We kept a strict watch over our wretched prisoner. For his own sake I
did not wish him to escape, and, far from having an intention of
delivering him up to justice, my earnest desire was to try and reclaim
him. I think that, under the circumstances, I should have acted as I
did had he been an indifferent person; but I felt sure, from the
peculiarity of his features, that he was the youngest son of my kind old
patron and friend, Mr Wells. Often in his childhood had he sat on my
knee when I came home from sea, and often he had listened attentively to
the accounts of my adventures. He was a pretty, interesting little
fellow. As he grew up he altered very much; became disobedient to his
parents, and ultimately growing wilder and wilder, went, as the
expression is, to the bad. For some years I had not even heard of him.
Worn out with fatigue, our prisoner slept on till after the sun was up,
and we were busy in marking out the ground for our slate hut, and making
preparations for cutting down the nearest trees with which to build it.
More than once I looked at his countenance while he slept, and called my
wife to look at him. We were both convinced that my surmise was
correct.
On awaking at last he gazed round with an astonished, puzzled look, and
sighed deeply. I happened to be near, and went up to him.
"Arthur!" I said, gently, "what brought you here?"
"What!--Who are you?--How do you know me?" he exclaimed, springing to
his feet. "I'll answer you though--my own folly and vice and sin. I am
in your power. I did not wish to take your life, but I hoped to get
your gun and then to force you to give me and my mates food--that was
all. You may, however, take me into camp and deliver me up to the
governor and his men; if they hang me at once I shall be grateful to
you, for I am weary of this life. I am a mere slave to my mates; they
would murder me in an instant if I should become burdensome to them;
and, bad as I am, they are so much worse that I can even now have no
fellowship with them."
Thus the unhappy man ran on, eagerly discharging, as it were, at once
his long pent-up feelings and thoughts. For weeks and months he had
been wandering about, nearly starved, and ill-treated and despised by
his companions in crime. And this man had been in the rank of a
gentleman, and had been educated as one, and had once felt as one! I
know to a certainty that there are numbers of such wandering about the
world, and others who have died miserably,--outcasts from their friends
and, more terrible fate, from their God,--who little thought when they
made their first downward step in the path of sin to what a fearful
termination it was leading them.