he deepest sensation, Chief Justice
Blackburne proceeded to discharge his task. O'Brien was sentenced to be
hanged, beheaded, and quartered. "During the delivery of the sentence,"
says a writer of the period, "the most profound agitation pervaded in
the court; as it drew towards the close, the excitement became more
marked and intense; but when the last barbarous provisions of the
sentence were pronounced, the public feeling could only manifest itself
by stifled sobs and broken murmurs of sympathy for the heroic man, who,
alone, was unmoved during this awful scene, whose lips alone did not
quiver, whose hand alone did not tremble, but whose heart beat with the
calm pulsation of conscious guiltlessness and unsullied honour."

Nine months later (July 29th, 1849), the brig "Swift" sailed from
Kingstown harbour, bearing O'Brien, Meagher, M'Manus, and O'Donoghue
into exile. In the month of November the vessel reached Hobart Town,
where "tickets of leave" were offered to those gentlemen on condition of
their residing each one within a certain district marked out for him,
and giving their parole to make no attempt at escape while in possession
of the ticket. Messrs. Meagher, M'Manus, and O'Donoghue accepted these
terms; Mr. O'Brien refused them, and was consequently sent to an island
off the coast called Maria Island, where he was placed in strict custody
and treated with great severity. The news of the indignities and the
sufferings to which he was subjected, outraged the feelings of the Irish
people in the neighbouring country, and ere long his sympathisers in
Tasmania laid a plan for his escape. They hired a vessel to lie off the
coast on a particular day, and send a boat on shore to take off the
prisoner, who had been informed of the plot, and had arranged to be in
waiting for his deliverers. This design would unquestionably have
succeeded but for the treachery of the captain of the ship, who, before
sailing to the appointed spot, had given the government information of
the intended escape and the manner of it. What occurred on the arrival
of the vessel we shall relate in the words of Mr. Mitchel, who tells the
story in his "Jail Journal" as he heard it from Mr. O'Brien himself:

"At last as he wandered on the shore and had almost given up all hope of
the schooner, the schooner hove in sight. To give time for her approach
he walked into the woods for a space, that he might not alarm his
guardian constable by his attention