He did not shout because his pursuers would have heard him; for all this time he had heard them at intervals; and whenever the ground changed from hard to soft, their hoofs rang out the instant the roan’s were muffled.
The joy of that wild ride through the gum-trees to the sea! He forgot the little value he had set upon his life, and rode for it now as men ride for nothing else. Yet he recked but little of the result. He knew no fears and no regrets, but instead an exhilaration such as he had never known before. It might be his last hour. He revelled in it the more — was the more grateful for it — on that account. To have tasted such life as this at life’s end! To die after this with no more pain! To reach the sweet sea, and swim out to rest!
And now he smelt it; the rushing air was spiced with salt; even in the pungent forest he detected it through all the odours, and was mistaken in that no more. Only one question remained in his mind. Would the roan hold out? Would the roan hold out?
Long ago the pace had slackened. Long ago Tom had stooped and ripped his big boots down to the ankles, and cast them from him with all else that had been the Italian’s. He was now riding a light ten stone in his shirt and trousers. His bare feet were numb from standing in his stirrups to ease the roan. But the trees had been rushing past in myriads half the night; and still they stood against the morning sky-line, like blots of ink upon a slate, in myriads more.
On the other hand, he had heard nothing of his pursuers for some time, and was beginning to wonder whether they had given up the chase. Their horses might well have started less fresh than his. Had they given it up or had they not?
Tom had asked himself the question for the twentieth time when something happened and he had his answer sitting stupidly on the ground. The roan was disappearing amid the trees with the saddle beneath its belly; its startled gallop died away like the roll of a drum; but heavier hoofs were coming up behind.
Tom sprang up, but sat down again with a yelp of pain. His ankle was badly sprained. He felt for a weapon, but he had thrown them all away; even his knife he seemed to have hurled after the long boots, or left in a pocket of the blue jacket, which had been jettisoned in its turn.
He sat still and groaned. To have to surrender sitting still! What an end to his ride! What a beginning of the end of all!
The heavy hoofs came nearer, nearer. Three troopers laboured into view, gave a yell and put spurs to their tired horses, but ceased to spur them when they saw their man.
“Why, who are you?” cried they.
“The man you want.”
“I wish you were! You’re all we shall get with these horses. But you must have heard him pass?”
A light broke over Tom; he said he had heard it, but some time since, when it was darker and he was halfasleep.
“And what made you think you were our man?” asked another trooper suspiciously.
“I — I — I’m a runaway convict.”
“Then you’re better than nothing,” cried the former speaker. “You’ll come with us; but the man we’ve lost is an Italian, and there’s precious little of the Italian about you!”
There was less than little: he had thrown everything away, but without a thought of saving his neck by so doing. Nor indeed had he saved it yet.
CHAPTER XXVIII
THE OUTER DARKNESS
THE stockade smouldered in the midst of a hard-baked plain, that was as brown as shoe-leather, and as devoid of any sort or kind of vegetation as though it were shaved every morning with some monstrous razor. Trees there were in the distance, marking more than half the sky-line, as though the place had been shaved especially for the stockade; but not a solitary bush was within reach. And the sight of the trees whose leaves they never heard, and whose shade they never felt, was one more torment to those of the eighty prisoners who still lifted their heads to look so far; the majority, however, let their dull eyes redden by the day together on those few hard and blinding yards which might chance to occupy their picks and shovels from five in the morning till the going-down of the sun.
All day they laboured in chains beneath the barrels and bayonets of the military. In the evening, when they returned to the stockade, loaded muskets and fixed bayonets showed them the way. Even in the stockade itself, fixed bayonets and loaded muskets gave them their supper. Thereafter they were locked up for the night in so many small boxes, lined with ledges something more spacious than book-shelves; on these ledges they lay down, as close as mummies in catacombs, until it should be five o’clock once more; and perhaps, after a time, the only sound would be the clank of his fetters as this man or that turned over, in the magnificent space of eighteen inches that was allotted to each.
It was the same stockade of which Erichsen had seen the outside on his way to Castle Sullivan in the early part of December; he saw the inside by the end of February, when Strachan gave him six months of it for absconding, and by so doing made open enemies of the Sullivans. They wanted to have the breaking of Tom’s spirit all to themselves, and tried to dictate another fifty lashes and the convict’s return to service; but this time Strachan was firm, passing, indeed, the most merciful sentence possible in the circumstances.
The six months began on Wednesday, the last of February, in the year 1838.
First they took his name and made an inventory of his marks, scars and the colour of his eyes and hair; then they cropped the latter, and shaved off the yellow stubble which had lately hidden the hollow cheeks and softened the haggard jaw. And it was an old man’s face that saw itself with sunken eyes in the barber’s glass.
Next they took away his farm-labourer’s clothes, which were not branded, and put him in a Parramatta frock and trousers, which were. And now they clasped round his body a green-hide belt, from which depended, in front, a heavy chain that became two heavy chains at about the level of the knees; and the two chains ended in still heavier rings round either ankle; and the whole made a capital Y upside down. In this harness it was impossible to walk, though with practice you might waddle; and it was never struck off, for a single instant, on any pretext whatsoever.
They now presented him with a spoon all to himself; his knife and fork, his pannikin and his mess-kid, he was to share with five other felons.
Lastly they showed him his eighteen inches, where he passed the intolerable night in wondering why he had not given himself up as the Italian’s understudy; and in wondering, even more, why he still would not do so if it were all to come over again — for he knew he would not. Indeed, one of the most dreadful features of this present phase was the tenacity with which the poor wretch found himself clinging to life in each emergency, despite all his cooler longings for the end. He longed for that more than ever, but he saw now that death must come to him. He might sink to murder; to self-murder he could never stoop.
Or so he thought at the beginning of this term of broiling days and fetid nights, with foul company and heavy irons common to both. The combined effect of all these things will presently be seen. Meanwhile such feelings as were left him were still tolerably keen; and it was with a real thrill that, towards the end of the first week, he woke up at his work to hear the others hooting, and turned round to see Nat Sullivan once more riding down the line.
The thrill became a shiver: the blue eyes were fixed on Tom, the great lip was thrust out at him, and before Tom the rider reined up.
“You villain!” said Mr. Nat, with inexpressible malignancy of voice and look. “You villain — I’ve found you out!”
A line of red eyes blinked and watered in the sun, then fell with a glimmer of interest from the scowling horseman to the prisoner accosted. Tom had already piqued such attention as his new companions were in the habit of bestowing upon any fellow-creature: for few there were who joined that morose and fierce crew with the stamp of such moroseness and ferocity already on them. Those few were crabbed old hands, but here was raw youth, and yet in three long days they had not heard his voice. Nor did they now. Tom moistened his palms, and took a new grip of his p
ick — but that was not all. He was seen to tremble, and he nearly pinned his own foot to the ground. What was it he had done and been found out in, this cub whose teeth were always showing, but whose voice was never heard?
A perspiring sentry strolled up, his once red swallowtail coat hanging open upon his naked chest, and his white trousers sticking to his legs; he was the only one whose curiosity went the length of a word.
“What’s he been doing of?” said the sentry, wetting his hand on his chest to cool his musket-stock. “We’ve only ‘ad ‘im ‘ere these three days.”
“You won’t have him many more,” said Sullivan. “The hangman will have him.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. Look at him trembling!”
“I see.”
“He’ll tremble in the air before long!”
Tom bent over his pick. There was more hooting here, but whether at himself or at his enemy Tom neither knew nor cared. He wished to appear very busy and regardless; he was really intent upon Nat’s shadow under his pick; wondering whether he could possibly spring so far forward in his chains and get such a swing as to bury the pick in the substance instead. But this was never known. When the hooting subsided, the noise of light wheels approaching took its place, and Nat Sullivan turned round in his saddle.
The military man who debased himself by the charge of this iron-gang was a major of gunners, too fat for service, and too gouty to sustain his distended body on his legs; he therefore superintended operations from a bath-chair, in which a blue-jacketed mess-man had to trail him about the works. Major Honeybone had recognised Nat, and had ordered the mess-man to hurry to the spot, but not to seem in a hurry. The major was himself a sufficiently hard and cantankerous man, but some sense of justice he had, and he considered Castle Sullivan one of the angriest plague-spots in a plague-spotted land. The present occasion filled him, therefore, with the greatest glee. He had long desired an opportunity of giving one or other of the Sullivans a piece of his mind, and here was young Sullivan trespassing on the works.
“Go slower,” said the major, making up his mind what to say, and not to say it all at once, as Mr. Nat turned in his saddle. Their greeting was in consequence not uncivil, though the major blandly ignored the coarse, ringed hand obtruded by the other.
“You heard of the outrage the other night at Castle Sullivan?” began Mr. Nat.
“By bushrangers?” observed Major Honeybone.
“By bushrangers; only one of them escaped; and there he is!” roared Nat, pointing savagely at Tom.
“Really?” remarked the major, wilfully unmoved. “Dear me! It was from you he came here — like half my gang — for absconding, I understood?”
“We didn’t know it then.”
“That he was one of the bushrangers?”
“Yes.”
“But you know it now?”
“We do so!”
“Dear me!” again remarked the major, whose expression was rendered inscrutable by the rich shade of the gigantic umbrella without which he rarely ventured abroad. His small, shrewd eyes glanced from the visitor to Tom, who was still looking down, and fidgeting with his pick, the speaking image of sullen guilt. More repulsive to the major was the gloating ruffian in the saddle; but he sigued to the sentry to take away Tom’s pick, and then favoured the other with a slow, contemplative stare.
“A very singular thing, I’m sure,” he resumed, with a sarcastic intonation that punctured even Nat’s thick skull. “Very singular indeed. Upon my word, Mr. Sullivan,” exclaimed the major, “I find it difficult to believe what you say!”
“Sir!”
“Or, if you like, to understand it.”
“If you will allow me to say the rest, and to say it elsewhere—”
“No, sir. Here!” cried Major Honeybone. “Here or nowhere, which you please. This man absconds one night — so I gather — and the next night you are attacked by bushrangers. This man is found the morning after that, and I understand you to suggest he was one of the band that attacked you. Yet you never recognised him at the time! Come now, did none of you?”
“Not then; but he threatened my sister and a female whom we have since returned, and Miss Sullivan remembers hearing him call the female by her name. Now this man and that woman kept company,” snarled Nat, in a perfect flame of rage and spite; “and Miss Sullivan will swear he called the woman by her name. He fell in with the thieves when he absconded, it’s perfectly clear; he was the very man to join them in an attack on his own masters, even if he didn’t instigate it. Join in it he did. I can prove it. Though not one of the original gang is left alive, I can prove—”
“What about that Italian fellow?” interrupted the major; and Tom held his breath.
“He wasn’t in it. I believe he’s dead, and they put this Erichsen in his clothes. His horse was found a few miles beyond where they found this man, and now his coat has been discovered with Erichsen’s knife in the pocket. Yes, you may wince!” cried this good hater. “You shall swing for it yet!”
“Kindly confine your remarks to me,” said the major sternly. “You’ll have to prove the knife was his, and that won’t prove everything. Never heard such a story in my life! You’ll have to strengthen it up a bit if you mean to make a case. What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing at all,” said Nat ungraciously.
“Then why the deuce do you come to me?”
“I didn’t. I was on my way to your superiors.” Major Honey bone turned to the sentry.
“Cock your piece,” said he, “and shoot his horse if he attempts to go till I’ve done with him. Now, you Sullivan,” continued the major, “perhaps you didn’t know you were trespassing when you came on these works? But you were, and you’ll stop on ‘em now till I’ve done with you. You came to gloat over the man you’ve hounded here, to tell him you’d hound him to the gallows, did you? To laugh at him, eh? Gadzooks, sir, the boot’s on the other leg this time! The whole chain-gang is laughing at you; and you may frown upon ‘em as much as you like, but if you touch one you’ll be in irons yourself in two minutes. I know you, sir. We know all about both of you here. Half the men who come here have been driven here by you and your father. Silence in the gang! Go on to Sydney and tell them anything you like about the man you mean to hang. But, gadzooks! you don’t get him out of this — no, and the Governor himself sha’n’t have him out of this until he knows on whose word he’s acting! Go to my superiors; they’ll never listen to your clumsy yarn; if they do, I’ll send down to Sydney myself to tell ‘em what I know of you and yours. And Castle Sullivan will be swept into the sea, and you — you slave-driver — you’ll be where these men are now! Be off, sir. I hate the sight of you! Sentry, let him go.”
About the middle of this tirade Nat had been ready with a retort as virulent; but the concluding sentences were too much even for his hard nerves and sturdy ruffianism. Muttering something unintelligible about an “outrage,” and “reporting” Major Honeybone, he put spurs to his horse and galloped off, leaving nothing worse behind him than a look. It was such a look as might be seen any day, any moment even, in an iron-gang; yet Tom never forgot the cruel eyes, the low lip, the murderous scowl, nor the peculiarly bestial whole which they made on that occasion. The convicts cursed and cheered him in derision; and, when he was gone, were given to understand by the major that if they ever did it again he should treat the lot of them as they would be treated at Castle Sullivan — to fifty lashes all round.
“Only I give you fair warning,” said he, “and you don’t catch me break my word either way!”
The major was a man who liked a little opposition for the sake of putting it down, which he never failed to do with the highest hand; but he had his chain-gang in such an exemplary state of broken-spirited subjection that the iron will within that flabby body was growing rusty from disuse. The impudence of young Sullivan was consequently a godsend to this born martinet. It gave him an appetite, and it made him sleep. Furthermore, it fixed his eye on Erichs
en, and to some extent his thoughts also. The major was harsh by habit but impartial to the core. He did not believe a syllable of Nat Sullivan’s story; but why had Erichsen so taken it to heart? He alone had neither cursed nor cheered; the major was puzzled, but kept watch.
“Fancy he’s a gentleman,” said Honeybone, in a day or two; and he made inquiries.
The result of the inquiries was the information that Erichsen usually sulked; but when he was in a bad temper, he was more blasphemous than any man in the gang; when in a good one he was more foul.
“He is a gentleman — hem! — was,” said the cocksure major. “Only it’s the old story: the further they have to fall, the lower they sink. Poor devil — poor devil!” And old Honeybone sighed, for he had sunk a little too; and if his conscience was clear of crime, it was more or less saturated with sin, of which the perfume was not a little stale and sickly. Whether from that cause or another, the fat major found himself taking a more human interest in this prisoner than in most. “So that’s the most profane tongue in the stockade!” he would think whenever he looked at Tom. “So that’s the foulest mouth!”
It was not; but Tom was educated, and had an educated man’s sense of emphasis and of selection. His bad things stuck — that was all.
But if those superlatives were not literally justified, others were, and before Tom had been six weeks in chains he had shown a temper as insubordinate, an audacity as brazen, and a callousness as shocking as anything of the sort which the major had yet encountered in his present capacity. It was the reaction from the sulky spirit in which the convict had begun his term. For two whole weeks he broke no rules, but in the next four he was three times flogged.
On the first occasion he knocked down the scourger when it was all over, and so brought it all over again; on the last, the major addressed him from his chair, as the convict positively swaggered from the triangles, with his fetters clanking and his shoes squelching at every step.
Complete Works of E W Hornung Page 99