For the Term of His Natural Life Part 44

"Don't know where he got the file from," said Warder Short.

"Know! Of course you don't know. You men never do know anything until the mischief's done. You want me here for a month or so. I'd teach you your duty! Don't know--with things like this lying about? I wonder the whole yard isn't loose and dining with the Governor."

"This" was a fragment of delft pottery which Frere's quick eye had detected among the broken metal.

"I'd cut the biggest iron you've got with this; and so would he and plenty more, I'll go bail. You ought to have lived with me at Sarah Island, Mr. Short. Don't know!"

"Well, Captain Frere, it's an accident," says Short, "and can't be helped now."

"An accident!" roared Frere. "What business have you with accidents?

How, in the devil's name, you let the man get over the wall, I don't know."

"He ran up that stone heap," says Scott, "and seemed to me to jump at the roof of the shed. I fired at him, and he swung his legs over the top of the wall and dropped."

Frere measured the distance from his eye, and an irrepressible feeling of admiration, rising out of his own skill in athletics, took possession of him for an instant.

"By the Lord Harry, but it's a big jump!" he said; and then the instinctive fear with which the consciousness of the hideous wrong he had done the now escaped convict inspired him, made him add: "A desperate villain like that wouldn't stick at a murder if you pressed him hard. Which way did he go?"

"Right up Macquarie Street, and then made for the mountain. There were few people about, but Mr. Mays, of the Star Hotel, tried to stop him, and was knocked head over heels. He says the fellow runs like a deer."

"We'll have the reward out if we don't get him to-night," says Frere, turning away; "and you'd better put on an extra warder. This sort of game is catching." And he strode away to the Barracks.

From right to left, from east to west, through the prison city flew the signal of alarm, and the patrol, clattering out along the road to New Norfolk, made hot haste to strike the trail of the fugitive. But night came and found him yet at large, and the patrol returning, weary and disheartened, protested that he must be lying hid in some gorge of the purple mountain that overshadowed the town, and would have to be starved into submission. Meanwhile the usual message ran through the island, and so admirable were the arrangements which Arthur the reformer had initiated, that, before noon of the next day, not a signal station on the coast but knew that No. 8942, etc., etc., prisoner for life, was illegally at large. This intelligence, further aided by a paragraph in the Gazette anent the "Daring Escape", noised abroad, the world cared little that the Mary Jane, Government schooner, had sailed for Port Arthur without Rufus Dawes.

But two or three persons cared a good deal. Major Vickers, for one, was indignant that his boasted security of bolts and bars should have been so easily defied, and in proportion to his indignation was the grief of Messieurs Jenkins, Scott, and Co., suspended from office, and threatened with absolute dismissal. Mr. Meekin was terribly frightened at the fact that so dangerous a monster should be roaming at large within reach of his own saintly person. Sylvia had shown symptoms of nervous terror, none the less injurious because carefully repressed; and Captain Maurice Frere was a prey to the most cruel anxiety. He had ridden off at a hand-gallop within ten minutes after he had reached the Barracks, and had spent the few hours of remaining daylight in scouring the country along the road to the North. At dawn the next day he was away to the mountain, and with a black-tracker at his heels, explored as much of that wilderness of gully and chasm as nature permitted to him. He had offered to double the reward, and had examined a number of suspicious persons. It was known that he had been inspecting the prison a few hours before the escape took place, and his efforts were therefore attributed to zeal, not unmixed with chagrin. "Our dear friend feels his reputation at stake," the future chaplain of Port Arthur said to Sylvia at the Christmas dinner. "He is so proud of his knowledge of these unhappy men that he dislikes to be outwitted by any of them."

Notwithstanding all this, however, Dawes had disappeared. The fat landlord of the Star Hotel was the last person who saw him, and the flying yellow figure seemed to have been as completely swallowed up by the warm summer's afternoon as if it had run headlong into the blackest night that ever hung above the earth.

CHAPTER IX. JOHN REX'S LETTER HOME.

The "little gathering" of which Major Vickers had spoken to Mr. Meekin, had grown into something larger than he had antic.i.p.ated. Instead of a quiet dinner at which his own household, his daughter's betrothed, and the stranger clergyman only should be present, the Major found himself entangled with Mesdames Protherick and Jellicoe, Mr. McNab of the garrison, and Mr. Pounce of the civil list. His quiet Christmas dinner had grown into an evening party.

The conversation was on the usual topic.

"Heard anything about that fellow Dawes?" asked Mr. Pounce.

"Not yet," says Frere, sulkily, "but he won't be out long. I've got a dozen men up the mountain."

"I suppose it is not easy for a prisoner to make good his escape?" says Meekin.

"Oh, he needn't be caught," says Frere, "if that's what you mean; but he'll starve instead. The bushranging days are over now, and it's a precious poor look-out for any man to live upon luck in the bush."

"Indeed, yes," says Mr. Pounce, lapping his soup. "This island seems specially adapted by Providence for a convict settlement; for with an admirable climate, it carries little indigenous vegetation which will support human life."

"Wull," said McNab to Sylvia, "I don't think Prauvidence had any thocht o' caunveect deesiplin whun He created the cauleny o' Van Deemen's Lan'."

"Neither do I," said Sylvia.

"I don't know," says Mrs. Protherick. "Poor Protherick used often to say that it seemed as if some Almighty Hand had planned the Penal Settlements round the coast, the country is so delightfully barren."

"Ay, Port Arthur couldn't have been better if it had been made on purpose," says Frere; "and all up the coast from Tenby to St. Helen's there isn't a sc.r.a.p for human being to make a meal on. The West Coast is worse. By George, sir, in the old days, I remember--"

"By the way," says Meekin, "I've got something to show you. Rex's confession. I brought it down on purpose."

"Rex's confession!"

"His account of his adventures after he left Macquarie Harbour. I am going to send it to the Bishop."

"Oh, I should like to see it," said Sylvia, with heightened colour. "The story of these unhappy men has a personal interest for me."

"A forbidden subject, Poppet."

"No, papa, not altogether forbidden; for it does not affect me now as it used to do. You must let me read it, Mr. Meekin."

"A pack of lies, I expect," said Frere, with a scowl. "That scoundrel Rex couldn't tell the truth to save his life."

"You misjudge him, Captain Frere," said Meekin. "All the prisoners are not hardened in iniquity like Rufus Dawes. Rex is, I believe, truly penitent, and has written a most touching letter to his father."

"A letter!" said Vickers. "You know that, by the King's--no, the Queen's Regulations, no letters are allowed to be sent to the friends of prisoners without first pa.s.sing through the hands of the authorities."

"I am aware of that, Major, and for that reason have brought it with me, that you may read it for yourself. It seems to me to breathe a spirit of true piety."

"Let's have a look at it," said Frere.

"Here it is," returned Meekin, producing a packet; "and when the cloth is removed, I will ask permission of the ladies to read it aloud. It is most interesting."

A glance of surprise pa.s.sed between the ladies Protherick and Jellicoe.

The idea of a convict's letter proving interesting! Mr. Meekin was new to the ways of the place.

Frere, turning the packet between his finger, read the address:--

John Rex, sen., Care of Mr. Blicks, 38, Bishopsgate Street Within, London.

"Why can't he write to his father direct?" said he. "Who's Blick?"

"A worthy merchant, I am told, in whose counting-house the fortunate Rex pa.s.sed his younger days. He had a tolerable education, as you are aware."

"Educated prisoners are always the worst," said Vickers. "James, some more wine. We don't drink toasts here, but as this is Christmas Eve, 'Her Majesty the Queen'!"

"Hear, hear, hear!" says Maurice. "'Her Majesty the Queen'!"

Having drunk this loyal toast with due fervour, Vickers proposed, "His Excellency Sir John Franklin", which toast was likewise duly honoured.

"Here's a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to you, sir," said Frere, with the letter still in his hand. "G.o.d bless us all."