The next day, on some transparent pretence, Lance was ordered to take up the work of one of the long-sentence prisoners, which involved menial and degrading, not to say disgusting duties. These he performed patiently and mechanically, yet with a far-off look as of a man in a dream. Even this penance was insufficient to appease the malevolence of his tormentor. He made a practice of standing near, watching his victim, enjoying the spectacle of the captive 'swell' engaged for hours in the meanest conceivable employment. From time to time he made brutal jokes upon the situation with his assistant warders or those prisoners who were always ready for personal reasons to take the side of their taskmasters.
After the night's stillness and respite—stillness how oppressive, even terrible in its unbroken silence!—Lance would brace himself to confront anew his bitter fate. He would repeat to himself all the reasons that he could summon for stubborn endurance and patient adherence to the course he had laid down for himself. But with the morning light came his inexorable foe, ordering him here and there, persisting in declaring that he was in the habit of breaking minor regulations, making a laughing-stock of him before other prisoners in every way, driving him along the road which was sure, in Bracker's experience, to land him in some act of overt insubordination.
One morning, after an hour's trial of every species of aggravation, Lance's patience so far failed him that he turned upon his persecutor and told him that no one but a coward would thus treat a man in his position, and who was unable to defend himself or retaliate. He did not say much, but doubtless committed himself to the extent of infringing the gaol regulations, which enjoin respect and obedience to all officials.
His adversary at once seized his advantage, and ordering him back to his cell locked him up, pushing him roughly inside the door. This portion of his duty performed, he lodged a complaint in due form of insubordination against Launcelot Trevanion, hard labour prisoner under sentence.
The gaoler held over the case until the end of the week, when Mr. M'Alpine, as visiting magistrate, regularly attended to hear cases and complaints.
The trial of prisoners charged with such offences is conductedin camera, the magistrate, the gaoler, the parties to the complaint, and the witnesses being only present. For reasons held to be sufficient, the public and the press are excluded. Evidence on oath is taken down in writing, that the depositions may be afterwards referred to. The magistrate decides on the evidence brought before him. The accused is permitted to call witnesses. But for obvious reasons the warders and the companions in captivity of the culprit or complainant constitute necessarily the only available testimony. Thus it is to be feared that occasionally the scales of justice may be deflected, and though forms are adhered to, wrong-doing triumphs and revenge is wreaked.
So, in the present case, Bracker swore positively that Lance had habitually refused to obey orders, and on this occasion had abused and threatened him in language unfit to be repeated. He handed in a paper on which was written a selection of foul expressions of his own invention. His tale was corroborated in part by another warder, who had heard Lance speak in an excited tone of voice to the complainant—though he was not near enough to catch the sense of his words. One of the prisoners—mindful of favours to come—'swore up' in Bracker's interest, and more circumstantially confirmed his story. Against this weight of evidence Lance's denial availed nothing. His resentful demeanour tended to prejudice Mr. M'Alpine against him as being mutinous and defiant. There was no little difficulty in preserving order among the desperatedétenusof the day, as it was. The sternest repression was thought necessary. In view of example and deterrent effect, Lance was therefore sentenced—after an admonition of curt severity—to a month's solitary confinement upon bread and water, the last week to be passed in the dark cell.
The ill-concealed triumph depicted on Bracker's countenance was hard to bear. The solitary cell, the meagre fare, often unduly abridged, represented to a man of Lance's temperament and experiences the extremity of human wretchedness. But a sharper sting was added by Bracker's daily jeers: 'So you won't give a civil answer yet when you're spoke to,' he said, one afternoon, stirring Lance rudely with his foot. 'And you won't stand up when you're told? Wait till to-morrow, when you're due for the dark 'un—seven days and seven nights! That'll bleach you, my flash horse-thief, like a stick of celery! I'll take the steel out of yer before I've done! Bigger chaps than you have been straightened here before now!'
On the next morning, accordingly, Lance was marched to the dark cell, and thrust in so roughly that, weakened as he was by his Lenten diet, he fell down, bruised and half-fainting. There was barely sufficient room in the small circular cell for him to lie at length, and as he regained a sitting posture and strained his eyesight to discover one ray of light amid the almost palpable darkness, he realised fully the utter desolation and horror of his position. Despair took possession of him. Forsaken of God and man, as he deemed himself to be, he raved and blasphemed like a maniac, ceasing only when sheer exhaustion brought on a stupor of insensibility, from which he passed into perturbed and fitful slumbers.
He awoke only to undergo with partially renewed faculties still keener miseries. Unaware of the time which he had passed in sleep, he was ignorant whether it was day or night. No sound penetrated the thick walls of the cell. The Cimmerian gloom was unrelieved by the faintest pencil of light. Had he been dead and entombed he could not have been more utterly separated from knowledge of the outer world—from communion with the living. Days seemed to have passed since he first entered the cell. His brain throbbed. His heart-beats were plainly audible to him in the horrible silence. Delirious fancies commenced to assail him. He saw his father's form as he had last seen it, with visage stern and inflexible. He seemed to say: 'All that I foresaw has come to pass. You have dishonoured an ancient name!—blotted a stainless escutcheon! Die, and make no sign!'
Then his cousin Estelle's sweet face came slowly out of the gloom, gazing upon him with sorrowful, angelic pity. The infinite tenderness, the boundless compassion of love, shone in her starry eyes, which, in his vision, commenced to irradiate the gloomy vault. Clearer grew the outlines of her form—a celestial brightness appeared to render visible every outline of her form, every lineament of her countenance, as she inclined herself as if to raise him from his recumbent position. He threw up his arms with a cry of joyous recognition. The action appeared to recall his wandering senses. The impenetrable dungeon gloom again closed over him like a descending iron platform. A steel band appeared to compress and still more tightly environ his brain, until a deathlike swoon terminated simultaneously both agony and sensation.
When Lance issued from the dark cell and was relegated to ordinary confinement, he fully justified Bracker's anticipations in one respect. He was 'bleached,' as that official had described the change of complexion likely to result. His face was ashen white, his eyes had a vacant stare like those of a blind man. He staggered from weakness, so that the warders were fain to hold him up more than once. When addressed he made no answer. It seemed as if his senses had suffered partial obliteration. Bracker was not present when his victim was returned to his cell after serving the full term of punishment. The other warders, who had no special dislike to him, were indulgent rather than otherwise in their treatment and comments.
'You're a bit low, Trevanion,' one of them said; 'I'd ask to see the doctor if I were you, and get sent to hospital for a week or two. He'll order you wine, and soup, and things. You'll be slipping your cable like that other chap Bracker got into trouble about, if you don't mind.'
Lance made no reply. He sat down slowly and doubtfully upon the folded blankets at the farther end of the cell, steadying himself with difficulty against the angle of the wall.
'Now, you take my tip,' said the elder of the two men to his fellow as they left, after bolting the cell door with the clang inseparable from prison life, 'that chap will do one of three things before a month's out. Bracker's been running him too hard. He's a well-bred 'un, and they won't stand driving. He'll either die, go mad, or——'
'Or what?' said the younger man.
'Well, Bracker had better look out. Some fine morning he'll have Trevanion's fingers in his throat, and he mayn't find it so easy to get 'em slacked off again. I've known that happen before now. And when the chap was choked off it didn't matter to Dawkins.Hewas the warder. It happened when I was at the stockade.'
'Why didn't it matter?'
'BecauseDawkins was dead! The chap laughed when they dragged him off, and said they might do what they liked with him. He'd settled Dawkins, and that was all he cared for in the world. They might hang him now, and welcome.'
'And did they?'
'Of course they did, but we old hands knew Dawkins had been tantalising him; it was a way of his with some prisoners, and this cove made up his mind to rub him out. He got him to rights, safe enough.'
'Hadn't we better tell Bracker?'
'What for? He thinks he knows everything, and wouldn't thank us. Likely think we'd been putting up something to get his place. Let him take his chance like another man.'
When the medical officer saw Lance he ordered his immediate removal to the hospital ward. He said the prisoner was dangerously low and feeble; that his health had suffered more than could be accounted for; and that there were certain bruises and excoriations which could not have been produced in any ordinary way. He spoke kindly to Lance, and advised him to follow his treatment and diet marked out for him, and to be more cheerful and resigned if he wished to get well and come safely through his imprisonment.
'You're only a young man, Trevanion,' he would say. 'After this couple of years are out there is nothing to prevent your going to the United States, or to any other part of the world where people have never heard of you, of Ballarat—hardly of Australia, for that matter. And what a deal of life there is to come for you—the best part too. Take courage and make up your mind to bear the necessary hardship of your sentence, and look forward to the day when you will go forth a free man.'
Whether acted upon by this well-meant advice, or following out some course of action nurtured like the fungus of a dungeon in the dark depths of his brooding heart, a change took place in the sullen captive's mien. He seemed thankful for the 'medical comforts' doled out to him, and availed himself of them readily. He listened respectfully to the chaplain and gaol surgeon, and when, after a fortnight's treatment in the hospital ward, he was reported fit for the ordinary discipline of the gaol, the warders with one exception declared that they would not have known him to be the same man.
The ordinary routine of prison life is scarcely calculated to develop the finer feelings in the keepers of the wild beasts in human form over whom they hold watch and ward. Boundless dissimulation, craft and subtlety, tameless ferocity, ruthless cruelty, are their leading characteristics. Apparently peaceable and harmless, theirs is but the guile of the red Indian or the dark-souled Hindoo, biding his time until the hour comes for murder and rapine. Let but the keeper relax vigilance; let the sentinel slumber at his post, and mutiny and murder are prompt to unmask. Still, with this knowledge drilled into them by decades of experience, the ordinary prison officials are just if not merciful, strict but not severe; while their own discipline is so rigorous that any departure from regulations is sternly and invariably visited on the offending official.
Bracker was an exception—for the credit of the department it must be admitted that he was the only man in that great prison-house who would have acted as he did towards any prisoner, however vexatious.
As Lance passed into his cell he saw his oppressor watching him with the expression he knew so well. He was not long left in suspense.
'Didn't Saunders complain of not being strong enough for the wood and water work, Jackson?'
'Yes, sir,' replied the under warder.
'Well, take this man here and put him in his place. He's fat and lazy enough after his loafing in the hospital to do a little work again.'
'This way, Trevanion,' said the warder. 'You've got to work in the lower yard.'
As he passed Bracker their eyes met for an instant.
'You're not worked down yet, my man,' said Bracker, with an insolent laugh. 'Wait till you've had another month's graft where I'm going to put ye. "Jimmy Ducks" aboard an emigrant ship's a fool to it.'
Lance drew himself up for an instant and looked full into his tormentor's face. The cruel cowardly eyes fell for a moment before the gaze of the patrician, degraded and despairing as he was. Then the warder quietly pushed him on.
'Don't cross him, if you take my advice,' he said. 'He's a devil all out when he goes for a prisoner, and I never knew one that didn't come off worst in the end. You lie low for a bit and give him his head. The doctor's your friend now, and he'll see he doesn't crowd you.'
Lance nodded his head in recognition of the kindness of the man's intention, then silently commenced his laborious and uncongenial task. When he returned to his cell at night worn out and exhausted by the unwonted toil, hardly recovered indeed from the pitiable weakness to which he had been reduced, he swore a bitter oath and then and there registered an unholy vow.
From that hour he awaited but opportunity to wreak a full measure of vengeance upon his adversary. He felt his strength declining day by day. Daily did he endure the cheap taunt, the cruel mockery, the ingenious expedients, by which Bracker sought to intensify his misery. But a single chance he would yet give to him, if he had the manhood to accept it.
One morning he addressed him with the usual salute.
'I wish to speak a few words to you, and before I do so I wish you to understand that I mean no—no—disrespect——'
'Speak and be d—d,' was Bracker's courteous rejoinder.
'It is only this. You have been what the people here would call "running me,"—that is, putting me to work above my strength, insulting me habitually as well. Why you should do so is best known to yourself. I can't stand it much longer. If you will leave off this line of conduct and treat me fairly, like any other prisoner, I will promise on my part to—to—behave well and reasonably. Don't decide in a hurry—it may cost both our lives.'
Bracker laughed aloud. He stopped to look at Lance more than once, then he laughed as at too exquisite a joke. It was the mockery of a fiend exulting in the agonies of a demon-tortured soul.
He misconceived the situation. He concluded that his captive's courage had failed him; that henceforth he would be able to treat him with the contemptuous cruelty with which he was wont to finish his persecutions. He triumphed in his foresight, and could not forbear showing a cowardly exultation.
'So you've dropped down to it at last, my flash horse-duffer, have you? You've shown the white feather that I always knew was in you—a rank cur from the beginning, with all your brag. By God! I'll make it hotter than ever for you, just for this very bit of impudence. D—n ye! Get back to your muck.'
As he spoke the last words, ending with a foul expression, he had drawn near Lance, and raising his foot as if for a contemptuous kick, he placed his hands on his shoulders. The long corridor between the cells was for the moment without a second warder. With a panther-like bound Lance sprang forward, and in another moment his hands were at Bracker's throat, clutching with the grasp that death alone relaxes.
'Dog!' he ground out between his teeth. 'Your last hour is come. Die, wretch, and go to hell—die, if you had a hundred lives, scoundrel and villain that you are—die for your cruelty to a helpless wretch that never did you harm!'
So sudden was the onslaught that Bracker, though a powerful man, had no chance of resistance, never dreaming that the cowed convict, as he took Lance to be, would turn upon him. In another moment he was on his back on the floor of the cell, his foe with knee on chest awaiting the moment when the blanched features should display no sign of life, nor abating for one second the deadly gripe of the slayer of his kind.
Of his own safety—of his assured doom for killing a prison official—he thought not. The blood fury was on him. His unendurable wrongs, his daily torment, had reached the point of desperation when the human animal turns at bay, disregarding alike the hunter's spear, the baying hound, the fast-flowing life-blood.
Another minutest subdivision of time would have settled the matter. Another dead warder would have been found by the side of a reckless and desperate prisoner. The usual inquest would have been held, when, after a verdict of wilful murder, the rope or a sentence of imprisonment for life would have terminated all public interest for a season.
But in mercy or otherwise to Mr. Bracker an attendant accidentally returned to the corridor and noticed the open cell door. This, of course, was irregular. Rushing towards it he was just in time—hardly a second too soon—to prevent Mr. Bracker, 'our late respected head warder of Ballarat gaol' as he would have been styled, from posing as a corpse, and Lance Trevanion, late of Wychwood, Cornwall, from becoming a murderer!
Some considerable time elapsed before Mr. Bracker returned fully to his senses after regaining consciousness. He had been hurled to the cell floor with such violence that concussion of the brain had taken place, while his swollen throat testified to the deadly gripe of the victim who had so nearly turned the table upon his tormentor. It was fully a week before he was in a condition to give evidence before the Visiting Justice. The interval Lance was condemned to spend in 'solitary,' to be nourished wholly on bread and water,—to be abandoned in fact to the society of the Furies, which none the less mordantly than in the days of the world's green youth rend the heart and shatter the brain of their ill-fated or guilty victim.
Lance was rapidly passing from one stage of misery to the other, from the unmerciful to the merciful woe. As he sat or lay in his cell the long hours through, the thought crossed his brain, revelled and ran riot there, that if he had only persevered in his policy of endurance, if he had been strong and patient instead of weak and impulsive, this needed not to have happened. He might probably have found some door of escape from his tribulation, not literally of course, but through the clergyman and the Visiting Justice, the latter of whom would have been most uncompromising in punishing an official who misused his power.
Now that the storm of passion was over, the fury spent, thebrevis insaniapassed away, calmer reflection would intrude. To what further sentence had he rendered himself liable? Would he be committed for attempted murder, or would it be manslaughter? Should he be condemned to a further sentence of years—long years of imprisonment? Might he not be hanged for the attempt to commit the capital offence? No doubt he intended to kill Bracker—that he would not deny. His mind was made up. If a shameful death or long imprisonment was to be his doom, he would rid himself of a worthless life. He had procured the means of self-destruction during his first remand. The feeling aroused among his fellow-captives by his daring attempt to take the life of his gaoler was peculiar and exceptional. Though many of the prisoners from motive of policy were subservient to Bracker, he was liked by no one. He had been known to be trying to 'break' or crush Trevanion. Cruelties and unnecessary severity springing from the irresponsible use of power are presumably not unknown in gaols. But the prison herd knows that at a certain point despair sets in. Reckless retribution follows, and the life of the agent or leading actor in the tragedy nearly always exacted counts with himself and his fellows merely as dust in the balance.
The criminals like to think that from their midst will arise at least one man who devotes himself to sacrifice, so only may he avenge himself and them upon their enemy. The time comes, and with curious certainty the man. Then the words of the first warder come true. The sullen patience of the harassed convict, who rarely resents routine discipline, however severe, becomes exhausted, and the debt is paid in full by a brutal murder or a life-long injury. Let it be borne in mind that 'early in the fifties' the problem of successful goldfield management was yet unsolved in Australia. The legislation had been chiefly tentative; the police and prison arrangements were incomplete. From the seething mass of the mining population, not always ruled with tact or temper, smarting under alleged injustice and excited by the enormous yield of the precious metal, arose a dangerously large and increasing criminal class. The overcrowded gaols, ample for a pastoral colony, were unable to contain them. Among the more experienced officers apprehensions of a revolt of the mining population—unhappily but too well-founded—began to assume the appearance of certainty. In such event the prisoners, if altogether centralised or confined inland, might easily be liberated—would hardly fail to be so on the first outbreak. Considering these contingencies, the Government of the day determined to relieve the pressure upon the metropolitan gaols by establishing prison hulks. Vessels moored in the waters of Williamstown Bay could be more easily guarded—would obviously be more difficult to escape from. Ships by scores, deserted by their crews, lay at anchor motionless and tenantless as that of the Ancient Mariner. Their owners were too happy to sell at any reasonable price. The idea was approved—not sooner approved than acted upon. ThePresident, theSuccess, theSacramento, theDeborah, were purchased and forthwith proclaimed to be, and to be considered, Her Majesty's gaols. They became from that day floating prisons. There were those long after who did not hesitate to designate them as floating hells.
One of the leading ideas connected with the scheme was the compulsory labour of the convicts, who, it was thought, might be employed beneficially to themselves and to the state in building at Williamstown—then a chief port of Melbourne—wharves, lighthouses, and docks. There were millions of tons of blue-stone—a species of volcanic trap—to be had near the shore for the quarrying. Harbour accommodation was miserably insufficient. The labour of a thousand men was a valuable consideration in that day of dearth of every kind of manual labour. Long afterwards the navvies employed in the construction of the Yan Yean aqueduct received one pound sterling per day. At this time double the wage would not have furnished the labour these convicts performed, and in many instances performed well.
ThePresidentenjoyed the bad eminence of being styled and worked as a strictly penal hulk—an abode for refractory and desperate criminals. Many of these were, in the prison slang, 'long-sentence men,' incorrigible felons serving a life sentence for repeated offences; men who could not be trusted to work even in the iron-gangs—so skilful and determined were they in all methods of escape. Many of these were doomed never to leave thePresident'sgloomy cells but for the coffin and the shroud. Others again, after performing the allotted form of strictly penal and reformatory discipline, were drafted on board theSuccess, where they underwent the more popular and varied experience of working in the quarries on the main-land—in irons, it is true, but having the excitement of a daily voyage to and fro in one of the barges used for the purpose.
When Lance was brought up for trial he found to his relief—if indeed anything could have afforded him a gleam of satisfaction—that in spite of the heinousness of his offence—penally considered—a favourable feeling had sprung up with regard to him. Now that Bracker had in their opinion got his deserts, several of the 'good conduct' prisoners came forward with voluntary statements. They had seen the injured man knocking about the prisoner Trevanion. He was always 'tantalising,' and seemed to want to provoke him to a breach of regulations. Had not spoken before, because they were afraid of Bracker, who was well known to be revengeful. It was believed in the gaol (sent round, doubtless, in the wonderful way criminals have of communicating with each other) that he had caused a prisoner in another gaol to hang himself.
Two warders had also noticed his conduct to prisoner Trevanion when he came out of hospital. Thought it severe and unnecessary. The prisoner's own statement was taken on oath. He admitted the offence, but averred that he had become reckless through consistent ill-treatment. Bracker, of course, denied everything in the most unabashed manner, looking with evil eye upon the recalcitrant warders and the 'good conduct' prisoners. But the papers had been sent for in the last inquiry made into his conduct, also upon a charge of cruelty to prisoners. The evidence, unfortunately for him, was very similar. Mr. M'Alpine, who was an unsparing foe to all official misconduct, at once decided against him. After a terrific lecture, he reminded Bracker that he had been disrated for a former offence of a like nature. He should recommend him, therefore, for dismissal, which recommendation, to the general joy of the inhabitants of the Ballarat gaol, was promptly carried out.
'Prisoner Trevanion, whose conduct if condoned must have a bad effect upon the other prisoners (other prisoners, how the words fell like drops of molten lead upon his heart!), is ordered to serve the rest of his sentence on board Her Majesty's hulks at Williamstown.'
Two stern-faced men set out from LynnIn the cold and heavy mist,And Eugene Aram walked betweenWith gyves upon his wrists.
Two stern-faced men set out from LynnIn the cold and heavy mist,And Eugene Aram walked betweenWith gyves upon his wrists.
This verse, from Hood's pathetic ballad, Lance had been fond of and learned by heart as a schoolboy, little dreaming how closely the circumstances would apply to himself in the after-time.
Itwouldkeep ringing through his brain with incessant automatic iteration, as Lance found himself early next morning driven off to Ballarat, leg-ironed and handcuffed, in charge of two warders. The two men, with himself in the centre, took their seats in the back part of Cobb's coach, and in company with various other passengers, clerical and lay, male and female, as is the slightly unfair practice of the Government, looking at it from the standpoint of the travelling public. However, no great inconvenience having so far resulted, the sentimental objection to travel with criminals has lessened. And being decidedly the more economical mode of escort, as far as the Government is concerned, the arrangement is continued.
Of course glances of pitying wonder were cast from time to time, especially by the female passengers in the crowded coach, at the men in police uniform and the sad, sallow, clean-shaved man sitting between them. One young girl alone, though sitting nearly opposite, had exhibited no interest in the trio. She sat near the right-hand door of the coach. Closely veiled, she had turned her head towards the town and the crowd always attendant on the departure of a coach.
The clock struck six. The powerful high-conditioned horses sprang at their collars, obedient to the practised hand of 'Cabbage-tree Ned,' one of the 'stage' heroes of the period. The heavily-laden coach swayed on its thorough-brace springs and rattled down Sturt Street at the rate of twelve miles an hour. More than once had Lance been the envied occupant of the box seat beside this very driver, who, smoking the proffered cigar, was as civil to Trevanion of Number Six as an official of his exalted position could afford to be to any one.
And now he sat, chained and alone,The 'warder' by his side,The plume, the helm, the charger gone, etc.
And now he sat, chained and alone,The 'warder' by his side,The plume, the helm, the charger gone, etc.
Gone, gone, indeed,—how many things had gone!—fame and fortune, hope, honour,—all that made life worth living. The sooner that wretched dishonoured life went too, the better for all. Thank God, it would be easy to drop overboard from barge or boat—the waters of the bay had ended the sorrows of many a hopeless wretch, it was said. The heavy irons provided for a quick and silent escape from life's weary burden.
An involuntary sigh, as the sequel to the train of thought, from the fettered captive, together with a faint but distinct tinkle from his leg-irons, appeared to arouse the girl from her reverie.
She gazed at the prisoner long and earnestly, then with a cry of grief and despair which thrilled the hearts of all who heard her she threw herself forward, and clasping his manacled hands within her own looked into his face, worn and altered in every feature as it was, with the piteous agony of a frightened child.
It was Tessie Lawless!
'Lance! oh, Lance!' she cried in tones so full of anguish that the warders forbore to interfere, and the coach passengers listened in sympathetic wonder. 'Is this what they have brought you to? Oh, wicked wicked girl! Worse and more wicked man! For I know now how they plotted to destroy you. Your blood will be on our heads. Surely we must suffer for this if there's a God. Where are they taking you to? Oh, God! have mercy!'
The driver having inquired tersely into the occasion of the disturbance, and having gathered that a girl had recognised a friend or relation in the prisoner, lighted a fresh cigar and let his horses out adown the incline with the remark that accidents would happen, but a good-looking girl like her had no call to fret; she might have her pick of twenty new sweethearts long before this one had served his time. Women would go on like that, he supposed though, to the end of the world.
The public, as represented by the twenty inside passengers, did not exhibit undue surprise or other emotion. Some of the women whispered 'poor thing—fine young fellow too—pity he's gone wrong,' and so on. The men kept mostly mute, though not unsympathetic. They were not unused to seeing tragedies acted in everyday life in those unconventional days of the early goldfields. The passions had lacked hiding-places such as are furnished by a highly-civilised community.
The crowded goldfields camp more nearly represented 'board ship' than the provincial life pure and simple, and things were done and said, necessarilycoram publico, which in more conventional communities would have been wholly suppressed or excited inconvenient remark.
Therefore, after a vain attempt to persuade poor Tessie to moderate her feelings, Lance was fain to yield to the contagion of her grief. Weakened in mind and body by his late sufferings, softened by the tenderness of her every tone, and touched by the first kind words he had heard since his imprisonment, he was fain, though hating himself for the weakness, to weep for company. As the tears streamed down the convict's grief-worn countenance—tears which he vainly strived to hide with his manacled hands—every heart was touched, and those emotions of our common humanity which ennoble the species were deeply stirred. Murmurs of 'Poor things,' 'Poor girl,' 'Hard lines,' etc., were heard. Even the warders, though unused to the melting mood, were raised from out of their ordinary groove of total indifference to human suffering not provided for by the gaol regulations. After a short colloquy the one nearest to Tessie motioned to the girl to exchange seats, an offer which she thankfully accepted.
There was no dereliction of duty involved in this charity, which was heartily and unanimously endorsed by their public. Relaxation of discipline was necessarily permitted in the case of escort of prisoners from one part of the country to another. Such a task was generally looked upon in the light of a holiday by warders or police troopers. It involved change of air and scene, higher pay for a time, and with various perquisites and indulgences. All that was required of them was to deliver over their charge safely to the authorities. That being the result, they were allowed a certain latitude with regard to the means. If the prisoner thereby escaped, their punishment was exemplary. It often happened, however, that the prisoner, being a fair sort of fellow (as prisoners go), was conversed and generally associated with on terms of equality. Of course proper security was exacted. A single trooper, camping out through a stretch of thinly-inhabited pastoral country, has been compelled to handcuff himself to the prisoner nightly for his better safeguarding. But these formalities apart, much cheerful companionship has ere now been enjoyed between the (official) 'wolf and hound.'
Hence, as the first warder observed in a gruff whisper, 'they had no call to bother their heads if the poor chap's girl wanted a yarn with him. It was the last one as he'd see for a spell, unless he fell across a mermaid.' Here the speaker, who had been a ship's carpenter once, growled a hoarse rumbling laugh. 'Let him have his bit o' luck for once. He'd got stiffish times to come, or else they'd heard wrong.'
So Tessie, sitting on the right side of Lance—there being no one to the left of him at the coach-window—leaning her head on his shoulder, commenced to whisper in his ear. The friendly warder studiously gazed at the fast-flying landscape, as if it possessed peculiarly picturesque effects. The second man almost turned his back upon Lance in his anxiety to be out of the reach of confidential communications, while Tessie's murmuring voice, instinct with more than womanly tenderness, sounded in the ear—ay, in the heart of the captive, so lately sullenly despairing of God and man—like the voice of an angel from heaven.
'You may think me immodest, Lance,' she said—'I may call you that now, may I not?—but I don't care. There are times when a woman must follow her own heart, and this is one of them. I would tell you what I feel now if there were hundreds looking on. I cannot help it; and what does my poor life matter? When I think of what you were when I first saw you! full of health, hope, and spirits, with a smile for every one, and under compliment to no living man, I felt as if my heart would burst when I saw you—saw you—as you are!'
Here the girl's tears streamed down like rain—and she sobbed, though striving with all her will power to restrain her feelings—till her slender form shook and trembled in a manner piteous to see. Her forlorn companion gazed at her silently, with a world of misery in his hollow eyes. Just at that particular juncture the conversation in the coach became, if not more cheerful, decidedly more loud and animated, and their united voices helping to drown poor Tessie's lamentations, some poor opportunity was given her to recover herself.
'You think me very silly,' she said, with a miserable attempt to smile. 'I did not know how much I cared for you until the trial—women don't always. I thought I had a friendly feeling, and no more, till I felt I could have killed Kate—wretch that she is! for the part she took against you. Then I knew—that I loved you! Oh! my God! I know now! But you would never have been told it if you had been free and rich—not now—not now either—except I thought I could do you some good—some good, after helping to ruin you. God forgive me!'
'I have been back to Ballarat, back to Eumeralla and the Snowy River, to other places, too, because I was determined to find out how the thing was worked between Dayrell and Kate.'
'And did you find out?' Lance said, and his voice sounded strangely hoarse in the girl's ear—even his voice had changed, she thought. 'What fiends there are on earth!'
'I am certain that I have,' she answered. 'I daresay you wondered—and so did I—what made Kate so venomous against you all of a sudden? Dayrell didn't like you because you thought yourself above him, and for another reason, and besides he wanted to get his name up for a conviction, because so many horses had been stolen and the Commissioner had been blaming the police.'
'What was the other reason, Tessie? I never did him any harm.'
'Well, it doesn't matter now, but he—he—chose to fancy he admired me—poor me!—when we lived at Eumeralla. I never could bear the sight of him—and showed it. One of the boys stupidly chaffed him about it after we came to Growlers', and said I was "gone upon you," as he called it. That foolishness made all the mischief, I believe. He set himself to have you somehow.'
'And he did! May God blast and wither his soul and body, as he has mine!' groaned Lance, with a savage intensity that made the girl shudder.
'Oh, don't—don't!' she cried. 'I can't bear to hear you speak like that, you seem so different when you do. Then, when you were searched, he found a letter which you had half-written to your cousin in England, and out of that he made greater mischief still. He finished it himself in his own way, and then read it to Kate, making her believe that you had been engaged to your cousin all along, and were making game of her as a half-bred, common bush girl that you were amusing yourself with.'
'Then how about seeing me at Eumeralla?youswore to that!' said Lance reproachfully, unable to repress his anger as he thought of the strange medley of fact and fraud by which he had been betrayed.
'I did, God help me!' said poor Tessie, very humbly. 'Why couldn't I swear falsely, like others? It was that villain Trevenna. I have seem him since, but only for a moment or two. It is the most extraordinary likeness that ever was seen. I was deceived, and so were the other honest witnesses. He was also in the plot against you. He was an admirer of Kate's, and she played fast and loose with him. When he heard that you and she had met at Growlers', and were seen riding about together, he was furious, and vowed to shoot you if he got a chance. He was in with Ned and Dan in some cross work at Eumeralla, but only showed on occasions. He used to come across from Omeo, where, if all reports are true, the worst villains in all Australia are gathered together.'
The day was cold, and long besides to the crowded passengers, relieved only by a short mid-day halt for refreshment. The roads chiefly unmade and deep with mud, through which the steaming team rushed, unrelaxing the high rate of speed with which they had started. Their colours were hardly discernible. Along the plank road for twenty miles matters were something better; here the pace was at times little less than full speed. Even then occasionally a loose plank would fly up as a horse trod too near the end, and a shower of mud and water would be impartially distributed. Two persons only felt not the enforced tedium to be a weariness. Lance and Tessie, in the early gloom of a winter evening, were enabled to talk still more at ease. They enjoyed their opportunity, this wintry smile of fortune, as those who might never meet again in life. So many chances were against it. But this strange interview had been most beneficial to Lance. It had softened his heart and revived his drooping, well-nigh extinguished faith in Providence and his fortune. The girl persuaded him to promise that he would do his best to disarm his gaolers by good conduct. The chances were against his finding a second Bracker. She would find means of communicating with him from Melbourne. Trust her for that! She had already given liberally to his present guards, who were fully convinced that she was a young woman deserving of every consideration.
'You promise me, on your honour,' she said, as the lights of the town and the well-macadamised street warned of the approaching halt.
'My honour?' he said drearily.
'Yes, your honour,' she answered proudly; 'I believe in it, and so will others yet.'
'I promise,' he said; 'may God bless you, Tessie, whatever may be my fate.'
They sat silently, her hands clasped around his, her head against his shoulder.
'Mine is a strange love tale,' she said, 'is it not? But for this meeting, it might never have been told. No living man shall hear such words again from me. And to think that you and I may never meet again!'
The coach stopped. There was the usual bustle of escaping passengers and mislaid luggage, as the girl threw her arms around Trevanion's neck and kissed his lips, his cheeks, his forehead, with passionate fervour.
'You are mine,' she said, 'for this day if for no other, and, unless my heart tells me false, it is the last last time! Do not forget poor Tessie; if she could have saved you with her life you would have been free and happy. May God bless and keep you.'
She descended the coach-steps slowly, and, walking calmly down the lighted street without looking back, was soon lost in the crowd of busy or pleasure-seeking wayfarers.
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! itwashard 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 Islandwahine!'
'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 hedidwrite 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 deucewillbecome 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 hulkPresident. 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 celebratedSacramento. 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 hulkPresidentwas 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 readingTom Cringle's Logunder 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 thePresident; '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, fœtid 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 onterra 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 thePresident; 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 theSuccess, 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. Hemusthave 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 theSuccess, 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 therehadescaped 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 itWELLworth 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 thePresident(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 ofoubliette, 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 thepoise.
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 theforçathad 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 becomingwhat 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 fœtid 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 thePresidentnone 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 thePresident; 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 hulkSuccessat 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 chainswouldmake, 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.