Page 166 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

sitting on the ground among the fragments of his garden-
ing tools. For this act of wanton mischief he was flogged.
At the triangles his behaviour was considered curious. He
wept and prayed to be released, fell on his knees to Barton,
and implored pardon. Barton would not listen, and at the
first blow the prisoner was silent. From that time he became
more sullen than ever, only at times he was observed, when
alone, to fling himself on the ground and cry like a child. It
was generally thought that his brain was affected.
When Vickers came, Dawes sought an interview, and
begged to be sent back to Hobart Town. This was refused,
of course, but he was put to work on the Osprey. After work-
ing there for some time, and being released from his irons,
he concealed himself on the slip, and in the evening swam
across the harbour. He was pursued, retaken, and flogged.
Then he ran the dismal round of punishment. He burnt
lime, dragged timber, and tugged at the oar. The heaviest
and most degrading tasks were always his. Shunned and
hated by his companions, feared by the convict overseers,
and regarded with unfriendly eyes by the authorities, Ru-
fus Dawes was at the very bottom of that abyss of woe into
which he had voluntarily cast himself. Goaded to despera-
tion by his own thoughts, he had joined with Gabbett and
the unlucky three in their desperate attempt to escape; but,
as Vickers stated, he had been captured almost instant-
ly. He was lamed by the heavy irons he wore, and though
Gabbett— with a strange eagerness for which after events
accounted—insisted that he could make good his flight, the
unhappy man fell in the first hundred yards of the terri-

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