Page 198 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

CHAPTER X. JOHN

REX’S REVENGE.

rs Vickers, pale and sick with terror, yet sustained by
Mthat strange courage of which we have before spoken,
passed rapidly under the open skylight, and prepared to
ascend. Sylvia—her romance crushed by too dreadful real-
ity— clung to her mother with one hand, and with the other
pressed close to her little bosom the ‘English History”. In
her all-absorbing fear she had forgotten to lay it down.
‘Get a shawl, ma’am, or something,’ says Bates, ‘and a hat
for missy.’
Mrs. Vickers looked back across the space beneath the
open skylight, and shuddering, shook her head. The men
above swore impatiently at the delay, and the three has-
tened on deck.
‘Who’s to command the brig now?’ asked undaunted
Bates, as they came up.
‘I am,’ says John Rex, ‘and, with these brave fellows, I’ll
take her round the world.’
The touch of bombast was not out of place. It jumped so
far with the humour of the convicts that they set up a feeble
cheer, at which Sylvia frowned. Frightened as she was, the
prison-bred child was as much astonished at hearing con-
victs cheer as a fashionable lady would be to hear her footman

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