The drifting log that had so strangely served as a means of saving Rufus Dawes swam with the current that was running out of the bay. For some time the burden that it bore was an insensible one. Exhausted1 with his desperate struggle for life, the convict lay along the rough back of this Heaven-sent raft without motion, almost without breath. At length a violent shock awoke him to consciousness, and he perceived that the log had become stranded2 on a sandy point, the extremity3 of which was lost in darkness. Painfully raising himself from his uncomfortable posture4, he staggered to his feet, and crawling a few paces up the beach, flung himself upon the ground and slept.
When morning dawned, he recognized his position. The log had, in passing under the lee of Philip’s Island, been cast upon the southern point of Coal Head; some three hundred yards from him were the mutilated sheds of the coal gang. For some time he lay still, basking5 in the warm rays of the rising sun, and scarcely caring to move his bruised6 and shattered limbs. The sensation of rest was so exquisite7, that it overpowered all other considerations, and he did not even trouble himself to conjecture10 the reason for the apparent desertion of the huts close by him. If there was no one there — well and good. If the coal party had not gone, he would be discovered in a few moments, and brought back to his island prison. In his exhaustion12 and misery13, he accepted the alternative and slept again.
As he laid down his aching head, Mr. Troke was reporting his death to Vickers, and while he still slept, the Ladybird, on her way out, passed him so closely that any one on board her might, with a good glass, have espied14 his slumbering15 figure as it lay upon the sand.
When he woke it was past midday, and the sun poured its full rays upon him. His clothes were dry in all places, save the side on which he had been lying, and he rose to his feet refreshed by his long sleep. He scarcely comprehended, as yet, his true position. He had escaped, it was true, but not for long. He was versed16 in the history of escapes, and knew that a man alone on that barren coast was face to face with starvation or recapture. Glancing up at the sun, he wondered indeed, how it was that he had been free so long. Then the coal sheds caught his eye, and he understood that they were untenanted. This astonished him, and he began to tremble with vague apprehension17. Entering, he looked around, expecting every moment to see some lurking18 constable19, or armed soldier. Suddenly his glance fell upon the food rations9 which lay in the corner where the departing convicts had flung them the night before. At such a moment, this discovery seemed like a direct revelation from Heaven. He would not have been surprised had they disappeared. Had he lived in another age, he would have looked round for the angel who had brought them.
By and by, having eaten of this miraculous20 provender21, the poor creature began — reckoning by his convict experience — to understand what had taken place. The coal workings were abandoned; the new Commandant had probably other work for his beasts of burden to execute, and an absconder22 would be safe here for a few hours at least. But he must not stay. For him there was no rest. If he thought to escape, it behoved him to commence his journey at once. As he contemplated23 the meat and bread, something like a ray of hope entered his gloomy soul. Here was provision for his needs. The food before him represented the rations of six men. Was it not possible to cross the desert that lay between him and freedom on such fare? The very supposition made his heart beat faster. It surely was possible. He must husband his resources; walk much and eat little; spread out the food for one day into the food for three. Here was six men’s food for one day, or one man’s food for six days. He would live on a third of this, and he would have rations for eighteen days. Eighteen days! What could he not do in eighteen days? He could walk thirty miles a day — forty miles a day — that would be six hundred miles and more. Yet stay; he must not be too sanguine24; the road was difficult; the scrub was in places impenetrable. He would have to make détours, and turn upon his tracks, to waste precious time. He would be moderate, and say twenty miles a day. Twenty miles a day was very easy walking. Taking a piece of stick from the ground, he made the calculation in the sand. Eighteen days, and twenty miles a day — three hundred and sixty miles. More than enough to take him to freedom. It could be done! With prudence25, it could be done! He must be careful and abstemious26! Abstemious! He had already eaten too much, and he hastily pulled a barely-tasted piece of meat from his mouth, and replaced it with the rest. The action which at any other time would have seemed disgusting, was, in the case of this poor creature, merely pitiable.
Having come to this resolution, the next thing was to disencumber himself of his irons. This was more easily done than he expected. He found in the shed an iron gad27, and with that and a stone he drove out the rivets28. The rings were too strong to be “ovalled”,* or he would have been free long ago. He packed the meat and bread together, and then pushing the gad into his belt — it might be needed as a weapon of defence — he set out on his journey.
* Ovalled —“To oval” is a term in use among convicts, and means so to bend the round ring of the ankle fetter29 that the heel can be drawn30 up through it.
His intention was to get round the settlement to the coast, reach the settled districts, and, by some tale of shipwreck31 or of wandering, procure32 assistance. As to what was particularly to be done when he found himself among free men, he did not pause to consider. At that point his difficulties seemed to him to end. Let him but traverse the desert that was before him, and he would trust to his own ingenuity33, or the chance of fortune, to avert34 suspicion. The peril35 of immediate36 detection was so imminent37 that, beside it, all other fears were dwarfed38 into insignificance39.
Before dawn next morning he had travelled ten miles, and by husbanding his food, he succeeded by the night of the fourth day in accomplishing forty more. Footsore and weary, he lay in a thicket40 of the thorny41 melaleuca, and felt at last that he was beyond pursuit. The next day he advanced more slowly. The bush was unpropitious. Dense42 scrub and savage43 jungle impeded44 his path; barren and stony45 mountain ranges arose before him. He was lost in gullies, entangled46 in thickets47, bewildered in morasses48. The sea that had hitherto gleamed, salt, glittering, and hungry upon his right hand, now shifted to his left. He had mistaken his course, and he must turn again. For two days did this bewilderment last, and on the third he came to a mighty49 cliff that pierced with its blunt pinnacle50 the clustering bush. He must go over or round this obstacle, and he decided51 to go round it. A natural pathway wound about its foot. Here and there branches were broken, and it seemed to the poor wretch52, fainting under the weight of his lessening53 burden, that his were not the first footsteps which had trodden there. The path terminated in a glade54, and at the bottom of this glade was something that fluttered. Rufus Dawes pressed forward, and stumbled over a corpse55!
In the terrible stillness of that solitary56 place he felt suddenly as though a voice had called to him. All the hideous57 fantastic tales of murder which he had read or heard seemed to take visible shape in the person of the loathly carcase before him, clad in the yellow dress of a convict, and lying flung together on the ground as though struck down. Stooping over it, impelled58 by an irresistible59 impulse to know the worst, he found the body was mangled60. One arm was missing, and the skull61 had been beaten in by some heavy instrument! The first thought — that this heap of rags and bones was a mute witness to the folly62 of his own undertaking63, the corpse of some starved absconder — gave place to a second more horrible suspicion. He recognized the number imprinted64 on the coarse cloth as that which had designated the younger of the two men who had escaped with Gabbett. He was standing65 on the place where a murder had been committed! A murder!— and what else? Thank God the food he carried was not yet exhausted! He turned and fled, looking back fearfully as he went. He could not breathe in the shadow of that awful mountain.
Crashing through scrub and brake, torn, bleeding, and wild with terror, he reached a spur on the range, and looked around him. Above him rose the iron hills, below him lay the panorama66 of the bush. The white cone67 of the Frenchman’s Cap was on his right hand, on his left a succession of ranges seemed to bar further progress. A gleam, as of a lake, streaked69 the eastward70. Gigantic pine trees reared their graceful71 heads against the opal of the evening sky, and at their feet the dense scrub through which he had so painfully toiled72, spread without break and without flaw. It seemed as though he could leap from where he stood upon a solid mass of tree-tops. He raised his eyes, and right against him, like a long dull sword, lay the narrow steel-blue reach of the harbour from which he had escaped. One darker speck73 moved on the dark water. It was the Osprey making for the Gates. It seemed that he could throw a stone upon her deck. A faint cry of rage escaped him. During the last three days in the bush he must have retraced74 his steps, and returned upon his own track to the settlement! More than half his allotted75 time had passed, and he was not yet thirty miles from his prison. Death had waited to overtake him in this barbarous wilderness76. As a cat allows a mouse to escape her for a while, so had he been permitted to trifle with his fate, and lull77 himself into a false security. Escape was hopeless now. He never could escape; and as the unhappy man raised his despairing eyes, he saw that the sun, redly sinking behind a lofty pine which topped the opposite hill, shot a ray of crimson78 light into the glade below him. It was as though a bloody79 finger pointed80 at the corpse which lay there, and Rufus Dawes, shuddering81 at the dismal82 omen11, averting83 his face, plunged84 again into the forest.
For four days he wandered aimlessly through the bush. He had given up all hopes of making the overland journey, and yet, as long as his scanty85 supply of food held out, he strove to keep away from the settlement. Unable to resist the pangs86 of hunger, he had increased his daily ration8; and though the salted meat, exposed to rain and heat, had begun to turn putrid87, he never looked at it but he was seized with a desire to eat his fill. The coarse lumps of carrion88 and the hard rye-loaves were to him delicious morsels89 fit for the table of an emperor. Once or twice he was constrained90 to pluck and eat the tops of tea-trees and peppermint91 shrubs92. These had an aromatic93 taste, and sufficed to stay the cravings of hunger for a while, but they induced a raging thirst, which he slaked94 at the icy mountain springs. Had it not been for the frequency of these streams, he must have died in a few days. At last, on the twelfth day from his departure from the Coal Head, he found himself at the foot of Mount Direction, at the head of the peninsula which makes the western side of the harbour. His terrible wandering had but led him to make a complete circuit of the settlement, and the next night brought him round the shores of Birches Inlet to the landing-place opposite to Sarah Island. His stock of provisions had been exhausted for two days, and he was savage with hunger. He no longer thought of suicide. His dominant95 idea was now to get food. He would do as many others had done before him — give himself up to be flogged and fed. When he reached the landing-place, however, the guard-house was empty. He looked across at the island prison, and saw no sign of life. The settlement was deserted96! The shock of this discovery almost deprived him of reason. For days, that had seemed centuries, he had kept life in his jaded97 and lacerated body solely98 by the strength of his fierce determination to reach the settlement; and now that he had reached it, after a journey of unparalleled horror, he found it deserted. He struck himself to see if he was not dreaming. He refused to believe his eyesight. He shouted, screamed, and waved his tattered99 garments in the air. Exhausted by these paroxysms, he said to himself, quite calmly, that the sun beating on his unprotected head had dazed his brain, and that in a few minutes he should see well-remembered boats pulling towards him. Then, when no boat came, he argued that he was mistaken in the place; the island yonder was not Sarah Island, but some other island like it, and that in a second or so he would be able to detect the difference. But the inexorable mountains, so hideously100 familiar for six weary years, made mute reply, and the sea, crawling at his feet, seemed to grin at him with a thin-lipped, hungry mouth. Yet the fact of the desertion seemed so inexplicable101 that he could not realize it. He felt as might have felt that wanderer in the enchanted102 mountains, who, returning in the morning to look for his companions, found them turned to stone.
At last the dreadful truth forced itself upon him; he retired103 a few paces, and then, with a horrible cry of furious despair, stumbled forward towards the edge of the little reef that fringed the shore. Just as he was about to fling himself for the second time into the dark water, his eyes, sweeping104 in a last long look around the bay, caught sight of a strange appearance on the left horn of the sea beach. A thin, blue streak68, uprising from behind the western arm of the little inlet, hung in the still air. It was the smoke of a fire!
The dying wretch felt inspired with new hope. God had sent him a direct sign from Heaven. The tiny column of bluish vapour seemed to him as glorious as the Pillar of Fire that led the Israelites. There were yet human beings near him!— and turning his face from the hungry sea, he tottered105 with the last effort of his failing strength towards the blessed token of their presence.
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1
exhausted
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| adj.极其疲惫的，精疲力尽的 | |
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stranded
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| a.搁浅的，进退两难的 | |
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extremity
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| n.末端，尽头；尽力；终极；极度 | |
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posture
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| n.姿势，姿态，心态，态度；v.作出某种姿势 | |
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basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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exquisite
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| adj.精美的；敏锐的；剧烈的，感觉强烈的 | |
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ration
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| n.定量(pl.)给养，口粮；vt.定量供应 | |
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rations
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| 定量( ration的名词复数 )； 配给量； 正常量； 合理的量 | |
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conjecture
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| n./v.推测，猜测 | |
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omen
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| n.征兆，预兆；vt.预示 | |
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exhaustion
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| n.耗尽枯竭，疲惫，筋疲力尽，竭尽，详尽无遗的论述 | |
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misery
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| n.痛苦，苦恼，苦难；悲惨的境遇，贫苦 | |
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espied
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| v.看到( espy的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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slumbering
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| 微睡，睡眠（slumber的现在分词形式） | |
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versed
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| adj. 精通，熟练 | |
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apprehension
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| n.理解，领悟；逮捕，拘捕；忧虑 | |
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lurking
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| 潜在 | |
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constable
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| n.(英国)警察，警官 | |
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miraculous
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| adj.像奇迹一样的，不可思议的 | |
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provender
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| n.刍草；秣料 | |
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absconder
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| n.潜逃者，逃跑者 | |
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contemplated
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| adj. 预期的 动词contemplate的过去分词形式 | |
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sanguine
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| adj.充满希望的，乐观的，血红色的 | |
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prudence
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| n.谨慎，精明，节俭 | |
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abstemious
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| adj.有节制的，节俭的 | |
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gad
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| n.闲逛；v.闲逛 | |
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rivets
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| 铆钉( rivet的名词复数 ) | |
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fetter
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| n./vt.脚镣，束缚 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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shipwreck
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| n.船舶失事，海难 | |
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procure
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| vt.获得，取得，促成；vi.拉皮条 | |
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ingenuity
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| n.别出心裁；善于发明创造 | |
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avert
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| v.防止，避免；转移(目光、注意力等) | |
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peril
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| n.(严重的)危险；危险的事物 | |
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immediate
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| adj.立即的；直接的，最接近的；紧靠的 | |
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imminent
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| adj.即将发生的，临近的，逼近的 | |
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dwarfed
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| vt.（使）显得矮小（dwarf的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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insignificance
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| n.不重要；无价值；无意义 | |
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thicket
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| n.灌木丛，树林 | |
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thorny
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| adj.多刺的，棘手的 | |
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dense
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| a.密集的，稠密的，浓密的；密度大的 | |
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savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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stony
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| adj.石头的，多石头的，冷酷的，无情的 | |
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entangled
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| adj.卷入的；陷入的；被缠住的；缠在一起的v.使某人（某物/自己）缠绕，纠缠于（某物中），使某人（自己）陷入（困难或复杂的环境中）( entangle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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thickets
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| n.灌木丛( thicket的名词复数 )；丛状物 | |
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morasses
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| n.缠作一团( morass的名词复数 )；困境；沼泽；陷阱 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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pinnacle
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| n.尖塔，尖顶，山峰；(喻)顶峰 | |
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decided
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| adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的 | |
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wretch
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| n.可怜的人，不幸的人；卑鄙的人 | |
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lessening
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| 减轻，减少，变小 | |
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glade
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| n.林间空地，一片表面有草的沼泽低地 | |
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corpse
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| n.尸体，死尸 | |
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solitary
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| adj.孤独的，独立的，荒凉的；n.隐士 | |
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hideous
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| adj.丑陋的，可憎的，可怕的，恐怖的 | |
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impelled
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| v.推动、推进或敦促某人做某事( impel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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irresistible
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| adj.非常诱人的，无法拒绝的，无法抗拒的 | |
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mangled
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| vt.乱砍（mangle的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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skull
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| n.头骨；颅骨 | |
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folly
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| n.愚笨，愚蠢，蠢事，蠢行，傻话 | |
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undertaking
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| n.保证，许诺，事业 | |
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imprinted
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| v.盖印（imprint的过去式与过去分词形式） | |
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standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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panorama
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| n.全景，全景画，全景摄影，全景照片[装置] | |
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cone
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| n.圆锥体，圆锥形东西，球果 | |
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streak
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| n.条理，斑纹，倾向，少许，痕迹；v.加条纹，变成条纹，奔驰，快速移动 | |
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streaked
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| adj.有条斑纹的，不安的v.快速移动( streak的过去式和过去分词 )；使布满条纹 | |
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eastward
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| adv.向东；adj.向东的；n.东方，东部 | |
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graceful
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| adj.优美的，优雅的；得体的 | |
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toiled
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的过去式和过去分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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speck
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| n.微粒，小污点，小斑点 | |
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retraced
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| v.折回( retrace的过去式和过去分词 )；回忆；回顾；追溯 | |
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allotted
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| 分配，拨给，摊派( allot的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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lull
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| v.使安静，使入睡，缓和，哄骗；n.暂停，间歇 | |
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crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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bloody
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| adj.非常的的；流血的；残忍的；adv.很；vt.血染 | |
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pointed
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| adj.尖的，直截了当的 | |
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81
shuddering
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| v.战栗( shudder的现在分词 )；发抖；（机器、车辆等）突然震动；颤动 | |
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82
dismal
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| adj.阴沉的，凄凉的，令人忧郁的，差劲的 | |
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83
averting
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| 防止，避免( avert的现在分词 )； 转移 | |
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84
plunged
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| v.颠簸( plunge的过去式和过去分词 )；暴跌；骤降；突降 | |
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85
scanty
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| adj.缺乏的，仅有的，节省的，狭小的，不够的 | |
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86
pangs
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| 突然的剧痛( pang的名词复数 )； 悲痛 | |
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87
putrid
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| adj.腐臭的；有毒的；已腐烂的；卑劣的 | |
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carrion
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| n.腐肉 | |
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89
morsels
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| n.一口( morsel的名词复数 )；（尤指食物）小块，碎屑 | |
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constrained
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| adj.束缚的,节制的 | |
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91
peppermint
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| n.薄荷，薄荷油，薄荷糖 | |
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shrubs
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| 灌木( shrub的名词复数 ) | |
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aromatic
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| adj.芳香的，有香味的 | |
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slaked
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| v.满足( slake的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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95
dominant
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| adj.支配的，统治的；占优势的；显性的；n.主因，要素，主要的人(或物)；显性基因 | |
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96
deserted
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| adj.荒芜的，荒废的，无人的，被遗弃的 | |
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jaded
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| adj.精疲力竭的；厌倦的；（因过饱或过多而）腻烦的；迟钝的 | |
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solely
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| adv.仅仅，唯一地 | |
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99
tattered
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| adj.破旧的，衣衫破的 | |
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100
hideously
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| adv.可怕地，非常讨厌地 | |
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101
inexplicable
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| adj.无法解释的，难理解的 | |
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102
enchanted
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| adj. 被施魔法的，陶醉的，入迷的 动词enchant的过去式和过去分词 | |
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103
retired
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| adj.隐退的，退休的，退役的 | |
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104
sweeping
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| adj.范围广大的，一扫无遗的 | |
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105
tottered
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| v.走得或动得不稳( totter的过去式和过去分词 )；踉跄；蹒跚；摇摇欲坠 | |
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