Nevermore Part 20

'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 sh.o.r.e 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 ash.o.r.e. 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 pa.s.sage, 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 _forcat_ 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--b.e.s.t.i.a.l, savage, obscene.

'Great G.o.d!' thought Lance, as one by one the felons pa.s.sed 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 G.o.d! shall I ever become like these men? And yet once I had as little fear of becoming _what I am_----'

He pa.s.sed 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 a.s.sume--

'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 const.i.tuted 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 enc.u.mbering weight, he felt, somewhat to his surprise, that his general tone had been raised. He saw the sh.o.r.e, 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 c.o.c.k-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 G.o.d-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 trans.m.u.table 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 appet.i.te, 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 pa.s.sed 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 suns.h.i.+ne.

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 sh.o.r.e; satisfied himself that once there he could manage for himself. Of course there was the reverse side of the s.h.i.+eld. 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 sc.r.a.p 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 _recherche_ 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 s.h.i.+llings 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.

CHAPTER XVI

It came at last--the week--the day--the very night to which Lance had looked forward with such nervous anxiety. When compelled to pace the deck for the last morning, as he trusted, with his chained comrades, he barely concealed his exultation at the thought that on the morrow he might be a free man once more. He feared it would be visible in his countenance, in his very step, which in spite of himself was almost elastic, causing his chains to clank unusually. Indeed one of his fellows in adversity noticed it.

Keen to detect the slightest change from the stereotyped prison bearing, he growled out, 'What the ---- are ye at, step-dancing with your bloomin' irons, ye ---- fool? They'll clap the fourteen-pound clinks on ye if ye try the shakin' lay. Stoush it, ye ----'

The words were perhaps unfit for publication, but the intention was not all unkind. The trained _forcat_ had quickly divined that something not in the programme--an 'extra,' so to speak--was likely to be played, and thus warned him against premature elation.

Lance felt his heart stop as the possibility occurred to him that the caprice of a warder might order him to wear irons weighing a quarter of a hundredweight in place of the comparatively light ones which at present confined his limbs. He at once 'dropped,' as the adviser would have phrased it, and falling into the chain-gang shuffle as if instinctively, said, 'All right, Scotty, this foggy day makes a fellow want to warm his feet.'

'Warm your feet!' scoffed the convict, 'you'll be lucky if you can raise a trot without hobbles these years to come. When your time's up they'll have ye for something else, like they did me. Once they've got a cove on these ---- h.e.l.l-boats they don't like to let him go again.'