For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke

  It was not far to the sheds, and after a few minutes' walk through thewooden palisades they reached a long stone building, two storeys high,from which issued a horrible growling, pierced with shrilly screamedsongs. At the sound of the musket butts clashing on the pine-woodflagging, the noises ceased, and a silence more sinister than sound fellon the place.

  Passing between two rows of warders, the two officers reached a sort ofante-room to the gaol, containing a pine-log stretcher, on which a massof something was lying. On a roughly-made stool, by the side of thisstretcher, sat a man, in the grey dress (worn as a contrast to theyellow livery) of "good conduct" prisoners. This man held between hisknees a basin containing gruel, and was apparently endeavouring to feedthe mass on the pine logs.

  "Won't he eat, Steve?" asked Vickers.

  And at the sound of the Commandant's voice, Steve arose.

  "Dunno what's wrong wi' 'un, sir," he said, jerking up a finger to hisforehead. "He seems jest muggy-pated. I can't do nothin' wi' 'un."

  "Gabbett!"

  The intelligent Troke, considerately alive to the wishes of his superiorofficers, dragged the mass into a sitting posture.

  Gabbett--for it was he--passed one great hand over his face, and leaningexactly in the position in which Troke placed him, scowled, bewildered,at his visitors.

  "Well, Gabbett," says Vickers, "you've come back again, you see. Whenwill you learn sense, eh? Where are your mates?"

  The giant did not reply.

  "Do you hear me? Where are your mates?"

  "Where are your mates?" repeated Troke.

  "Dead," says Gabbett.

  "All three of them?"

  "Ay."

  "And how did you get back?"

  Gabbett, in eloquent silence, held out a bleeding foot.

  "We found him on the point, sir," said Troke, jauntily explaining, "andbrought him across in the boat. He had a basin of gruel, but he didn'tseem hungry."

  "Are you hungry?"

  "Yes."

  "Why don't you eat your gruel?"

  Gabbett curled his great lips.

  "I have eaten it. Ain't yer got nuffin' better nor that to flog a manon? Ugh! yer a mean lot! Wot's it to be this time, Major? Fifty?"

  And laughing, he rolled down again on the logs.

  "A nice specimen!" said Vickers, with a hopeless smile. "What can one dowith such a fellow?"

  "I'd flog his soul out of his body," said Frere, "if he spoke to me likethat!"

  Troke and the others, hearing the statement, conceived an instantrespect for the new-comer. He looked as if he would keep his word.

  The giant raised his great head and looked at the speaker, but did notrecognize him. He saw only a strange face--a visitor perhaps. "Youmay flog, and welcome, master," said he, "if you'll give me a fig o'tibbacky." Frere laughed. The brutal indifference of the rejoindersuited his humour, and, with a glance at Vickers, he took a small pieceof cavendish from the pocket of his pea-jacket, and gave it to therecaptured convict. Gabbett snatched it as a cur snatches at a bone, andthrust it whole into his mouth.

  "How many mates had he?" asked Maurice, watching the champing jawsas one looks at a strange animal, and asking the question as though a"mate" was something a convict was born with--like a mole, for instance.

  "Three, sir."

  "Three, eh? Well, give him thirty lashes, Vickers."

  "And if I ha' had three more," growled Gabbett, mumbling at his tobacco,"you wouldn't ha' had the chance."

  "What does he say?"

  But Troke had not heard, and the "good-conduct" man, shrinking as itseemed, slightly from the prisoner, said he had not heard either. Thewretch himself, munching hard at his tobacco, relapsed into his restlesssilence, and was as though he had never spoken.

  As he sat there gloomily chewing, he was a spectacle to shudder at. Notso much on account of his natural hideousness, increased a thousand-foldby the tattered and filthy rags which barely covered him. Not so much onaccount of his unshaven jaws, his hare-lip, his torn and bleedingfeet, his haggard cheeks, and his huge, wasted frame. Not only because,looking at the animal, as he crouched, with one foot curled round theother, and one hairy arm pendant between his knees, he was so horriblyunhuman, that one shuddered to think that tender women and fair childrenmust, of necessity, confess to fellowship of kind with such a monster.But also because, in his slavering mouth, his slowly grinding jaws, hisrestless fingers, and his bloodshot, wandering eyes, there lurked a hintof some terror more awful than the terror of starvation--a memory of atragedy played out in the gloomy depths of that forest which had vomitedhim 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 theshambles.

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

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

  Major Vickers, inured as he was to such sentiments, sighed. "It isnot for me to find fault with the system," he said, hesitating, inhis reverence for "discipline", to utter all the thought; "but I havesometimes wondered if kindness would not succeed better than the chainand the cat."

  "Your old ideas!" laughed his companion. "Remember, they nearly costus our lives on the Malabar. No, no. I've seen something ofconvicts--though, to be sure, my fellows were not so bad as yours--andthere'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 theywill. If they work well--why a taste of the cat now and then keeps 'emin mind of what they may expect if they get lazy." They had reached theverandah now. The rising moon shone softly on the bay beneath them, andtouched with her white light the summit of the Grummet Rock.

  "That is the general opinion, I know," returned Vickers. "But considerthe life they lead. Good God!" he added, with sudden vehemence, as Frerepaused 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 tenprisoners have drowned themselves from yonder rock, rather than liveon in their misery. Only three weeks ago, two men, with a wood-cuttingparty in the hills, having had some words with the overseer, shook handswith 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 whatthey 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'reall innocent, if you'd believe their own stories. Hallo! what's that redlight there?"

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

  CHAPTER V. SYLVIA.