nches of planking, jested and laughed over their plans of freedom and
vengeance. Though he conversed but little with his companions, these men
were his berth mates, and he could not but know how they would proceed
to wreak their vengeance on their gaolers.

True, that the head of this formidable chimera--John Rex, the
forger--was absent, but the two hands, or rather claws--the burglar and
the prison-breaker--were present, and the slimly-made, effeminate Crow,
if he had not the brains of the master, yet made up for his flaccid
muscles and nerveless frame by a cat-like cunning, and a spirit of
devilish volatility that nothing could subdue. With such a powerful ally
outside as the mock maid-servant, the chance of success was enormously
increased. There were one hundred and eighty convicts and but fifty
soldiers. If the first rush proved successful--and the precautions taken
by Sarah Purfoy rendered success possible--the vessel was theirs.
Rufus Dawes thought of the little bright-haired child who had run so
confidingly to meet him, and shuddered.

"There!" said the Crow, with a sneering laugh, "what do you think of
that? Does the girl look like nosing us now?"

"No," says the giant, stretching his great arms with a grin of delight,
as one stretches one's chest in the sun, "that's right, that is. That's
more like bizness."

"England, home and beauty!" said Vetch, with a mock-heroic air,
strangely out of tune with the subject under discussion. "You'd like to
go home again, wouldn't you, old man?"

Gabbett turned on him fiercely, his low forehead wrinkled into a frown
of ferocious recollection.

"You!" he said--"You think the chain's fine sport, don't yer? But I've
been there, my young chicken, and I knows what it means."

There was silence for a minute or two. The giant was plunged in gloomy
abstraction, and Vetch and the Moocher interchanged a significant
glance. Gabbett had been ten years at the colonial penal settlement of
Macquarie Harbour, and he had memories that he did not confide to his
companions. When he indulged in one of these fits of recollection, his
friends found it best to leave him to himself.

Rufus Dawes did not understand the sudden silence. With all his senses
stretched to the utmost to listen, the cessation of the whispered
colloquy affected him strangely. Old artillery-men have said that, after
being at work for days in the trenches, accustomed to the continued roar
of the guns, a sudden pause