'How long have you been lagged, Scotty?' inquired Lance, less indeed impelled by curiosity than desirous of turning the conversation from what he felt was a dangerous direction.
'Me?' growled the convict hoarsely, glaring for a moment at Lance with his wolfish eyes--eyes which rarely met those of another steadfastly. 'I did ten stretch on the Derwent afore I come across the Straits--ten long years. That warn't enough for 'em, for I hadn't been a year at Bendigo when I was "lumbered" for robbing a cove's tent as I'd never been nigh.
No! God strike me dead if I had! I knew the chap as did the "touch" as well as I know you. He and Black Douglas did it between 'em. But I'd a bad name. I'd come from the other side, and I was picked upon. I was seen going towards the tent the night before. The chaps that lost their gold swore to me; they wanted to "cop" somebody. And there was I, as was going straight and had a good claim and didn't need to rob nobody, and thought I had a chance in a new country, there was I--"lagged" and dragged aboard again, and me no more in it than a sucking child. I went _mad_ pretty well, and here's the end of it. But by ----' and here the half-insane felon swore a terrible oath, 'I'll give 'em something to talk about afore I'm done, and it'll be true this time--true as death--death--death!'
Here the unfortunate creature, whose features had gradually assumed an expression of ungovernable rage, lashed to fury by the thought of real or fancied injustice, raised his voice to a shriek like the cry of a wild beast, and with every feature working like those of an epileptic, fell on the floor of the deck helpless and insensible.
'What's all this?' demanded a warder, marching to the spot, yet cautiously, as always doubtful of a rush among the fierce animals over which he and his comrades ruled. 'Dash it all, you fellows are like a lot of old women--jabber, jabber. I shall have to put some of you in the black hole if you don't look out.'
'It's only Scotty, sir,' answered a crafty-looking convict who had been looking on, with a strange mysterious smile. 'He's got a fit or somethink. He's always mad when he gets on that Bendigo yarn of his.'
'Oh, Scotty, is it?' replied the warder carelessly. 'Throw a bucket of salt water over him; he'll come to directly. Your hour's up all but five minutes, men. You can go below and keep quiet, or it'll be worse for some of you.'
So below they went, in tens and tens, one after the other, murmuring and cursing among themselves, devoting Scotty, Lance, and the warder to the least respectable deities, yet not daring to raise their voices lest the dreaded 'black hole' or the more terrible 'box' should be apportioned to some of them with indiscriminate severity.
Lance, perhaps, was the only one who retired to his cell with a feeling of satisfaction. Gloomy was the evening, dark yet not stormy. Brooding over all things hung an enshrouding, clinging fog. The lights of the vessels in the bay were invisible until the boats almost ran against their sides, then they appeared like blurred and wavering moons. The invisible flocks of sea-birds flying landwards, true precursors of a storm, wailed and shrieked in curiously weird cadence, like the ghosts of shipwrecked mariners. Yet no breath of rising wind or gathering tempest stirred the black waveless plain which stretched for so many a mile seaward and lay illimitable between the murky shores. To those long versed in sea signs--and there were many such on board this mockery of a ship--a storm was imminent. Phantom-like, motionless, lay the _President_ on the oily moveless deep, a corpse-like hull upon the lifeless water. In that hour she seemed a derelict of that dread fleet which the poet dreamed of in his weirdest, grandest poem:
'And ships were drifting with the dead To shores where all were dumb.'
If there was a period of comparative rest and peace in that lazar ship, choked to the gunwales with human nature's foulest disorders, it was between the second and third hour after midnight. Before that time there was little or no repose, much less silence. The restless felons, debarred from work or exercise, were loath to sleep or to permit such indulgence to others. But from about an hour after midnight to the lingering winter dawn a certain, or rather uncertain, quantity of sleep was procured. Not incorrectly may it be said that then in all abodes of sin and wretchedness.
'The wicked cease from troubling And the weary are at rest.'
The hush of nature, the strange compulsion of the tangible darkness and solemn stillness of the night, was unbroken save by the flights of sea-fowl and the occasional sound from the shore, when softly yet distinctly touching the very stern of the vessel a grating sound was heard by Lance, secreted in an old state-room. Two large-sized ports, through which a man could easily crawl and drop himself into the water or on a boat below, were open. 'Lower away,' said a carefully modulated voice, 'and look sharp.'
As he spoke a stout rope was let down, of which the man in the boat-punt laid hold. Lance leaned out through the wide port of the state-room and could just distinguish the outline of a small boat. 'Drop slowly down,'
said the strange voice; 'gently does it.'
The captive had by this time seated himself on the window-sill with his legs outward. His irons were wrapped and muffled with portions of his blanket, which he had sacrificed for the purpose. A twisted rope was made of strips of the same material, a stout gray woollen, woven and milled in Pentridge, and therefore free from shoddy and mixture.
Adown this Lance cautiously lowered himself--how cautiously and anxiously! A slip--a touch of foot on the side instead of the centre of the frail bark, and failure--recapture even--were imminent. The splash would at once alarm the vigilant ears of the sentries, whose rifle-bullets would be spurting in and about the spot in no time. Inch by inch he lowered himself until he felt a man's hand touch and steady him. His feet were on the flat bottom of a ducking canoe which floated low on the surface of the stirless deep. Lower still and lower he sank down until he found himself sitting on the floor of the punt with an arm on either thwart and his back nearly touching the stern. With one strong noiseless stroke the strange boatman sent his light craft yards away from the prison-ship, and as the hull vanished abruptly, swallowed up in the Egyptian darkness of the night, Lance felt a great throb at his heart. He inhaled joyously the salt odour of the tide, for he knew that, bar accidents, he was again a free man.
'Steady,' said the boatman in a low but distinct voice as he settled to his sculls, 'another quarter of a mile and we may talk as much as you please. We shall make the shore before yon black cloud bursts, and after that no boat leaves any ship in the bay till sunrise.'
Lance sat carefully still, and indeed had little inclination to talk for a while. Swiftly, smoothly, they seemed to speed through the ebon darkness lit up from time to time by the phosphorescent scintillations which fell from the black water at each dip of the oars.
'How do you steer?' he said at length. 'It wouldn't do to get lost in this fog; we might easily be picked up, and then my fate would be worse than before.'
'See that light?' said the rower, pointing to a tiny speck like a beacon, miles away on the main.
'I do see a very small glimmering,' said Lance; 'are you sure that is the right direction?'
'That light,' said the stranger slowly, 'is a fire in a nail can which is kept alight by my mate. It stands before our hut in Fisherman's Bend, and there could not be a better place to land.'
'How so?'
'Because it is cut off before and behind by marshes. There is no track to Liardet's Beach, which is only half a mile off. There is a mud flat in front, and hardly any one but ourselves knows the channel. It's dead low water now; any boat, even if they chased us, would be stuck in the mud in ten minutes, and it isn't every one that knows how to get off again.'
'Then we're right, and I'm a free man once more. Great God of Heaven!
what a feeling it is. May I ask your name, the name of a man that's saved my life?'
'My name's Wheeler. Not that it matters much, unless I'm had up for being so soft-hearted as to mix myself up with the law's victims. But one gentleman takes a fancy to help another now and then in this topsy-turvy country. I've heard and can see for myself that you're one.'
'I _was_,' groaned out Lance. 'People called me one. Shall I ever be one again?'
Here his irons, stirred with an involuntary movement, made a slight sound.
'That is the answer. My God, what had I done that I should be tortured thus?' His head sank down upon his knees, and he made no sound or sign till the boat glided up to the verge of the small beacon light and a second man appeared out of the darkness, taking hold of the painter which was thrown out to him.
'Haul her up, Joe, as far as you can,' said the boatman, stepping out on the low sedgy bank, so low as to be barely distinguishable above the water. 'Stop, I'll help you. Sit quiet then till we come to you.'
The shallow canoe, with the prow released from weight and tilted up, was pulled bodily on to the land. Then the men stood on either side of Lance, and, raising him from his cramped position, helped him to step on to _terra firma_, and thence into the door of a small hut, in front of which stood the nail can aforesaid.
The hut was small, but weather-tight and snug as to its interior fittings, displaying the extreme neatness coupled with economy of space often observable where men live by themselves, especially if one of the celibates happens to have been a sailor.
'This is my mate, Trevanion,' said the first mariner. 'His name's Joe Collins, formerly second lieutenant of Her Majesty's ship _Avenger_. My name you know, so we needn't stand on ceremony with one another. We are well posted up in your story, thanks to your plucky pretty friend, so there's no need for explanation. You and I are ready for supper, I suspect, so we'll turn to while Collins sees to the canoe and makes all tight for the night. There's the first storm-note; it's going to blow great guns before long, just as I thought it would.'
Mr. Wheeler rattled on in a cheery, careless sort of way, while his friend went in and out, fed the dogs, of which they had two or three couples--retrievers, terriers, and one of the tall handsome greyhounds, the kangaroo dog of the colonists. Lance knew that the talkativeness was assumed for the sake of putting him at his ease. Too strange and excited to converse himself, he could but sit in a rude but substantial chair, fashioned out of a beer-barrel and covered with a kangaroo skin, and look silently from one to the other.
Meanwhile the tea was made, the corned beef and bread set forth in a tin dish, pannikins placed ready, and the substantial bush meal, always fully adequate to the needs of a healthy man in good training, was ready. Before commencing, however, Mr. Wheeler fished forth from a species of locker a square bottle, apparently containing Hollands. From this he poured into each pannikin a pretty stiff 'second mate's glass.'
'Do us no harm this cold night,' he said. 'Your health, Trevanion, and a good journey to follow a bad start. It often happens here, take my word for it.'
The three men raised the tin pints and looked at each other. 'Thank you; from my heart I thank you,' Lance gasped out. 'God bless you both, if my wishing it will do you any good. I shall never forget this night.'
One is far from recommending, or indeed palliating, the continuous use of alcohol, but there is no evading the fact that when people are more or less exhausted, beside being chilled and dispirited, a glass of spirits, be it sound cognac, 'the real M'Kay,' or, as in this instance, good square gin, produces an effect little less than magical. There are those who, in the joyous season of early youth, or fixed in the higher wisdom of abstinence, require it not. But strictly in moderation and under exceptional circumstances it is a medicine, a luxury, an _elixir vitae_.
No sooner had the powerful cordial commenced to produce its ordinary effect than the heart of the ransomed captive was conscious of a feeling of lightness to which it had long been a stranger. Hope, timidly approaching, whispered a soothing message; a vision of distant lands and brighter days assumed form and colour. The cramped limbs recovered warmth; the sluggish blood commenced a quicker circulation. He found appetite for the simple meal, and listened with interest and amusement to the tales of moving incidents by flood and field with which, between their pipes, the woodsmen beguiled the winter evening. Lastly, the door was bolted, the dogs let loose, and Lance was invited to avail himself of a comfortable shakedown, where opossum cloaks and wallaby rugs protected him from the searching night air, now keen-edged with the fury of a howling storm. The wearied fugitive slept soundly, as he had not done for months. He awakened to find that the sun had risen and that his hosts had left him to complete his slumbers undisturbed by their exit.
His feelings when he arose and looked around were instinctively tinged with apprehension. By this time at least his escape had been made known.
What excitement must have been caused! What despatches to the other prison-ships and their guards! To the water police! To the hunters of men on land and sea whose beards had been mocked at! Their energy would be further stimulated by the offer of a reward, as well as by the certainty of promotion in the event of recapture. As the captive sat up on his couch and looked through the open door upon the still waters of the river-mouth, from which the fog, now that the storm had blown itself out, was slowly lifting, he felt a shudder thrill through his frame as he realised how near he was still to his prison home, how helpless too, manacled as he was. He struggled to his feet, however, with a renewal of hope and confidence in the future. The fresh and unpolluted air acted like a cordial as he breathed it with long gasps of enjoyment. The close walls of lofty ti-tree which shut in on three sides the nook of land, indistinguishable from the water until at close quarters, provided at once a shelter and a hiding-place almost impossible of surprise. The wild-fowl swam and dived and splashed and squatted, heedless of their chief enemy man. He found himself reverting in thought to the sports of his youth, to the happy days when, gun in hand, he would have joyed to have crawled within range of the shy birds and rattled in a right and left shot.
One of his irons clanked; the rag had slipped. How the sound brought him back to the present! His lips had shaped themselves into a curse, his brow had darkened, when his hosts suddenly appeared, emerging from a creek which wound sinuously through the marshy level. Fastening up the invaluable punt, they stepped lightly out, bearing with them a goodly assortment of wild-fowl--noble black duck, delicate teal, and that lovely minute goose, the _Anas boscha_, commonly known as the 'wood duck.'
'Grand bird this,' said Wheeler, throwing down a magnificent specimen of that finest of all the family--the 'mountain duck'--with his bronzed-fawn and metallic plumage. 'Splendid fellow to look at, but that's all. Pity, isn't it? Not worth a button to eat. Why do we shoot them? you'll ask. We sell them to the bird-stuffers. They pay well at the price they give us. Now then, we'll proceed to business, which means breakfast. Spatch duck--a couple of teal, eh? How do we do it? Pop 'em into boiling water. Feathers off in a jiffy. Cut them in four, broil, and serve hot. Tender as butter, these flappers, for they're not much older. After breakfast we'll unfold the plot. Slept well? I thought so.
Hope you've got an appetite.'
Lance was well aware that Mr. Wheeler's cheery, garrulous tone, not by any means characteristic of men who live lonely lives, was assumed for the purpose of concealing his real feelings and saving those of his guest. But he appeared to take no heed, merely performing his toilet with the aid of a bucket of water and a rough towel, and treating himself to a more thorough lavation than had been lately possible. Mr.
Collins, R.N., had been setting-to with a will as caterer, and in far less time than one would think, a meal, in some respects not to be disdained by an epicure, appeared on the small table which, fixed upon trestles, was placed before the hut door.
'Try this teal, Trevanion; it's as plump as a partridge. Here's cayenne pepper; lemons in that net. Cut one in half and squeeze--"squeeze doughtily," as Dugald Dalgetty advises Ranald M'Eagh to do when he has his hand on the Duke of Argyle's windpipe, in the event of His Grace attempting to give the alarm. I read _A Legend of Montrose_ over again last week. What a glorious old fellow Sir Walter is, to be sure! When you've finished your first beaker of tea, there's more in the camp-kettle, Australice "billy." Did I ever think--or you either, Trevanion--that we should drink tea out of a "billy," or be our own cooks, housemaids, washerwomen, and gamekeepers all in one. Still, there are worse places than Australia, and that I'll live and die on.'
While Wheeler's tongue was going at this brisk rate, it is not to be supposed that his jaws were idle. The friends played a real good knife and fork, and Lance, between invitation and the natural temptation of, in its way, a dainty and appetising meal, followed suit. The other man gave a lively sketch of their morning's sport, and by the time breakfast was finished and pipes lighted, a well-worn briar-root having been made over to Lance on the previous evening, the gnawing feeling of consuming anxiety commenced to be somewhat allayed.
'Now we open the council of war,' began Wheeler, after two or three solemn puffs. 'Collins and I have to make a little _detour_ on business which will occupy us till mid-day. Half an hour after we leave, a mysterious artificer will suddenly appear, not out of the ground, like Wayland Smith in _Kenilworth_ (pray excuse any excessive quotation of Sir Walter, but the fact is we got a second-hand edition cheap last month, and have been feasting upon him ever since). Well, this lineal descendant of Tubal Cain will arise out of the ti-tree and will disembarrass you of, say, any garniture which you may consider inconvenient to travel with. I don't know him; you don't know him; he don't know us; nobody knows anybody. You apprehend? But _the work will be done_. Afterwards look in that bag and you will find a rig-out, half-worn but serviceable, and somewhere about your measure.'
'Stop a minute--just permit me one minute,' proceeded Wheeler hurriedly, but ever courteously. 'A trifle more explanation is necessary. Here is your route arranged for you by your good angel, your admirable friend and protectress, with whom Collins and I are madly enamoured--but this by the way. Listen again. When you feel ready for the road, take this left-hand path through the ti-tree. You see it starting behind that bush. You cannot get off it once you are on it.
Follow it for three miles. You will meet there, by a reedy lagoon, a man with two horses. Mount the one which he leads, asking no questions. He will say "Number Six?" you will say "Polwarth." Of course you are the Mr. Polwarth of Number Six on a tour of inspection. He will ride with you the whole night through, stopping only at necessary intervals. At daylight you will find yourself more than fifty miles on the Gippsland road. He will take you by "cuts" and by-tracks to a part of Gippsland from which you may make your way to Monaro, to Twofold Bay, to Omeo--all A1 places for a man who wishes rest and seclusion for a season. You will take your choice. On the led horse--a good one, as I am informed--you will find valise, waterproof, and other necessaries. Here is a pocket-book, which I am commissioned to hand to you, in which are 50 in notes and gold, besides a letter from her to whom you owe so much.'