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 shore. 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.”
Frere, somewhat alarmed, strode over to the little cavern.
The “lady of the Commandant” was in a strange plight. The cavern was lofty, but narrow. In shape it was three-cornered, having two sides open to the wind. The ingenuity of Rufus Dawes had closed these sides with wicker-work and clay, and a sort of door of interlaced brushwood hung at one of them. Frere pushed open this door and entered. The poor woman was lying on a bed of rushes strewn over young brushwood, and was moaning feebly. From the first she had felt the privation to which she was subjected most keenly, and the mental anxiety from which she suffered increased her physical debility. The exhaustion and lassitude to which she had partially succumbed soon after Dawes’s arrival, had now completely overcome her, and she was unable to rise.
“Cheer up, ma’am,” said Maurice, with an assumption of heartiness. “It will be all right in a day or two.”
“Is it you? I sent for Mr. Dawes.”
“He is away just now. I am making a boat. Did not Sylvia tell you?”
“She told me that he was making one.”
“Well, I— that is, we — are making it. He will be back again tonight. Can I do anything for you?”
“No, thank you. I only wanted to know how he was getting on. I must go soon — if I am to go. Thank you, Mr. Frere. I am much obliged to you. This is a — he-e — dreadful place to have visitors, isn’t it?”
“Never mind,” said Frere, again, “you will be back in Hobart Town in a few days now. We are sure to get picked up by a ship. But you must cheer up. Have some tea or something.”
“No, thank you — I don’t feel well enough to eat. I am tired.”
Sylvia began to cry.
“Don’t cry, dear. I shall be better by and by. Oh, I wish Mr. Dawes was back.”
Maurice Frere went out indignant. This “Mr.” Dawes was everybody, it seemed, and he was nobody. Let them wait a little. All that day, working hard to carry out the convict’s directions, he meditated a thousand plans by which he could turn the tables. He would accuse Dawes of violence. He would demand that he should be taken back as an “absconder”. He would insist that the law should take its course, and that the “death” which was the doom of all who were caught in the act of escape from a penal settlement should be enforced. Yet if they got safe to land, the marvellous courage and ingenuity of the prisoner would tell strongly in his favour. The woman and child would bear witness to his tenderness and skill, and plead for him. As he had said, the convict deserved a pardon. The mean, bad man, burning with wounded vanity and undefined jealousy, waited for some method to suggest itself, by which he might claim the credit of the escape, and snatch from the prisoner, who had dared to rival him, the last hope of freedom.
Rufus Dawes, drifting with the current, had allowed himself to coast along the eastern side of the harbour until the Pilot Station appeared in view on the opposite shore. By this time it was nearly seven o’clock. He landed at a sandy cove, and drawing up his raft, proceeded to unpack from among his garments a piece of damper. Having eaten sparingly, and dried himself in the sun, he replaced the remains of his breakfast, and pushed his floats again into the water. The Pilot Station lay some distance below him, on the opposite shore. He had purposely made his second start from a point which would give him this advantage of position; for had he attempted to paddle across at right angles, the strength of the current would have swept him out to sea. Weak as he was, he several times nearly lost his hold on the reeds. The clumsy bundle presenting too great a broadside to the stream, whirled round and round, and was once or twice nearly sucked under. At length, however, breathless and exhausted, he gained the opposite bank, half a mile below the point he had attempted to make, and carrying his floats out of reach of the tide, made off across the hill to the Pilot Station.
Arrived there about midday, he set to work to lay his snares. The goats, with whose hides he hoped to cover the coracle, were sufficiently numerous and tame to encourage him to use every exertion. He carefully examined the tracks of the animals, and found that they converged to one point — the track to the nearest water. With much labour he cut down bushes, so as to mask the approach to the waterhole on all sides save where these tracks immediately conjoined. Close to the water, and at unequal distances along the various tracks, he scattered the salt he had obtained by his rude distillation of sea-water. Between this scattered salt and the points where he judged the animals would be likely to approach, he set his traps, made after the following manner. He took several pliant branches of young trees, and having stripped them of leaves and twigs, dug with his knife and the end of the rude paddle he had made for the voyage across the inlet, a succession of holes, about a foot deep. At the thi............