The insubordination of which Rufus Dawes had been guilty was, inthis instance, insignificant. It was the custom of the newly-fledgedconstables of Captain Frere to enter the wards at night, armed withcutlasses, tramping about, and making a great noise. Mindful of thereport of Pounce, they pulled the men roughly from their hammocks,examined their persons for concealed tobacco, and compelled them to opentheir mouths to see if any was inside. The men in Dawes's gang--to whichMr. Troke had an especial objection--were often searched more than oncein a night, searched going to work, searched at meals, searched goingto prayers, searched coming out, and this in the roughest manner. Theirsleep broken, and what little self-respect they might yet presume toretain harried out of them, the objects of this incessant persecutionwere ready to turn upon and kill their tormentors.
The great aim of Troke was to catch Dawes tripping, but the leader ofthe "Ring" was far too wary. In vain had Troke, eager to sustain hisreputation for sharpness, burst in upon the convict at all times andseasons. He had found nothing. In vain had he laid traps for him; invain had he "planted" figs of tobacco, and attached long threads tothem, waited in a bush hard by, until the pluck at the end of his lineshould give token that the fish had bitten. The experienced "old hand"was too acute for him. Filled with disgust and ambition, he determinedupon an ingenious little trick. He was certain that Dawes possessedtobacco; the thing was to find it upon him. Now, Rufus Dawes, holdingaloof, as was his custom, from the majority of his companions, had madeone friend--if so mindless and battered an old wreck could be called afriend--Blind Mooney. Perhaps this oddly-assorted friendship was broughtabout by two causes--one, that Mooney was the only man on the island whoknew more of the horrors of convictism than the leader of the Ring; theother, that Mooney was blind, and, to a moody, sullen man, subjectto violent fits of passion and a constant suspicion of all hisfellow-creatures, a blind companion was more congenial than a sharp-eyedone.
Mooney was one of the "First Fleeters". He had arrived in Sydneyfifty-seven years before, in the year 1789, and when he was transportedhe was fourteen years old. He had been through the whole round ofservitude, had worked as a bondsman, had married, and been "up country",had been again sentenced, and was a sort of dismal patriarch of NorfolkIsland, having been there at its former settlement. He had no friends.His wife was long since dead, and he stated, without contradiction,that his master, having taken a fancy to her, had despatched theuncomplaisant husband to imprisonment. Such cases were not uncommon.
One of the many ways in which Rufus Dawes had obtained the affectionof the old blind man was a gift of such fragments of tobacco as he hadhimself from time to time secured. Troke knew this; and on the eveningin question hit upon an excellent plan. Admitting himself noiselesslyinto the boat-shed, where the gang slept, he crept close to the sleepingDawes, and counterfeiting Mooney's mumbling utterance asked for "sometobacco". Rufus Dawes was but half awake, and on repeating his request,Troke felt something put into his hand. He grasped Dawes's arm, andstruck a light. He had got his man this time. Dawes had conveyed to hisfancied friend a piece of tobacco almost as big as the top joint of hislittle finger. One can understand the feelings of a man entrapped bysuch base means. Rufus Dawes no sooner saw the hated face of WarderTroke peering over his hammock, then he sprang out, and exerting to theutmost his powerful muscles, knocked Mr. Troke fairly off his legs intothe arms of the in-coming constables. A desperate struggle took place,at the end of which the convict, overpowered by numbers, was bornesenseless to the cells, gagged, and chained to the ring-bolt on the bareflags. While in this condition he was savagely beaten by five or sixconstables.
To this maimed and manacled rebel was the Commandant ushered by Trokethe next morning.
"Ha! ha! my man," said the Commandant. "Here you are again, you see. Howdo you like this sort of thing?"
Dawes, glaring, makes no answer.
"You shall have fifty lashes, my man," said Frere. "We'll see how youfeel then!" The fifty were duly administered, and the Commandant calledthe next day. The rebel was still mute.
"Give him fifty more, Mr. Troke. We'll see what he's made of."
One hundred and twenty lashes were inflicted in the course of themorning, but still the sullen convict refused to speak. He was thentreated to fourteen days' solitary confinement in one of the new cells.On being brought out and confronted with his tormentor, he merelylaughed. For this he was sent back for another fourteen days; and stillremaining obdurate, was flogged again, and got fourteen days more.Had the chaplain then visited him, he might have found him open toconsolation, but the chaplain--so it was stated--was sick. When broughtout at the conclusion of his third confinement, he was found to be in soexhausted a condition that the doctor ordered him to hospital. As soonas he was sufficiently recovered, Frere visited him, and finding his"spirit" not yet "broken", ordered that he should be put to grind maize.Dawes declined to work. So they chained his hand to one arm of thegrindstone and placed another prisoner at the other arm. As the secondprisoner turned, the hand of Dawes of course revolved.
"You're not such a pebble as folks seemed to think," grinned Frere,pointing to the turning wheel.
Upon which the indomitable poor devil straightened his sorely-triedmuscles, and prevented the wheel from turning at all. Frere gave himfifty more lashes, and sent him the next day to grind cayenne pepper.This was a punishment more dreaded by the convicts than any other.The pungent dust filled their eyes and lungs, causing them the mostexcruciating torments. For a man with a raw back the work was onecontinued agony. In four days Rufus Dawes, emaciated, blistered,blinded, broke down.
"For God's sake, Captain Frere, kill me at once!" he said.
"No fear," said the other, rejoiced at this proof of his power. "You'vegiven in; that's all I wanted. Troke, take him off to the hospital."
When he was in hospital, North visited him.
"I would have come to see you before," said the clergyman, "but I havebeen very ill."
In truth he looked so. He had had a fever, it seemed, and they hadshaved his beard, and cropped his hair. Dawes could see that thehaggard, wasted man had passed through some agony almost as great as hisown. The next day Frere visited him, complimented him on his courage,and offered to make him a constable. Dawes turned his scarred back tohis torturer, and resolutely declined to answer.
"I am afraid you have made an enemy of the Commandant," said North, thenext day. "Why not accept his offer?"
Dawes cast on him a glance of quiet scorn. "And betray my mates? I'm notone of that sort."
The clergyman spoke to him of hope, of release, of repentance, andredemption. The prisoner laughed. "Who's to redeem me?" he said,expressing his thoughts in phraseology that to ordinary folks might seemblasphemous. "It would take a Christ to die again to save such as I."
North spoke to him of immortality. "There is another life," said he. "Donot risk your chance of happiness in it. You have a future to live for,man."
"I hope not," said the victim of the "system". "I want to rest--to rest,and never to be disturbed again."
His "spirit" was broken enough by this time. Yet he had resolutionenough to refuse Frere's repeated offers. "I'll never 'jump' it," hesaid to North, "if they cut me in half first."
North pityingly implored the stubborn mind to have mercy on thelacerated body, but without effect. His own wayward heart gave him thekey to read the cipher of this man's life. "A noble nature ruined," saidhe to himself. "What is the secret of his history?"
Dawes, on his part, seeing how different from other black coats was thispriest--at once so ardent and so gloomy, so stern and so tender--beganto speculate on the cause of his monitor's sunken cheeks, fiery eyes,and pre-occupied manner, to wonder what grief inspired those agonizedprayers, those eloquent and daring supplications, which were dailypoured out over his rude bed. So between these two--the priest and thesinner--was a sort of sympathetic bond.
One day this bond was drawn so close as to tug at both theirheart-strings. The chaplain had a flower
in his coat. Dawes eyed it withhungry looks, and, as the clergyman was about to quit the room, said,"Mr. North, will you give me that rosebud?" North paused irresolutely,and finally, as if after a struggle with himself, took it carefully fromhis button-hole, and placed it in the prisoner's brown, scarred hand. Inanother instant Dawes, believing himself alone, pressed the gift tohis lips. North returned abruptly, and the eyes of the pair met. Dawesflushed crimson, but North turned white as death. Neither spoke, buteach was drawn close to the other, since both had kissed the rosebudplucked by Sylvia's fingers.
CHAPTER VIII. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH.
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 80