An hour after sunrise, the frail boat, which was the last hope of thesefour human beings, drifted with the outgoing current towards the mouthof the harbour. When first launched she had come nigh swamping, beingoverloaded, and it was found necessary to leave behind a great portionof the dried meat. With what pangs this was done can be easily imagined,for each atom of food seemed to represent an hour of life. Yet there wasno help for it. As Frere said, it was "neck or nothing with them". Theymust get away at all hazards.
That evening they camped at the mouth of the Gates, Dawes being afraidto risk a passage until the slack of the tide, and about ten o'clockat night adventured to cross the Bar. The night was lovely, and thesea calm. It seemed as though Providence had taken pity on them; for,notwithstanding the insecurity of the craft and the violence of thebreakers, the dreaded passage was made with safety. Once, indeed, whenthey had just entered the surf, a mighty wave, curling high above them,seemed about to overwhelm the frail structure of skins and wickerwork;but Rufus Dawes, keeping the nose of the boat to the sea, and Frerebaling with his hat, they succeeded in reaching deep water. A greatmisfortune, however, occurred. Two of the bark buckets, left by someunpardonable oversight uncleated, were washed overboard, and withthem nearly a fifth of their scanty store of water. In the face ofthe greater peril, the accident seemed trifling; and as, drenched andchilled, they gained the open sea, they could not but admit that fortunehad almost miraculously befriended them.
They made tedious way with their rude oars; a light breeze from thenorth-west sprang up with the dawn, and, hoisting the goat-skin sail,they crept along the coast. It was resolved that the two men should keepwatch and watch; and Frere for the second time enforced his authority bygiving the first watch to Rufus Dawes. "I am tired," he said, "and shallsleep for a little while."
Rufus Dawes, who had not slept for two nights, and who had done all theharder work, said nothing. He had suffered so much during the last twodays that his senses were dulled to pain.
Frere slept until late in the afternoon, and, when he woke, found theboat still tossing on the sea, and Sylvia and her mother both seasick.This seemed strange to him. Sea-sickness appeared to be a malady whichbelonged exclusively to civilization. Moodily watching the great greenwaves which curled incessantly between him and the horizon, he marvelledto think how curiously events had come about. A leaf had, as it were,been torn out of his autobiography. It seemed a lifetime since he haddone anything but moodily scan the sea or shore. Yet, on the morning ofleaving the settlement, he had counted the notches on a calendar-stickhe carried, and had been astonished to find them but twenty-two innumber. Taking out his knife, he cut two nicks in the wicker gunwale ofthe coracle. That brought him to twenty-four days. The mutiny had takenplace on the 13th of January; it was now the 6th of February. "Surely,"thought he, "the Ladybird might have returned by this time." There wasno one to tell him that the Ladybird had been driven into Port Davey bystress of weather, and detained there for seventeen days.
That night the wind fell, and they had to take to their oars. Rowingall night, they made but little progress, and Rufus Dawes suggested thatthey should put in to the shore and wait until the breeze sprang up.But, upon getting under the lee of a long line of basaltic rocks whichrose abruptly out of the sea, they found the waves breaking furiouslyupon a horseshoe reef, six or seven miles in length. There was nothingfor it but to coast again. They coasted for two days, without a signof a sail, and on the third day a great wind broke upon them from thesouth-east, and drove them back thirty miles. The coracle began to leak,and required constant bailing. What was almost as bad, the rum cask,that held the best part of their water, had leaked also, and was nowhalf empty. They caulked it, by cutting out the leak, and then pluggingthe hole with linen.
"It's lucky we ain't in the tropics," said Frere. Poor Mrs. Vickers,lying in the bottom of the boat, wrapped in her wet shawl, and chilledto the bone with the bitter wind, had not the heart to speak. Surelythe stifling calm of the tropics could not be worse than this bleak andbarren sea.
The position of the four poor creatures was now almost desperate. Mrs.Vickers, indeed, seemed completely prostrated; and it was evident that,unless some help came, she could not long survive the continued exposureto the weather. The child was in somewhat better case. Rufus Dawes hadwrapped her in his woollen shirt, and, unknown to Frere, had dividedwith her daily his allowance of meat. She lay in his arms at night, andin the day crept by his side for shelter and protection. As long as shewas near him she felt safe. They spoke little to each other, but whenRufus Dawes felt the pressure of her tiny hand in his, or sustained theweight of her head upon his shoulder, he almost forgot the cold thatfroze him, and the hunger that gnawed him.
So two more days passed, and yet no sail. On the tenth day aftertheir departure from Macquarie Harbour they came to the end of theirprovisions. The salt water had spoiled the goat-meat, and soaked thebread into a nauseous paste. The sea was still running high, and thewind, having veered to the north, was blowing with increased violence.The long low line of coast that stretched upon their left hand was attimes obscured by a blue mist. The water was the colour of mud, andthe sky threatened rain. The wretched craft to which they had entrustedthemselves was leaking in four places. If caught in one of the frequentstorms which ravaged that iron-bound coast, she could not live an hour.The two men, wearied, hungry, and cold, almost hoped for the end to comequickly. To add to their distress, the child was seized with fever.She was hot and cold by turns, and in the intervals of moaning talkeddeliriously. Rufus Dawes, holding her in his arms, watched the sufferinghe was unable to alleviate with a savage despair at his heart. Was sheto die after all?
So another day and night passed, and the eleventh morning saw the boatyet alive, rolling in the trough of the same deserted sea. The fourexiles lay in her almost without breath.
All at once Dawes uttered a cry, and, seizing the sheet, put the clumsycraft about. "A sail! a sail!" he cried. "Do you not see her?"
Frere's hungry eyes ranged the dull water in vain.
"There is no sail, fool!" he said. "You mock us!"
The boat, no longer following the line of the coast, was running nearlydue south, straight into the great Southern Ocean. Frere tried to wrestthe thong from the hand of the convict, and bring the boat back to hercourse. "Are you mad?" he asked, in fretful terror, "to run us out tosea?"
"Sit down!" returned the other, with a menacing gesture, and staringacross the grey water. "I tell you I see a sail!"
Frere, overawed by the strange light which gleamed in the eyes of hiscompanion, shifted sulkily back to his place. "Have your own way,"he said, "madman! It serves me right for putting off to sea in such adevil's craft as this!"
After all, what did it matter? As well be drowned in mid-ocean as insight of land.
The long day wore out, and no sail appeared. The wind freshened towardsevening, and the boat, plunging clumsily on the long brown waves,staggered as though drunk with the water she had swallowed, for at oneplace near the bows the water ran in and out as through a slit in a wineskin. The coast had altogether disappeared, and the huge ocean--vast,stormy, and threatening--heaved and hissed all around them. It seemedimpossible that they should live until morning. But Rufus Dawes, withhis eyes fixed on some object visible alone to him, hugged the child inhis arms, and drove the quivering coracle into the black waste of nightand sea. To Frere, sitting sullenly in the bows, the aspect of this grimimmovable figure, with its back-blown hair and staring eyes, had in itsomething supernatural and horrible. He began to think that privationand anxiety had driven the unhappy convict mad.
Thinking and shuddering over his fate, he fell--as it seemed tohim--into a momentary sleep, in the midst of which someone called tohim. He started up, with shaking knees and bristling hair. The day hadbroken, and the dawn, in one long pale streak of sickly saffron, lay lowon the left hand. Between this streak of saffron-coloured light and thebows of the boat gleamed for an instant a white speck.
"
A sail! a sail!" cried Rufus Dawes, a wild light gleaming in his eyes,and a strange tone vibrating in his voice. "Did I not tell you that Isaw a sail?"
Frere, utterly confounded, looked again, with his heart in his mouth,and again did the white speck glimmer. For an instant he felt almostsafe, and then a blanker despair than before fell upon him. From thedistance at which she was, it was impossible for the ship to sight theboat.
"They will never see us!" he cried. "Dawes--Dawes! Do you hear? Theywill never see us!"
Rufus Dawes started as if from a trance. Lashing the sheet to the polewhich served as a gunwale, he laid the sleeping child by her mother, andtearing up the strip of bark on which he had been sitting, moved to thebows of the boat.
"They will see this! Tear up that board! So! Now, place it thus acrossthe bows. Hack off that sapling end! Now that dry twist of osier! Nevermind the boat, man; we can afford to leave her now. Tear off that outerstrip of hide. See, the wood beneath is dry! Quick--you are so slow."
"What are you going to do?" cried Frere, aghast, as the convict toreup all the dry wood he could find, and heaped it on the sheet of barkplaced on the bows.
"To make a fire! See!"
Frere began to comprehend. "I have three matches left," he said,fumbling, with trembling fingers, in his pocket. "I wrapped them in oneof the leaves of the book to keep them dry."
The word "book" was a new inspiration. Rufus Dawes seized upon theEnglish History, which had already done such service, tore out the drierleaves in the middle of the volume, and carefully added them to thelittle heap of touchwood.
"Now, steady!"
The match was struck and lighted. The paper, after a few obstinatecurlings, caught fire, and Frere, blowing the young flame with hisbreath, the bark began to burn. He piled upon the fire all that wascombustible, the hides began to shrivel, and a great column of blacksmoke rose up over the sea.
"Sylvia!" cried Rufus Dawes. "Sylvia! My darling! You are saved!"
She opened her blue eyes and looked at him, but gave no sign ofrecognition. Delirium had hold of her, and in the hour of safety thechild had forgotten her preserver. Rufus Dawes, overcome by this lastcruel stroke of fortune, sat down in the stern of the boat, with thechild in his arms, speechless. Frere, feeding the fire, thought that thechance he had so longed for had come. With the mother at the pointof death, and the child delirious, who could testify to this hatedconvict's skilfulness? No one but Mr. Maurice Frere, and Mr. MauriceFrere, as Commandant of convicts, could not but give up an "absconder"to justice.
The ship changed her course, and came towards this strange fire in themiddle of the ocean. The boat, the fore part of her blazing like a pinetorch, could not float above an hour. The little group of the convictand the child remained motionless. Mrs. Vickers was lying senseless,ignorant even of the approaching succour.
The ship--a brig, with American colours flying--came within hail ofthem. Frere could almost distinguish figures on her deck. He made hisway aft to where Dawes was sitting, unconscious, with the child in hisarms, and stirred him roughly with his foot.
"Go forward," he said, in tones of command, "and give the child to me."
Rufus Dawes raised his head, and, seeing the approaching vessel, awoketo the consciousness of his duty. With a low laugh, full of unutterablebitterness, he placed the burden he had borne so tenderly in the arms ofthe lieutenant, and moved to the blazing bows.
* * * * *
The brig was close upon them. Her canvas loomed large and dusky,shadowing the sea. Her wet decks shone in the morning sunlight. From herbulwarks peered bearded and eager faces, looking with astonishment atthis burning boat and its haggard company, alone on that barren andstormy ocean.
Frere, with Sylvia in his arms, waited for her.
END OF BOOK THE SECOND
BOOK III.--PORT ARTHUR. 1838.
CHAPTER I. A LABOURER IN THE VINEYARD.
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 30