For the Term of His Natural Life Part 30

"Float across. Come, there is not time for questioning! Go and cut down some saplings, and let us begin!"

The lieutenant-master looked at the convict prisoner with astonishment, and then gave way to the power of knowledge, and did as he was ordered.

Before sundown that evening the carcase of poor Nanny, broken into various most unbutcherly fragments, was hanging on the nearest tree; and Frere, returning with as many young saplings as he could drag together, found Rufus Dawes engaged in a curious occupation. He had killed the goat, and having cut off its head close under the jaws, and its legs at the knee-joint, had extracted the carcase through a slit made in the lower portion of the belly, which slit he had now sewn together with string. This proceeding gave him a rough bag, and he was busily engaged in filling this bag with such coa.r.s.e gra.s.s as he could collect. Frere observed, also, that the fat of the animal was carefully preserved, and the intestines had been placed in a pool of water to soak.

The convict, however, declined to give information as to what he intended to do. "It's my own notion," he said. "Let me alone. I may make a failure of it." Frere, on being pressed by Sylvia, affected to know all about the scheme, but to impose silence on himself. He was galled to think that a convict brain should contain a mystery which he might not share.

On the next day, by Rufus Dawes's direction, Frere cut down some rushes that grew about a mile from the camping ground, and brought them in on his back. This took him nearly half a day to accomplish. Short rations were beginning to tell upon his physical powers. The convict, on the other hand, trained by a woeful experience in the Boats to endurance of hardship, was slowly recovering his original strength.

"What are they for?" asked Frere, as he flung the bundles down. His master condescended to reply. "To make a float."

"Well?"

The other shrugged his broad shoulders. "You are very dull, Mr. Frere.

I am going to swim over to the Pilot Station, and catch some of those goats. I can get across on the stuffed skin, but I must float them back on the reeds."

"How the doose do you mean to catch 'em?" asked Frere, wiping the sweat from his brow.

The convict motioned to him to approach. He did so, and saw that his companion was cleaning the intestines of the goat. The outer membrane having been peeled off, Rufus Dawes was turning the gut inside out.

This he did by turning up a short piece of it, as though it were a coat-sleeve, and dipping the turned-up cuff into a pool of water. The weight of the water pressing between the cuff and the rest of the gut, bore down a further portion; and so, by repeated dippings, the whole length was turned inside out. The inner membrane having been sc.r.a.ped away, there remained a fine transparent tube, which was tightly twisted, and set to dry in the sun.

"There is the catgut for the noose," said Dawes. "I learnt that trick at the settlement. Now come here."

Frere, following, saw that a fire had been made between two stones, and that the kettle was partly sunk in the ground near it. On approaching the kettle, he found it full of smooth pebbles.

"Take out those stones," said Dawes.

Frere obeyed, and saw at the bottom of the kettle a quant.i.ty of sparkling white powder, and the sides of the vessel crusted with the same material.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Salt."

"How did you get it?"

"I filled the kettle with sea-water, and then, heating those pebbles red-hot in the fire, dropped them into it. We could have caught the steam in a cloth and wrung out fresh water had we wished to do so. But, thank G.o.d, we have plenty."

Frere started. "Did you learn that at the settlement, too?" he asked.

Rufus Dawes laughed, with a sort of bitterness in his tones. "Do you think I have been at 'the settlement' all my life? The thing is very simple, it is merely evaporation."

Frere burst out in sudden, fretful admiration: "What a fellow you are, Dawes! What are you--I mean, what have you been?"

A triumphant light came into the other's face, and for the instant he seemed about to make some startling revelation. But the light faded, and he checked himself with a gesture of pain.

"I am a convict. Never mind what I have been. A sailor, a shipbuilder, prodigal, vagabond--what does it matter? It won't alter my fate, will it?"

"If we get safely back," says Frere, "I'll ask for a free pardon for you. You deserve it."

"Come," returned Dawes, with a discordant laugh. "Let us wait until we get back."

"You don't believe me?"

"I don't want favour at your hands," he said, with a return of the old fierceness. "Let us get to work. Bring up the rushes here, and tie them with a fishing line."

At this instant Sylvia came up. "Good afternoon, Mr. Dawes. Hard at work? Oh! what's this in the kettle?" The voice of the child acted like a charm upon Rufus Dawes. He smiled quite cheerfully.

"Salt, miss. I am going to catch the goats with that."

"Catch the goats! How? Put it on their tails?" she cried merrily.

"Goats are fond of salt, and when I get over to the Pilot Station I shall set traps for them baited with this salt. When they come to lick it, I shall have a noose of catgut ready to catch them--do you understand?"

"But how will you get across?"

"You will see to-morrow."

CHAPTER XIV. A WONDERFUL DAY'S WORK.

The next morning Rufus Dawes was stirring by daylight. He first got his catgut wound upon a piece of stick, and then, having moved his frail floats alongside the little rock that served as a pier, he took a fishing line and a larger piece of stick, and proceeded to draw a diagram on the sand. This diagram when completed represented a rude outline of a punt, eight feet long and three broad. At certain distances were eight points--four on each side--into which small willow rods were driven. He then awoke Frere and showed the diagram to him.

"Get eight stakes of celery-top pine," he said. "You can burn them where you cannot cut them, and drive a stake into the place of each of these willow wands. When you have done that, collect as many willows as you can get. I shall not be back until tonight. Now give me a hand with the floats."

Frere, coming to the pier, saw Dawes strip himself, and piling his clothes upon the stuffed goat-skin, stretch himself upon the reed bundles, and, paddling with his hands, push off from the sh.o.r.e. The clothes floated high and dry, but the reeds, depressed by the weight of the body, sank so that the head of the convict alone appeared above water. In this fashion he gained the middle of the current, and the out-going tide swept him down towards the mouth of the harbour.

Frere, sulkily admiring, went back to prepare the breakfast--they were on half rations now, Dawes having forbidden the slaughtered goat to be eaten, lest his expedition should prove unsuccessful--wondering at the chance which had thrown this convict in his way. "Parsons would call it 'a special providence,'" he said to himself. "For if it hadn't been for him, we should never have got thus far. If his 'boat' succeeds, we're all right, I suppose. He's a clever dog. I wonder who he is." His training as a master of convicts made him think how dangerous such a man would be on a convict station. It would be difficult to keep a fellow of such resources. "They'll have to look pretty sharp after him if they ever get him back," he thought. "I'll have a fine tale to tell of his ingenuity." The conversation of the previous day occurred to him. "I promised to ask for a free pardon. He wouldn't have it, though. Too proud to accept it at my hands! Wait until we get back. I'll teach him his place; for, after all, it is his own liberty that he is working for as well as mine--I mean ours." Then a thought came into his head that was in every way worthy of him. "Suppose we took the boat, and left him behind!" The notion seemed so ludicrously wicked that he laughed involuntarily.

"What is it, Mr. Frere?"

"Oh, it's you, Sylvia, is it? Ha, ha, ha! I was thinking of something--something funny."

"Indeed," said Sylvia, "I am glad of that. Where's Mr. Dawes?"

Frere was displeased at the interest with which she asked the question.

"You are always thinking of that fellow. It's Dawes, Dawes, Dawes all day long. He has gone."

"Oh!" with a sorrowful accent. "Mamma wants to see him."

"What about?" says Frere roughly. "Mamma is ill, Mr. Frere."

"Dawes isn't a doctor. What's the matter with her?"

"She is worse than she was yesterday. I don't know what is the matter."