Page 355 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

whom he had saved, and who loved him. When, on board
the whaler that had rescued him from the burning boat,
he had felt that the sailors, believing in Frere’s bluff lies,
shrunk from the moody felon, he had gained strength to
be silent by thinking of the suffering child. When poor Mrs.
Vickers died, making no sign, and thus the chief witness
to his heroism perished before his eyes, the thought that
the child was left had restrained his selfish regrets. When
Frere, handing him over to the authorities as an absconder,
ingeniously twisted the details of the boat-building to his
own glorification, the knowledge that Sylvia would assign
to these pretensions their true value had given him cour-
age to keep silence. So strong was his belief in her gratitude,
that he scorned to beg for the pardon he had taught him-
self to believe that she would ask for him. So utter was his
contempt for the coward and boaster who, dressed in brief
authority, bore insidious false witness against him, that,
when he heard his sentence of life banishment, he disdained
to make known the true part he had played in the matter,
preferring to wait for the more exquisite revenge, the more
complete justification which would follow upon the recov-
ery of the child from her illness. But when, at Port Arthur,
day after day passed over, and brought no word of pity or
justification, he began, with a sickening feeling of despair,
to comprehend that something strange had happened. He
was told by newcomers that the child of the Commandant
lay still and near to death. Then he heard that she and her
father had left the colony, and that all prospect of her right-
ing him by her evidence was at an end. This news gave him

For the Term of His Natural Life