“I bear him no ill-will, sir,” said Rex. “I did at first. There was a time when I could have killed him, but when I had him in my power, I—as you know—forbore to strike. No, sir, I could not commit murder!”
“Very proper,” says Meekin, “very proper indeed.”
“God will punish him in His own way, and His own time,” continued Rex.
“My great sorrow is for the poor woman. She is in Sydney, I have heard, living respectably, sir; and my heart bleeds for her.” Here Rex heaved a sigh that would have made his fortune on the boards.
“My poor fellow,” said Meekin. “Do you know where she is?”
“I do, sir.”
“You might write to her.”
John Rex appeared to hesitate, to struggle with himself, and finally to take a deep resolve. “No, Mr. Meekin, I will not write.”
“Why not?”
“You know the orders, sir—the Commandant reads all the letters sent. Could I write to my poor Sarah what other eyes were to read?” and he watched the parson slyly.
“N—no, you could not,” said Meekin, at last.
“It is true, sir,” said Rex, letting his head sink on his breast. The next day, Meekin, blushing with the consciousness that what he was about to do was wrong, said to his penitent, “If you will promise to write nothing that the Commandant might not see, Rex, I will send your letter to your wife.”
“Heaven bless you, sir,”, said Rex, and took two days to compose an epistle which should tell Sarah Purfoy how to act. The letter was a model of composition in one way. It stated everything clearly and succinctly. Not a detail that could assist was omitted—not a line that could embarrass was suffered to remain. John Rex’s scheme of six months’ deliberation was set down in the clearest possible manner. He brought his letter unsealed to Meekin. Meekin looked at it with an interest that was half suspicion. “Have I your word that there is nothing in this that might not be read by the Commandant?”
John Rex was a bold man, but at the sight of the deadly thing fluttering open in the clergyman’s hand, his knees knocked together. Strong in his knowledge of human nature, however, he pursued his desperate plan. “Read it, sir,” he said turning away his face reproachfully. “You are a gentleman. I can trust you.”
“No, Rex,” said Meekin, walking loftily into the pitfall; “I do not read private letters.” It was sealed, and John Rex felt as if somebody had withdrawn a match from a powder barrel.
In a month Mr. Meekin received a letter, beautifully written, from “Sarah Rex”, stating briefly that she had heard of his goodness, that the enclosed letter was for her husband, and that if it was against the rules to give it him, she begged it might be returned to her unread. Of course Meekin gave it to Rex, who next morning handed to Meekin a most touching pious production, begging him to read it. Meekin did so, and any suspicions he may have had were at once disarmed. He was ignorant of the fact that the pious letter contained a private one intended for John Rex only, which letter John Rex thought so highly of, that, having read it twice through most attentively, he ate it.
The plan of escape was after all a simple one. Sarah Purfoy was to obtain from Blicks the moneys he held in trust, and to embark the sum thus obtained in any business which would suffer her to keep a vessel hovering round the southern coast of Van Diemen’s Land without exciting suspicion. The escape was to be made in the winter months, if possible, in June or July. The watchful vessel was to be commanded by some trustworthy person, who was to frequently land on the south-eastern side, and keep a look-out for any extraordinary appearance along the coast. Rex himself must be left to run the gauntlet of the dogs and guards unaided. “This seems a desperate scheme,” wrote Rex, “but it is not so wild as it looks. I have thought over a dozen others, and rejected them all. This is the only way. Consider it well. I have my own plan for escape, which is easy if rescue be at hand. All depends upon placing a trustworthy man in charge of the vessel. You ought to know a dozen such. I will wait eighteen months to give you time to make all arrangements.” The eighteen months had now nearly passed over, and the time for the desperate attempt drew near. Faithful to his cruel philosophy, John Rex had provided scape-goats, who, by their vicarious agonies, should assist him to his salvation.
He had discovered that of the twenty men in his gang eight had already determined on an effort for freedom. The names of these eight were Gabbett, Vetch, Bodenham, Cornelius, Greenhill, Sanders, called the “Moocher”, Cox, and Travers. The leading spirits were Vetch and Gabbett, who, with profound reverence, requested the “Dandy” to join. John Rex, ever suspicious, and feeling repelled by the giant’s strange eagerness, at first refused, but by degrees allowed himself to appear to be drawn into the scheme. He would urge these men to their fate, and take advantage of the excitement attendant on their absence to effect his own escape. “While all the island is looking for these eight boobies, I shall have a good chance to slip away unmissed.” He wished, however, to have a companion. Some strong man, who, if pressed hard, would turn and keep the pursuers at bay, would be useful without doubt; and this comrade-victim he sought in Rufus Dawes.
Beginning, as we have seen, from a purely selfish motive, to urge his fellow-prisoner to abscond with him, John Rex gradually found himself attracted into something like friendliness by the sternness with which his overtures were repelled. Always a keen student of human nature, the scoundrel saw beneath the roughness with which it had pleased the unfortunate man to shroud his agony, how faithful a friend and how ardent and undaunted a spirit was concealed. There was, moreover, a mystery about Rufus Dawes which Rex, the reader of hearts, longed to fathom.
“Have you no friends whom you would wish to see?” he asked, one evening, when Rufus Dawes had proved more than usually deaf to his arguments.
“No,” said Dawes gloomily. “My friends are all dead to me.”
“What, all?” asked the other. “Most men have some one whom they wish to see.”
Rufus Dawes laughed a slow, heavy laugh. “I am better here.”
“Then are you content to live this dog’s life?”
“Enough, enough,” said Dawes. “I am resolved.”
“Pooh! Pluck up a spirit,” cried Rex. “It can’t fail. I’ve been thinking of it for eighteen months, and it can’t fail.”
“Who are going?” asked the other, his eyes fixed on the ground. John Rex enumerated the eight, and Dawes raised his head. “I won’t go. I have had two trials at it; I don’t want another. I would advise you not to attempt it either.”
“Why not?”
“Gabbett bolted twice before,” said Rufus Dawes, shuddering at the remembrance of the ghastly object he had seen in the sunlit glen at Hell’s Gates. “Others went with him, but each time he returned alone.”
“What do you mean?” asked Rex, struck by the tone of his companion.
“What became of the others?”
“Died, I suppose,” said the Dandy, with a forced laugh.
“Yes; but how? They were all without food. How came the surviving monster to live six weeks?”
John Rex grew a shade paler, and did not reply. He recollected the sanguinary legend that pertained to Gabbett’s rescue. But he did not intend to make the journey in his company, so, after all, he had no cause for fear. “Come with me then,” he said, at length. “We will try our luck together.”
“No. I have resolved. I stay here.”
“And leave your innocence unproved.”
“How can I prove it?” cried Rufus Dawes, roughly impatient. “There are crimes committed which are never brought to light, and this is one of them.”
“Well,” said Rex, rising, as if weary of the discussion, “have it your own way, then. You know best. The private detective game is hard work. I, myself, have gone on a wild-goose chase before now. There’s a mystery about a certain ship-builder’s son which took me four months to unravel, and then I lost the thread.”
“A ship-builder’s son! Who was he?”
John Rex paused in wonderment at the eager interest with which the question was put, and then hastened to take advantage of this new opening for conversation. “A queer story. A well-known character in my time—Sir Richard Devine. A miserly old curmudgeon, with a scapegrace son.”
Rufus Dawes bit his lips to avoid showing his emotion. This was the second time that the name of his dead father had been spoken in his hearing. “I think I remember something of him,” he said, with a voice that sounded strangely calm in his own ears.
“A curious story,” said Rex, plunging into past memories. “Amongst other matters, I dabbled a little in the Private Inquiry line of business, and the old man came to me. He had a son who had gone abroad—a wild young dog, by all accounts—and he wanted particulars of him.”
“Did you get them?”
“To a certain extent. I hunted him through Paris into Brussels, from Brussels to Antwerp, from Antwerp back to Paris. I lost him there. A miserable end to a long and expensive search. I got nothing but a portmanteau with a lot of letters from his mother. I sent the particulars to the ship-builder, and by all accounts the news killed him, for he died not long after.”
“And the son?”
“Came to the queerest end of all. The old man had left him his fortune—a large one, I believe—but he’d left Europe, it seems, for India, and was lost in the Hydaspes. Frere was his cousin.”
“Ah!”
“By Gad, it annoys me when I think of it,” continued Rex, feeling, by force of memory, once more the adventurer of fashion. “With the resources I had, too. Oh, a miserable failure! The days and nights I’ve spent walking about looking for Richard Devine, and never catching a glimpse of him. The old man gave me his son’s portrait, with full particulars of his early life, and I suppose I carried that ivory gimcrack in my breast for nearly three months, pulling it out to refresh my memory every half-hour. By Gad, if the young gentleman was anything like his picture, I could have sworn to him if I’d met him in Timbuctoo.”
“Do you think you’d know him again?” asked Rufus Dawes in a low voice, turning away his head.
There may have been something in the attitude in which the speaker had put himself that awakened memory, or perhaps the subdued eagerness of the tone, contrasting so strangely with the comparative inconsequence of the theme, that caused John Rex’s brain to perform one of those feats of automatic synthesis at which we afterwards wonder. The profligate son—the likeness to the portrait—the mystery of Dawes’s life! These were the links of a galvanic chain. He closed the circuit, and a vivid flash revealed to him—THE MAN.
Warder Troke, coming up, put his hand on Rex’s shoulder. “Dawes,” he said, “you’re wanted at the yard”; and then, seeing his mistake, added with a grin, “Curse you two; you’re so much alike one can’t tell t’other from which.”
Rufus Dawes walked off moodily; but John Rex’s evil face turned pale, and a strange hope made his heart leap.
“Gad, Troke’s right; we are alike. I’ll not press him to escape any more.”
CHAPTER XXIII
RUNNING THE GAUNTLET
THE Pretty Mary—as ugly and evil-smelling a tub as ever pitched under a southerly burster—had been lying on and off Cape Surville for nearly three weeks. Captain Blunt was getting wearied. He made strenuous efforts to find the oyster-beds of which he was ostensibly in search, but no success attended his efforts. In vain did he take boat and pull into every cove and nook between the Hippolyte Reef and Schouten’s Island. In vain did he run the Pretty Mary as near to the rugged cliffs as he dared to take her, and make perpetual expeditions to the shore. In vain did he—in his eagerness for the interests of Mrs. Purfoy—clamber up the rocks, and spend hours in solitary soundings in Blackman’s Bay. He never found an oyster. “If I don’t find something in three or four days more,” said he to his mate, “I shall go back again. It’s too dangerous cruising here.”
*
On the same evening that Captain Blunt made this resolution, the watchman at Signal Hill saw the arms of the semaphore at the settlement make three motions, thus:
The semaphore was furnished with three revolving arms, fixed one above the other. The upper one denoted units, and had six motions, indicating ONE to SIX. The middle one denoted tens, TEN to SIXTY. The lower one marked hundreds, from ONE HUNDRED to SIX HUNDRED.
The lower and upper arms whirled out. That meant THREE HUNDRED AND SIX. A ball ran up to the top of the post. That meant ONE THOUSAND.
Number 130 6, or, being interpreted, “PRISONERS ABSCONDED”.
“By George, Harry,” said Jones, the signalman, “there’s a bolt!”
The semaphore signalled again: “Number 1411”.
“WITH ARMS!” Jones said, translating as he read. “Come here, Harry! here’s a go!”
But Harry did not reply, and, looking down, the watchman saw a dark figure suddenly fill the doorway. The boasted semaphore had failed this time, at all events. The “bolters” had arrived as soon as the signal! The man sprang at his carbine, but the intruder had already possessed himself of it. “It’s no use making a fuss, Jones! There are eight of us. Oblige me by attending to your signals.”
Jones knew the voice. It was that of John Rex. “Reply, can’t you?” said Rex coolly. “Captain Burgess is in a hurry.” The arms of the semaphore at the settlement were, in fact, gesticulating with comical vehemence. Jones took the strings in his hands, and, with his signal-book open before him, was about to acknowledge the message, when Rex stopped him. “Send this message,” he said. “NOT SEEN! SIGNAL SENT TO EAGLEHAWK!” Jones paused irresolutely. He was himself a convict, and dreaded the inevitable cat that he knew would follow this false message. “If they finds me out—” he said. Rex cocked the carbine with so decided a meaning in his black eyes that Jones—who could be brave enough on occasions—banished his hesitation at once, and began to signal eagerly. There came up a clinking of metal, and a murmur from below. “What’s keepin’ yer, Dandy?”
“All right. Get those irons off, and then we’ll talk, boys. I’m putting salt on old Burgess’s tail.” The rough jest was received with a roar, and Jones, looking momentarily down from his window on the staging, saw, in the waning light, a group of men freeing themselves from their irons with a hammer taken from the guard-house; while two, already freed, were casting buckets of water on the beacon wood-pile. The sentry was lying bound at a little distance.
“Now,” said the leader of this surprise party, “signal to Woody Island.” Jones perforce obeyed. “Say, ‘AN ESCAPE AT THE MINES! WATCH ONE-TREE POINT! SEND ON TO EAGLEHAWK!’ Quick now!”
Jones—comprehending at once the force of this manoeuvre, which would have the effect of distracting attention from the Neck—executed the order with a grin. “You’re a knowing one, Dandy,” said he. John Rex acknowledged the compliment by uncocking the carbine. “Hold out your hands!—Jemmy Vetch!”
“Ay, ay,” replied the Crow, from beneath. “Come up and tie our friend Jones. Gabbett, have you got the axes?”
“There’s only one,” said Gabbett, with an oath. “Then bring that, and any tucker you can lay your hands on. Have you tied him? On we go then.” And in the space of five minutes from the time when unsuspecting Harry had been silently clutched by two forms, who rushed upon him out of the shadows of the huts, the Signal Hill Station was deserted.
At the settlement Burgess was foaming. Nine men to seize the Long Bay boat, and get half an hour’s start of the alarm signal, was an unprecedented achievement! What could Warder Troke have been about! Warder Troke, however, found eight hours afterwards, disarmed, gagged, and bound in the scrub, had been guilty of no negligence. How could he tell that, at a certain signal from Dandy Jack, the nine men he had taken to Stewart’s Bay would “rush” him; and, before he could draw a pistol, truss him like a chicken? The worst of the gang, Rufus Dawes, had volunteered for the hated duties of pile-driving, and Troke had felt himself secure. How could he possibly guess that there was a plot, in which Ru
fus Dawes, of all men, had refused to join?
Constables, mounted and on foot, were despatched to scour the bush round the settlement. Burgess, confident from the reply of the Signal Hill semaphore, that the alarm had been given at Eaglehawk Isthmus, promised himself the re-capture of the gang before many hours; and, giving orders to keep the communications going, retired to dinner. His convict servants had barely removed the soup when the result of John Rex’s ingenuity became manifest.
The semaphore at Signal Hill had stopped working.
“Perhaps the fools can’t see,” said Burgess. “Fire the beacon—and saddle my horse.” The beacon was fired. All right at Mount Arthur, Mount Communication, and the Coal Mines. To the westward the line was clear. But at Signal Hill was no answering light. Burgess stamped with rage. “Get me my boat’s crew ready; and tell the Mines to signal to Woody Island.” As he stood on the jetty, a breathless messenger brought the reply. “A BOAT’S CREW GONE TO ONE-TREE POINT! FIVE MEN SENT FROM EAGLEHAWK IN OBEDIENCE TO ORDERS!” Burgess understood it at once. The fellows had decoyed the Eaglehawk guard. “Give way, men!” And the boat, shooting into the darkness, made for Long Bay. “I won’t be far behind ’em,” said the Commandant, “at any rate.”
Between Eaglehawk and Signal Hill were, for the absconders, other dangers. Along the indented coast of Port Bunche were four constables’ stations. These stations—mere huts within signalling distance of each other—fringed the shore, and to avoid them it would be necessary to make a circuit into the scrub. Unwilling as he was to lose time, John Rex saw that to attempt to run the gauntlet of these four stations would be destruction. The safety of the party depended upon the reaching of the Neck while the guard was weakened by the absence of some of the men along the southern shore, and before the alarm could be given from the eastern arm of the peninsula. With this view, he ranged his men in single file; and, quitting the road near Norfolk Bay, made straight for the Neck. The night had set in with a high westerly wind, and threatened rain. It was pitch dark; and the fugitives were guided only by the dull roar of the sea as it beat upon Descent Beach. Had it not been for the accident of a westerly gale, they would not have had even so much assistance.
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