o be?"

"We'll go with you!" says the man who had pulled the stroke in the
whale-boat, spitting into the water with averted face. Upon which
utterance the convicts burst into joyous oaths, and the pair were
received with much hand-shaking.

Then Rex, with Lyon and Riley as a guard, got into the whale boat, and
having loosed the two prisoners from their bonds, ordered them to take
the place of Russen and Fair. The whale-boat was manned by the seven
mutineers, Rex steering, Fair, Russen, and the two recruits pulling,
and the other four standing up, with their muskets levelled at the
jolly-boat. Their long slavery had begotten such a dread of authority in
these men that they feared it even when it was bound and menaced by four
muskets. "Keep your distance!" shouted Cheshire, as Frere and Bates, in
obedience to orders, began to pull the jolly-boat towards the shore; and
in this fashion was the dismal little party conveyed to the mainland.

It was night when they reached it, but the clear sky began to thrill
with a late moon as yet unrisen, and the waves, breaking gently upon
the beach, glimmered with a radiance born of their own motion. Frere and
Bates, jumping ashore, helped out Mrs. Vickers, Sylvia, and the wounded
Grimes. This being done under the muzzles of the muskets, Rex commanded
that Bates and Frere should push the jolly-boat as far as they could
from the shore, and Riley catching her by a boat-hook as she came
towards them, she was taken in tow.

"Now, boys," says Cheshire, with a savage delight, "three cheers for old
England and Liberty!"

Upon which a great shout went up, echoed by the grim hills which had
witnessed so many miseries.

To the wretched five, this exultant mirth sounded like a knell of death.
"Great God!" cried Bates, running up to his knees in water after the
departing boats, "would you leave us here to starve?"

The only answer was the jerk and dip of the retreating oars.

CHAPTER XI. LEFT AT "HELL'S GATES."

There is no need to dwell upon the mental agonies of that miserable
night. Perhaps, of all the five, the one least qualified to endure
it realized the prospect of suffering most acutely. Mrs.
Vickers--lay-figure and noodle as she was--had the keen instinct of
approaching danger, which is in her sex a sixth sense. She was a woman
and a mother, and owned a double capacity for suffering. Her feminine
imagination pictured all the horrors of death by famine, and having
realiz