Page 549 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

falls again. He must rest, or go mad. His limbs are power-
less. His eyelids are glued together. He sleeps as he stands.
This horrible thing must be a dream. He is at Port Arthur,
or will wake on his pallet in the penny lodging-house he
slept at when a boy. Is that the Deputy come to wake him
to the torment of living? It is not time—surely not time yet.
He sleeps—and the giant, grinning with ferocious joy, ap-
proaches on clumsy tiptoe and seizes the coveted axe.
On the north coast of Van Diemen’s Land is a place called
St Helen’s Point, and a certain skipper, being in want of fresh
water; landing there with a boat’s crew, found on the banks
of the creek a gaunt and blood-stained man, clad in tattered
yellow, who carried on his back an axe and a bundle. When
the sailors came within sight of him, he made signs to them
to approach, and, opening his bundle with much ceremo-
ny, offered them some of its contents. Filled with horror at
what the maniac displayed, they seized and bound him. At
Hobart Town he was recognized as the only survivor of the
nine desperadoes who had escaped from Colonel Arthur’s
‘Natural Penitentiary”.
END OF BOOK THE THIRD

For the Term of His Natural Life