Page 356 - for-the-term-of-his-natural-life

a terrible pang; and at first he was inclined to break out
into upbraidings of her selfishness. But, with that depth of
love which was in him, albeit crusted over and concealed
by the sullenness of speech and manner which his suffer-
ings had produced, he found excuses for her even then. She
was ill. She was in the hands of friends who loved her, and
disregarded him; perhaps, even her entreaties and explana-
tions were put aside as childish babblings. She would free
him if she had the power. Then he wrote ‘Statements’, ag-
onized to see the Commandant, pestered the gaolers and
warders with the story of his wrongs, and inundated the
Government with letters, which, containing, as they did al-
ways, denunciations of Maurice Frere, were never suffered
to reach their destination. The authorities, willing at the
first to look kindly upon him in consideration of his strange
experience, grew weary of this perpetual iteration of what
they believed to be malicious falsehoods, and ordered him
heavier tasks and more continuous labour. They mistook
his gloom for treachery, his impatient outbursts of passion
at his fate for ferocity, his silent endurance for dangerous
cunning. As he had been at Macquarie Harbour, so did he
become at Port Arthur— a marked man. Despairing of win-
ning his coveted liberty by fair means, and horrified at the
hideous prospect of a life in chains, he twice attempted to
escape, but escape was even more hopeless than it had been
at Hell’s Gates. The peninsula of Port Arthur was admirably
guarded, signal stations drew a chain round the prison, an
armed boat’s crew watched each bay, and across the narrow
isthmus which connected it with the mainland was a cor-