Flint became suddenly animated.
"What?" he cried, sharply.
"Why, the last I heard of him—the day I sailed from Melbourne—was, that he was captured somewhere up in Queensland."
"If you had sailed a day later you would have heard more."
"What?" asked Dick, in his turn.
"He escaped."
"Escaped?"
"The same night. He got clean away from the police-barracks at Mount Clarence—that was the little Queensland township. They never caught him. They believe he managed to clear out of the country—to America, probably."
"By Jove, I'm not sorry!" exclaimed Dick.
"Here are some newspaper cuttings about him," continued Flint, taking the scraps from his pocketbook and handing them to Dick. "Read them afterwards; they will interest you. He was taken along with another fellow, but the other fellow was taken dead—shot through the heart. That must have been the one he called Ben; for the big brute who tried to knife you had disappeared some time before. When they were taken they were known to have a lot of gold somewhere—I mean, Sundown was—for they had just stuck up the Mount Clarence bank."