in the bush he must have retraced his steps, and returned
upon his own track to the settlement! More than half his allotted time
had passed, and he was not yet thirty miles from his prison. Death had
waited to overtake him in this barbarous wilderness. As a cat allows a
mouse to escape her for a while, so had he been permitted to trifle with
his fate, and lull 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 crimson light into the glade
below him. It was as though a bloody finger pointed at the corpse which
lay there, and Rufus Dawes, shuddering at the dismal omen, averting his
face, plunged 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 scanty
supply of food held out, he strove to keep away from the settlement.
Unable to resist the pangs of hunger, he had increased his daily ration;
and though the salted meat, exposed to rain and heat, had begun to turn
putrid, he never looked at it but he was seized with a desire to eat his
fill. The coarse lumps of carrion and the hard rye-loaves were to him
delicious morsels fit for the table of an emperor. Once or twice he
was constrained to pluck and eat the tops of tea-trees and peppermint
shrubs. These had an aromatic taste, and sufficed to stay the cravings
of hunger for a while, but they induced a raging thirst, which he slaked
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 dominant
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