I was awakened by the yelping of hounds; my windows, extending to the
floor, were open. As I stepped out onto the veranda in front, Elaine’s
silvery laugh floated up. I peered through the railing and backed into
my room for obvious reasons, not wishing to be seen, dressed as I was.
I had seen the young lady running down the pathway to the river with a
half-dozen of the long-eared, slack-lipped brown man-chasers bounding
about her. The dogs were evidently getting a scent from the blue jacket
which she carried in her hand, as during the momentary view which I
had, they started running ahead of her and the tone of each held a
different note from the yelp of play; a sinister sound meaning business
I determined, and I dressed hastily thinking something was amiss,
notwithstanding the evident cheerfulness of my little hostess.
The dogs had gone upshore, I was certain and as I reached the water’s
edge, I saw Elaine’s white dress a quarter of a mile away; its contrast
with the fringe of green spruce trees bordering the waterfront
rendered any mistake impossible. She was evidently standing still but I
could not make out what it was all about. I reached the point which I
had marked but she had vanished.
I stopped running as a most choice jumble of Pidgin English, Cantonese
and possibly other varieties of Chinese epithets met my ear.
In the precarious upper crotch of a wild cherry tree, looking down, his
usually sallow face empurpled, his eyes like twin moons at the full;
indignation, joy or fear, I could not determine which, was the moving
cause until it suddenly occurred to me that Fong’s little missie was
evidently having some sport at his expense.
Seriously I called, “What is the matter, Fong?”
“Mlatta, mlatta,” came irritably from the Chinaman, “Plitty soon mad
dogs eat this Chinaman plenty up.”
I asked where Miss Elaine had gone and Fong pointed out through the
spruce thicket, “Mlissie, dogs all gone same way; soon Fong come down,
Mlissie say,” and I gathered that the young lady was prone to amuse
herself as though no black cloud hung about. Youth irrepressible,
flaring up, had brought about Fong’s discomfiture.
He had depreciated the dogs’ ability--in his opinion their most useful
occupation was meat-eating and Elaine was proving him in error by
running him to cover and then she had called off the hunt and informed
Fong that he was at liberty after a half-hour or so.
Should I walk back with Fong or should I follow the little path through
the thicket and walk with Elaine? Was it timidity of the dogs? A
quarter-mile walk with her--it was worth the venture, though I doubted
not I stood a good chance of being eaten alive by the brute escort.
My hesitation was only momentary. I plunged into the dense fringe of
spruce and walking rapidly soon came out into a more open wood, where
hickory and butternut trees abounded.
She was on her knees before a great tangle of hazel bushes and I
stopped just for a second--“What shall I say or do?”
She arose, her white skirt gathered by her left hand into a receptacle
for the hazelnuts which she was gathering.
A little startled scream; the skirt fluttered from her fingers and the
gathered hazelnuts piled in a scattered heap on the ground.
“A thousand pardons--the picture was so charming--I’m sorry,” I
stammered.
The startled look left Elaine’s eyes.
“There,” she laughingly said, “You may retrieve my treasures. I had
just commenced picking. Did you see anything of poor Fong?”
“Yes,” I replied, “Up a tree.”
She laughed heartily, throwing her bare white arms up in an effort to
adjust some little strands of dark gold, disarranged in the flight
after the hounds.
“That China boy is a dear; he will never again doubt the usefulness of
my canine friends; was he still afraid?”
“Could not be persuaded to come down for half an hour.”
Then she said, “I hope I have not really alarmed him; let us return and
take him back to the Hall.”
I ventured a protest; could see my chances for a walk with her in the
balance. I was busily stuffing prickly husks into the patch-pockets of
my Norfolk when Elaine asked, “Why up so early this morning?”
It was not the words. Something in the quizzical tone, the look, the
thought that back of the question was an interest meant much at that
moment.
“Your laugh pulled me right across the veranda, over the rail, right
up to Fong’s perch,” I replied, and she said, archly, “Do I laugh so
rarely that it has such a terrible effect on our friends?”
Then she laughed gaily and for one glorious hour before we reached the
Hall I watched her every word and mood for indication of interest in me
or a motion that might be interpreted into something deeper than the
sentiment called friendship.
When we entered the house, loaded with floral trophies, wild and
tame, I was still wholly in the dark as to whether or not this girl
had ever given me a thought other than as a guest of her brother--her
brother--that was it; he seemed to be her great, her only interest--her
heart was his and no other man had as yet made even a dent in it--yet I
was not discouraged.
I decided I would spend the winter at Craighead Hall. My excellent
chances with my firm at home might go hang; for one hour,
responsibility was cast aside; there was for me only one desideratum.
That day and evening, Elaine was brilliant, joyful; her beautiful,
expressive eyes fairly danced. One could not bring oneself to believe
that she ever had a care or an anxious thought. I fervently offered a
silent supplication to the great God in heaven that she should always
be just as she was that night.
Under the wideflung branches of a lone giant maple atop the big hill to
the west, Hugh resumed his story.
Not a word had been spoken as we leisurely tramped up the river’s
edge, out through a fringe of woods, across a cultivated field, then
up, up by a zigzag pathway, little used, to the hill’s crest. Hugh
was unusually preoccupied; he walked the last stretch ahead of me and
seated himself on a bank of green. Pretty well winded by the climb, I
threw myself down a few feet from him.
Faintly then floated up to us the voices of rivermen in song. They were
taking in the booms used during high water when lumber drives were
floated down the river.
With chin resting on the palms of both hands and elbows on his knees,
Hugh sat pensively looking out across his demesne of field and forest
to where the castellated hall of the Craigheads, a set diamond in a
circle of greenery, gleamed white in the evening sunlight.
Suddenly he broke the silence.
“I do not wonder,” he said, “that my father objected to my reading
Voltaire. This is where I read _La Pucelle_--what a terrible impression
of the saintly Joan it leaves with you! What an egoist Voltaire was and
yet what a great mind! He thought independently, fearlessly. How he
ridiculed religion! His satire was cutting. Religion, a contradictory
emotion--dying, tortured, hundreds of thousands miserably perishing on
rack and in dungeon because of a belief.
“What do we Christians really believe? That God Almighty threw the
unlimited universe--or at least our solar system--out of gear that a
thieving band of unwashed nomads might have light for their massacre of
tens of thousands of women and innocent children?
“This is anthropomorphizing God with a vengeance, but the Israelite
could not look higher than the wandering old Arab Abraham or the
cunning Jacob, a wily trader, but God’s chosen who easily outwitted his
crafty uncle! That’s a long way back, Gordon, but the faith and the
trait survive--we need religion, ready-made. Hundreds of millions are
comforted by it, whether Christian, Mohammedan, Shinto, Buddhist or
Voodoo, and all, even you my friend, come within its control.
“What is your idea of God? For years I carried in my head the picture,
a woodcut of a stern-visaged old man with whiskers. I saw it in the
kirk at White’s Corners when a wee lad. I can see it even now, yes, and
hear the old dominie thunder out a denunciation of the ‘use of stringed
instruments.’
“Ezra was a plagiarist, Babylon, his birth-place, borrowed from the
Persian Vedas its story of Adamus and Procriti, antedating Moses
fifteen hundred years, and Ezra borrowed from Babylon to furnish a
beginning to our book of books on which all our hope of heaven is
founded. Borrowed its garden on the Tigris but shifted to a different
locale, characteristically purloining the snake, the tree and all,
but the versatile Babylonian Jew, contrary to the ancient Babylonian
teaching, made a transposition of personages; he pictured man in the
image of God instead of the reverse.
“I do not feel, Gordon, that Mr. Ezra improved things; I cannot
conceive of God as a man; that is debasing to a low level a Power--the
marvelous something ruling the limitless universe with its intelligent
laws. There is a Supreme Power. Call it God or Law, it is in every
soul, in every breath that sustains life and in every spirit even after
the great transformation.
“The old Persian version was better; man could draw his own picture,
make his God as beautiful, as sympathetic, as consoling as the case
demanded, but Ezra, abetted by Moses’ ideas, left us only the jealous,
vengeful Jehovah to appease and to worship through groveling. God is in
everything. The law plays no favorites; observance brings our meed of
happiness, health of mind and body; infraction brings the reverse.
“I wonder what unfortunate cross-current my poor friend Blank ran
counter to that he should have had such an existence on earth and yet
should find no happiness in the spirit.
“Gordon,” said Hugh, lying back on the grass, “The life history of
John Blank as revealed through his messages to Elaine is incomplete; I
can give you only that part of the picture showing him a man married
and having one child, a girl, two years of age. The canvas to the
left of this point is blank. Doubtless many incidents were scamped in
the fragmentary recital because our sessions--or shall we call them
seances--were necessarily interrupted for sleep and meals--details,
often amplifications, interested Elaine, who did most of the
questioning and, of course, all of the writing; consequently, I shall
tell you perhaps more than is necessary for the satisfying of your
curiosity as to how Blank was mutilated and how he happened to become
our neighbor.
“Elaine drew his tale from him reluctantly, it seemed to both of us,
because he told of his sufferings during days of recitals before we got
to the beginning of his troubles, but I have collated and arranged the
story in regular sequence as to time and events.
“Blank’s home was not many miles from Southampton, England. His
father had been a rich landowner; both father and mother dead, a
sister two years his junior, a wife and child as I have told you. He
was apprehended on the Strand in London and imprisoned, charged with
murder, would not admit his guilt, nor could Elaine or I obtain from
him a denial. He was tried in the Old Bailey, made no defense, his
counsel pled for mitigation and the judge sent him to Tasmania--he
called it Van Diemen’s Land--for life.
“After sentence, his mind benumbed, he found himself aboard the convict
ship Success. His cell was so small and crowded that he could scarcely
stand upright; a chain with a heavy iron ball was attached to his right
ankle. The night was cold and rainy and the ship tossed about as it
made its initial step in the long voyage half around the world.
“Insensibility mercifully blotted out his first agonies. Harsh voices
aroused him; dawn had come.
“‘Up on deck’ was the order and as the door of his den was thrown open
he gathered the ball and chain in his arms and joined a procession in
the enclosed way leading forward. On deck he stood in line watching in
horror the hideous work going on.
“A nauseous odor reached even down the companionway--burning flesh. He
could not appreciate that men could do such awful mischief to man. The
open deck was an inferno. Guards with cutlass and gun were all about.
Two furnaces, red-hot, were having thrust into them branding irons. Men
stripped to the waist were being thrown on the deck; irons were plucked
out of the furnaces glowing and pressed to the palm of the right hand
and to the back of each prostrate man, leaving a livid arrow where
white flesh had gleamed.
“Some screamed, many fainted, all were dragged to their feet, walked or
were carried forward.
“Blank’s time came; his coat, vest and shirt were torn off; even then
he did not appreciate that such indignity could be put upon him--him,
the scion of an honorable house, delicately reared, highly educated--he
was lying on his face; a blow behind the ear had ended an attempt to
resist; no feeling accompanied the burning.
“He found himself on the foredeck, still on his face, his back wet with
salt water which was being thrown indiscriminately on the score or
more victims lying near.
“Bread and water only were served him. On the third day out he was
again hustled on deck, a slip-noose passed around both wrists, then
drawn up to a triangle, and he was lashed with a cat-o’-nine-tails
until the blood ran down his back, then immersed in a tank of saltwater.
“He marveled that he stood a daily repetition of this scourging; tried
to die as he saw many a strong man succumb, the body being pitched
overboard. Sharks followed the ship on its tedious voyage and few days
passed without the consignment of some fortunate to their mercy. The
flogging was a regulation; it was imposed on all life prisoners.
“Six months or so later, the prisoner who had, from a wish to die,
passed to a hunger to kill, locked in his filthy den with three others,
felt the ship come to anchor.
“Hours later he heard the voices of his brutal keepers ordering all
men to line up for debarkation. His door was thrown open. Both hands
carried the thirty-pound ball as he stepped into line upon deck, over
the ship’s side--the earth again underfoot.
“Then between files of guards, a wabbling march, legs refusing to
properly function.
“The march seemed endless. Then through a postern, a large yard, into a
gloomy hall, when nature defaulted and he sank to the stone floor.
“Dimly he could feel lashes applied to his back, but all sense of
suffering was absent. He revived to find himself in a stone cell, a
plank for a bed, though he was then on the floor. A window, barred,
but at least twelve feet from the floor, threw a dim slanting light on
the cold gray wall. This was home--a six by eight room, but Paradise
compared with the cell on the ‘Success.’
“An officer with two subalterns stood in the cell; one had a book, the
other a gun and sword. As Blank endeavored to arise, the officer said,
‘Name and previous station.’
“‘John Blank--’ was as far as he got, and the name was so recorded. He
fainted through pain and weakness.
“Days of stupor followed but after a time he took his place with the
other convicts on the stone pile with a hammer; guards all about, ever
watching for an infraction of regulations; ever ready to lash out with
a heavy black bull hide whip if labor was not incessant, or if one
convict as much as exchanged a sign with another.
“Month after month of this until, his health restored, his vigor
regained, he commenced to entertain thoughts of escape.
“One day a convict near Blank, while working with head bowed over his
pile of stone whispered, ‘My last week; I sail on the next boat.’
“Blank whispered back, ‘£1,000 if you will take a message to my
sister,’ at the same time looking involuntarily toward his neighbor.
“A guard back of them plied his whip over both backs.
“A flat piece of stone was the medium of communication. Secreting it in
his clothing, he managed, while in his cell by the use of the tongue on
his belt-buckle to scratch on the stone, ‘Pay £1,000, Bring ship,’ and
his sister’s address.
“Hiding the stone, he managed to slip it to the other convict while in
the yard, but in so doing, lost his place in the line. A guard noticed
his effort to regain his assigned position and he drew a month at
the barrow transferring crushed stone. Dozens of other convicts were
similarly punished for slight infractions of prison rules.
“For a month at a stretch, then back to breaking stone, then for
another month, he made one of six men to strain on a tread-wheel used
to turn the gears of a mill, walked hundreds of miles without advancing
three feet because he answered in kind when called an offensive name by
a guard.
“The work in six-hour stretches toughened and the better fitted him for
the enterprise always in his mind--escape at any risk. The thought of
escape kept him alive.
“Six months passed with no sign from his sister. One day while working
in the woods he overheard two guards discussing the arrival of a
strange ship bound for Australia, blown out of her course. She had
taken on fresh water, but after staying in port until ordered out, she
continued to cruise back and forth within view of shore.
“Blank dragged the thirty-pound ball attached to his ankle nearer
and nearer to the fringe of woods, ostensibly to roll out cut logs
just felled. Suddenly he picked up the ball and made a dash into the
thicket. A bullet stung his shoulder but he ran for an hour, ran until,
through loss of blood, he became faint, halted to staunch the blood
flow and heard the baying of hounds. He brained one of the dogs with
the cant-hook which he still carried but the balance of the pack had
him on his back in a moment.
“Next morning, trussed up to a triangle in the jail enclosure, with
two hundred prisoners looking on, he received forty lashes from a
cat-o’-nine-tails and scarcely felt any pain when a guard passed a
lancet down the left side of his head, completely shearing off his ear.
“Days unrecorded and without care, for hope had fled, passed in a dark
cell, then one day he was driven, chained in a gang of six, away from
the prison. Whisperings in prison told of a terrible place from which
there was no chance of escape.
“There was a narrow spit of land jutting out into the ocean, a neck
about one hundred and fifty yards across guarded by a barracks house,
two smaller guard-houses, all of stone and beyond, chained so that
their muzzles almost met, were two rows of ferocious dogs--bull and
mastiff.
“The prisoners were marched through a gate between the buildings, the
dogs were held back and Blank found himself one of a company of perhaps
one hundred men all of whom had lost one or both ears; still carrying
the iron ball, but free to mingle with his miserable companions.
“The freedom of the open space was a joy; no restraint as to speaking.
The retreat was safe--man-eating sharks infested the water on all
sides and there was not a stick of timber on the little peninsula
sufficiently heavy for use in making a boat.
“A shelter of stone one story in height housed about half of the
prisoners; the others lived in the open, in the broiling sun, except
for caves dug in the sand, into which they crawled.
“Blank and his five companions slept on the sand the first night, then
through the attraction of like for like, he paired off with a man about
fifty years of age, a college man, a physician, there for murder which
he denied having committed.
“They dug a pit near the outer point of the spit, using a part of their
clothing to hold the sand in place. Then commenced the task of wearing
away the links in the chains attached to their legs.
“Months passed in this way. Finally they were both free of the iron
ball but still carried the iron bracelets on their ankles and the
tedious work of relieving themselves of these irons was a not unwelcome
task; it kept mind and body in action.
“Bread, water and meat, twice a week, placed within the line of dogs,
kept them alive.
“An organization of the prisoners had been formed; a hierarchy of the
most desperate; despotic but effectual, at least insofar as proper
distribution of food and the keeping clean of their small world was
concerned. A patrol of guards, twenty in number, inspected the camp
twice a week but no smaller number ever ventured inside the line of
animals.
“Killings among the prisoners were common and passed unnoted
apparently. This devoted colony contained the very worst of the
condemned desperadoes of Tasmania. No man who passed onto the spit had
ever left there alive. Attempts to rush the guards had met with failure
and served as an excuse for the lessening of the country’s burden
through the shooting down of all participants.
“The seemingly unguarded mainland less than a thousand yards away was
ever in Blank’s mind. How to get there was his problem. He could swim
it, but the tribe of finny sentinels showed a dorsal and a great swirl
if so small a thing as a meat-bone was tossed from shore.
“A year went by; the doctor and Blank had hidden away in their cave a
mattress of reeds and bits of flotsam gathered from the shore at night.
When tried in the water, it would support only one man; they drew
straws and Blank won.
“On a moonless night with wind blowing across the point and slightly
inshore, Blank said goodbye to his companion who shoved the raft off.
“Lying on his flimsy support he aided the light wind through using his
hands as paddles, frequently having to jerk them out of the proximity
of a shark’s teeth as they sported all about him.
“He drifted ashore just at dawn about five miles from Eagle Hawk Neck,
his recent home and found a company of musketeers awaiting him.
“Roughly handled by a petty officer he was glad of a two-day respite in
a windowless dungeon.
“On the third morning at daybreak they led him back of a guardhouse,
whipped him into insensibility and he awoke inside the line of dogs
with his friend the doctor bandaging a hand with strips torn from a
shirt--all the fingers of both hands had been cut away, deep gashes
were in both cheeks and the other ear was missing.
“Despair possessed him; his spirit was crushed.
“Could the wife and child whom he had last seen; could they ever again
look upon him with anything but loathing if he escaped? That head
without ears--grotesque--those livid scars on face--those stumps which
once were shapely hands.
“He kept no record of time. Years passed. The doctor died and he
guarded his dugout alone. The chains and leg circlets provided him a
much treasured weapon.
“Strange how death passed him by. For months he longed for an end to
his mental agony but the body was strong. He became an officer of the
‘Society of the Damned,’ as their organization was named.
“Gradually, in whispers, a plot to rush the guards was hatched. Almost
the entire colony was enrolled in the movement. A few of the weaker
ones were not invited to participate and they were kept in ignorance of
what was afoot.
“Death sure and swift was agreed upon as the price of any act tending
to divulge the plan.
“Six months after the first meeting of the conspirators all had been
provided with weapons, mainly a stone to be tied in a trouser leg or
shirt; nakedness adding to chances of swift running; some with sticks
and many with shackles hidden carefully away underground--a precious
possession.
“They patiently awaited a propitious night. With a gale blowing from
the sea driving sheets of rain toward the barracks, the only thing to
give warning the bright flashes of lightning, the Chief sent out his
call and over eighty half-naked men lined up at the outer end of the
prisoners’ quarters.
“All knew that the chances of success were slight, but few of
these men even dreaded the shock of a bullet or the quick stab of a
bayonet--either was preferable to suicide.
“An earless man, almost a giant, the leader, armed with a camp poker,
stepped alongside Blank and according to arrangement previously agreed
upon, the company divided into a line on either side of the long
building and while stooping low, formed two wedges. Blank and the giant
formed the point of the left wedge and all went forward in the darkness
across the hundred yards or so of space between the building and the
dogs.
“The howling of the wind, the downpouring rain and the almost constant
roll of thunder would, but for the dogs, have made success easy.
“Fifteen feet or more from the double line of bull and mastiff--a sharp
warning bark told of discovery--instantly every man rushed forward.
A rifle cracked. A quick swing of his weapon, another, and Blank was
through the line of dogs, the leader beside him--they knew the weakest
spot--the gate. Scattering spurts of flame showed that the guards were
firing but thunder drowned the reports.
“A soldier stood before the gate, his gun at present. Blank heard a
loud ‘Ah!’ from his companion as the gun flashed--all while a streak of
lightning made things near at hand momentarily visible. A swing of the
chain with two shackles at the end and the soldier went down. Then he
was over the gate and running. He was alone.
“The sound of regular volleys and scattering shots came back on the
wind serving only to urge him to greater speed. He made for the sea,
ran in shallow water for a mile or so, followed an inlet to a creek up
which he waded until it entered a thicket so dense that he could swing
himself from one tree to another and traveled thus until daylight came.
“Rain was still falling. He prayed that it might continue and wash away
the scent. The trees were getting larger; one served him as a resting
place while he ate the chunk of meat carried in a trouser pocket.
“Coatless, hatless and with bare feet, he was, nevertheless, exultant;
the fate of the others did not concern him. The years had made of the
English gentleman a something akin to the most dangerous of brutes. One
thought obsessed him--escape--the life of anything tending to thwart
his purpose was forfeit.
“He must have walked over a hundred miles, going ahead by night, hiding
by day, feeding like the animal he had become, on roots and berries.
“He reached a broad river and skulked through the wood well away from
its bank, toward the mouth, knowing that it must lead to the sea.
“He made a wide detour when smoke indicated the presence of man.
“One day he saw out in the stream a slovenly-looking four-masted ship
evidently awaiting the rise of the tide. She was headed downstream.
“That was his anxious hour; to show himself meant to return to be
executed.
“Transportation to a home on Tasmania was the penalty meted out to any
ship master aiding in an escape. Should the flood-tide precede darkness
he was doomed.
“Darkness found him swimming low in the water. Noiselessly he grasped
the rudder and climbed up onto the beam above it, huddling as close as
possible to the ship’s stern.
“The ship was well out to sea and it was not far from daybreak when
he stood up, facing a sleepy steersman resting on a wheel that needed
little attention because of the light but steady breeze prevailing.
“Blank said, ‘Speak and you are a dead man.’ Then he told the helmsman
that he could have £1,000 if he would hide him until he could talk to
the captain.
“The sailor said, ‘Take the helm, stand with your back to the lookout,
he’s likely asleep and I’ll bring the captain,’ and threw his oilskin
coat over Blank’s shoulders.
“‘£1,000 to the captain,’ Blank whispered.
“The captain and the steersman came separately. There was a plea for
sympathy, an offer of all the money the captain would ask--the purchase
outright of a ship that the captain might put the ocean between himself
and old England.
“Blank was installed in the captain’s cabin, bathed, clothed, ate a
part of the captain’s meals and notwithstanding his deformities was
almost happy during the long voyage around the Cape of Good Hope and up
the coast of Africa.
“At Southampton, Blank was hidden, his sister sent for. You can imagine
the meeting? The sister was not lacking in fidelity; the disfiguration
of the beloved brother meant to her merely a call for more love, more
fortitude.
“The captain resigned his employment, purchased for cash at the owner’s
asking price, a trim little three-master lying in port, became captain
of his own ship and cleared for Quebec, Canada.
“Two hooded and veiled women, apparently, boarded and the vessel went
on its way to a strange land. Neither Blank nor his sister appeared
on deck during the six weeks before the frowning citadel at Quebec,
guarding the waters of the St. Lawrence was reached and passed.
“A few miles up the river, beyond the plains of Abraham, Blank and his
sister Margaret bade the Captain goodbye.
“Each carried a heavy pack as they stepped into a small boat and were
rowed ashore by the same helmsman who first saw Blank on the rudder,
back in the waters of far-away Tasmania.
“Reasoning that safety was to be found only through hiding far from the
sea, the brother and sister followed the river, making wide detours
whenever hamlets or settlements intervened.
“It was May when they first set foot on Canadian soil. When the leaves
began to take on a russet hue, they found what appeared to them a
perfect hiding place.
“To their surprise, perhaps, their guide, the river, broadened into an
inland sea and they found that settlements, cities even, dotted the
shores of both river and lake. They struck back, following a turbulent
stream, and found it led them into a real wilderness.
“Margaret made purchases of necessities while John was always hiding.
They existed in constant fear of discovery. No spot on earth would
prove safe for the condemned. The offense against society would never
outlaw.
“An abandoned canoe, washed up on the shore of a back-water or channel
back of an island in this river encountered in their wanderings, was
used. They had not seen a village or even a human habitation in three
days’ walk through dense brush and open wood. A paddle was improvised
through the use of the light ax carried.
“For miles up the dark stream, sometimes widening to a couple of
hundred yards, but usually so narrow and grown with weeds as to be
wellnigh impassable, they proceeded.
“A landing had to be made as night was near. They pushed the canoe
through a labyrinth of water-deadened trees, with outreaching arms
suggestive of myriad gibbets, until they found the shore thicket for
which they were looking and thus they came home.
“Home--home from the proud old family mansion in well-settled England
to a spot where the foot of white-faced man had apparently never been
planted.
“Difficulty of getting to solid ground, inspired the thought of making
this stopping place their permanent abode, and led to a survey of the
entire surroundings. It was an almost inaccessible island, surrounded
not by open water, but by an impassable swamp.
“The dugout on Hawk’s Neck, Tasmania, inspired their first attempt at a
dwelling-place.
“Stealthily, gradually, from a distant village, Margaret gathered
such few tools as permitted the building of a cabin. She bought such
seedlings as enabled them to plant a garden. A gun became part of their
outfit and the following spring found them busily engaged in making
comfortable their retreat.
“As the years passed Margaret dared to go openly to a village many
miles away. In time they learned from newspapers which they bought that
the prison colony on Tasmania was abolished and though Blank’s status
was still uncertain, a sense of security was established--but from
something that John Blank’s living spirit would not disclose through
Elaine, a new cause of sorrow and discontent came into his miserable
existence; I am sure of that,” Hugh said, turning on me his gaze which
during this long recital had been fixed on the wood beyond the open
fields and I knew that he was not on the hilltop where we sat but at
that lonesome cabin back of the black ash swamp.
“What a fearful life and what a terrible ending,” I ventured. “What
became of the sister?”
“I do not know,” Hugh replied, “but I would swear I saw her on the
Dover boat, though it may have been my imagination only.”
As we walked homeward, our backs to the setting sun, we discussed
the brutality of the British penal system of the first half of the
nineteenth century and I was surprised to hear Hugh put up a plea in
extenuation of what to me was unthinkable in a civilization so far
advanced--a system instituted and maintained as late as 1854 by a
Christian country furnishing us the very laws which I, as an officer of
the courts, was sworn to respect.
Hugh calmly said, “Yes, the punishment of offenders against society’s
laws was as horrible as any demon incarnate could invent, though I have
a conviction that neither the Home authorities nor the English people
had any idea as to the depths to which human nature, both in keepers
and convicts, descended.
“Abandon hope, except of forcing freedom and the criminal becomes
extremely dangerous. Consider the plight of the keepers, outnumbered by
their charges, months removed from home and help; they could expect no
quarter--could they give it?
“Fear is contagious; the guards were not of the higher type of
Anglo-Saxon. They doubtless were rightly afraid of the army of the
abandoned and from the ignorant and doubtless cowardly private, the
feeling of insecurity crept up through the ranks even to the governor
himself. I believe that the horrors of the rack, with its stretchers,
breakers, hot irons and lancet was a natural corollary; brutality was
supreme on the island, though I find no excuse for the arrow-branding
and flogging on shipboard.”
“Remember, Gordon,” Hugh added, “We owe to the severity of the
Anglo-Saxon laws the fact that we find today more native honesty
of mind in the Anglo-Saxon than in either the Latin or the Slav.
The hangings for petty theft--the poaching of a rabbit and such
delinquencies as would now, in our Canadian and American courts, invite
a fine or at the worst a jail sentence--bred through generations of
English mothers a more honest race. Let us be thankful--we shall live
to see capital punishment a rarity. Even my poor friend Blank did not
suffer altogether in vain.”
[Illustration]