The mutineers of the Osprey had been long since given up as dead, and
the story of their desperate escape had become indistinct to the general
public mind. Now that they had been recaptured in a remarkable manner,
popular belief invested them with all sorts of strange surroundings.
They had been--according to report--kings over savage islanders, chiefs
of lawless and ferocious pirates, respectable married men in Java,
merchants in Singapore, and swindlers in Hong Kong. Their adventures had
been dramatized at a London theatre, and the popular novelist of that
day was engaged in a work descriptive of their wondrous fortunes.
John Rex, the ringleader, was related, it was said, to a noble family,
and a special message had come out to Sir John Franklin concerning him.
He had every prospect of being satisfactorily hung, however, for even
the most outspoken admirers of his skill and courage could not but admit
that he had committed an offence which was death by the law. The Crown
would leave nothing undone to convict him, and the already crowded
prison was re-crammed with half a dozen life sentence men, brought up
from Port Arthur to identify the prisoners. Amongst this number was
stated to be “the notorious Dawes”.
This statement gave fresh food for recollection and invention. It was
remembered that “the notorious Dawes” was the absconder who had been
brought away by Captain Frere, and who owed such fettered life as he
possessed to the fact that he had assisted Captain Frere to make the
wonderful boat in which the marooned party escaped. It was remembered,
also, how sullen and morose he had been on his trial five years before,
and how he had laughed when the commutation of his death sentence was
announced to him. The Hobart Town Gazette published a short biography of
this horrible villain--a biography setting forth how he had been engaged
in a mutiny on board the convict ship, how he had twice escaped from the
Macquarie Harbour, how he had been repeatedly flogged for violence and
insubordination, and how he was now double-ironed at Port Arthur,
after two more ineffectual attempts to regain his freedom. Indeed, the
Gazette, discovering that the wretch had been originally transported for
highway robbery, argued very ably it would be far better to hang such
wild beasts in the first instance than suffer them to cumber the ground,
and grow confirmed in villainy. “Of what use to society,” asked the
Gazette, quite pathetically, “has this scoundrel been during the last
eleven years?” And everybody agreed that he had been of no use whatever.
Miss Sylvia Vickers also received an additional share of public
attention. Her romantic rescue by the heroic Frere, who was shortly to
reap the reward of his devotion in the good old fashion, made her almost
as famous as the villain Dawes, or his confederate monster John Rex. It
was reported that she was to give evidence on the trial, together with
her affianced husband, they being the only two living witnesses who
could speak to the facts of the mutiny. It was reported also that her
lover was naturally most anxious that she should not give evidence, as
she was--an additional point of romantic interest--affected deeply by
the illness consequent on the suffering she had undergone, and in a
state of pitiable mental confusion as to the whole business. These
reports caused the Court, on the day of the trial, to be crowded with
spectators; and as the various particulars of the marvellous history of
this double escape were detailed, the excitement grew more intense. The
aspect of the four heavily-ironed prisoners caused a sensation which,
in that city of the ironed, was quite novel, and bets were offered and
taken as to the line of defence which they would adopt. At first it
was thought that they would throw themselves on the mercy of the Crown,
seeking, in the very extravagance of their story, to excite public
sympathy; but a little study of the demeanour of the chief prisoner,
John Rex, dispelled that conjecture. Calm, placid, and defiant, he
seemed prepared to accept his fate, or to meet his accusers with some
plea which should be sufficient to secure his acquittal on the capital
charge. Only when he heard the indictment, setting forth that he had
“feloniously pirated the brig Osprey,” he smiled a little.
Mr. Meekin, sitting in the body of the Court, felt his religious
prejudices sadly shocked by that smile. “A perfect wild beast, my dear
Miss Vickers,” he said, returning, in a pause during the examination
of the convicts who had been brought to identify the prisoner, to the
little room where Sylvia and her father were waiting. “He has quite a
tigerish look about him.”
“Poor man!” said Sylvia, with a shudder.
“Poor! My dear young lady, you do not pity him?”
“I do,” said Sylvia, twisting her hands together as if in pain. “I pity
them all, poor creatures.”
“Charming sensibility!” says Meekin, with a glance at Vickers. “The true
woman's heart, my dear Major.”
The Major tapped his fingers impatiently at this ill-timed twaddle.
Sylvia was too nervous just then for sentiment. “Come here, Poppet,” he
said, “and look through this door. You can see them from here, and if
you do not recognize any of them, I can't see what is the use of putting
you in the box; though, of course, if it is necessary, you must go.”
The raised dock was just opposite to the door of the room in which
they were sitting, and the four manacled men, each with an armed warder
behind him, were visible above the heads of the crowd. The girl had
never before seen the ceremony of trying a man for his life, and the
silent and antique solemnities of the business affected her, as it
affects all who see it for the first time. The atmosphere was heavy and
distressing. The chains of the prisoners clanked ominously. The crushing
force of judge, gaolers, warders, and constables assembled to punish
the four men, appeared cruel. The familiar faces, that in her momentary
glance, she recognized, seemed to her evilly transfigured. Even the
countenance of her promised husband, bent eagerly forward towards
the witness-box, showed tyrannous and bloodthirsty. Her eyes hastily
followed the pointing finger of her father, and sought the men in the
dock. Two of them lounged, sullen and inattentive; one nervously chewed
a straw, or piece of twig, pawing the dock with restless hand; the
fourth scowled across the Court at the witness-box, which she could not
see. The four faces were all strange to her.
“No, papa,” she said, with a sigh of relief, “I can't recognize them at
all.”
As she was turning from the door, a voice from the witness-box behind
her made her suddenly pale and pause to look again. The Court itself
appeared, at that moment, affected, for a murmur ran through it, and
some official cried, “Silence!”
The notorious criminal, Rufus Dawes, the desperado of Port Arthur, the
wild beast whom the Gazette had judged not fit to live, had just entered
the witness-box. He was a man of thirty, in the prime of life, with a
torso whose muscular grandeur not even the ill-fitting yellow jacket
could altogether conceal, with strong, embrowned, and nervous hands, an
upright carriage, and a pair of fierce, black eyes that roamed over the
Court hungrily.
Not all the weight of the double irons swaying from the leathern thong
around his massive loins, could mar that elegance of attitude which
comes only from perfect muscular development. Not all the frowning faces
bent upon him could frown an accent of respect into the contemptuous
tones in which he answered to his name, “Rufus Dawes, prisoner of the
Crown”.
“Come away, my darling,” said Vickers, alarmed at his daughter's
blanched face and eager eyes.
“Wait,” she said impatiently, listening for the voice whose owner she
could not see. “Rufus Dawes! Oh, I have heard that name before!”
“You are a prisoner of the Crown at the penal settlement of Port
Arthur?”
“Yes.”
“For life?”
“For life.”
Sylvia turned to her father with breathless inquiry in her eyes. “Oh,
papa! who is that speaking? I know the name! the voice!”
“That is the man who was with you in the boat, dear,” says Vickers
gravely. “The prisoner.”
The eager light died out of her eyes, and in its place came a look
of disappointment and pain. “I thought it was a good man,” she said,
holding by the edge of the doorway. “It sounded like a good voice.”
And then she pressed her hands over her eyes and shuddered. “There,
there,” says Vickers soothingly, “don't be afraid, Poppet; he can't hurt
you now.”
“No, ha! ha!” says Meekin, with great display of off-hand courage, “the
villain's safe enough now.”
The colloquy in the Court went on. “Do you know the prisoners in the
dock?”
“Yes.” “Who are they?”
“John Rex, Henry Shiers, James Lesly, and, and--I'm not sure about the
last man.” “You are not sure about the last man. Will you swear to the
three others?”
“Yes.”
“You remember them well?”
“I was in the chain-gang at Macquarie Harbour with them for three
years.” Sylvia, hearing this hideous reason for acquaintance, gave a low
cry, and fell into her father's arms.
“Oh, papa, take me away! I feel as if I was going to remember something
terrible!”
Amid the deep silence that prevailed, the cry of the poor girl was
distinctly audible in the Court, and all heads turned to the door. In
the general wonder no one noticed the change that passed over Rufus
Dawes. His face flushed scarlet, great drops of sweat stood on his
forehead, and his black eyes glared in the direction from whence the
sound came, as though they would pierce the envious wood that separated
him from the woman whose voice he had heard. Maurice Frere sprang up and
pushed his way through the crowd under the bench.
“What's this?” he said to Vickers, almost brutally. “What did you bring
her here for? She is not wanted. I told you that.”
“I considered it my duty, sir,” says Vickers, with stately rebuke.
“What has frightened her? What has she heard? What has she seen?” asked
Frere, with a strangely white face. “Sylvia, Sylvia!”
She opened her eyes at the sound of his voice. “Take me home, papa; I'm
ill. Oh, what thoughts!”
“What does she mean?” cried Frere, looking in alarm from one to the
other.
“That ruffian Dawes frightened her,” said Meekin. “A gush of
recollection, poor child. There, there, calm yourself, Miss Vickers. He
is quite safe.”
“Frightened her, eh?” “Yes,” said Sylvia faintly, “he frightened me,
Maurice. I needn't stop any longer, dear, need I?”
“No,” says Frere, the cloud passing from his face. “Major, I beg your
pardon, but I was hasty. Take her home at once. This sort of thing is
too much for her.” And so he went back to his place, wiping his brow,
and breathing hard, as one who had just escaped from some near peril.
Rufus Dawes had remained in the same attitude until the figure of Frere,
passing through the doorway, roused him. “Who is she?” he said, in a
low, hoarse voice, to the constable behind him. “Miss Vickers,” said the
man shortly, flinging the information at him as one might fling a bone
to a dangerous dog.
“Miss Vickers,” repeated the convict, still staring in a sort of
bewildered agony. “They told me she was dead!”
The constable sniffed contemptuously at this preposterous conclusion, as
who should say, “If you know all about it, animal, why did you ask?”
and then, feeling that the fixed gaze of his interrogator demanded some
reply, added, “You thort she was, I've no doubt. You did your best to
make her so, I've heard.”
The convict raised both his hands with sudden action of wrathful
despair, as though he would seize the other, despite the loaded muskets;
but, checking himself with sudden impulse, wheeled round to the Court.
“Your Honour!--Gentlemen! I want to speak.”
The change in the tone of his voice, no less than the sudden loudness
of the exclamation, made the faces, hitherto bent upon the door through
which Mr. Frere had passed, turn round again. To many there it seemed
that the “notorious Dawes” was no longer in the box, for, in place of
the upright and defiant villain who stood there an instant back, was a
white-faced, nervous, agitated creature, bending forward in an attitude
almost of supplication, one hand grasping the rail, as though to save
himself from falling, the other outstretched towards the bench. “Your
Honour, there has been some dreadful mistake made. I want to explain
about myself. I explained before, when first I was sent to Port Arthur,
but the letters were never forwarded by the Commandant; of course,
that's the rule, and I can't complain. I've been sent there unjustly,
your Honour. I made that boat, your Honour. I saved the Major's wife and
daughter. I was the man; I did it all myself, and my liberty was sworn
away by a villain who hated me. I thought, until now, that no one knew
the truth, for they told me that she was dead.” His rapid utterance
took the Court so much by surprise that no one interrupted him. “I was
sentenced to death for bolting, sir, and they reprieved me because I
helped them in the boat. Helped them! Why, I made it! She will tell you
so. I nursed her! I carried her in my arms! I starved myself for
her! She was fond of me, sir. She was indeed. She called me 'Good Mr.
Dawes'.”
At this, a coarse laugh broke out, which was instantly checked. The
judge bent over to ask, “Does he mean Miss Vickers?” and in this
interval Rufus Dawes, looking down into the Court, saw Maurice Frere
staring up at him with terror in his eyes. “I see you, Captain Frere,
coward and liar! Put him in the box, gentlemen, and make him tell his
story. She'll contradict him, never fear. Oh, and I thought she was dead
all this while!”
The judge had got his answer from the clerk by this time. “Miss Vickers
had been seriously ill, had fainted just now in the Court. Her only
memories of the convict who had been with her in the boat were those
of terror and disgust. The sight of him just now had most seriously
affected her. The convict himself was an inveterate liar and schemer,
and his story had been already disproved by Captain Frere.”
The judge, a man inclining by nature to humanity, but forced by
experience to receive all statements of prisoners with caution, said
all he could say, and the tragedy of five years was disposed of in the
following dialogue:- JUDGE: This is not the place for an accusation
against Captain Frere, nor the place to argue upon your alleged
wrongs. If you have suffered injustice, the authorities will hear your
complaint, and redress it.
RUFUS DAWES I have complained, your Honour. I wrote letter after letter
to the Government, but they were never sent. Then I heard she was
dead, and they sent me to the Coal Mines after that, and we never hear
anything there.
JUDGE I can't listen to you. Mr. Mangles, have you any more questions to
ask the witness?
But Mr. Mangles not having any more, someone called, “Matthew Gabbett,”
and Rufus Dawes, still endeavouring to speak, was clanked away with,
amid a buzz of remark and surmise.
* * * * *
The trial progressed without further incident. Sylvia was not called,
and, to the astonishment of many of his enemies, Captain Frere went into
the witness-box and generously spoke in favour of John Rex. “He might
have left us to starve,” Frere said; “he might have murdered us; we were
completely in his power. The stock of provisions on board the brig was
not a large one, and I consider that, in dividing it with us, he showed
great generosity for one in his situation.” This piece of evidence told
strongly in favour of the prisoners, for Captain Frere was known to
be such an uncompromising foe to all rebellious convicts that it was
understood that only the sternest sense of justice and truth could lead
him to speak in such terms. The defence set up by Rex, moreover, was
most ingenious. He was guilty of absconding, but his moderation might
plead an excuse for that. His only object was his freedom, and, having
gained it, he had lived honestly for nearly three years, as he could
prove. He was charged with piratically seizing the brig Osprey, and he
urged that the brig Osprey, having been built by convicts at Macquarie
Harbour, and never entered in any shipping list, could not be said to
be “piratically seized”, in the strict meaning of the term. The Court
admitted the force of this objection, and, influenced doubtless by
Captain Frere's evidence, the fact that five years had passed since the
mutiny, and that the two men most guilty (Cheshire and Barker) had
been executed in England, sentenced Rex and his three companions to
transportation for life to the penal settlements of the colony.