For the Term of His Natural Life Part 21

As he sat there gloomily chewing, he was a spectacle to shudder at. Not so much on account of his natural hideousness, increased a thousand-fold by the tattered and filthy rags which barely covered him. Not so much on account of his unshaven jaws, his hare-lip, his torn and bleeding feet, his haggard cheeks, and his huge, wasted frame. Not only because, looking at the animal, as he crouched, with one foot curled round the other, and one hairy arm pendant between his knees, he was so horribly unhuman, that one shuddered to think that tender women and fair children must, of necessity, confess to fellows.h.i.+p of kind with such a monster.

But also because, in his slavering mouth, his slowly grinding jaws, his restless fingers, and his bloodshot, wandering eyes, there lurked a hint of some terror more awful than the terror of starvation--a memory of a tragedy played out in the gloomy depths of that forest which had vomited him forth again; and the shadow of this unknown horror, clinging to him, repelled and disgusted, as though he bore about with him the reek of the shambles.

"Come," said Vickers, "Let us go back. I shall have to flog him again, I suppose. Oh, this place! No wonder they call it 'h.e.l.l's Gates'."

"You are too soft-hearted, my dear sir," said Frere, half-way up the palisaded path. "We must treat brutes like brutes."

Major Vickers, inured as he was to such sentiments, sighed. "It is not for me to find fault with the system," he said, hesitating, in his reverence for "discipline", to utter all the thought; "but I have sometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the chain and the cat."

"Your old ideas!" laughed his companion. "Remember, they nearly cost us our lives on the Malabar. No, no. I've seen something of convicts--though, to be sure, my fellows were not so bad as yours--and there's only one way. Keep 'em down, sir. Make 'em feel what they are.

They're there to work, sir. If they won't work, flog 'em until they will. If they work well--why a taste of the cat now and then keeps 'em in mind of what they may expect if they get lazy." They had reached the verandah now. The rising moon shone softly on the bay beneath them, and touched with her white light the summit of the Grummet Rock.

"That is the general opinion, I know," returned Vickers. "But consider the life they lead. Good G.o.d!" he added, with sudden vehemence, as Frere paused to look at the bay. "I'm not a cruel man, and never, I believe, inflicted an unmerited punishment, but since I have been here ten prisoners have drowned themselves from yonder rock, rather than live on in their misery. Only three weeks ago, two men, with a wood-cutting party in the hills, having had some words with the overseer, shook hands with the gang, and then, hand in hand, flung themselves over the cliff.

It's horrible to think of!"

"They shouldn't get sent here," said practical Frere. "They knew what they had to expect. Serve 'em right."

"But imagine an innocent man condemned to this place!"

"I can't," said Frere, with a laugh. "Innocent man be hanged! They're all innocent, if you'd believe their own stories. Hallo! what's that red light there?"

"Dawes's fire, on Grummet Rock," says Vickers, going in; "the man I told you about. Come in and have some brandy-and-water, and we'll shut the door in place."

CHAPTER V. SYLVIA.

"Well," said Frere, as they went in, "you'll be out of it soon. You can get all ready to start by the end of the month, and I'll bring on Mrs.

Vickers afterwards."

"What is that you say about me?" asked the sprightly Mrs. Vickers from within. "You wicked men, leaving me alone all this time!"

"Mr. Frere has kindly offered to bring you and Sylvia after us in the Osprey. I shall, of course, have to take the Ladybird."

"You are most kind, Mr. Frere, really you are," says Mrs. Vickers, a recollection of her flirtation with a certain young lieutenant, six years before, tinging her cheeks. "It is really most considerate of you. Won't it be nice, Sylvia, to go with Mr. Frere and mamma to Hobart Town?"

"Mr. Frere," says Sylvia, coming from out a corner of the room, "I am very sorry for what I said just now. Will you forgive me?"

She asked the question in such a prim, old-fas.h.i.+oned way, standing in front of him, with her golden locks streaming over her shoulders, and her hands clasped on her black silk ap.r.o.n (Julia Vickers had her own notions about dressing her daughter), that Frere was again inclined to laugh.

"Of course I'll forgive you, my dear," he said. "You didn't mean it, I know."

"Oh, but I did mean it, and that's why I'm sorry. I am a very naughty girl sometimes, though you wouldn't think so" (this with a charming consciousness of her own beauty), "especially with Roman history. I don't think the Romans were half as brave as the Carthaginians; do you, Mr. Frere?"

Maurice, somewhat staggered by this question, could only ask, "Why not?"

"Well, I don't like them half so well myself," says Sylvia, with feminine disdain of reasons. "They always had so many soldiers, though the others were so cruel when they conquered."

"Were they?" says Frere.

"Were they! Goodness gracious, yes! Didn't they cut poor Regulus's eyelids off, and roll him down hill in a barrel full of nails? What do you call that, I should like to know?" and Mr. Frere, shaking his red head with vast a.s.sumption of cla.s.sical learning, could not but concede that that was not kind on the part of the Carthaginians.

"You are a great scholar, Miss Sylvia," he remarked, with a consciousness that this self-possessed girl was rapidly taking him out of his depth.

"Are you fond of reading?"

"Very."

"And what books do you read?"

"Oh, lots! 'Paul and Virginia', and 'Paradise Lost', and 'Shakespeare's Plays', and 'Robinson Crusoe', and 'Blair's Sermons', and 'The Tasmanian Almanack', and 'The Book of Beauty', and 'Tom Jones'."

"A somewhat miscellaneous collection, I fear," said Mrs. Vickers, with a sickly smile--she, like Gallio, cared for none of these things--"but our little library is necessarily limited, and I am not a great reader.

John, my dear, Mr. Frere would like another gla.s.s of brandy-and-water.

Oh, don't apologize; I am a soldier's wife, you know. Sylvia, my love, say good-night to Mr. Frere, and retire."

"Good-night, Miss Sylvia. Will you give me a kiss?"

"No!"

"Sylvia, don't be rude!"

"I'm not rude," cries Sylvia, indignant at the way in which her literary confidence had been received. "He's rude! I won't kiss you. Kiss you indeed! My goodness gracious!"

"Won't you, you little beauty?" cried Frere, suddenly leaning forward, and putting his arm round the child. "Then I must kiss you!"

To his astonishment, Sylvia, finding herself thus seized and kissed despite herself, flushed scarlet, and, lifting up her tiny fist, struck him on the cheek with all her force.

The blow was so sudden, and the momentary pain so sharp, that Maurice nearly slipped into his native coa.r.s.eness, and rapped out an oath.

"My dear Sylvia!" cried Vickers, in tones of grave reproof.

But Frere laughed, caught both the child's hands in one of his own, and kissed her again and again, despite her struggles. "There!" he said, with a sort of triumph in his tone. "You got nothing by that, you see."

Vickers rose, with annoyance visible on his face, to draw the child away; and as he did so, she, gasping for breath, and sobbing with rage, wrenched her wrist free, and in a storm of childish pa.s.sion struck her tormentor again and again. "Man!" she cried, with flaming eyes, "Let me go! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you!"

"I am very sorry for this, Frere," said Vickers, when the door was closed again. "I hope she did not hurt you."

"Not she! I like her spirit. Ha, ha! That's the way with women all the world over. Nothing like showing them that they've got a master."

Vickers hastened to turn the conversation, and, amid recollections of old days, and speculations as to future prospects, the little incident was forgotten. But when, an hour later, Mr. Frere traversed the pa.s.sage that led to his bedroom, he found himself confronted by a little figure wrapped in a shawl. It was his childish enemy.

"I've waited for you, Mr. Frere," said she, "to beg pardon. I ought not to have struck you; I am a wicked girl. Don't say no, because I am; and if I don't grow better I shall never go to Heaven."

Thus addressing him, the child produced a piece of paper, folded like a letter, from beneath the shawl, and handed it to him.

"What's this?" he asked. "Go back to bed, my dear; you'll catch cold."