Had Captain Trafford died, the young soldier must have been hung; but
the former lived to give his evidence at the court-martial, the
sergeant's corroborated the captain's, and the prisoner pleaded guilty.
But ere the sentence of the court was ascertained, Gray, through some
sailor friends, managed to escape from prison, got on board a merchant
ship where hands were wanting, and worked his passage home. He was
easily traced, was seized as a deserter, and the result of another trial
was transportation for life.
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The convicts who had been rescued from the wreck by the soldiers of the
fort were of course handed over to the proper authorities in South
Africa.
Some met with a merciful destiny, some continued their evil practices--
these were sent on their way.
The wreck of the _Trafalgar_ became matter of history in an age when
philanthropy, or the affectation of it, takes the lead in public.
"Ha!" said Lee to his companion, when they heard, some months after, of
the fate of felons like themselves, "what a fool you would have made of
yourself if you had given yourself up as you wished."
Poor Martin Gray would at the moment this was said have gladly changed
places with the hardest-worked convict in Norfolk Island.
But I must not anticipate my tale.
I have said that Lee had "rapidly chalked out in his mind's eye a map of
his plans." These were rather facilitated in prospect by the unexpected
advent of a companion; and on rising the following morning, he drew out
such a sketch of his intended operations as induced Gray, of necessity,
to assent to them.
In the first place, he, Gray, knew Lee to be a desperate man, albeit
certain indulgences, the result of a morbid spirit of philanthropy--an
endemic peculiar to England--had been granted to the latter on board the
convict-ship; and he had thus, comparatively with the other voyagers,
been placed beyond complaint. Secondly, there was only the alternative
of giving himself up as a deserter. On the one hand, was infinite space
in a fine country, with strange promises from his comrade, a daring and
clever man; on the other, at best, a renewal of servitude under a yoke
he had been taught by a miserable fatality to dislike.
Their resolution once taken, they determined, with wise precaution, on
leaving no traces of concealment in a locality so dangerous by its
proximity to the military post; for, although the river to the westward
still remained impassable, and there was no likelihood of an invasion
from the eastward, it was not to be doubted that ere long the scene of
the wreck would prove of sufficient interest to bring some to the spot
in search of such plunder as the tide might cast up. This territory,
held, in Kafir parlance, by "the sons of Congo," contained, besides the
kraals and pasture-lands of its chiefs and their people, a few traders'
huts, and three or four mission stations, all widely separated from each
other.