they pulled in the wrong
direction,” said Frere. “They had a good four hours' start of us, you
know.”
Then Best came up, and told the story to a crowd of eager listeners. The
sailors having hoisted and secured the boats, were hurried off to the
forecastle, there to eat, and relate their experience between mouthfuls,
and the four convicts were taken in charge and locked below again.
“You had better go and turn in, Frere,” said Pine gruffly. “It's no use
whistling for a wind here all day.”
Frere laughed--in his heartiest manner. “I think I will,” he said. “I'm
dog tired, and as sleepy as an owl,” and he descended the poop ladder.
Pine took a couple of turns up and down the deck, and then catching
Blunt's eye, stopped in front of Vickers.
“You may think it a hard thing to say, Captain Vickers, but it's just
as well if we don't find these poor devils. We have quite enough on our
hands as it is.”
“What do you mean, Mr. Pine?” says Vickers, his humane feelings getting
the better of his pomposity. “You would not surely leave the unhappy men
to their fate.”
“Perhaps,” returned the other, “they would not thank us for taking them
aboard.”
“I don't understand you.”
“The fever has broken out.”
Vickers raised his brows. He had no experience of such things; and
though the intelligence was startling, the crowded condition of the
prison rendered it easy to be understood, and he apprehended no danger
to himself.
“It is a great misfortune; but, of course, you will take such steps--”
“It is only in the prison, as yet,” says Pine, with a grim emphasis on
the word; “but there is no saying how long it may stop there. I have got
three men down as it is.” “Well, sir, all authority in the matter is in
your hands. Any suggestions you make, I will, of course, do my best to
carry out.”
“Thank ye. I must have more room in the hospital to begin with. The
soldiers must lie a little closer.”
“I will see what can be done.”
“And you had better keep your wife and the little girl as much on deck
as possible.”
Vickers turned pale at the mention of his child. “Good Heaven! do you
think there is any danger?”
“There is, of course, danger to all of us; but with care we may escape
it. There's that maid, too. Tell her to keep to herself a little more.
She has a trick of roaming about the ship I don't like. Infection is
easily spread, and children always sicken sooner than grown-up people.”
Vickers pressed his lips together. This old man, with his harsh,
dissonant voice, and hideous practicality, seemed like a bird of ill
omen.
Blunt, hitherto silently listening, put in a word for defence of the
absent woman. “The wench is right enough, Pine,” said he. “What's the
matter with her?”
“Yes, she's all right, I've no doubt. She's less likely to take it than
any of us. You can see her vitality in her face--as many lives as a cat.
But she'd bring infection quicker than anybody.”
“I'll--I'll go at once,” cried poor Vickers, turning round. The woman of
whom they were speaking met him on the ladder. Her face was paler than
usual, and dark circles round her eyes gave evidence of a sleepless
night. She opened her red lips to speak, and then, seeing Vickers,
stopped abruptly.
“Well, what is it?”
She looked from one to the other. “I came for Dr. Pine.”
Vickers, with the quick intelligence of affection, guessed her errand.
“Someone is ill?”
“Miss Sylvia, sir. It is nothing to signify, I think. A little feverish
and hot, and my mistress--”
Vickers was down the ladder in an instant, with scared face.
Pine caught the girl's round firm arm. “Where have you been?” Two great
flakes of red came out in her white cheeks, and she shot an indignant
glance at Blunt.
“Come, Pine, let the wench alone!”
“Were you with the child last night?” went on Pine, without turning his
head.
“No; I have not been in the cabin since dinner yesterday. Mrs. Vickers
only called me in just now. Let go my arm, sir, you hurt me.”
Pine loosed his hold as if satisfied at the reply. “I beg your pardon,”
he said gruffly. “I did not mean to hurt you. But the fever has broken
out in the prison, and I think the child has caught it. You must be
careful where you go.” And then, with an anxious face, he went in
pursuit of Vickers.
Sarah Purfoy stood motionless for an instant, in deadly terror. Her lips
parted, her eyes glittered, and she made a movement as though to retrace
her steps.
“Poor soul!” thought honest Blunt, “how she feels for the child! D----
that lubberly surgeon, he's hurt her!--Never mind, my lass,” he
said aloud. It was broad daylight, and he had not as much courage in
love-making as at night. “Don't be afraid. I've been in ships with fever
before now.”
Awaking, as it were, at the sound of his voice, she came closer to him.
“But ship fever! I have heard of it! Men have died like rotten sheep in
crowded vessels like this.”
“Tush! Not they. Don't be frightened; Miss Sylvia won't die, nor you
neither.” He took her hand. “It may knock off a few dozen prisoners or
so. They are pretty close packed down there--”
She drew her hand away; and then, remembering herself, gave it him
again.
“What is the matter?”
“Nothing--a pain. I did not sleep last night.”
“There, there; you are upset, I dare say. Go and lie down.”
She was staring away past him over the sea, as if in thought. So
intently did she look that he involuntarily turned his head, and the
action recalled her to herself. She brought her fine straight brows
together for a moment, and then raised them with the action of a thinker
who has decided on his course of conduct.
“I have a toothache,” said she, putting her hand to her face.
“Take some laudanum,” says Blunt, with dim recollections of his mother's
treatment of such ailments. “Old Pine'll give you some.”
To his astonishment she burst into tears.
“There--there! Don't cry, my dear. Hang it, don't cry. What are you
crying about?”
She dashed away the bright drops, and raised her face with a rainy smile
of trusting affection. “Nothing! I am lonely. So far from home; and--and
Dr. Pine hurt my arm. Look!”
She bared that shapely member as she spoke, and sure enough there were
three red marks on the white and shining flesh.
“The ruffian!” cried Blunt, “it's too bad.” And after a hasty look
around him, the infatuated fellow kissed the bruise. “I'll get the
laudanum for you,” he said. “You shan't ask that bear for it. Come into
my cabin.”
Blunt's cabin was in the starboard side of the ship, just under the poop
awning, and possessed three windows--one looking out over the side, and
two upon deck. The corresponding cabin on the other side was occupied
by Mr. Maurice Frere. He closed the door, and took down a small medicine
chest, cleated above the hooks where hung his signal-pictured telescope.
“Here,” said he, opening it. “I've carried this little box for years,
but it ain't often I want to use it, thank God. Now, then, put some o'
this into your mouth, and hold it there.”
“Good gracious, Captain Blunt, you'll poison me! Give me the bottle;
I'll help myself.”
“Don't take too much,” says Blunt. “It's dangerous stuff, you know.”
“You need not fear. I've used it before.”
The door was shut, and as she put the bottle in her pocket, the amorous
captain caught her in his arms.
“What do you say? Come, I think I deserve a kiss for that.”
Her tears were all dry long ago, and had only given increased colour to
her face. This agreeable woman never wept long enough to make herself
distasteful. She raised her dark eyes to his for a moment, with a saucy
smile. “By and by,” said she, and escaping, gained her cabin. It was
next to that of her mistress, and she could hear the sick child feebly
moaning. Her eyes filled with tears--real ones this time.
“Poor little thing,” she said; “I hope she won't die.”
And then she threw herself on her bed, and buried her hot head in the
pillow. The intelligence of the fever seemed to have terrified her. Had
the news disarranged some well-concocted plan of hers? Being near the
accomplishment of some cherished scheme long kept in view, had the
sudden and unexpected presence of disease falsified her carefully-made
calculations, and cast an almost insurmountable obstacle in her path?
“She die! and through me? How did I know that he had the fever? Perhaps
I have taken it myself--I feel ill.” She turned over on the bed, as
if in pain, and then started to a sitting position, stung by a sudden
thought. “Perhaps he might die! The fever spreads quickly, and if so,
all this plotting will have been useless. It must be done at once. It
will never do to break down now,” and taking the phial from her pocket,
she held it up, to see how much it contained. It was three parts full.
“Enough for both,” she said, between her set teeth. The action of
holding up the bottle reminded her of the amorous Blunt, and she smiled.
“A strange way to show affection for a man,” she said to herself, “and
yet he doesn't care, and I suppose I shouldn't by this time. I'll go
through with it, and, if the worst comes to the worst, I can fall back
on Maurice.” She loosened the cork of the phial, so that it would come
out with as little noise as possible, and then placed it carefully in
her bosom. “I will get a little sleep if I can,” she said. “They have
got the note, and it shall be done to-night.”
CHAPTER VII. TYPHUS FEVER.
The felon Rufus Dawes had stretched himself in his bunk and tried to
sleep. But though he was tired and sore, and his head felt like lead, he
could not but keep broad awake. The long pull through the pure air, if
it had tired him, had revived him, and he felt stronger; but for all
that, the fatal sickness that was on him maintained its hold; his pulse
beat thickly, and his brain throbbed with unnatural heat. Lying in
his narrow space--in the semi-darkness--he tossed his limbs about, and
closed his eyes in vain--he could not sleep. His utmost efforts induced
only an oppressive stagnation of thought, through which he heard the
voices of his fellow-convicts; while before his eyes was still the
burning Hydaspes--that vessel whose destruction had destroyed for ever
all trace of the unhappy Richard Devine.
It was fortunate for his comfort, perhaps, that the man who had been
chosen to accompany him was of a talkative turn, for the prisoners
insisted upon hearing the story of the explosion a dozen times over, and
Rufus Dawes himself had been roused to give the name of the vessel with
his own lips. Had it not been for the hideous respect in which he was
held, it is possible that he might have been compelled to give his
version also, and to join in the animated discussion which took place
upon the possibility of the saving of the fugitive crew. As it was,
however, he was left in peace, and lay unnoticed, trying to sleep.
The detachment of fifty being on deck--airing--the prison was not quite
so hot as at night, and many of the convicts made up for their lack of
rest by snatching a dog-sleep in the bared bunks. The four volunteer
oarsmen were allowed to “take it out.”
As yet there had been no alarm of fever. The three seizures had excited
some comment, however, and had it not been for the counter-excitement of
the burning ship, it is possible that Pine's precaution would have
been thrown away. The “Old Hands”--who had been through the Passage
before--suspected, but said nothing, save among themselves. It was
likely that the weak and sickly would go first, and that there would be
more room for those remaining. The Old Hands were satisfied.
Three of these Old Hands were conversing together just behind the
partition of Dawes's bunk. As we have said, the berths were five feet
square, and each contained six men. No. 10, the berth occupied by Dawes,
was situated on the corner made by the joining of the starboard and
centre lines, and behind it was a slight recess, in which the scuttle
was fixed. His “mates” were at present but three in number, for John Rex
and the cockney tailor had been removed to the hospital. The three that
remained were now in deep conversation in the shelter of the recess. Of
these, the giant--who had the previous night asserted his authority
in the prison--seemed to be the chief. His name was Gabbett. He was
a returned convict, now on his way to undergo a second sentence
for burglary. The other two were a man named Sanders, known as the
“Moocher”, and Jemmy Vetch, the Crow. They were talking in whispers, but
Rufus Dawes, lying with his head close to the partition, was enabled to
catch much of what they said.
At first the conversation turned on the catastrophe of the burning ship
and the likelihood of saving the crew. From this it grew to anecdote of
wreck and adventure, and at last Gabbett said something which made the
listener start from his indifferent efforts to slumber, into sudden
broad wakefulness.
It was the mention of his own name, coupled with that of the woman he
had met on the quarter-deck, that roused him.
“I saw her speaking to Dawes yesterday,” said the giant, with an oath.
“We don't want no more than we've got. I ain't goin' to risk my neck for
Rex's woman's fancies, and so I'll tell her.”
“It was something about the kid,” says the Crow, in his elegant slang.
“I don't believe she ever saw him before. Besides, she's nuts on Jack,
and ain't likely to pick up with another man.”
“If I thort she was agoin' to throw us over, I'd cut her throat as soon
as look at her!” snorts Gabbett savagely.
“Jack ud have a word in that,” snuffles the Moocher; “and he's a curious
cove to quarrel with.”
“Well, stow yer gaff,” grumbled Mr. Gabbett, “and let's have no more
chaff. If we're for bizness, let's come to bizness.”
“What are we to do now?” asked the Moocher. “Jack's on the sick list,
and the gal won't stir a'thout him.”
“Ay,” returned Gabbett, “that's it.”
“My dear friends,” said the Crow, “my keyind and keristian friends, it
is to be regretted that when natur' gave you such tremendously thick
skulls, she didn't put something inside of 'em. I say that now's the
time. Jack's in the 'orspital; what of that? That don't make it no
better for him, does it? Not a bit of it; and if he drops his knife and
fork, why then, it's my opinion that the gal won't stir a peg. It's on
his account, not ours, that she's been manoovering, ain't it?”
“Well!” says Mr. Gabbett, with the air of one who was but partly
convinced, “I s'pose it is.”
“All the more reason of getting it off quick. Another thing, when the
boys know there's fever aboard, you'll see the rumpus there'll be.
They'll be ready enough to join us then. Once get the snapper chest, and
we're right as ninepenn'orth o' hapence.”
This conversation, interspersed with oaths and slang as it was, had an
intense interest for Rufus Dawes. Plunged into prison, hurriedly tried,
and by reason of his surroundings ignorant of the death of his
father and his own fortune, he had hitherto--in his agony and sullen
gloom--held aloof from the scoundrels who surrounded him, and repelled
their hideous advances of friendship. He now saw his error. He knew that
the name he had once possessed was blotted out, that any shred of his
old life which had clung to him hitherto, was shrivelled in the fire
that consumed the “Hydaspes”. The secret, for the preservation of
which Richard Devine had voluntarily flung away his name, and risked a
terrible and disgraceful death, would be now for ever safe; for Richard
Devine was dead--lost at sea with the crew of the ill-fated vessel in
which, deluded by a skilfully-sent letter from the prison, his mother
believed him to have sailed. Richard Devine was dead, and the secret of
his birth would die with him. Rufus Dawes, his alter ego, alone should
live. Rufus Dawes, the convicted felon, the suspected murderer, should
live to claim his freedom, and work out his vengeance; or, rendered
powerful by the terrible experience of the prison-sheds, should seize
both, in defiance of gaol or gaoler.
With his head swimming, and his brain on fire, he eagerly listened for
more. It seemed as if the fever which burnt in his veins had consumed
the grosser part of his sense, and given him increased power of hearing.
He was conscious that he was ill. His bones ached, his hands burned, his
head throbbed, but he could hear distinctly, and, he thought, reason on
what he heard profoundly.
“But we can't stir without the girl,” Gabbett said. “She's got to stall
off the sentry and give us the orfice.”
The Crow's sallow features lighted up with a cunning smile.
“Dear old caper merchant! Hear him talk!” said he, “as if he had the
wisdom of Solomon in all his glory? Look here!”
And he produced a dirty scrap of paper, over which his companions
eagerly bent their heads.
“Where did yer get that?”
“Yesterday afternoon Sarah was standing on the poop throwing bits o'
toke to the gulls, and I saw her a-looking at me very hard. At last she
came down as near the barricade as she dared, and throwed crumbs and
such like up in the air over the side. By and by a pretty big lump,
doughed up round, fell close to my foot, and, watching a favourable
opportunity, I pouched it. Inside was this bit o' rag-bag.”
“Ah!” said Mr. Gabbett, “that's more like. Read it out, Jemmy.”
The writing, though feminine in character, was bold and distinct. Sarah
had evidently been mindful of the education of her friends, and had
desired to give them as little trouble as possible.
“All is right. Watch me when I come up to-morrow evening at three bells.
If I drop my handkerchief, get to work at the time agreed on. The sentry
will be safe.”
Rufus Dawes, though his eyelids would scarcely keep open, and a terrible
lassitude almost paralysed his limbs, eagerly drank in the whispered
sentence. There was a conspiracy to seize the ship. Sarah Purfoy was
in league with the convicts--was herself the wife or mistress of one of
them. She had come on board armed with a plot for his release, and this
plot was about to be put in execution. He had heard of the atrocities
perpetrated by successful mutineers. Story after story of such nature
had often made the prison resound with horrible mirth. He knew the
characters of the three ruffians who, separated from him by but two
inches of planking, jested and laughed over their plans of freedom and
vengeance. Though he conversed but little with his companions, these men
were his berth mates, and he could not but know how they would proceed
to wreak their vengeance on their gaolers.
True, that the head of this formidable chimera--John Rex, the
forger--was absent, but the two hands, or rather claws--the burglar and
the prison-breaker--were present, and the slimly-made, effeminate Crow,
if he had not the brains of the master, yet made up for his flaccid
muscles and nerveless frame by a cat-like cunning, and a spirit of
devilish volatility that nothing could subdue. With such a powerful ally
outside as the mock maid-servant, the chance of success was enormously
increased. There were one hundred and eighty convicts and but fifty
soldiers. If the first rush proved successful--and the precautions taken
by Sarah Purfoy rendered success possible--the vessel was theirs.
Rufus Dawes thought of the little bright-haired child who had run so
confidingly to meet him, and shuddered.
“There!” said the Crow, with a sneering laugh, “what do you think of
that? Does the girl look like nosing us now?”
“No,” says the giant, stretching his great arms with a grin of delight,
as one stretches one's chest in the sun, “that's right, that is. That's
more like bizness.”
“England, home and beauty!” said Vetch, with a mock-heroic air,
strangely out of tune with the subject under discussion. “You'd like to
go home again, wouldn't you, old man?”
Gabbett turned on him fiercely, his low forehead wrinkled into a frown
of ferocious recollection.
“You!” he said--“You think the chain's fine sport, don't yer? But I've
been there, my young chicken, and I knows what it means.”
There was silence for a minute or two. The giant was plunged in gloomy
abstraction, and Vetch and the Moocher interchanged a significant
glance. Gabbett had been ten years at the colonial penal settlement of
Macquarie Harbour, and he had memories that he did not confide to his
companions. When he indulged in one of these fits of recollection, his
friends found it best to leave him to himself.
Rufus Dawes did not understand the sudden silence. With all his senses
stretched to the utmost to listen, the cessation of the whispered
colloquy affected him strangely. Old artillery-men have said that, after
being at work for days in the trenches, accustomed to the continued roar
of the guns, a sudden pause in the firing will cause them intense pain.
Something of this feeling was experienced by Rufus Dawes. His faculties
of hearing and thinking--both at their highest pitch--seemed to break
down. It was as though some prop had been knocked from under him. No
longer stimulated by outward sounds, his senses appeared to fail him.
The blood rushed into his eyes and ears. He made a violent, vain effort
to retain his consciousness, but with a faint cry fell back, striking
his head against the edge of the bunk.
The noise roused the burglar in an instant. There was someone in the
berth! The three looked into each other's eyes, in guilty alarm, and
then Gabbett dashed round the partition.
“It's Dawes!” said the Moocher. “We had forgotten him!”
“He'll join us, mate--he'll join us!” cried Vetch, fearful of bloodshed.
Gabbett uttered a furious oath, and flinging himself on to the prostrate
figure, dragged it, head foremost, to the floor. The sudden vertigo
had saved Rufus Dawes's life. The robber twisted one brawny hand in his
shirt, and pressing the knuckles down, prepared to deliver a blow that
should for ever silence the listener, when Vetch caught his arm. “He's
been asleep,” he cried. “Don't hit him! See, he's not awake yet.”
A crowd gathered round. The giant relaxed his grip, but the convict gave
only a deep groan, and allowed his head to fall on his shoulder. “You've
killed him!” cried someone.
Gabbett took another look at the purpling face and the bedewed forehead,
and then sprang erect, rubbing at his right hand, as though he would rub
off something sticking there.
“He's got the fever!” he roared, with a terror-stricken grimace.
“The what?” asked twenty voices.
“The fever, ye grinning fools!” cried Gabbett. “I've seen it before
to-day. The typhus is aboard, and he's the fourth man down!”
The circle of beast-like faces, stretched forward to “see the fight,”
widened at the half-uncomprehended, ill-omened word. It was as though
a bombshell had fallen into the group. Rufus Dawes lay on the deck
motionless, breathing heavily. The savage circle glared at his prostrate
body. The alarm ran round, and all the prison crowded down to stare at
him. All at once he uttered a groan, and turning, propped his body on
his two rigid arms, and made an effort to speak. But no sound issued
from his convulsed jaws.
“He's done,” said the Moocher brutally. “He didn't hear nuffin', I'll
pound it.”
The noise of the heavy bolts shooting back broke the spell. The first
detachment were coming down from “exercise.” The door was flung back,
and the bayonets of the guard gleamed in a ray of sunshine that shot
down the hatchway. This glimpse of sunlight--sparkling at the entrance
of the foetid and stifling prison--seemed to mock their miseries. It was
as though Heaven laughed at them. By one of those terrible and strange
impulses which animate crowds, the mass, turning from the sick man,
leapt towards the doorway. The interior of the prison flashed white with
suddenly turned faces. The gloom scintillated with rapidly moving hands.
“Air! air! Give us air!”
“That's it!” said Sanders to his companions. “I thought the news would
rouse 'em.”
Gabbett--all the savage in his blood stirred by the sight of flashing
eyes and wrathful faces--would have thrown himself forward with the
rest, but Vetch plucked him back.
“It'll be over in a moment,” he said. “It's only a fit they've got.” He
spoke truly. Through the uproar was heard the rattle of iron on iron, as
the guard “stood to their arms,” and the wedge of grey cloth broke, in
sudden terror of the levelled muskets.
There was an instant's pause, and then old Pine walked, unmolested, down
the prison and knelt by the body of Rufus Dawes.
The sight of the familiar figure, so calmly performing its familiar
duty, restored all that submission to recognized authority which
strict discipline begets. The convicts slunk away into their berths,
or officiously ran to help “the doctor,” with affectation of intense
obedience. The prison was like a schoolroom, into which the master had
suddenly returned. “Stand back, my lads! Take him up, two of you, and
carry him to the door. The poor fellow won't hurt you.” His orders
were obeyed, and the old man, waiting until his patient had been safely
received outside, raised his hand to command attention. “I see you know
what I have to tell. The fever has broken out. That man has got it. It
is absurd to suppose that no one else will be seized. I might catch it
myself. You are much crowded down here, I know; but, my lads, I can't
help that; I didn't make the ship, you know.”
“'Ear, 'ear!”
“It is a terrible thing, but you must keep orderly and quiet, and bear
it like men. You know what the discipline is, and it is not in my power
to alter it. I shall do my best for your comfort, and I look to you to
help me.”
Holding his grey head very erect indeed, the brave old fellow passed
straight down the line, without looking to the right or left. He had
said just enough, and he reached the door amid a chorus of “'Ear, 'ear!”
“Bravo!” “True for you, docther!” and so on. But when he got fairly
outside, he breathed more freely. He had performed a ticklish task, and
he knew it.
“'Ark at 'em,” growled the Moocher from his corner, “a-cheerin' at the
bloody noos!”
“Wait a bit,” said the acuter intelligence of Jemmy Vetch. “Give 'em
time. There'll be three or four more down afore night, and then we'll
see!”
CHAPTER VIII. A DANGEROUS CRISIS.
It was late in the afternoon when Sarah Purfoy awoke from her uneasy
slumber. She had been dreaming of the deed she was about to do, and was
flushed and feverish; but, mindful of the consequences which hung upon
the success or failure of the enterprise, she rallied herself, bathed
her face and hands, and ascended with as calm an air as she could assume
to the poop-deck.
Nothing was changed since yesterday. The sentries' arms glittered in
the pitiless sunshine, the ship rolled and creaked on the swell of the
dreamy sea, and the prison-cage on the lower deck was crowded with the
same cheerless figures, disposed in the attitudes of the day before.
Even Mr. Maurice Frere, recovered from his midnight fatigues, was
lounging on the same coil of rope, in precisely the same position.
Yet the eye of an acute observer would have detected some difference
beneath this outward varnish of similarity. The man at the wheel
looked round the horizon more eagerly, and spit into the swirling,
unwholesome-looking water with a more dejected air than before. The
fishing-lines still hung dangling over the catheads, but nobody touched
them. The soldiers and sailors on the forecastle, collected in knots,
had no heart even to smoke, but gloomily stared at each other. Vickers
was in the cuddy writing; Blunt was in his cabin; and Pine, with two
carpenters at work under his directions, was improvising increased
hospital accommodation. The noise of mallet and hammer echoed in the
soldiers' berth ominously; the workmen might have been making coffins.
The prison was strangely silent, with the lowering silence which
precedes a thunderstorm; and the convicts on deck no longer told
stories, nor laughed at obscene jests, but sat together, moodily
patient, as if waiting for something. Three men--two prisoners and
a soldier--had succumbed since Rufus Dawes had been removed to the
hospital; and though as yet there had been no complaint or symptom
of panic, the face of each man, soldier, sailor, or prisoner, wore an
expectant look, as though he wondered whose turn would come next. On the
ship--rolling ceaselessly from side to side, like some wounded creature,
on the opaque profundity of that stagnant ocean--a horrible shadow had
fallen. The Malabar seemed to be enveloped in an electric cloud, whose
sullen gloom a chance spark might flash into a blaze that should consume
her.
The woman who held in her hands the two ends of the chain that would
produce this spark, paused, came up upon deck, and, after a glance
round, leant against the poop railing, and looked down into the
barricade. As we have said, the prisoners were in knots of four and
five, and to one group in particular her glance was directed. Three men,
leaning carelessly against the bulwarks, watched her every motion.
“There she is, right enough,” growled Mr. Gabbett, as if in continuation
of a previous remark. “Flash as ever, and looking this way, too.”
“I don't see no wipe,” said the practical Moocher.
“Patience is a virtue, most noble knuckler!” says the Crow, with
affected carelessness. “Give the young woman time.”
“Blowed if I'm going to wait no longer,” says the giant, licking his
coarse blue lips. “'Ere we've been bluffed off day arter day, and kep'
dancin' round the Dandy's wench like a parcel o' dogs. The fever's
aboard, and we've got all ready. What's the use o' waitin'? Orfice, or
no orfice, I'm for bizness at once!--”
“--There, look at that,” he added, with an oath, as the figure of
Maurice Frere appeared side by side with that of the waiting-maid, and
the two turned away up the deck together.
“It's all right, you confounded muddlehead!” cried the Crow, losing
patience with his perverse and stupid companion. “How can she give us
the office with that cove at her elbow?”
Gabbett's only reply to this question was a ferocious grunt, and a
sudden elevation of his clenched fist, which caused Mr. Vetch to retreat
precipitately. The giant did not follow; and Mr. Vetch, folding his
arms, and assuming an attitude of easy contempt, directed his attention
to Sarah Purfoy. She seemed an object of general attraction, for at the
same moment a young soldier ran up the ladder to the forecastle, and
eagerly bent his gaze in her direction.
Maurice Frere had come behind her and touched her on the shoulder. Since
their conversation the previous evening, he had made up his mind to be
fooled no longer. The girl was evidently playing with him, and he would
show her that he was not to be trifled with.
“Well, Sarah!”
“Well, Mr. Frere,” dropping her hand, and turning round with a smile.
“How well you are looking to-day! Positively lovely!”
“You have told me that so often,” says she, with a pout. “Have you
nothing else to say?”
“Except that I love you.” This in a most impassioned manner.
“That is no news. I know you do.”
“Curse it, Sarah, what is a fellow to do?” His profligacy was failing
him rapidly. “What is the use of playing fast and loose with a fellow
this way?”
“A 'fellow' should be able to take care of himself, Mr. Frere. I didn't
ask you to fall in love with me, did I? If you don't please me, it is
not your fault, perhaps.”
“What do you mean?”
“You soldiers have so many things to think of--your guards and sentries,
and visits and things. You have no time to spare for a poor woman like
me.”
“Spare!” cries Frere, in amazement. “Why, damme, you won't let a fellow
spare! I'd spare fast enough, if that was all.” She cast her eyes down
to the deck and a modest flush rose in her cheeks. “I have so much to
do,” she said, in a half-whisper. “There are so many eyes upon me, I
cannot stir without being seen.”
She raised her head as she spoke, and to give effect to her words,
looked round the deck. Her glance crossed that of the young soldier
on the forecastle, and though the distance was too great for her to
distinguish his features, she guessed who he was--Miles was jealous.
Frere, smiling with delight at her change of manner, came close to
her, and whispered in her ear. She affected to start, and took the
opportunity of exchanging a signal with the Crow.
“I will come at eight o'clock,” said she, with modestly averted face.
“They relieve the guard at eight,” he said deprecatingly.
She tossed her head. “Very well, then, attend to your guard; I don't
care.”
“But, Sarah, consider--”
“As if a woman in love ever considers!” said she, turning upon him a
burning glance, which in truth might have melted a more icy man than he.
--She loved him then! What a fool he would be to refuse. To get her to
come was the first object; how to make duty fit with pleasure would be
considered afterwards. Besides, the guard could relieve itself for once
without his supervision.
“Very well, at eight then, dearest.”
“Hush!” said she. “Here comes that stupid captain.”
And as Frere left her, she turned, and with her eyes fixed on the
convict barricade, dropped the handkerchief she held in her hand over
the poop railing. It fell at the feet of the amorous captain, and with a
quick upward glance, that worthy fellow picked it up, and brought it to
her.
“Oh, thank you, Captain Blunt,” said she, and her eyes spoke more than
her tongue.
“Did you take the laudanum?” whispered Blunt, with a twinkle in his eye.
“Some of it,” said she. “I will bring you back the bottle to-night.”
Blunt walked aft, humming cheerily, and saluted Frere with a slap on the
back. The two men laughed, each at his own thoughts, but their laughter
only made the surrounding gloom seem deeper than before.
Sarah Purfoy, casting her eyes toward the barricade, observed a change
in the position of the three men. They were together once more, and the
Crow, having taken off his prison cap, held it at arm's length with
one hand, while he wiped his brow with the other. Her signal had been
observed.
During all this, Rufus Dawes, removed to the hospital, was lying flat on
his back, staring at the deck above him, trying to think of something he
wanted to say.
When the sudden faintness, which was the prelude to his sickness, had
overpowered him, he remembered being torn out of his bunk by fierce
hands--remembered a vision of savage faces, and the presence of
some danger that menaced him. He remembered that, while lying on
his blankets, struggling with the coming fever, he had overheard a
conversation of vital importance to himself and to the ship, but of
the purport of that conversation he had not the least idea. In vain he
strove to remember--in vain his will, struggling with delirium, brought
back snatches and echoes of sense; they slipped from him again as fast
as caught. He was oppressed with the weight of half-recollected thought.
He knew that a terrible danger menaced him; that could he but force his
brain to reason connectedly for ten consecutive minutes, he could give
such information as would avert that danger, and save the ship. But,
lying with hot head, parched lips, and enfeebled body, he was as one
possessed--he could move nor hand nor foot.
The place where he lay was but dimly lighted. The ingenuity of Pine had
constructed a canvas blind over the port, to prevent the sun striking
into the cabin, and this blind absorbed much of the light. He could but
just see the deck above his head, and distinguish the outlines of three
other berths, apparently similar to his own. The only sounds that broke
the silence were the gurgling of the water below him, and the Tap tap,
Tap tap, of Pine's hammers at work upon the new partition. By and by the
noise of these hammers ceased, and then the sick man could hear gasps,
and moans, and mutterings--the signs that his companions yet lived.
All at once a voice called out, “Of course his bills are worth four
hundred pounds; but, my good sir, four hundred pounds to a man in my
position is not worth the getting. Why, I've given four hundred pounds
for a freak of my girl Sarah! Is it right, eh, Jezebel? She's a
good girl, though, as girls go. Mrs. Lionel Crofton, of the Crofts,
Sevenoaks, Kent--Sevenoaks, Kent--Seven----”
A gleam of light broke in on the darkness which wrapped Rufus Dawes's
tortured brain. The man was John Rex, his berth mate. With an effort he
spoke.
“Rex!”
“Yes, yes. I'm coming; don't be in a hurry. The sentry's safe, and the
howitzer is but five paces from the door. A rush upon deck, lads, and
she's ours! That is, mine. Mine and my wife's, Mrs. Lionel Crofton,
of Seven Crofts, no oaks--Sarah Purfoy, lady's-maid and nurse--ha!
ha!--lady's-maid and nurse!”
This last sentence contained the name-clue to the labyrinth in which
Rufus Dawes's bewildered intellects were wandering. “Sarah Purfoy!”
He remembered now each detail of the conversation he had so strangely
overheard, and how imperative it was that he should, without delay,
reveal the plot that threatened the ship. How that plot was to be
carried out, he did not pause to consider; he was conscious that he was
hanging over the brink of delirium, and that, unless he made himself
understood before his senses utterly deserted him, all was lost.
He attempted to rise, but found that his fever-thralled limbs refused to
obey the impulse of his will. He made an effort to speak, but his tongue
clove to the roof of his mouth, and his jaws stuck together. He could
not raise a finger nor utter a sound. The boards over his head waved
like a shaken sheet, and the cabin whirled round, while the patch of
light at his feet bobbed up and down like the reflection from a wavering
candle. He closed his eyes with a terrible sigh of despair, and resigned
himself to his fate. At that instant the sound of hammering ceased, and
the door opened. It was six o'clock, and Pine had come to have a last
look at his patients before dinner. It seemed that there was somebody
with him, for a kind, though somewhat pompous, voice remarked upon the
scantiness of accommodation, and the “necessity--the absolute necessity”
of complying with the King's Regulations.
Honest Vickers, though agonized for the safety of his child, would not
abate a jot of his duty, and had sternly come to visit the sick men,
aware as he was that such a visit would necessitate his isolation from
the cabin where his child lay. Mrs. Vickers--weeping and bewailing
herself coquettishly at garrison parties--had often said that “poor dear
John was such a disciplinarian, quite a slave to the service.”
“Here they are,” said Pine; “six of 'em. This fellow”--going to the
side of Rex--“is the worst. If he had not a constitution like a horse, I
don't think he could live out the night.”
“Three, eighteen, seven, four,” muttered Rex; “dot and carry one. Is
that an occupation for a gentleman? No, sir. Good night, my lord, good
night. Hark! The clock is striking nine; five, six, seven, eight! Well,
you've had your day, and can't complain.”
“A dangerous fellow,” says Pine, with the light upraised. “A very
dangerous fellow--that is, he was. This is the place, you see--a regular
rat-hole; but what can one do?”
“Come, let us get on deck,” said Vickers, with a shudder of disgust.
Rufus Dawes felt the sweat break out into beads on his forehead. They
suspected nothing. They were going away. He must warn them. With a
violent effort, in his agony he turned over in the bunk and thrust out
his hand from the blankets.
“Hullo! what's this?” cried Pine, bringing the lantern to bear upon it.
“Lie down, my man. Eh!--water, is it? There, steady with it now”; and he
lifted a pannikin to the blackened, froth-fringed lips. The cool draught
moistened his parched gullet, and the convict made a last effort to
speak.
“Sarah Purfoy--to-night--the prison--MUTINY!”
The last word, almost shrieked out, in the sufferer's desperate efforts
to articulate, recalled the wandering senses of John Rex. “Hush!” he
cried. “Is that you, Jemmy? Sarah's right. Wait till she gives the
word.”
“He's raving,” said Vickers.
Pine caught the convict by the shoulder. “What do you say, my man? A
mutiny of the prisoners!”
With his mouth agape and his hands clenched, Rufus Dawes, incapable of
further speech, made a last effort to nod assent, but his head fell upon
his breast; the next moment, the flickering light, the gloomy prison,
the eager face of the doctor, and the astonished face of Vickers,
vanished from before his straining eyes. He saw the two men stare at
each other, in mingled incredulity and alarm, and then he was floating
down the cool brown river of his boyhood, on his way--in company with
Sarah Purfoy and Lieutenant Frere--to raise the mutiny of the Hydaspes,
that lay on the stocks in the old house at Hampstead.
CHAPTER IX. WOMAN'S WEAPONS.
The two discoverers of this awkward secret held a council of war.
Vickers was for at once calling the guard, and announcing to the
prisoners that the plot--whatever it might be--had been discovered; but
Pine, accustomed to convict ships, overruled this decision.
“You don't know these fellows as well as I do,” said he. “In the first
place there may be no mutiny at all. The whole thing is, perhaps, some
absurdity of that fellow Dawes--and should we once put the notion of
attacking us into the prisoners' heads, there is no telling what they
might do.”
“But the man seemed certain,” said the other. “He mentioned my wife's
maid, too!”
“Suppose he did?--and, begad, I dare say he's right--I never liked the
look of the girl. To tell them that we have found them out this time
won't prevent 'em trying it again. We don't know what their scheme is
either. If it is a mutiny, half the ship's company may be in it. No,
Captain Vickers, allow me, as surgeon-superintendent, to settle our
course of action. You are aware that--”
“--That, by the King's Regulations, you are invested with full powers,”
interrupted Vickers, mindful of discipline in any extremity. “Of course,
I merely suggested--and I know nothing about the girl, except that she
brought a good character from her last mistress--a Mrs. Crofton I think
the name was. We were glad to get anybody to make a voyage like this.”
“Well,” says Pine, “look here. Suppose we tell these scoundrels that
their design, whatever it may be, is known. Very good. They will
profess absolute ignorance, and try again on the next opportunity,
when, perhaps, we may not know anything about it. At all events, we
are completely ignorant of the nature of the plot and the names of the
ringleaders. Let us double the sentries, and quietly get the men under
arms. Let Miss Sarah do what she pleases, and when the mutiny breaks
out, we will nip it in the bud; clap all the villains we get in irons,
and hand them over to the authorities in Hobart Town. I am not a cruel
man, sir, but we have got a cargo of wild beasts aboard, and we must be
careful.”
“But surely, Mr. Pine, have you considered the probable loss of life?
I--really--some more humane course perhaps? Prevention, you know--”
Pine turned round upon him with that grim practicality which was a part
of his nature. “Have you considered the safety of the ship, Captain
Vickers? You know, or have heard of, the sort of things that take place
in these mutinies. Have you considered what will befall those half-dozen
women in the soldiers' berths? Have you thought of the fate of your own
wife and child?”
Vickers shuddered.
“Have it your way, Mr. Pine; you know best perhaps. But don't risk more
lives than you can help.”
“Be easy, sir,” says old Pine; “I am acting for the best; upon my soul
I am. You don't know what convicts are, or rather what the law has made
'em--yet--”
“Poor wretches!” says Vickers, who, like many martinets, was in reality
tender-hearted. “Kindness might do much for them. After all, they are
our fellow-creatures.”
“Yes,” returned the other, “they are. But if you use that argument to
them when they have taken the vessel, it won't avail you much. Let me
manage, sir; and for God's sake, say nothing to anybody. Our lives may
hang upon a word.”
Vickers promised, and kept his promise so far as to chat cheerily with
Blunt and Frere at dinner, only writing a brief note to his wife to tell
her that, whatever she heard, she was not to stir from her cabin until
he came to her; he knew that, with all his wife's folly, she would obey
unhesitatingly, when he couched an order in such terms.
According to the usual custom on board convict ships, the guards
relieved each other every two hours, and at six p.m. the poop guard was
removed to the quarter-deck, and the arms which, in the daytime,
were disposed on the top of the arm-chest, were placed in an arm-rack
constructed on the quarter-deck for that purpose. Trusting nothing to
Frere--who, indeed, by Pine's advice, was, as we have seen, kept in
ignorance of the whole matter--Vickers ordered all the men, save those
who had been on guard during the day, to be under arms in the barrack,
forbade communication with the upper deck, and placed as sentry at the
barrack door his own servant, an old soldier, on whose fidelity he could
thoroughly rely. He then doubled the guards, took the keys of the prison
himself from the non-commissioned officer whose duty it was to keep
them, and saw that the howitzer on the lower deck was loaded with grape.
It was a quarter to seven when Pine and he took their station at the
main hatchway, determined to watch until morning.
At a quarter past seven, any curious person looking through the window
of Captain Blunt's cabin would have seen an unusual sight. That gallant
commander was sitting on the bed-place, with a glass of rum and water in
his hand, and the handsome waiting-maid of Mrs. Vickers was seated on a
stool by his side. At a first glance it was perceptible that the captain
was very drunk. His grey hair was matted all ways about his reddened
face, and he was winking and blinking like an owl in the sunshine.
He had drunk a larger quantity of wine than usual at dinner, in sheer
delight at the approaching assignation, and having got out the rum
bottle for a quiet “settler” just as the victim of his fascinations
glided through the carefully-adjusted door, he had been persuaded to go
on drinking.
“Cuc-come, Sarah,” he hiccuped. “It's all very fine, my lass, but you
needn't be so--hic--proud, you know. I'm a plain sailor--plain s'lor,
Srr'h. Ph'n'as Bub--blunt, commander of the Mal-Mal- Malabar. Wors' 'sh
good talkin'?”
Sarah allowed a laugh to escape her, and artfully protruded an ankle at
the same time. The amorous Phineas lurched over, and made shift to take
her hand.
“You lovsh me, and I--hic--lovsh you, Sarah. And a preshus tight little
craft you--hic--are. Giv'sh--kiss, Sarah.”
Sarah got up and went to the door.
“Wotsh this? Goin'! Sarah, don't go,” and he staggered up; and with the
grog swaying fearfully in one hand, made at her.
The ship's bell struck the half-hour. Now or never was the time. Blunt
caught her round the waist with one arm, and hiccuping with love and
rum, approached to take the kiss he coveted. She seized the moment,
surrendered herself to his embrace, drew from her pocket the laudanum
bottle, and passing her hand over his shoulder, poured half its contents
into the glass.
“Think I'm--hic--drunk, do yer? Nun--not I, my wench.”
“You will be if you drink much more. Come, finish that and be quiet, or
I'll go away.”
But she threw a provocation into her glance as she spoke, which belied
her words, and which penetrated even the sodden intellect of poor
Blunt. He balanced himself on his heels for a moment, and holding by
the moulding of the cabin, stared at her with a fatuous smile of drunken
admiration, then looked at the glass in his hand, hiccuped with much
solemnity thrice, and, as though struck with a sudden sense of duty
unfulfilled, swallowed the contents at a gulp. The effect was almost
instantaneous. He dropped the tumbler, lurched towards the woman at the
door, and then making a half-turn in accordance with the motion of the
vessel, fell into his bunk, and snored like a grampus.
Sarah Purfoy watched him for a few minutes, and then having blown out
the light, stepped out of the cabin, and closed the door behind her. The
dusky gloom which had held the deck on the previous night enveloped all
forward of the main-mast. A lantern swung in the forecastle, and swayed
with the motion of the ship. The light at the prison door threw a glow
through the open hatch, and in the cuddy, at her right hand, the usual
row of oil-lamps burned. She looked mechanically for Vickers, who was
ordinarily there at that hour, but the cuddy was empty. So much the
better, she thought, as she drew her dark cloak around her, and tapped
at Frere's door. As she did so, a strange pain shot through her temples,
and her knees trembled. With a strong effort she dispelled the dizziness
that had almost overpowered her, and held herself erect. It would never
do to break down now.
The door opened, and Maurice Frere drew her into the cabin. “So you have
come?” said he.
“You see I have. But, oh! if I should be seen!”
“Seen? Nonsense! Who is to see you?”
“Captain Vickers, Doctor Pine, anybody.”
“Not they. Besides, they've gone off down to Pine's cabin since dinner.
They're all right.”
Gone off to Pine's cabin! The intelligence struck her with dismay.
What was the cause of such an unusual proceeding? Surely they did not
suspect! “What do they want there?” she asked.
Maurice Frere was not in the humour to argue questions of probability.
“Who knows? I don't. Confound 'em,” he added, “what does it matter to
us? We don't want them, do we, Sarah?”
She seemed to be listening for something, and did not reply. Her nervous
system was wound up to the highest pitch of excitement. The success of
the plot depended on the next five minutes.
“What are you staring at? Look at me, can't you? What eyes you have! And
what hair!”
At that instant the report of a musket-shot broke the silence. The
mutiny had begun!
The sound awoke the soldier to a sense of his duty. He sprang to his
feet, and disengaging the arms that clung about his neck, made for
the door. The moment for which the convict's accomplice had waited
approached. She hung upon him with all her weight. Her long hair swept
across his face, her warm breath was on his cheek, her dress exposed
her round, smooth shoulder. He, intoxicated, conquered, had half-turned
back, when suddenly the rich crimson died away from her lips, leaving
them an ashen grey colour. Her eyes closed in agony; loosing her hold
of him, she staggered to her feet, pressed her hands upon her bosom, and
uttered a sharp cry of pain.
The fever which had been on her two days, and which, by a strong
exercise of will, she had struggled against--encouraged by the violent
excitement of the occasion--had attacked her at this supreme moment.
Deathly pale and sick, she reeled to the side of the cabin. There was
another shot, and a violent clashing of arms; and Frere, leaving the
miserable woman to her fate, leapt out on to the deck.
CHAPTER X. EIGHT BELLS.
At seven o'clock there had been also a commotion in the prison. The news
of the fever had awoke in the convicts all that love of liberty which
had but slumbered during the monotony of the earlier part of the voyage.
Now that death menaced them, they longed fiercely for the chance of
escape which seemed permitted to freemen. “Let us get out!” they said,
each man speaking to his particular friend. “We are locked up here to
die like sheep.” Gloomy faces and desponding looks met the gaze of each,
and sometimes across this gloom shot a fierce glance that lighted up
its blackness, as a lightning-flash renders luridly luminous the indigo
dullness of a thunder-cloud. By and by, in some inexplicable way, it
came to be understood that there was a conspiracy afloat, that they
were to be released from their shambles, that some amongst them had been
plotting for freedom. The 'tween decks held its foul breath in wondering
anxiety, afraid to breathe its suspicions. The influence of this
predominant idea showed itself by a strange shifting of atoms. The
mass of villainy, ignorance, and innocence began to be animated with
something like a uniform movement. Natural affinities came together,
and like allied itself to like, falling noiselessly into harmony, as the
pieces of glass and coloured beads in a kaleidoscope assume mathematical
forms. By seven bells it was found that the prison was divided into
three parties--the desperate, the timid, and the cautious. These three
parties had arranged themselves in natural sequence. The mutineers,
headed by Gabbett, Vetch, and the Moocher, were nearest to the door; the
timid--boys, old men, innocent poor wretches condemned on circumstantial
evidence, or rustics condemned to be turned into thieves for pulling
a turnip--were at the farther end, huddling together in alarm; and the
prudent--that is to say, all the rest, ready to fight or fly, advance or
retreat, assist the authorities or their companions, as the fortune of
the day might direct--occupied the middle space. The mutineers proper
numbered, perhaps, some thirty men, and of these thirty only half a
dozen knew what was really about to be done.
The ship's bell strikes the half-hour, and as the cries of the three
sentries passing the word to the quarter-deck die away, Gabbett, who has
been leaning with his back against the door, nudges Jemmy Vetch.
“Now, Jemmy,” says he in a whisper, “tell 'em!”
The whisper being heard by those nearest the giant, a silence ensues,
which gradually spreads like a ripple over the surface of the crowd,
reaching even the bunks at the further end.
“Gentlemen,” says Mr. Vetch, politely sarcastic in his own hangdog
fashion, “myself and my friends here are going to take the ship for you.
Those who like to join us had better speak at once, for in about half an
hour they will not have the opportunity.”
He pauses, and looks round with such an impertinently confident air,
that three waverers in the party amidships slip nearer to hear him.
“You needn't be afraid,” Mr. Vetch continues, “we have arranged it all
for you. There are friends waiting for us outside, and the door will be
open directly. All we want, gentlemen, is your vote and interest--I mean
your--”
“Gaffing agin!” interrupts the giant angrily. “Come to business, carn't
yer? Tell 'em they may like it or lump it, but we mean to have the ship,
and them as refuses to join us we mean to chuck overboard. That's about
the plain English of it!”
This practical way of putting it produces a sensation, and the
conservative party at the other end look in each other's faces with some
alarm. A grim murmur runs round, and somebody near Mr. Gabbett laughs a
laugh of mingled ferocity and amusement, not reassuring to timid people.
“What about the sogers?” asked a voice from the ranks of the cautious.
“D--- the sogers!” cries the Moocher, moved by a sudden inspiration.
“They can but shoot yer, and that's as good as dyin' of typhus anyway!”
The right chord had been struck now, and with a stifled roar the prison
admitted the truth of the sentiment. “Go on, old man!” cries Jemmy Vetch
to the giant, rubbing his thin hands with eldritch glee. “They're all
right!” And then, his quick ears catching the jingle of arms, he said,
“Stand by now for the door--one rush'll do it.”
It was eight o'clock and the relief guard was coming from the after
deck. The crowd of prisoners round the door held their breath to listen.
“It's all planned,” says Gabbett, in a low growl. “W'en the door h'opens
we rush, and we're in among the guard afore they know where they are.
Drag 'em back into the prison, grab the h'arm-rack, and it's all over.”
“They're very quiet about it,” says the Crow suspiciously. “I hope it's
all right.”
“Stand from the door, Miles,” says Pine's voice outside, in its usual
calm accents.
The Crow was relieved. The tone was an ordinary one, and Miles was the
soldier whom Sarah Purfoy had bribed not to fire. All had gone well.
The keys clashed and turned, and the bravest of the prudent party,
who had been turning in his mind the notion of risking his life for a
pardon, to be won by rushing forward at the right moment and alarming
the guard, checked the cry that was in his throat as he saw the men
round the door draw back a little for their rush, and caught a glimpse
of the giant's bristling scalp and bared gums.
“NOW!” cries Jemmy Vetch, as the iron-plated oak swung back, and with
the guttural snarl of a charging wild boar, Gabbett hurled himself out
of the prison.
The red line of light which glowed for an instant through the doorway
was blotted out by a mass of figures. All the prison surged forward, and
before the eye could wink, five, ten, twenty, of the most desperate
were outside. It was as though a sea, breaking against a stone wall,
had found some breach through which to pour its waters. The contagion
of battle spread. Caution was forgotten; and those at the back, seeing
Jemmy Vetch raised upon the crest of that human billow which reared its
black outline against an indistinct perspective of struggling figures,
responded to his grin of encouragement by rushing furiously forward.
Suddenly a horrible roar like that of a trapped wild beast was heard.
The rushing torrent choked in the doorway, and from out the lantern glow
into which the giant had rushed, a flash broke, followed by a groan, as
the perfidious sentry fell back shot through the breast. The mass in
the doorway hung irresolute, and then by sheer weight of pressure from
behind burst forward, and as it so burst, the heavy door crashed into
its jambs, and the bolts were shot into their places.
All this took place by one of those simultaneous movements which are so
rapid in execution, so tedious to describe in detail. At one instant the
prison door had opened, at the next it had closed. The picture which
had presented itself to the eyes of the convicts was as momentary as are
those of the thaumatoscope. The period of time that had elapsed between
the opening and the shutting of the door could have been marked by the
musket shot.
The report of another shot, and then a noise of confused cries, mingled
with the clashing of arms, informed the imprisoned men that the ship
had been alarmed. How would it go with their friends on deck? Would they
succeed in overcoming the guards, or would they be beaten back? They
would soon know; and in the hot dusk, straining their eyes to see each
other, they waited for the issue Suddenly the noises ceased, and a
strange rumbling sound fell upon the ears of the listeners.
* * * * *
What had taken place?
This--the men pouring out of the darkness into the sudden glare of
the lanterns, rushed, bewildered, across the deck. Miles, true to his
promise, did not fire, but the next instant Vickers had snatched the
firelock from him, and leaping into the stream, turned about and
fired down towards the prison. The attack was more sudden then he had
expected, but he did not lose his presence of mind. The shot would serve
a double purpose. It would warn the men in the barrack, and perhaps
check the rush by stopping up the doorway with a corpse. Beaten back,
struggling, and indignant, amid the storm of hideous faces, his humanity
vanished, and he aimed deliberately at the head of Mr. James Vetch; the
shot, however, missed its mark, and killed the unhappy Miles.
Gabbett and his companions had by this time reached the foot of the
companion ladder, there to encounter the cutlasses of the doubled guard
gleaming redly in the glow of the lanterns. A glance up the hatchway
showed the giant that the arms he had planned to seize were defended by
ten firelocks, and that, behind the open doors of the partition which
ran abaft the mizenmast, the remainder of the detachment stood to their
arms. Even his dull intellect comprehended that the desperate project
had failed, and that he had been betrayed. With the roar of despair
which had penetrated into the prison, he turned to fight his way back,
just in time to see the crowd in the gangway recoil from the flash of
the musket fired by Vickers. The next instant, Pine and two soldiers,
taking advantage of the momentary cessation of the press, shot the
bolts, and secured the prison.
The mutineers were caught in a trap.
The narrow space between the barracks and the barricade was choked with
struggling figures. Some twenty convicts, and half as many soldiers,
struck and stabbed at each other in the crowd. There was barely
elbow-room, and attacked and attackers fought almost without knowing
whom they struck. Gabbett tore a cutlass from a soldier, shook his
huge head, and calling on the Moocher to follow, bounded up the ladder,
desperately determined to brave the fire of the watch. The Moocher,
close at the giant's heels, flung himself upon the nearest soldier, and
grasping his wrist, struggled for the cutlass. A brawny, bull-necked
fellow next him dashed his clenched fist in the soldier's face, and the
man maddened by the blow, let go the cutlass, and drawing his pistol,
shot his new assailant through the head. It was this second shot that
had aroused Maurice Frere.
As the young lieutenant sprang out upon the deck, he saw by the position
of the guard that others had been more mindful of the safety of the ship
than he. There was, however, no time for explanation, for, as he reached
the hatchway, he was met by the ascending giant, who uttered a hideous
oath at the sight of this unexpected adversary, and, too close to strike
him, locked him in his arms. The two men were drawn together. The guard
on the quarter-deck dared not fire at the two bodies that, twined
about each other, rolled across the deck, and for a moment Mr. Frere's
cherished existence hung upon the slenderest thread imaginable.
The Moocher, spattered with the blood and brains of his unfortunate
comrade, had already set his foot upon the lowest step of the ladder,
when the cutlass was dashed from his hand by a blow from a clubbed
firelock, and he was dragged roughly backwards. As he fell upon the
deck, he saw the Crow spring out of the mass of prisoners who had been,
an instant before, struggling with the guard, and, gaining the cleared
space at the bottom of the ladder, hold up his hands, as though to
shield himself from a blow. The confusion had now become suddenly
stilled, and upon the group before the barricade had fallen that
mysterious silence which had perplexed the inmates of the prison.
They were not perplexed for long. The two soldiers who, with the
assistance of Pine, had forced-to the door of the prison, rapidly
unbolted that trap-door in the barricade, of which mention has been made
in a previous chapter, and, at a signal from Vickers, three men ran the
loaded howitzer from its sinister shelter near the break of the barrack
berths, and, training the deadly muzzle to a level with the opening in
the barricade, stood ready to fire.
“Surrender!” cried Vickers, in a voice from which all “humanity” had
vanished. “Surrender, and give up your ringleaders, or I'll blow you to
pieces!”
There was no tremor in his voice, and though he stood, with Pine by his
side, at the very mouth of the levelled cannon, the mutineers perceived,
with that acuteness which imminent danger brings to the most stolid
of brains, that, did they hesitate an instant, he would keep his word.
There was an awful moment of silence, broken only by a skurrying noise
in the prison, as though a family of rats, disturbed at a flour cask,
were scampering to the ship's side for shelter. This skurrying noise was
made by the convicts rushing to their berths to escape the threatened
shower of grape; to the twenty desperadoes cowering before the muzzle of
the howitzer it spoke more eloquently than words. The charm was broken;
their comrades would refuse to join them. The position of affairs at
this crisis was a strange one. From the opened trap-door came a sort of
subdued murmur, like that which sounds within the folds of a sea-shell,
but, in the oblong block of darkness which it framed, nothing was
visible. The trap-door might have been a window looking into a tunnel.
On each side of this horrible window, almost pushed before it by the
pressure of one upon the other, stood Pine, Vickers, and the guard. In
front of the little group lay the corpse of the miserable boy whom Sarah
Purfoy had led to ruin; and forced close upon, yet shrinking back from
the trampled and bloody mass, crouched in mingled terror and rage, the
twenty mutineers. Behind the mutineers, withdrawn from the patch of
light thrown by the open hatchway, the mouth of the howitzer threatened
destruction; and behind the howitzer, backed up by an array of brown
musket barrels, suddenly glowed the tiny fire of the burning match in
the hand of Vickers's trusty servant.
The entrapped men looked up the hatchway, but the guard had already
closed in upon it, and some of the ship's crew--with that carelessness
of danger characteristic of sailors--were peering down upon them. Escape
was hopeless.
“One minute!” cried Vickers, confident that one second would be
enough--“one minute to go quietly, or--”
“Surrender, mates, for God's sake!” shrieked some unknown wretch from
out of the darkness of the prison. “Do you want to be the death of us?”
Jemmy Vetch, feeling, by that curious sympathy which nervous natures
possess, that his comrades wished him to act as spokesman, raised his
shrill tones. “We surrender,” he said. “It's no use getting our brains
blown out.” And raising his hands, he obeyed the motion of Vickers's
fingers, and led the way towards the barrack.
“Bring the irons forward, there!” shouted Vickers, hastening from his
perilous position; and before the last man had filed past the still
smoking match, the cling of hammers announced that the Crow had resumed
those fetters which had been knocked off his dainty limbs a month
previously in the Bay of Biscay.
In another moment the trap-door was closed, the howitzer rumbled back to
its cleatings, and the prison breathed again.
* * * * *
In the meantime, a scene almost as exciting had taken place on the upper
deck. Gabbett, with the blind fury which the consciousness of failure
brings to such brute-like natures, had seized Frere by the throat,
determined to put an end to at least one of his enemies. But desperate
though he was, and with all the advantage of weight and strength upon
his side, he found the young lieutenant a more formidable adversary than
he had anticipated.
Maurice Frere was no coward. Brutal and selfish though he might be, his
bitterest enemies had never accused him of lack of physical courage.
Indeed, he had been--in the rollicking days of old that were
gone--celebrated for the display of very opposite qualities. He was an
amateur at manly sports. He rejoiced in his muscular strength, and, in
many a tavern brawl and midnight riot of his own provoking, had proved
the fallacy of the proverb which teaches that a bully is always a
coward. He had the tenacity of a bulldog--once let him get his teeth in
his adversary, and he would hold on till he died. In fact he was, as
far as personal vigour went, a Gabbett with the education of a
prize-fighter; and, in a personal encounter between two men of equal
courage, science tells more than strength. In the struggle, however,
that was now taking place, science seemed to be of little value. To the
inexperienced eye, it would appear that the frenzied giant, gripping
the throat of the man who had fallen beneath him, must rise from the
struggle an easy victor. Brute force was all that was needed--there was
neither room nor time for the display of any cunning of fence.
But knowledge, though it cannot give strength, gives coolness. Taken by
surprise as he was, Maurice Frere did not lose his presence of mind. The
convict was so close upon him that there was no time to strike; but,
as he was forced backwards, he succeeded in crooking his knee round the
thigh of his assailant, and thrust one hand into his collar. Over and
over they rolled, the bewildered sentry not daring to fire, until the
ship's side brought them up with a violent jerk, and Frere realized that
Gabbett was below him. Pressing with all the might of his muscles, he
strove to resist the leverage which the giant was applying to turn him
over, but he might as well have pushed against a stone wall. With his
eyes protruding, and every sinew strained to its uttermost, he was
slowly forced round, and he felt Gabbett releasing his grasp, in order
to draw back and aim at him an effectual blow. Disengaging his left
hand, Frere suddenly allowed himself to sink, and then, drawing up his
right knee, struck Gabbett beneath the jaw, and as the huge head was
forced backwards by the blow, dashed his fist into the brawny throat.
The giant reeled backwards, and, falling on his hands and knees, was in
an instant surrounded by sailors.
Now began and ended, in less time than it takes to write it, one of
those Homeric struggles of one man against twenty, which are none
the less heroic because the Ajax is a convict, and the Trojans merely
ordinary sailors. Shaking his assailants to the deck as easily as a
wild boar shakes off the dogs which clamber upon his bristly sides, the
convict sprang to his feet, and, whirling the snatched-up cutlass round
his head, kept the circle at bay. Four times did the soldiers round the
hatchway raise their muskets, and four times did the fear of wounding
the men who had flung themselves upon the enraged giant compel them to
restrain their fire. Gabbett, his stubbly hair on end, his bloodshot
eyes glaring with fury, his great hand opening and shutting in air, as
though it gasped for something to seize, turned himself about from side
to side--now here, now there, bellowing like a wounded bull. His
coarse shirt, rent from shoulder to flank, exposed the play of his huge
muscles. He was bleeding from a cut on his forehead, and the blood,
trickling down his face, mingled with the foam on his lips, and dropped
sluggishly on his hairy breast. Each time that an assailant came within
reach of the swinging cutlass, the ruffian's form dilated with a fresh
access of passion. At one moment bunched with clinging adversaries--his
arms, legs, and shoulders a hanging mass of human bodies--at the next,
free, desperate, alone in the midst of his foes, his hideous countenance
contorted with hate and rage, the giant seemed less a man than a demon,
or one of those monstrous and savage apes which haunt the solitudes
of the African forests. Spurning the mob who had rushed in at him, he
strode towards his risen adversary, and aimed at him one final blow that
should put an end to his tyranny for ever. A notion that Sarah Purfoy
had betrayed him, and that the handsome soldier was the cause of
the betrayal, had taken possession of his mind, and his rage had
concentrated itself upon Maurice Frere. The aspect of the villain was so
appalling, that, despite his natural courage, Frere, seeing the backward
sweep of the cutlass, absolutely closed his eyes with terror, and
surrendered himself to his fate.
As Gabbett balanced himself for the blow, the ship, which had been
rocking gently on a dull and silent sea, suddenly lurched--the convict
lost his balance, swayed, and fell. Ere he could rise he was pinioned by
twenty hands.
Authority was almost instantaneously triumphant on the upper and lower
decks. The mutiny was over.
CHAPTER XI. DISCOVERIES AND CONFESSIONS.
The shock was felt all through the vessel, and Pine, who had been
watching the ironing of the last of the mutineers, at once divined its
cause.
“Thank God!” he cried, “there's a breeze at last!” and as the
overpowered Gabbett, bruised, bleeding, and bound, was dragged down the
hatchway, the triumphant doctor hurried upon deck to find the
Malabar plunging through the whitening water under the influence of a
fifteen-knot breeze.
“Stand by to reef topsails! Away aloft, men, and furl the royals!” cries
Best from the quarter-deck; and in the midst of the cheery confusion
Maurice Frere briefly recapitulated what had taken place, taking
care, however, to pass over his own dereliction of duty as rapidly as
possible.
Pine knit his brows. “Do you think that she was in the plot?” he asked.
“Not she!” says Frere--eager to avert inquiry. “How should she be? Plot!
She's sickening of fever, or I'm much mistaken.”
Sure enough, on opening the door of the cabin, they found Sarah Purfoy
lying where she had fallen a quarter of an hour before. The clashing of
cutlasses and the firing of muskets had not roused her.
“We must make a sick-bay somewhere,” says Pine, looking at the senseless
figure with no kindly glance; “though I don't think she's likely to be
very bad. Confound her! I believe that she's the cause of all this. I'll
find out, too, before many hours are over; for I've told those fellows
that unless they confess all about it before to-morrow morning, I'll get
them six dozen a-piece the day after we anchor in Hobart Town. I've a
great mind to do it before we get there. Take her head, Frere, and we'll
get her out of this before Vickers comes up. What a fool you are, to be
sure! I knew what it would be with women aboard ship. I wonder Mrs. V.
hasn't been out before now. There--steady past the door. Why, man, one
would think you never had your arm round a girl's waist before! Pooh!
don't look so scared--I won't tell. Make haste, now, before that little
parson comes. Parsons are regular old women to chatter”; and thus
muttering Pine assisted to carry Mrs. Vickers's maid into her cabin.
“By George, but she's a fine girl!” he said, viewing the inanimate body
with the professional eye of a surgeon. “I don't wonder at you making
a fool of yourself. Chances are, you've caught the fever, though this
breeze will help to blow it out of us, please God. That old jackass,
Blunt, too!--he ought to be ashamed of himself, at his age!”
“What do you mean?” asked Frere hastily, as he heard a step approach.
“What has Blunt to say about her?”
“Oh, I don't know,” returned Pine. “He was smitten too, that's all. Like
a good many more, in fact.”
“A good many more!” repeated the other, with a pretence of carelessness.
“Yes!” laughed Pine. “Why, man, she was making eyes at every man in the
ship! I caught her kissing a soldier once.”
Maurice Frere's cheeks grew hot. The experienced profligate had been
taken in, deceived, perhaps laughed at. All the time he had flattered
himself that he was fascinating the black-eyed maid, the black-eyed
maid had been twisting him round her finger, and perhaps imitating his
love-making for the gratification of her soldier-lover. It was not a
pleasant thought; and yet, strange to say, the idea of Sarah's treachery
did not make him dislike her. There is a sort of love--if love it can be
called--which thrives under ill-treatment. Nevertheless, he cursed with
some appearance of disgust.
Vickers met them at the door. “Pine, Blunt has the fever. Mr. Best found
him in his cabin groaning. Come and look at him.”
The commander of the Malabar was lying on his bunk in the betwisted
condition into which men who sleep in their clothes contrive to get
themselves. The doctor shook him, bent down over him, and then loosened
his collar. “He's not sick,” he said; “he's drunk! Blunt! wake up!
Blunt!”
But the mass refused to move.
“Hallo!” says Pine, smelling at the broken tumbler, “what's this? Smells
queer. Rum? No. Eh! Laudanum! By George, he's been hocussed!”
“Nonsense!”
“I see it,” slapping his thigh. “It's that infernal woman! She's
drugged him, and meant to do the same for”--(Frere gave him an imploring
look)--“for anybody else who would be fool enough to let her do it.
Dawes was right, sir. She's in it; I'll swear she's in it.”
“What! my wife's maid? Nonsense!” said Vickers.
“Nonsense!” echoed Frere.
“It's no nonsense. That soldier who was shot, what's his name?--Miles,
he--but, however, it doesn't matter. It's all over now.” “The men will
confess before morning,” says Vickers, “and we'll see.” And he went off
to his wife's cabin.
His wife opened the door for him. She had been sitting by the child's
bedside, listening to the firing, and waiting for her husband's return
without a murmur. Flirt, fribble, and shrew as she was, Julia Vickers
had displayed, in times of emergency, that glowing courage which women
of her nature at times possess. Though she would yawn over any book
above the level of a genteel love story; attempt to fascinate, with
ludicrous assumption of girlishness, boys young enough to be her sons;
shudder at a frog, and scream at a spider, she could sit throughout a
quarter of an hour of such suspense as she had just undergone with as
much courage as if she had been the strongest-minded woman that ever
denied her sex. “Is it all over?” she asked.
“Yes, thank God!” said Vickers, pausing on the threshold. “All is safe
now, though we had a narrow escape, I believe. How's Sylvia?” The child
was lying on the bed with her fair hair scattered over the pillow, and
her tiny hands moving restlessly to and fro.
“A little better, I think, though she has been talking a good deal.”
The red lips parted, and the blue eyes, brighter than ever, stared
vacantly around. The sound of her father's voice seemed to have roused
her, for she began to speak a little prayer: “God bless papa and mamma,
and God bless all on board this ship. God bless me, and make me a good
girl, for Jesus Christ's sake, our Lord. Amen.”
The sound of the unconscious child's simple prayer had something awesome
in it, and John Vickers, who, not ten minutes before, would have sealed
his own death warrant unhesitatingly to preserve the safety of the
vessel, felt his eyes fill with unwonted tears. The contrast was
curious. From out the midst of that desolate ocean--in a fever-smitten
prison ship, leagues from land, surrounded by ruffians, thieves, and
murderers, the baby voice of an innocent child called confidently on
Heaven.
* * * * *
Two hours afterwards--as the Malabar, escaped from the peril which had
menaced her, plunged cheerily through the rippling water--the mutineers,
by the spokesman, Mr. James Vetch, confessed.
“They were very sorry, and hoped that their breach of discipline would
be forgiven. It was the fear of the typhus which had driven them to it.
They had no accomplices either in the prison or out of it, but they felt
it but right to say that the man who had planned the mutiny was Rufus
Dawes.”
The malignant cripple had guessed from whom the information which
had led to the failure of the plot had been derived, and this was his
characteristic revenge.
CHAPTER XII. A NEWSPAPER PARAGRAPH.
Extracted from the Hobart Town Courier of the 12th November, 1827:--
“The examination of the prisoners who were concerned in the attempt upon
the Malabar was concluded on Tuesday last. The four ringleaders, Dawes
Gabbett, Vetch, and Sanders, were condemned to death; but we understand
that, by the clemency of his Excellency the Governor, their sentence
has been commuted to six years at the penal settlement of Macquarie
Harbour.”
END OF BOOK THE FIRST
BOOK II.--MACQUARIE HARBOUR. 1833.
CHAPTER I. THE TOPOGRAPHY OF VAN DIEMEN'S LAND.
The south-east coast of Van Diemen's Land, from the solitary Mewstone to
the basaltic cliffs of Tasman's Head, from Tasman's Head to Cape Pillar,
and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates' Bay, resembles
a biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continual
action of the ocean which, pouring round by east and west, has divided
the peninsula from the mainland of the Australasian continent--and done
for Van Diemen's Land what it has done for the Isle of Wight--the shore
line is broken and ragged. Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragments
of island and promontory which lie scattered between the South-West Cape
and the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms assumed by melted
lead spilt into water. If the supposition were not too extravagant, one
might imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a careless
giant upset the crucible, and spilt Van Diemen's land in the ocean. The
coast navigation is as dangerous as that of the Mediterranean. Passing
from Cape Bougainville to the east of Maria Island, and between the
numerous rocks and shoals which lie beneath the triple height of the
Three Thumbs, the mariner is suddenly checked by Tasman's Peninsula,
hanging, like a huge double-dropped ear-ring, from the mainland. Getting
round under the Pillar rock through Storm Bay to Storing Island, we
sight the Italy of this miniature Adriatic. Between Hobart Town
and Sorrell, Pittwater and the Derwent, a strangely-shaped point of
land--the Italian boot with its toe bent upwards--projects into the bay,
and, separated from this projection by a narrow channel, dotted with
rocks, the long length of Bruny Island makes, between its western
side and the cliffs of Mount Royal, the dangerous passage known as
D'Entrecasteaux Channel. At the southern entrance of D'Entrecasteaux
Channel, a line of sunken rocks, known by the generic name of the
Actaeon reef, attests that Bruny Head was once joined with the shores
of Recherche Bay; while, from the South Cape to the jaws of Macquarie
Harbour, the white water caused by sunken reefs, or the jagged peaks of
single rocks abruptly rising in mid sea, warn the mariner off shore.
It would seem as though nature, jealous of the beauties of her silver
Derwent, had made the approach to it as dangerous as possible; but
once through the archipelago of D'Entrecasteaux Channel, or the less
dangerous eastern passage of Storm Bay, the voyage up the river is
delightful. From the sentinel solitude of the Iron Pot to the smiling
banks of New Norfolk, the river winds in a succession of reaches,
narrowing to a deep channel cleft between rugged and towering cliffs. A
line drawn due north from the source of the Derwent would strike another
river winding out from the northern part of the island, as the Derwent
winds out from the south. The force of the waves, expended, perhaps, in
destroying the isthmus which, two thousand years ago, probably connected
Van Diemen's Land with the continent has been here less violent. The
rounding currents of the Southern Ocean, meeting at the mouth of the
Tamar, have rushed upwards over the isthmus they have devoured, and
pouring against the south coast of Victoria, have excavated there that
inland sea called Port Philip Bay. If the waves have gnawed the south
coast of Van Diemen's Land, they have bitten a mouthful out of the south
coast of Victoria. The Bay is a millpool, having an area of nine hundred
square miles, with a race between the heads two miles across.
About a hundred and seventy miles to the south of this mill-race lies
Van Diemen's Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial
showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman's Cap, Wyld's
Crag, or the lofty peaks of the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour
down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilizing streams. No parching
hot wind--the scavenger, if the torment, of the continent--blows upon
her crops and corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters
of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city
which nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot wind,
born amid the burning sand of the interior of the vast Australian
continent, sweeps over the scorched and cracking plains, to lick up
their streams and wither the herbage in its path, until it meets the
waters of the great south bay; but in its passage across the straits it
is reft of its fire, and sinks, exhausted with its journey, at the feet
of the terraced slopes of Launceston.
The climate of Van Diemen's Land is one of the loveliest in the world.
Launceston is warm, sheltered, and moist; and Hobart Town, protected by
Bruny Island and its archipelago of D'Entrecasteaux Channel and Storm
Bay from the violence of the southern breakers, preserves the mean
temperature of Smyrna; whilst the district between these two towns
spreads in a succession of beautiful valleys, through which glide clear
and sparkling streams. But on the western coast, from the steeple-rocks
of Cape Grim to the scrub-encircled barrenness of Sandy Cape, and
the frowning entrance to Macquarie Harbour, the nature of the country
entirely changes. Along that iron-bound shore, from Pyramid Island and
the forest-backed solitude of Rocky Point, to the great Ram Head, and
the straggling harbour of Port Davey, all is bleak and cheerless. Upon
that dreary beach the rollers of the southern sea complete their circuit
of the globe, and the storm that has devastated the Cape, and united in
its eastern course with the icy blasts which sweep northward from the
unknown terrors of the southern pole, crashes unchecked upon the Huon
pine forests, and lashes with rain the grim front of Mount Direction.
Furious gales and sudden tempests affright the natives of the coast.
Navigation is dangerous, and the entrance to the “Hell's Gates” of
Macquarie Harbour--at the time of which we are writing (1833), in the
height of its ill-fame as a convict settlement--is only to be attempted
in calm weather. The sea-line is marked with wrecks. The sunken rocks
are dismally named after the vessels they have destroyed. The air is
chill and moist, the soil prolific only in prickly undergrowth and
noxious weeds, while foetid exhalations from swamp and fen cling close
to the humid, spongy ground. All around breathes desolation; on the face
of nature is stamped a perpetual frown. The shipwrecked sailor, crawling
painfully to the summit of basalt cliffs, or the ironed convict,
dragging his tree trunk to the edge of some beetling plateau, looks down
upon a sea of fog, through which rise mountain-tops like islands; or
sees through the biting sleet a desert of scrub and crag rolling to the
feet of Mount Heemskirk and Mount Zeehan--crouched like two sentinel
lions keeping watch over the seaboard.
CHAPTER II. THE SOLITARY OF “HELL'S GATES”.
“Hell's Gates,” formed by a rocky point, which runs abruptly northward,
almost touches, on its eastern side, a projecting arm of land which
guards the entrance to King's River. In the middle of the gates is a
natural bolt--that is to say, an island-which, lying on a sandy bar in
the very jaws of the current, creates a double whirlpool, impossible
to pass in the smoothest weather. Once through the gates, the convict,
chained on the deck of the inward-bound vessel, sees in front of him the
bald cone of the Frenchman's Cap, piercing the moist air at a height of
five thousand feet; while, gloomed by overhanging rocks, and shadowed
by gigantic forests, the black sides of the basin narrow to the mouth of
the Gordon. The turbulent stream is the colour of indigo, and, being fed
by numerous rivulets, which ooze through masses of decaying vegetable
matter, is of so poisonous a nature that it is not only undrinkable, but
absolutely kills the fish, which in stormy weather are driven in from
the sea. As may be imagined, the furious tempests which beat upon this
exposed coast create a strong surf-line. After a few days of north-west
wind the waters of the Gordon will be found salt for twelve miles up
from the bar. The head-quarters of the settlement were placed on an
island not far from the mouth of this inhospitable river, called Sarah
Island.
Though now the whole place is desolate, and a few rotting posts and logs
alone remain-mute witnesses of scenes of agony never to be revived--in
the year 1833 the buildings were numerous and extensive. On Philip's
Island, on the north side of the harbour, was a small farm, where
vegetables were grown for the use of the officers of the establishment;
and, on Sarah Island, were sawpits, forges, dockyards, gaol,
guard-house, barracks, and jetty. The military force numbered about
sixty men, who, with convict-warders and constables, took charge of
more than three hundred and fifty prisoners. These miserable wretches,
deprived of every hope, were employed in the most degrading labour.
No beast of burden was allowed on the settlement; all the pulling and
dragging was done by human beings. About one hundred “good-conduct” men
were allowed the lighter toil of dragging timber to the wharf, to
assist in shipbuilding; the others cut down the trees that fringed the
mainland, and carried them on their shoulders to the water's edge. The
denseness of the scrub and bush rendered it necessary for a “roadway,”
perhaps a quarter of a mile in length, to be first constructed; and the
trunks of trees, stripped of their branches, were rolled together in
this roadway, until a “slide” was made, down which the heavier logs
could be shunted towards the harbour. The timber thus obtained was made
into rafts, and floated to the sheds, or arranged for transportation
to Hobart Town. The convicts were lodged on Sarah Island, in barracks
flanked by a two-storied prison, whose “cells” were the terror of the
most hardened. Each morning they received their breakfast of porridge,
water, and salt, and then rowed, under the protection of their guard, to
the wood-cutting stations, where they worked without food, until night.
The launching and hewing of the timber compelled them to work up to
their waists in water. Many of them were heavily ironed. Those who died
were buried on a little plot of ground, called Halliday's Island (from
the name of the first man buried there), and a plank stuck into the
earth, and carved with the initials of the deceased, was the only
monument vouchsafed him.
Sarah Island, situated at the south-east corner of the harbour, is long
and low. The commandant's house was built in the centre, having the
chaplain's house and barracks between it and the gaol. The hospital was
on the west shore, and in a line with it lay the two penitentiaries.
Lines of lofty palisades ran round the settlement, giving it the
appearance of a fortified town. These palisades were built for the
purpose of warding off the terrific blasts of wind, which, shrieking
through the long and narrow bay as through the keyhole of a door, had in
former times tore off roofs and levelled boat-sheds. The little town
was set, as it were, in defiance of Nature, at the very extreme of
civilization, and its inhabitants maintained perpetual warfare with the
winds and waves.
But the gaol of Sarah Island was not the only prison in this desolate
region.
At a little distance from the mainland is a rock, over the rude side
of which the waves dash in rough weather. On the evening of the 3rd
December, 1833, as the sun was sinking behind the tree-tops on the left
side of the harbour, the figure of a man appeared on the top of this
rock. He was clad in the coarse garb of a convict, and wore round his
ankles two iron rings, connected by a short and heavy chain. To the
middle of this chain a leathern strap was attached, which, splitting
in the form of a T, buckled round his waist, and pulled the chain high
enough to prevent him from stumbling over it as he walked. His head was
bare, and his coarse, blue-striped shirt, open at the throat, displayed
an embrowned and muscular neck. Emerging from out a sort of cell, or
den, contrived by nature or art in the side of the cliff, he threw on
a scanty fire, which burned between two hollowed rocks, a small log of
pine wood, and then returning to his cave, and bringing from it an iron
pot, which contained water, he scooped with his toil-hardened hands a
resting-place for it in the ashes, and placed it on the embers. It was
evident that the cave was at once his storehouse and larder, and that
the two hollowed rocks formed his kitchen.
Having thus made preparations for supper, he ascended a pathway which
led to the highest point of the rock. His fetters compelled him to take
short steps, and, as he walked, he winced as though the iron bit him.
A handkerchief or strip of cloth was twisted round his left ankle; on
which the circlet had chafed a sore. Painfully and slowly, he gained his
destination, and flinging himself on the ground, gazed around him. The
afternoon had been stormy, and the rays of the setting sun shone redly
on the turbid and rushing waters of the bay. On the right lay Sarah
Island; on the left the bleak shore of the opposite and the tall peak of
the Frenchman's Cap; while the storm hung sullenly over the barren hills
to the eastward. Below him appeared the only sign of life. A brig was
being towed up the harbour by two convict-manned boats.
The sight of this brig seemed to rouse in the mind of the solitary of
the rock a strain of reflection, for, sinking his chin upon his hand,
he fixed his eyes on the incoming vessel, and immersed himself in moody
thought. More than an hour had passed, yet he did not move. The ship
anchored, the boats detached themselves from her sides, the sun sank,
and the bay was plunged in gloom. Lights began to twinkle along the
shore of the settlement. The little fire died, and the water in the iron
pot grew cold; yet the watcher on the rock did not stir. With his eyes
staring into the gloom, and fixed steadily on the vessel, he lay along
the barren cliff of his lonely prison as motionless as the rock on which
he had stretched himself.
This solitary man was Rufus Dawes.
CHAPTER III. A SOCIAL EVENING.
In the house of Major Vickers, Commandant of Macquarie Harbour, there
was, on this evening of December 3rd, unusual gaiety.
Lieutenant Maurice Frere, late in command at Maria Island, had
unexpectedly come down with news from head-quarters. The Ladybird,
Government schooner, visited the settlement on ordinary occasions twice
a year, and such visits were looked forward to with no little eagerness
by the settlers. To the convicts the arrival of the Ladybird meant
arrival of new faces, intelligence of old comrades, news of how the
world, from which they were exiled, was progressing. When the Ladybird
arrived, the chained and toil-worn felons felt that they were yet human,
that the universe was not bounded by the gloomy forests which surrounded
their prison, but that there was a world beyond, where men, like
themselves, smoked, and drank, and laughed, and rested, and were Free.
When the Ladybird arrived, they heard such news as interested them--that
is to say, not mere foolish accounts of wars or ship arrivals, or city
gossip, but matters appertaining to their own world--how Tom was with
the road gangs, Dick on a ticket-of-leave, Harry taken to the bush, and
Jack hung at the Hobart Town Gaol. Such items of intelligence were the
only news they cared to hear, and the new-comers were well posted up in
such matters. To the convicts the Ladybird was town talk, theatre,
stock quotations, and latest telegrams. She was their newspaper and
post-office, the one excitement of their dreary existence, the one link
between their own misery and the happiness of their fellow-creatures. To
the Commandant and the “free men” this messenger from the outer life
was scarcely less welcome. There was not a man on the island who did not
feel his heart grow heavier when her white sails disappeared behind the
shoulder of the hill.
On the present occasion business of more than ordinary importance had
procured for Major Vickers this pleasurable excitement. It had been
resolved by Governor Arthur that the convict establishment should be
broken up. A succession of murders and attempted escapes had called
public attention to the place, and its distance from Hobart Town
rendered it inconvenient and expensive. Arthur had fixed upon Tasman's
Peninsula--the earring of which we have spoken--as a future convict
depôt, and naming it Port Arthur, in honour of himself, had sent down
Lieutenant Maurice Frere with instructions for Vickers to convey the
prisoners of Macquarie Harbour thither.
In order to understand the magnitude and meaning of such an order as
that with which Lieutenant Frere was entrusted, we must glance at the
social condition of the penal colony at this period of its history.
Nine years before, Colonel Arthur, late Governor of Honduras, had
arrived at a most critical moment. The former Governor, Colonel Sorrell,
was a man of genial temperament, but little strength of character. He
was, moreover, profligate in his private life; and, encouraged by his
example, his officers violated all rules of social decency. It was
common for an officer to openly keep a female convict as his mistress.
Not only would compliance purchase comforts, but strange stories were
afloat concerning the persecution of women who dared to choose their own
lovers. To put down this profligacy was the first care of Arthur; and in
enforcing a severe attention to etiquette and outward respectability, he
perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded,
he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of
the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. In
opposition to this official society created by Governor Arthur was that
of the free settlers and the ticket-of-leave men. The latter were more
numerous than one would be apt to suppose. On the 2nd November, 1829,
thirty-eight free pardons and fifty-six conditional pardons appeared on
the books; and the number of persons holding tickets-of-leave, on the
26th of September the same year, was seven hundred and forty-five.
Of the social condition of these people at this time it is impossible to
speak without astonishment. According to the recorded testimony of many
respectable persons-Government officials, military officers, and free
settlers-the profligacy of the settlers was notorious. Drunkenness was
a prevailing vice. Even children were to be seen in the streets
intoxicated. On Sundays, men and women might be observed standing round
the public-house doors, waiting for the expiration of the hours of
public worship, in order to continue their carousing. As for the
condition of the prisoner population, that, indeed, is indescribable.
Notwithstanding the severe punishment for sly grog-selling, it was
carried on to a large extent. Men and women were found intoxicated
together, and a bottle of brandy was considered to be cheaply bought at
the price of twenty lashes. In the factory--a prison for females--the
vilest abuses were committed, while the infamies current, as matters
of course, in chain gangs and penal settlements, were of too horrible
a nature to be more than hinted at here. All that the vilest and most
bestial of human creatures could invent and practise, was in this
unhappy country invented and practised without restraint and without
shame.
Seven classes of criminals were established in 1826, when the new
barracks for prisoners at Hobart Town were finished. The first class
were allowed to sleep out of barracks, and to work for themselves on
Saturday; the second had only the last-named indulgence; the third were
only allowed Saturday afternoon; the fourth and fifth were “refractory
and disorderly characters--to work in irons;” the sixth were “men of
the most degraded and incorrigible character--to be worked in irons, and
kept entirely separate from the other prisoners;” while the seventh were
the refuse of this refuse--the murderers, bandits, and villains, whom
neither chain nor lash could tame. They were regarded as socially dead,
and shipped to Hell's Gates, or Maria Island. Hells Gates was the most
dreaded of all these houses of bondage. The discipline at the place was
so severe, and the life so terrible, that prisoners would risk all to
escape from it. In one year, of eighty-five deaths there, only thirty
were from natural causes; of the remaining dead, twenty-seven were
drowned, eight killed accidentally, three shot by the soldiers, and
twelve murdered by their comrades. In 1822, one hundred and sixty-nine
men out of one hundred and eighty-two were punished to the extent of two
thousand lashes. During the ten years of its existence, one hundred
and twelve men escaped, out of whom sixty-two only were found-dead.
The prisoners killed themselves to avoid living any longer, and if so
fortunate as to penetrate the desert of scrub, heath, and swamp, which
lay between their prison and the settled districts, preferred death to
recapture. Successfully to transport the remnant of this desperate band
of doubly-convicted felons to Arthur's new prison, was the mission of
Maurice Frere.
He was sitting by the empty fire-place, with one leg carelessly thrown
over the other, entertaining the company with his usual indifferent air.
The six years that had passed since his departure from England had given
him a sturdier frame and a fuller face. His hair was coarser, his face
redder, and his eye more hard, but in demeanour he was little changed.
Sobered he might be, and his voice had acquired that decisive, insured
tone which a voice exercised only in accents of command invariably
acquires, but his bad qualities were as prominent as ever. His five
years' residence at Maria Island had increased that brutality of
thought, and overbearing confidence in his own importance, for which he
had been always remarkable, but it had also given him an assured air of
authority, which covered the more unpleasant features of his character.
He was detested by the prisoners--as he said, “it was a word and a blow
with him”--but, among his superiors, he passed for an officer, honest
and painstaking, though somewhat bluff and severe.
“Well, Mrs. Vickers,” he said, as he took a cup of tea from the hands
of that lady, “I suppose you won't be sorry to get away from this place,
eh? Trouble you for the toast, Vickers!”
“No indeed,” says poor Mrs. Vickers, with the old girlishness shadowed
by six years; “I shall be only too glad. A dreadful place! John's
duties, however, are imperative. But the wind! My dear Mr. Frere, you've
no idea of it; I wanted to send Sylvia to Hobart Town, but John would
not let her go.”
“By the way, how is Miss Sylvia?” asked Frere, with the patronising air
which men of his stamp adopt when they speak of children.
“Not very well, I'm sorry to say,” returned Vickers. “You see, it's
lonely for her here. There are no children of her own age, with the
exception of the pilot's little girl, and she cannot associate with her.
But I did not like to leave her behind, and endeavoured to teach her
myself.”
“Hum! There was a-ha-governess, or something, was there not?” said
Frere, staring into his tea-cup. “That maid, you know--what was her
name?”
“Miss Purfoy,” said Mrs. Vickers, a little gravely. “Yes, poor thing! A
sad story, Mr. Frere.”
Frere's eye twinkled.
“Indeed! I left, you know, shortly after the trial of the mutineers, and
never heard the full particulars.” He spoke carelessly, but he awaited
the reply with keen curiosity.
“A sad stor
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