Page 163 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

means; and we have seen through what a furnace Rufus
Dawes had passed before he set foot on the barren shore
of Hell’s Gates. But to appreciate in its intensity the agony
he suffered since that time, we must multiply the infamy
of the ‘tween decks of the Malabar a hundred fold. In that
prison was at least some ray of light. All were not abomina-
ble; all were not utterly lost to shame and manhood. Stifling
though the prison, infamous the companionship, terrible
the memory of past happiness— there was yet ignorance of
the future, there was yet hope. But at Macquarie Harbour
was poured out the very dregs of this cup of desolation. The
worst had come, and the worst must for ever remain. The pit
of torment was so deep that one could not even see Heav-
en. There was no hope there so long as life remained. Death
alone kept the keys of that island prison.
Is it possible to imagine, even for a moment, what an in-
nocent man, gifted with ambition, endowed with power to
love and to respect, must have suffered during one week
of such punishment? We ordinary men, leading ordinary
lives—walking, riding, laughing, marrying and giving in
marriage—can form no notion of such misery as this. Some
dim ideas we may have about the sweetness of liberty and
the loathing that evil company inspires; but that is all. We
know that were we chained and degraded, fed like dogs,
employed as beasts of burden, driven to our daily toil with
threats and blows, and herded with wretches among whom
all that savours of decency and manliness is held in an open
scorn, we should die, perhaps, or go mad. But we do not
know, and can never know, how unutterably loathsome life

1 For the Term of His Natural Life