Page 591 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

shoulder, as if in pain or anger, and seemed about to speak,
but, casting his eyes upon the group in the cell, relapsed
into silence again. I must get speech with him alone. One
can do nothing with a man if seven other devils worse than
himself are locked up with him.
I sent for Hankey, and asked him about cells. He says that
the gaol is crowded to suffocation. ‘Solitary confinement’ is
a mere name. There are six men, each sentenced to solitary
confinement, in a cell together. The cell is called the ‘nun-
nery”. It is small, and the six men were naked to the waist
when I entered, the perspiration pouring in streams off their
naked bodies! It is disgusting to write of such things.
June 26th.—Pounce has departed in the Lady Franklin
for Hobart Town, and it is rumoured that we are to have a
new Commandant. The Lady Franklin is commanded by
an old man named Blunt, a protegé of Frere’s, and a fellow
to whom I have taken one of my inexplicable and unreason-
ing dislikes.
Saw Rufus Dawes this morning. He continues sullen and
morose. His papers are very bad. He is perpetually up for
punishment. I am informed that he and a man named East-
wood, nicknamed ‘Jacky Jacky’, glory in being the leaders
of the Ring, and that they openly avow themselves weary of
life. Can it be that the unmerited flogging which the poor
creature got at Port Arthur has aided, with other sufferings,
to bring him to this horrible state of mind? It is quite possi-
ble. Oh, James North, remember your own crime, and pray
Heaven to let you redeem one soul at least, to plead for your
own at the Judgment Seat.

0 For the Term of His Natural Life