rarely swerve
From law, however stern, which tends their strength to serve."

Discipline must be maintained; so next morning the poor little
beggars were brought up on deck in batches, stripped, triced up, and
severely flogged. Jack, and a number of other boys, said they had
not cried at all, but the officer in charge thought it was better
that a few of the innocent should suffer rather than that one of the
guilty should escape, so they were all flogged alike, and soon after
they were shipped for New South Wales.

On his arrival n Sydney, Jack was assigned as a servant to a
squatter, and taken into the bush a long way to the west. The
weather had been very hot for a long time, all the grass had withered
to dust, and the cattle were starving. The first work which he was
ordered to do was to climb trees and cut off the branches, in order
that the cattle might keep themselves alive by eating the leaves and
twigs. Jack had never been used to handle an axe or tomahawk, so he
found the labour of chopping very hard. He did his best, but that
was not good enough for the squatter, who took him to a magistrate,
and had him flogged by the official scourger.

While serving his sentence of seven years he was flogged four times;
three of the times he said he had "done nothing," and for the fourth
flogging he confessed to me that he had "done something," but he did
not say what the "something" was. In those days it seems that "doing
nothing" and "doing something" were crimes equally meriting the lash.

And now after a long life of labour the old convict had achieved
independence at last. I don't think I ever met a richer man; he was
richer than the whole family of the Rothschilds; he wanted scarcely
anything. Food and clothing he obtained for the asking for them, and
he was not particular as to their quality of the quantity was
sufficient. Property to him was something despicable; he did not
want any, and would not live inside of a house if he had one; he
preferred the outside. He was free from family cares--never had
father or mother, sister or brother, wife or children. No poor relatives
ever claimed his hospitality; no intimate friends wanted to borrow
half-a-crown; no one ever asked him to buy suburban lots, or to take
shares in a limited liability company. He was perfectly indifferent
to all danger from bush-rangers, burglars, pickpockets, or cattle
stealers; he did not even own a dog, so the dogman never asked