Page 464 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

honest folks averred—how ungrateful were these juve-
nile convicts for the goods the Government had provided
for them. From the extremity of Long Bay, as the exten-
sion of the sea-arm was named, a convict-made tramroad
ran due north, through the nearly impenetrable thicket to
Norfolk Bay. In the mouth of Norfolk Bay was Woody Is-
land. This was used as a signal station, and an armed boat’s
crew was stationed there. To the north of Woody Island lay
One-tree Point—the southernmost projection of the drop
of the earring; and the sea that ran between narrowed to
the eastward until it struck on the sandy bar of Eaglehawk
Neck. Eaglehawk Neck was the link that connected the two
drops of the earring. It was a strip of sand four hundred
and fifty yards across. On its eastern side the blue waters of
Pirates’ Bay, that is to say, of the Southern Ocean, poured
their unchecked force. The isthmus emerged from a wild
and terrible coast-line, into whose bowels the ravenous sea
had bored strange caverns, resonant with perpetual roar of
tortured billows. At one spot in this wilderness the ocean
had penetrated the wall of rock for two hundred feet, and in
stormy weather the salt spray rose through a perpendicular
shaft more than five hundred feet deep. This place was called
the Devil’s Blow-hole. The upper drop of the earring was
named Forrestier’s Peninsula, and was joined to the main-
land by another isthmus called East Bay Neck. Forrestier’s
Peninsula was an almost impenetrable thicket, growing to
the brink of a perpendicular cliff of basalt.
Eaglehawk Neck was the door to the prison, and it was
kept bolted. On the narrow strip of land was built a guard-