Page 200 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

Bates was silent. The logic of that grin was unanswer-
able.
‘Come!’ cried the Dandy, shaking off his momentary mel-
ancholy, ‘look alive there! Lower away the jolly-boat. Mrs.
Vickers, go down to your cabin and get anything you want.
I am compelled to put you ashore, but I have no wish to
leave you without clothes.’ Bates listened, in a sort of dismal
admiration, at this courtly convict. He could not have spo-
ken like that had life depended on it. ‘Now, my little lady,’
continued Rex, ‘run down with your mamma, and don’t be
frightened.’
Sylvia flashed burning red at this indignity. ‘Frightened!
If there had been anybody else here but women, you never
would have taken the brig. Frightened! Let me pass, pris-
oner!’
The whole deck burst into a great laugh at this, and poor
Mrs. Vickers paused, trembling for the consequences of the
child’s temerity. To thus taunt the desperate convict who
held their lives in his hands seemed sheer madness. In the
boldness of the speech however, lay its safeguard. Rex—
whose politeness was mere bravado—was stung to the quick
by the reflection upon his courage, and the bitter accent with
which the child had pronounced the word prisoner (the ge-
neric name of convicts) made him bite his lips with rage.
Had he had his will, he would have struck the little creature
to the deck, but the hoarse laugh of his companions warned
him to forbear. There is ‘public opinion’ even among con-
victs, and Rex dared not vent his passion on so helpless an
object. As men do in such cases, he veiled his anger beneath

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