Page 245 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER XIV. A

WONDERFUL DAY’S WORK.

he next morning Rufus Dawes was stirring by daylight.
THe 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 distanc-
es 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 him-
self 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

For the Term of His Natural Life