Page 361 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER VIII. AN ESCAPE.

few days after this—on the 23rd of December—Maurice
F
A rere was alarmed by a piece of startling intelligence.
The notorious Dawes had escaped from gaol!
Captain Frere had inspected the prison that very after-
noon, and it had seemed to him that the hammers had never
fallen so briskly, nor the chains clanked so gaily, as on the
occasion of his visit. ‘Thinking of their Christmas holiday,
the dogs!’ he had said to the patrolling warder. ‘Thinking
about their Christmas pudding, the luxurious scoundrels!’
and the convict nearest him had laughed appreciative-
ly, as convicts and schoolboys do laugh at the jests of the
man in authority. All seemed contentment. Moreover, he
had—by way of a pleasant stroke of wit—tormented Rufus
Dawes with his ill-fortune. ‘The schooner sails to-morrow,
my man,’ he had said; ‘you’ll spend your Christmas at the
mines.’ And congratulated himself upon the fact that Rufus
Dawes merely touched his cap, and went on with his stone-
cracking in silence. Certainly double irons and hard labour
were fine things to break a man’s spirit. So that, when in
the afternoon of that same day he heard the astounding
news that Rufus Dawes had freed himself from his fetters,
climbed the gaol wall in broad daylight, run the gauntlet of
Macquarie Street, and was now supposed to be safely hid-
den in the mountains, he was dumbfounded.

0 For the Term of His Natural Life