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<h2> CHAPTER XVII. AT SEA. </h2>
<p>An hour after sunrise, the frail boat, which was the last hope of these
four human beings, drifted with the outgoing current towards the mouth of
the harbour. When first launched she had come nigh swamping, being
overloaded, and it was found necessary to leave behind a great portion of
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 was no
help for it. As Frere said, it was "neck or nothing with them". They must
get away at all hazards.</p>
<p>That evening they camped at the mouth of the Gates, Dawes being afraid to
risk a passage until the slack of the tide, and about ten o'clock at night
adventured to cross the Bar. The night was lovely, and the sea calm. It
seemed as though Providence had taken pity on them; for, notwithstanding
the insecurity of the craft and the violence of the breakers, the dreaded
passage was made with safety. Once, indeed, when they 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 Frere baling with his hat, they succeeded
in reaching deep water. A great misfortune, however, occurred. Two of the
bark buckets, left by some unpardonable oversight uncleated, were washed
overboard, and with them nearly a fifth of their scanty store of water. In
the face of the greater peril, the accident seemed trifling; and as,
drenched and chilled, they gained the open sea, they could not but admit
that fortune had almost miraculously befriended them.</p>
<p>They made tedious way with their rude oars; a light breeze from the
north-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 keep watch
and watch; and Frere for the second time enforced his authority by giving
the first watch to Rufus Dawes. "I am tired," he said, "and shall sleep
for a little while."</p>
<p>Rufus Dawes, who had not slept for two nights, and who had done all the
harder work, said nothing. He had suffered so much during the last two
days that his senses were dulled to pain.</p>
<p>Frere slept until late in the afternoon, and, when he woke, found the boat
still tossing on the sea, and Sylvia and her mother both seasick. This
seemed strange to him. Sea-sickness appeared to be a malady which belonged
exclusively to civilization. Moodily watching the great green waves which
curled incessantly between him and the horizon, he marvelled to 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 had done anything but
moodily scan the sea or shore. Yet, on the morning of leaving the
settlement, he had counted the notches on a calendar-stick he carried, and
had been astonished to find them but twenty-two in number. Taking out his
knife, he cut two nicks in the wicker gunwale of the coracle. That brought
him to twenty-four days. The mutiny had taken place on the 13th of
January; it was now the 6th of February. "Surely," thought he, "the
Ladybird might have returned by this time." There was no one to tell him
that the Ladybird had been driven into Port Davey by stress of weather,
and detained there for seventeen days.</p>
<p>That night the wind fell, and they had to take to their oars. Rowing all
night, they made but little progress, and Rufus Dawes suggested that they
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 which rose abruptly
out of the sea, they found the waves breaking furiously upon a horseshoe
reef, six or seven miles in length. There was nothing for it but to coast
again. They coasted for two days, without a sign of a sail, and on the
third day a great wind broke upon them from the south-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 now half empty. They caulked it, by
cutting out the leak, and then plugging the hole with linen.</p>
<p>"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 chilled to the
bone with the bitter wind, had not the heart to speak. Surely the stifling
calm of the tropics could not be worse than this bleak and barren sea.</p>
<p>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 exposure
to the weather. The child was in somewhat better case. Rufus Dawes had
wrapped her in his woollen shirt, and, unknown to Frere, had divided with
her daily his allowance of meat. She lay in his arms at night, and in the
day crept by his side for shelter and protection. As long as she was near
him she felt safe. They spoke little to each other, but when Rufus Dawes
felt the pressure of her tiny hand in his, or sustained the weight of her
head upon his shoulder, he almost forgot the cold that froze him, and the
hunger that gnawed him.</p>
<p>So two more days passed, and yet no sail. On the tenth day after their
departure from Macquarie Harbour they came to the end of their provisions.
The salt water had spoiled the goat-meat, and soaked the bread into a
nauseous paste. The sea was still running high, and the wind, having
veered to the north, was blowing with increased violence. The long low
line of coast that stretched upon their left hand was at times obscured by
a blue mist. The water was the colour of mud, and the sky threatened rain.
The wretched craft to which they had entrusted themselves was leaking in
four places. If caught in one of the frequent storms 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 come quickly. To add to
their distress, the child was seized with fever. She was hot and cold by
turns, and in the intervals of moaning talked deliriously. Rufus Dawes,
holding her in his arms, watched the suffering he was unable to alleviate
with a savage despair at his heart. Was she to die after all?</p>
<p>So another day and night passed, and the eleventh morning saw the boat yet
alive, rolling in the trough of the same deserted sea. The four exiles lay
in her almost without breath.</p>
<p>All at once Dawes uttered a cry, and, seizing the sheet, put the clumsy
craft about. "A sail! a sail!" he cried. "Do you not see her?"</p>
<p>Frere's hungry eyes ranged the dull water in vain.</p>
<p>"There is no sail, fool!" he said. "You mock us!"</p>
<p>The boat, no longer following the line of the coast, was running nearly
due south, straight into the great Southern Ocean. Frere tried to wrest
the thong from the hand of the convict, and bring the boat back to her
course. "Are you mad?" he asked, in fretful terror, "to run us out to
sea?"</p>
<p>"Sit down!" returned the other, with a menacing gesture, and staring
across the grey water. "I tell you I see a sail!"</p>
<p>Frere, overawed by the strange light which gleamed in the eyes of his
companion, shifted sulkily back to his place. "Have your own way," he
said, "madman! It serves me right for putting off to sea in such a devil's
craft as this!"</p>
<p>After all, what did it matter? As well be drowned in mid-ocean as in sight
of land.</p>
<p>The long day wore out, and no sail appeared. The wind freshened towards
evening, and the boat, plunging clumsily on the long brown waves,
staggered as though drunk with the water she had swallowed, for at one
place near the bows the water ran in and out as through a slit in a wine
skin. The coast had altogether disappeared, and the huge ocean—vast,
stormy, and threatening—heaved and hissed all around them. It seemed
impossible that they should live until morning. But Rufus Dawes, with his
eyes fixed on some object visible alone to him, hugged the child in his
arms, and drove the quivering coracle into the black waste of night and
sea. To Frere, sitting sullenly in the bows, the aspect of this grim
immovable figure, with its back-blown hair and staring eyes, had in it
something supernatural and horrible. He began to think that privation and
anxiety had driven the unhappy convict mad.</p>
<p>Thinking and shuddering over his fate, he fell—as it seemed to him—into
a momentary sleep, in the midst of which someone called to him. He started
up, with shaking knees and bristling hair. The day had broken, and the
dawn, in one long pale streak of sickly saffron, lay low on the left hand.
Between this streak of saffron-coloured light and the bows of the boat
gleamed for an instant a white speck.</p>
<p>"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 I saw
a sail?"</p>
<p>Frere, utterly confounded, looked again, with his heart in his mouth, and
again did the white speck glimmer. For an instant he felt almost safe, and
then a blanker despair than before fell upon him. From the distance at
which she was, it was impossible for the ship to sight the boat.</p>
<p>"They will never see us!" he cried. "Dawes—Dawes! Do you hear? They
will never see us!"</p>
<p>Rufus Dawes started as if from a trance. Lashing the sheet to the pole
which served as a gunwale, he laid the sleeping child by her mother, and
tearing up the strip of bark on which he had been sitting, moved to the
bows of the boat.</p>
<p>"They will see this! Tear up that board! So! Now, place it thus across the
bows. Hack off that sapling end! Now that dry twist of osier! Never mind
the boat, man; we can afford to leave her now. Tear off that outer strip
of hide. See, the wood beneath is dry! Quick—you are so slow."</p>
<p>"What are you going to do?" cried Frere, aghast, as the convict tore up
all the dry wood he could find, and heaped it on the sheet of bark placed
on the bows.</p>
<p>"To make a fire! See!"</p>
<p>Frere began to comprehend. "I have three matches left," he said, fumbling,
with trembling fingers, in his pocket. "I wrapped them in one of the
leaves of the book to keep them dry."</p>
<p>The word "book" was a new inspiration. Rufus Dawes seized upon the English
History, which had already done such service, tore out the drier leaves in
the middle of the volume, and carefully added them to the little heap of
touchwood.</p>
<p>"Now, steady!"</p>
<p>The match was struck and lighted. The paper, after a few obstinate
curlings, caught fire, and Frere, blowing the young flame with his breath,
the bark began to burn. He piled upon the fire all that was combustible,
the hides began to shrivel, and a great column of black smoke rose up over
the sea.</p>
<p>"Sylvia!" cried Rufus Dawes. "Sylvia! My darling! You are saved!"</p>
<p>She opened her blue eyes and looked at him, but gave no sign of
recognition. Delirium had hold of her, and in the hour of safety the child
had forgotten her preserver. Rufus Dawes, overcome by this last cruel
stroke of fortune, sat down in the stern of the boat, with the child in
his arms, speechless. Frere, feeding the fire, thought that the chance he
had so longed for had come. With the mother at the point of death, and the
child delirious, who could testify to this hated convict's skilfulness? No
one but Mr. Maurice Frere, and Mr. Maurice Frere, as Commandant of
convicts, could not but give up an "absconder" to justice.</p>
<p>The ship changed her course, and came towards this strange fire in the
middle of the ocean. The boat, the fore part of her blazing like a pine
torch, could not float above an hour. The little group of the convict and
the child remained motionless. Mrs. Vickers was lying senseless, ignorant
even of the approaching succour.</p>
<p>The ship—a brig, with American colours flying—came within hail
of them. Frere could almost distinguish figures on her deck. He made his
way aft to where Dawes was sitting, unconscious, with the child in his
arms, and stirred him roughly with his foot.</p>
<p>"Go forward," he said, in tones of command, "and give the child to me."</p>
<p>Rufus Dawes raised his head, and, seeing the approaching vessel, awoke to
the consciousness of his duty. With a low laugh, full of unutterable
bitterness, he placed the burden he had borne so tenderly in the arms of
the lieutenant, and moved to the blazing bows.</p>
<hr />
<p>The brig was close upon them. Her canvas loomed large and dusky, shadowing
the sea. Her wet decks shone in the morning sunlight. From her bulwarks
peered bearded and eager faces, looking with astonishment at this burning
boat and its haggard company, alone on that barren and stormy ocean.</p>
<p>Frere, with Sylvia in his arms, waited for her.</p>
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