After the conclusion of the sitting of the Court as presided over by His
Honour Judge Buckthorne, when Lance and Ned had been carried off to
undergo their allotted sentences, it was observed that Kate Lawless and
Sergeant Dayrell, while apparently strolling aimlessly together along
the street, were engaged in an earnest and apparently confidential
conversation.
'Well, that chap was got to rights if ever a man was,' observed the
Sergeant. 'There'll be some of the flashness taken out of him before he
comes out again.'
The girl looked at him searchingly before she answered. When she did
there was no triumph in her voice.
'Poor devil! it _was_ hard lines, when you come to think of it. And all
for a horse that he knew no more about than the dead! He looked at me,
as he walked out, so sad and fierce-like I couldn't help pitying him.'
'You mean you might have pitied him if he hadn't thrown you over for the
girl at home--if he hadn't treated you like the dirt beneath his feet
after promising to marry you--after amusing himself by making love to
you as if you were a South Sea Island _wahine_!'
'Perhaps he did. Suppose he did,' replied the girl musingly, evidently
in one of those fits of reactionary regret which so often in the
feminine nature--strange and enigmatical always--are prone to succeed
the exaltation of passion. 'For all that, I feel sorry, now it's over. I
can't get him out of my head, locked up in one of those beastly cells.'
'Your brother Ned's in one too. You don't seem to think of him.'
'No, I don't--not so much. Ned's different. He's been working for it
these years. He's lost the deal and has to pay up. He's not one to whine
either, and I'd take the odds he's out again and in the mountains long
before his time's up. But when I think of Lance and what a swell chap he
was, so hearty and jolly when we first seen him, I feel like a good
cry.'
'Perhaps you'd like to pass him over to Tessie when he comes out,'
sneered the Sergeant. 'She'd be so happy to console him.'
'I've that feeling for him yet, bad as he's treated me,' said the girl,
raising her head and stamping her foot, 'that I'd kill any woman that
took him from me, even now. He's played me false and thrown me over, I
know, and yet, by George!' she cried, suddenly facing round upon the
Sergeant, while her eyes flashed and her bosom heaved with sudden
passion, 'I wonder if he _did_ write all you showed me? I can't read a
line, more shame to father and mother that never had me taught like that
Tessie. So what's to prevent you putting down anything you liked and
saying he wrote it? Suppose you'd been working a cross all along? Frank
Dayrell, if I ever find out as you turned dog on me that way your last
hour's come. By ----! I'd shoot you like a crow, and if I didn't I'd
find somebody that would. Don't you make any mistake.'
Dayrell smiled in his old scornful way as he pointed out the extreme
improbability of Lance's writing to his affianced bride in England in
any other way. What else was he to say to her? 'Why, you never thought
he would marry you, did you, Kate?'
'Why did he make a fool of me then?' said the girl, standing slightly
back and facing the trooper as if, like the tigress which such women are
said to resemble, she needed but another spark of anger to cause her to
spring upon him and rend with tooth and talon. 'Why shouldn't he marry
me? I'd have made him as good a wife as that girl or any other in the
world, I don't care who she was. I know I'm ignorant and all that, but
one woman's as good as another if she takes to a man. That makes all the
difference, and I'd have blacked his boots and waited on him hand and
foot, and been a good woman too, if he'd been true to me--as God hears
me, I could--I would!'
And here, wrought up by a strange admixture of feelings--remorse,
regret, disappointment, doubt, and suspicion--newly aroused, the
half-wild daughter of the woods burst into tears and abandoned herself
to the womanly indulgence of a fit of passionate lamentation.
'It's too late now, Kate,' he said after a while, coolly removing his
cigar, which he had lighted at the first appearance of lamentation.
'Better clear out for Eumeralla and make it up with Trevenna. I believe
you carried on with him till Lance came on the scene. He's a handsome
fellow, and Tessie, you know, and some other people couldn't tell the
difference.'
Then he laughed in a sardonic, derisive manner, as though the joke was
an exceedingly good one--irresistible indeed.
Kate Lawless dried her eyes and looked keenly at him with an expression
of contempt and dislike which, in spite of his habitual indifference, he
by no means relished.
'Frank Dayrell,' she said, 'I believe you're the very devil himself; I
see your game partly now. You'd a down on Lance because Tessie was gone
on him, and wouldn't look at you. That's a nice reason to lag a man for,
isn't it? And if you'd play false in one thing, you would in another. I
see how you've worked it, partly. When I find out the rest it'll be a
bad day for you, mark my words. Good-bye.'
'Good-bye, Miss Lawless!' here he made her a deferential and elaborate
bow. 'You'd better be civil though, or I may have to run in Larry
Trevenna. That'll make a double widow of you--the man you'll marry and
the man you were going to marry. Smart work that, eh?'
'You look out for yourself, Dayrell,' she replied, as she moved slowly
away from him. 'You're pretty smart, but that mightn't save you some
day. You take my tip and leave us alone from this day out.'
Thus they parted. The girl walked sullenly away--the Sergeant, strolling
in another direction, hummed an air from an opera, stepping lightly as
might a man without a care in the world. Had he but known the future!
How heedless are the feet of men, surrounded by the traps and pitfalls
of Fate, all ignorant, mercifully, that a few inches one way or the
other means instant, irrevocable destruction. As for the woman, she went
on her way and he saw her no more.
'I wonder what the deuce _will_ become of the fair Kate?' he said
musingly, and half aloud, as he strolled along leisurely towards the
police camp. 'If she marries this fellow Trevenna she'll be paid out for
her sins, whatever they are. He's the making of one of the most precious
scoundrels that even this colony ever saw. The Lawlesses crowd can't
teach him much. If he marries her there'll be murder or something like
it before long. I think I see my way to another sensational case before
the game's played out--more than one indeed.'
* * * * *
The town at which the coach had stopped, on this his first and
memorable journey as a prisoner accommodated with leg-irons and
handcuffs, was Geelong, to the gaol of which town Lance was relegated
for the purpose of being forwarded to the hulk _President_. Accordingly,
after due course of procedure, Lance found himself one morning in a
police boat seated between his two Ballarat warders in near proximity to
the celebrated _Sacramento_. When they came within a certain distance of
the vessel they rested on their oars and commenced a conversation. The
ship's trumpet replied, but afforded no manner of information to Lance.
Apparently the colloquy was satisfactory. The sentry, who had been
steadily pointing his musket in their direction, presented it towards
the lighthouse, and all requisite permission being obtained the
momentous embarkation was commenced.
The hulk _President_ was a plain solid barque of one thousand tons
register, broad in the beam. Dutch-built was she, and had been strong to
encounter storms, but was destined to defy such forces no more.
On the fore part of her deck an iron roof protected the galley and
water-tank, giving her an expression of being settled in life. In front
of and around her bows was a planked and railed gangway, along which a
warder with a loaded rifle marched to and fro.
The heat of the summer suns reflected from the cloudless sky, the
shimmering water plain, had blistered the paint--a staring dreadful
yellow it was--upon her weather-worn hull. Armed figures walked on
either side of this terrible vessel. Except the solitary boat in which
Lance was a passenger, nothing seemed to come near. To his excited fancy
she seemed a plague ship. He could imagine the dead in their
heavily-weighted shrouds being cast in scores from her gloomy
port-holes. He stared at her in sullen silence. He had lost the habit of
ejaculation. What did it matter--what did anything matter? He was in
hell. In hell! What difference did the depth of the pit, more or less,
make, once within the Inferno?
There was a swell, consequent on a gale which had been blowing on the
previous night. The boat rocked and pitched as she came alongside of the
grim ungainly hulk. His fetters made it difficult for him to step from
the boat to the ladder. He tripped, and one of the warders was
constrained to hold him up.
'Look out! you mustn't drop overboard and cheat Her Majesty's
Government like Dickson did last month. Blest if you wouldn't go down
like a stone with them clinks on.'
A quick regret passed through Lance's heart that he had not dropped
quietly overboard, and so exchanged this torture-ship for eternal rest
and peace. But he clambered up with one warder in front and one
immediately behind.
At the deck he was met by the first and second officers, to whom an
important-looking document was presented by the senior warder who had
come down in charge.
'H--m, ha!' remarked the dignitary, opening it with deliberation and
then glancing searchingly at Lance. 'Refractory, determined, and--put
him into number fifty-six. If lower deck don't suit him, we must move
him aft. Show the way, Mr. Grastow.'
The 'way' led down a narrow ladder, the gradient of which was such that
the fettered man, heavily weighted as he was, had some difficulty in
getting down safe. However, as before, one warder preceding and one
following, he was partly supported, partly led. As he touched the deck
he looked round, and for an instant laughed aloud at the grim pleasantry
which, like a ray of light in a dungeon cell, had found access to his
brain. He was on board a slaver! His boyhood rose up before him, and he
saw himself again reading _Tom Cringle's Log_ under the King's oak at
Wychwood. There were the iron gratings above, through which the sun came
grudgingly, which afforded the only air and light to the long low
corridor into which the deck had been altered. Rows of small cells on
either side, each duly numbered, into which a herd of some forty or
fifty chained men were being driven, as it appeared to him. In the gloom
of the half-lighted passage their dark or sallow countenances, in which
the eyes and teeth alone gleamed in relief, might well have passed for
those of negroes. They laughed and talked or cursed and swore with a
freedom which surprised Lance, used to the strict and silent rule of the
Ballarat gaol. It was their recreation hour, he found. They had returned
from their exercise on deck.
As he scanned these foul and hideous countenances, from which all
semblance of the higher human attributes had departed, he shuddered
involuntarily, and a groan so deep and hollow came from him that the
warders who had accompanied him were affected.
'Don't you take on, Number Fifty-six,' said one, 'it's a deal worse than
Ballarat, but you go in for good conduct now and your time won't be so
long in runnin' out. See what you've got by behaving awkward, and
they're a deal worse, if you go contrairy here, than ever our lot was.'
'Down the ladder,' said the officer of the _President_; 'we've no time
to spare in this ship.'
Lower, lower still, another ladder, another deck. Here the gratings were
nearer to the floor, the cells were smaller and more numerous, the whole
arrangement still more nearly resembling his fancy of the slave-ship.
Had there been a row of miserable Africans sitting down, with another
row between their knees, and another yet in the same condition, as was
formerly the human method of packing the 'goods' so largely dealt in by
our good friends the Spaniards, Portuguese, and French, and indeed our
own most merciful and Christian nation, the illusion would have been
complete. They would have sold well in Victoria at that time, doubtless,
labour being so very scarce and valuable. The air, foetid with the
odours and emanations from three hundred men, having even to be filtered
through the crowded deck above them, was indescribably offensive. In
spite of ordinary precautions, the odour was that of galley-slaves.
Below the level of the waters of the bay as this deck was, Lance could
hear the waves washing beside the prison-house, while from the cells,
the bolts of which were partially drawn and the opening secured with a
chain, came ribald songs, yells, and curses, with an occasional noise of
weeping and bursts of yet more dreadful laughter.
Walking forward still towards the stern, they came to a cell numbered
fifty-six on the south side of the vessel. At no great distance, and
dividing it from the after-cabin, which was used as a sort of
store-room, was a grating of massive iron bars extending from one side
of the ship to the other.
The padlock was unlocked, the massive bolt shot back from the staple,
and Lance saw his habitation. A low, narrow cell, with heavy timber on
every side, only excepting a small port-hole narrowing outwards and
capable of being closed at will. The length to the concave wall of the
vessel's side was about eight feet, the width scarcely six. From two
iron hooks hung a rude canvas hammock. Here he must abide for the
present. It would depend upon himself whether he remained there.
From the timbers of the vessel's side protruded an iron ring with a
short chain dependent from it.
'What's that for?' said one of the Ballarat gaolers.
'Oh, nothing,' returned the hulk warder, 'it's there in case it's
wanted.'
The narrow door closed, the heavy bolt shot into its place, the
padlock-key turned, and Trevanion was alone and at sea once more. Once
more Lance Trevanion found himself on ship-board, but under what
different circumstances. He felt the heaving deck under his feet. The
day was dark and squally, and the barque rolled and pitched in a
sufficiently lively manner. The familiar movement recalled the scenes
which he had loved so well. He was a born sailor, and of the breed of
men that joy in the strife of wind and wave. The revulsion of feeling
was so great that he staggered and well-nigh fell.
How well he remembered the last time he had been at sea; the voyage out,
so free and joyous in spite of minor discomforts; the perfect
independence, the hearty, unconventional comradeship, the delight with
which all greeted the first step on _terra firma_; the general wonder,
excitement, and eager expectation of rapid fortunes to be acquired in
this strange new land of gold.
And now he was a chained and guarded felon, reserved for Heaven alone
knew what new degradation, even torture, in this sea dungeon. Long
before dark--the days were short in July--a warder came with bread and
water.
'When do we go on shore to work?' asked Lance, thinking to adapt himself
to his changed condition.
'Work? They don't do no work in the _President_; this is the punishment
hulk. All you chaps is supposed to belong to the 'fractory lot--my word!
some of 'em just are, and no mistake. You gets one hour a day exercise
on deck. Ten on yer's sent up in the cage at a time. The rest of the
twenty-four hours has to be took out in the cell.'
'My God!' groaned out the unhappy man, 'can this be true, twenty-three
hours in this den? Surely such cruelty can never be permitted.'
'That's about the size of it, Fifty-six,' answered the warder, preparing
to lock up and depart. 'And the sooner you make up your mind to man it,
the better it'll be for you and the sooner you'll be drafted to the
_Success_, when you'll have a chance of fresh air. So long.'
The lock closed, the bolt clanged, and Lance was left to sit down where
the last captive had leaned his weary frame, till his prison shoes--not
heavy either--had worn into the solid planking, and when at last heart
and brain had risen in wild revolt and he had cast away the wasted life
which had become so valueless and unendurable.
From the time when the door that closed upon hope and the outer world
clanged to, Lance Trevanion sat statue-like and motionless. The day
passed, the cell grew darker, the night came with no cessation of the
subdued but truly infernal din of noise to which nearly every cell
contributed its quota. The wind rose and moaned, the ship rocked more
heavily, the waves plashed around and above his cell, and still Lance
Trevanion stirred not. He _must_ have slept at length, worn out and
over-fatigued, for he started suddenly from a dream of Wychwood and the
first meet of the season to feel the sun feebly lighting up his prison,
to listen and shudder as his irons clanked with the instinctive
movement.
He sat up and gazed around for a while in the half-stupefied condition
produced by conflicting sensations. He endeavoured to collect his
thoughts and to resolve upon a course of action. What was he to do? At
present the mode of life--rather the living death--to which he felt
himself condemned seemed intolerable. But much would depend upon the
duration of the strictly penal term. If it were a matter of months only,
it might be borne. Then he would be 'promoted' to the _Success_, would
enjoy the favoured position of being permitted to work for ten hours a
day in a quarry--heavily ironed, of course--and on an equality and in
company with some of the most atrocious scoundrels that any country had
ever produced. It was not an alluring prospect. Still, he had at any
rate no actually malignant enemy like Bracker. It might be possible to
establish a friendly feeling with some of his guardians. He would make
the attempt. Even escape did not seem so altogether impossible. He
remembered Tessie's words. He knew that what one woman could do she
would accomplish. A man here and there _had_ escaped from the hulks and
got clear off, several had been drowned, two had been shot. Still these
were fair risks. The twenty-three hours a day in the cell constituted a
maddening monotony of captivity. Yet, from whatever reason, whether from
the sea air, his unexpected meeting with Tessie Lawless, or 'something
which never can be expressed,' Lance Trevanion's spirits rose higher
than they had done since the day of his conviction, and in the depth of
his saddened heart stirred a feeling that was almost hope.
When his gaoler made his appearance with the one-pound loaf of bread
which was to serve for his daily dole and the can of water similarly
apportioned, he assumed a cheerful air. 'When do we go up for exercise?'
he said.
'Your batch'll be sent up at eleven o'clock, Fifty-six. Then you get
down just in time for dinner, half-pound boiled beef for you then, so
you can save some for supper; half-pound of vegetables. That'll be the
lot.'
'Now look here, I don't know your name--oh, Grastow! what I want to say
is, I have only two years to serve. When I get out I shall have plenty
of money. I can make it WELL worth your while to help me; what do you
say? Is there any harm in that?'
'I don't know as there is, Fifty-six,' replied the gaoler warily. 'But a
many of the crew of the _President_ (we call 'em the crew among
ourselves) says the same thing. When they gets out they nat'rally
forgets. What are we to do? We can't summons 'em in the Small Debts
Court; how am I to know ye ain't on that lay?'
'I can show you how if you'll carry a note from me on shore and leave it
in the post-office. I'll guarantee a five-pound note is sent to any
address you name within twenty-four hours.'
'Ten-pun' note might do something,' answered the warder reflectively.
'The risk's a big 'un. If I'm nabbed I lose my berth straight off and
stand a blessed good chance of being brought into one of these here
fancy shops myself.'
'Why, who's to know?'
'Well,' replied the warder, looking round, 'it 'ud stun yer to count the
spies that seem to be bred regular in a place like this, one man
watching another for the reward. But I'll chance it, I will, the first
time I go ashore. Now then, you Fifty-five, what are you making all that
row for?'
The occupant of the next cell, Number Fifty-five, as he was in due
sequence, had apparently gone mad. He raved and shrieked, cursed and
yelled continuously. He banged at the door, which he could not well kick
as they had taken away his boots. But ever and anon he amused himself
with wildly extravagant rhapsodies, as well as by devoting his gaolers
to the infernal deities, as also the heads of any Church running counter
to his sectarian prejudices. Then he was taken out, secured, and hauled
before the chief officer for punishment. That autocrat ordered the
sullen-visaged 'Vandemonian,' as the warders designated him, to undergo
several days in the 'box' on bread and water. He was carried off,
struggling and cursing, by main force, being crammed into the 'box'
aforesaid. This retreat, which was inspected by Lance on another
occasion, appeared to be a species of _oubliette_, apparently in the
very keel of the vessel, so constructed that the delinquent could
neither stand up, lie down, nor sit with ease. In addition to this
rigorous confinement a gag was placed in the mouth of the offender if he
refused to stop his unseemly outcry.
A few minutes before eleven o'clock Lance's door was unlocked, and he
was summoned forth to take part in a new portion of the programme. Being
marched into the centre of the passage, he there saw a large iron cage,
of which the door, just sufficiently large to admit one man, was opened.
On either side stood an armed sentry with rifle at the _poise_.
An additional pair of warders was in attendance. The inmates of the
cells, called by number, not by name, shuffled or stumbled out and made
for the door of the cage, like tamed wild beasts under the keeper's
whip.
It was a piteous, strangely-moving sight to a lover of his kind, had
such been there. Men of various types and all ages obeyed the
summons--the white-haired convict, reckless and hopeless, the larger
half of whose life had been spent within prison walls, and who was now
doomed to linger out the last years of a ruined life in places of
confinement. The whole expression of the face denoted the human wreck
which the _forçat_ had become. The evil eye, furtive yet ferocious, the
animal mouth and jaw, the shaven, sallow cheek--every faculty once
capable of rising to the loftier attributes of manhood seemed
obliterated--the residuum but approached the type of the simian
anthropoid--bestial, savage, obscene.
'Great God!' thought Lance, as one by one the felons passed into this
cage, some young and hardly developed into fullest manhood like himself,
some of middle age, some stunted and decrepit, bowed and misshapen from
constant confinement and the weight of their irons, yet all with the
same criminal impress upon form and feature,--'Great God! shall I ever
become like these men? And yet once I had as little fear of becoming
_what I am_----'
He passed in last, the door was shut, the cage commenced to ascend. His
companions grinned and chuckled as, with a brutal oath, the older
convict asked what he was sent on board for.
Lance hesitated for a moment, and then, reflecting that if he attempted
to show what his companions in misery might consider airs of superiority
they would find some way of revenging themselves, answered in as
careless a manner as he could assume--
'Well, I knocked over the head warder at Ballarat.'
'Good boy! What for?'
'He had been "running" me--wanted to make me break out, I suppose. I
couldn't stand it any longer and went for him.'
'Why didn't yer choke the ---- wretch?'
'Because I hadn't time.' Here the savage joy which he experienced when
his enemy lay gasping beneath him came with a rush of recollection, and
the old fire, so long absent, glowed lurid in his eyes. 'Another second
or two and Bracker would have been a dead man.'
'Bracker, was it?' said one of the younger convicts. 'I was under him at
Pentridge, and a ---- dog he was! He tormented a cove there till he
hanged himself. I'm dashed glad he copped it, anyhow.'
'You're a right 'un, anyhow,' said the older convict approvingly. 'It
wants a chap like you now and then to straighten them infernal wretches
that think a man's like a log of wood as you chop and chip at till it's
all done. I learned one of 'em different on the other side, and there's
one or two here as'll get a surprise yet if they don't look out.'
At this stage of the conversation the slowly-ascending contrivance
reached the upper deck, and the inmates became as stolidly silent as
Eastern mutes.
One by one, covered by the rifles of the deck guards, they stepped out
and followed each other in the shuffling walk peculiar to heavily-ironed
men along and around the deck. Each man was a certain distance behind
the one immediately preceding him. The foremost man walked to the bow of
the vessel. When reached, he turned stiffly round as if by machinery,
and resumed the same monotonous tramp in the opposite direction.
Melancholy treadmill and mockery of locomotion as was this parade, still
it was not wholly without its attractions. The vision arose before their
aching eyes of the blue sky, the dancing wave, the far-off purple
mountain. There drove seaward an outgoing steamer. Alas, alas! what a
world of vain regrets did she evoke in Lance's mind! There were
white-winged gulls, yachts and skiffs that resembled them in free and
graceful flight. All these constituted a pageant impossible of
production within prison walls. Then the ocean breeze, with every
inspiration after the foetid atmosphere of the lower deck, revived and
in a sense exhilarated them. These joys and glories of the sea could not
be shut out even from the gaze of the fettered captives, unless the
further refinement of punishment of blindfolding had been added. And
even in the _President_ none of the officials had hit upon this
deterrent device.
So by the time that Lance and his fellows had completed their allotted
tramp, at the end of which time he was fatigued, unused as he was to
lift his legs with such an encumbering weight, he felt, somewhat to his
surprise, that his general tone had been raised. He saw the shore, then
known as Liardet's Beach, which did not seem so great a distance away.
He could imagine in the night, when a dense fog enveloped the mud flats
of the bay, the low sandy beach, the thickets of the tall ti-tree
(_melaleuca_), that either by swimming or with friendly aid a prisoner
might cross the intervening stretch of mud flat, so dreary and darksome
at low water, and, disappearing into the thickets, be as little likely
to be again seen as a ghost flitting at cock-crow.
During the remainder of this day Lance was sensible of an unusual
feeling of exaltation, so much so that when night came,--the dreary
night commencing so early and ending so late, when sleep would have been
the most precious of boons,--he was wholly unable to compose himself to
rest, as the phrase in orthodox fiction runs: Compose himself!--irony of
ironies!--with the murmur of the prison herd in his ears, in which ever
and anon a maniacal shriek shrilled through the murky midnight air.
The waves plashed and the rising gale moaned as if in natural protest
against the foul cargo of crime, misery, and despair amid which he lay.
In the strange half-delirious fancies which coursed through his brain,
he saw, plainly as it seemed to him, the face of the God-forsaken,
desperate criminal who had last occupied this very cell. He saw him
sitting crouched, hour after hour, day after day, in the very place
where he sat. He marked the spot where his boot-heels had worn the solid
plank. He saw him taken out to punishment. He saw him return more
dogged, hopeless, and defiant than before. Lastly, he could see him
apparently standing upright, but in reality suspended by the twisted
woollen cord, his blanket torn into strips, gone to carry his case into
that ultimate court of appeal where the wrongs of earth shall be righted
by the justice of Heaven.
* * * * *
From this time Lance Trevanion experienced a complete change of
sensation. 'Cabined, cribbed, confined' as he was most literally, there
seemed to have been breathed into his soul with the salt scent of the
ocean that which no art of man could shut out--the hope of freedom, the
promise of escape. Moreover, a brief note had reached the address agreed
upon between him and Tessie, and the warder, finding it transmutable
into sovereigns, had formed a different opinion of Number Fifty-six. He
began to look upon him as a victim of oppression, as something out of
the run of the ordinary 'crew' of the _President_; finally as a young
man who was worth taking a little trouble about, and for whom it might
in the end be worth encountering even the serious risk of dismissal.
After all, if made worth his while, what did dismissal from the
Government service amount to? It involved no moral stigma, no personal
disadvantage. If he cleared out with cash enough to set up a
public-house, or even a store, at some of these new goldfields which
were 'breaking out' every day, how could he do better?
Having established friendly relations with his immediate attendant,
Lance soon proceeded to reap the benefit of confidential intercourse.
Articles of food, 'medical comforts'--luxuries, even--were smuggled in
to Number Fifty-six. With the aid of these and recovered appetite, born
of the sea air, and the tonic ideas which now pervaded his system, Lance
improved measurably. He was reported to the chief officer for good
conduct, and that dread official was pleased to address him one day,
and, remarking upon his behaviour, to inform him that he would be
transferred to the hulk _Success_ at the end of three months, being much
earlier than, from the grave nature of his offence, he might have
calculated upon. Lance touched his cap, smiling bitterly as he shuffled
off on his mechanical round with the faint rattle which his chains
_would_ make, however carefully he might be-wrap and bandage them.
At the end of three months! Well, the first week was over. It had seemed
a month, and there were eleven more to follow before the penal period
would be completed. In Heaven's name, what was he to do until then, hour
after hour in solitude? But one little hour on deck, again to feel the
free ocean breeze, to note the curling waves, the gliding sea-bird.
Sometimes, indeed, even this faint solace was debarred. When the weather
was rough and the hulk unsteady at her moorings, the hour's exercise,
that precious respite, was forbidden. It was too difficult to haul up
the cage, to supervise satisfactorily the deck occupants. So the dark
dull day was fated to end in gloom and sadness as it had commenced.
Sometimes, indeed, the second day passed over without the blessed
interval. Not until the bad weather came to an end were the ill-fated
captives permitted the scanty dole of fresh air and sunshine.
As much of Lance's leisure time while at exercise as he could devote to
this sort of reconnoitring he managed to concentrate on the mud flats,
which at low tide were hardly a mile distant. These he carefully
examined. He learnt by heart their bearings from the shore; satisfied
himself that once there he could manage for himself. Of course there was
the reverse side of the shield. The hulks--more especially the
_President_, as holding a sample of the worst and most desperate
criminals of the whole prison population--were most closely watched. No
boats but those of the water police were permitted to come within an
area marked by buoys, more than half a mile square. Was it worth while
to run the risk of being caught and run down by these, or would it be
more prudent to await his transfer to the _Success_ and take the chance
of escaping from the quarries?
The latter idea seemed feasible. Amid a regiment of convicts nearly a
thousand strong, who worked from 7 A.M. to 5 P.M. in the quarries, at
the piers, or the building of a lighthouse--surely amid such an army of
labourers some opportunity of escape would be afforded him.
Meanwhile, in spite of adverse circumstances, matters were decidedly
improving. His friendly gaoler showed him how he could keep his
port-hole open in fine weather, even after locking-up time for the
night, and by other concessions materially lightened for him the weary
hours.
More than once too had he received a letter from Tessie, carefully
written on the smallest possible scrap of paper, but with its few words
of priceless value and comfort to the captive. In the last one a
distinct plan of escape was devised.
At this time, among the various pursuits and avocations by means of
which men of gentle nurture who had been unsuccessful at the goldfields
procured a living while leading an independent life, that of
wild-fowling ranked high. Game of all sorts was readily saleable at
fabulous prices to the hotel and restaurant keepers of Melbourne. Every
day scores of men, with pockets stuffed with bank notes, came to the
metropolis eager to embark for England with what seemed a fortune to
them, or to enjoy a season of revelry preparatory to returning to
Ballarat or Bendigo. There was, as the miner's phrase then went, 'plenty
more where that came from.' With such free-handed customers a
_recherché_ dinner, with fish, game, and fruit, preceding a theatre
party, was indispensable. The cost was not counted. Bills were despised
in those days when every river in favoured districts was a Pactolus.
Hotel-keepers and tradesfolk were reproached for their meanness in not
swelling their totals to a respectable sum. The free-handed miner, whose
drafts, payable in the rich red gold Dame Nature was so proud to honour,
mocked at expense, and exacted profusion at his quasi-luxurious
banquets. Such being the state of affairs, with teal and widgeon at ten
shillings a brace, and black duck at a sovereign the pair, a reduced
gentleman, with a punt and duck gun, was enabled to lead a
philosophical, remunerative, and far from laborious existence.