Page 270 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

think of freedom and of honour. Let him keep silence, and
pursue the life fate had marked out for him. He would re-
turn to bondage. The law would claim him as an absconder,
and would mete out to him such punishment as was fitting.
Perhaps he might escape severest punishment, as a reward
for his exertions in saving the child. He might consider
himself fortunate if such was permitted to him. Fortunate!
Suppose he did not go back at all, but wandered away into
the wilderness and died? Better death than such a doom as
his. Yet need he die? He had caught goats, he could catch
fish. He could build a hut. In here was, perchance, at the de-
serted settlement some remnant of seed corn that, planted,
would give him bread. He had built a boat, he had made
an oven, he had fenced in a hut. Surely he could contrive
to live alone savage and free. Alone! He had contrived all
these marvels alone! Was not the boat he himself had built
below upon the shore? Why not escape in her, and leave to
their fate the miserable creatures who had treated him with
such ingratitude?
The idea flashed into his brain, as though someone had
spoken the words into his ear. Twenty strides would place
him in possession of the boat, and half an hour’s drifting
with the current would take him beyond pursuit. Once out-
side the Bar, he would make for the westward, in the hopes
of falling in with some whaler. He would doubtless meet
with one before many days, and he was well supplied with
provision and water in the meantime. A tale of shipwreck
would satisfy the sailors, and—he paused—he had forgot-
ten that the rags which he wore would betray him. With