ry, and consequently their
disappearance caused no inquiries to be made concerning them. If the
waters of Hobson's Bay would give up their dead, and the dead could
speak, there would be a long series of fearful tales."

"Those bushranger fellows must have been terrible men," remarked Harry
as the gentleman paused. "What did the authorities do with them whenever
they caught any?"

"They disposed of them in various ways," was the reply. "Those who had
been guilty of murder or an attempt at it were hanged, while those
against whom murder could not be proved were sent to the hulks for life
or for long terms of imprisonment."

"What were the hulks? I don't know as I understand the term."

"Oh, the hulks were ships, old ships that had been pronounced
unseaworthy and dismantled. They were anchored in Hobson's Bay after
being fitted up as prisons, and very uncomfortable prisons they were. A
most terrible system of discipline prevailed on board of these hulks.
The man who established the system, or rather, the one who had
administered it, was beaten to death by a gang of desperate convicts,
who rushed upon him one day on the deck of one of the hulks, with the
determination to kill him for the cruelties they had suffered. Before
the guards could stop them they had literally pounded the life out of
him and flung his body overboard."

"How long did they keep up that system?" one of the youths asked.

"From 1850 to 1857," their informant replied. "In the last-named year
the practise of imprisonment on board of the hulks was discontinued and
the convicts were put into prisons on shore. Four of the hulks were sold
and broken up, and the fifth, the _Success_, was bought by speculators
and kept for exhibition purposes. She was shown in all the ports of
Australia for many years, and was at last taken to England and put on
exhibition there. She was five months making the voyage from Australia
to England, and at one time fears were entertained for her safety; but
she reached her destination all right, and has probably reaped a harvest
of money for her exhibitors. She was built in India in 1790, her hull
being made of solid teak-wood. She was an East Indian trader for more
than forty years, then she was an emigrant ship, and finally, in 1852, a
convict hulk.

"The convicts on board these hulks, or at any rate the worst of them,
were always kept in irons, but this did not deter them from jumping
overboard and trying to swim to the sh