Page 56 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

to half a guinea for every man he delivered alive at Hobart
Town, he had some reason to complain.
When Frere had come down, an hour before, the prison-
ers were all snugly between their blankets. They were not so
now; though, at the first clink of the bolts, they would be
back again in their old positions, to all appearances sound
asleep. As the eye became accustomed to the foetid duski-
ness of the prison, a strange picture presented itself. Groups
of men, in all imaginable attitudes, were lying, standing,
sitting, or pacing up and down. It was the scene on the
poop-deck over again; only, here being no fear of restrain-
ing keepers, the wild beasts were a little more free in their
movements. It is impossible to convey, in words, any idea
of the hideous phantasmagoria of shifting limbs and fac-
es which moved through the evil-smelling twilight of this
terrible prison-house. Callot might have drawn it, Dante
might have suggested it, but a minute attempt to describe
its horrors would but disgust. There are depths in human-
ity which one cannot explore, as there are mephitic caverns
into which one dare not penetrate.
Old men, young men, and boys, stalwart burglars and
highway robbers, slept side by side with wizened pickpock-
ets or cunning-featured area-sneaks. The forger occupied
the same berth with the body-snatcher. The man of edu-
cation learned strange secrets of house-breakers’ craft, and
the vulgar ruffian of St. Giles took lessons of self-control
from the keener intellect of the professional swindler. The
fraudulent clerk and the flash ‘cracksman’ interchanged
experiences. The smuggler’s stories of lucky ventures and