do you think it is across the bay?" he asked of Frere.

"What, to Sarah Island?"

"No, to the Pilot Station."

"About four miles."

The convict sighed. "Too far to swim now, though I might have done it
once. But this sort of life weakens a man. It must be done after all."

"What are you going to do?" asked Frere.

"To kill the goat."

Sylvia uttered a little cry; she had become fond of her dumb companion.
"Kill Nanny! Oh, Mr. Dawes! What for?"

"I am going to make a boat for you," he said, "and I want hides, and
thread, and tallow."

A few weeks back Maurice Frere would have laughed at such a sentence,
but he had begun now to comprehend that this escaped convict was not a
man to be laughed at, and though he detested him for his superiority, he
could not but admit that he was superior.

"You can't get more than one hide off a goat, man?" he said, with an
inquiring tone in his voice--as though it was just possible that such
a marvellous being as Dawes could get a second hide, by virtue of some
secret process known only to himself.

"I am going to catch other goats." "Where?"

"At the Pilot Station."

"But how are you going to get there?"

"Float across. Come, there is not time for questioning! Go and cut down
some saplings, and let us begin!"

The lieutenant-master looked at the convict prisoner with astonishment,
and then gave way to the power of knowledge, and did as he was ordered.
Before sundown that evening the carcase of poor Nanny, broken into
various most unbutcherly fragments, was hanging on the nearest tree; and
Frere, returning with as many young saplings as he could drag together,
found Rufus Dawes engaged in a curious occupation. He had killed the
goat, and having cut off its head close under the jaws, and its legs
at the knee-joint, had extracted the carcase through a slit made in the
lower portion of the belly, which slit he had now sewn together with
string. This proceeding gave him a rough bag, and he was busily engaged
in filling this bag with such coarse grass as he could collect. Frere
observed, also, that the fat of the animal was carefully preserved, and
the intestines had been placed in a pool of water to soak.

The convict, however, declined to give information as to what he
intended to do. "It's my own notion," he said. "Let me alone. I may make
a failure of it." Frere, on being pressed by Sylvia, affected to know
all about the scheme, but to impose silence on himself. He was