"What could you do?"
"Get him fifty lashes!" replied the major vindictively. "I should have mentioned that I happen to be a magistrate of the colony. You may bring your man before me in my own house any day you like, and for the first piece of impudence he shall have his fifty. I also happen to possess some private influence with the Governor. I need hardly say that it would be my privilege to use it in your interest, could you but show me the way."
"You have influence with the Governor?" cried the widow, with an animation which she had not hitherto displayed, and which vastly enhanced her charms. "Then get my poor gardener, not fifty lashes, but his ticket-of-leave!"
The other gazed upon her with kindling admiration, and a pleasant, smiling tolerance.
"A philanthropist!" said he. "An enthusiast in philanthropy! Only wait, my dear lady, until you've been out here a little longer. Why, I shall have the fellow before me in a week!"
And taking off his hat as he spoke, the major jerked his bald head in the direction of the convict gardener, and departed chuckling; but turned more thoughtful on the way, and reached home walking slowly, his yellow face ploughed with thought. Major Blacker was sixty years of age, but he never considered himself an old man, and now of a sudden he felt full ten years younger. He consulted his glass when he got in; the climate had dried him up a little; but there were black hairs in his whiskers yet, and a youthful glitter in his mirrored eyes which he hoped had not been wanting in the late interview. Major Blacker had lived; and now the desire was come to him to live a little more. Turning from the mirror to his bedroom window he beheld the smoke of the widow's cottage making a grey lane through the sunset; in between and down below the fretted floor of the bay was rosy indeed from shore to shore; overhead an incredible blue was fast changing to richest purple. And to such accompaniments of the eye, and in blood as cold as you please, the major's mind was made up.
Two days later—in a community which counted three men to the woman, there was no time to be lost—in two days, therefore, Major Blacker presented himself once more at the widow's cottage. He had devoured his Pickwick to the last line of the second number, and the book armed him both with a topic of familiar conversation and an excuse for a second visit so precipitate. He needed numbers three and four; but the widow was from home; the assigned servant had taken her out in a boat.
The assigned servant! the gardener! in that harbour full of sharks! The major strode through the cottage, was shown the boat rounding Shark Island homeward bound, and elected to await the lady's landing in her own garden. He must speak seriously to Mrs. Astley. It was bad enough for an unprotected woman to live alone in that lonely place with a convict man-servant and a maid who was doubtless a convict also. But to trust herself upon the water with the male criminal and none beside! It was worse than madness. The poor lady was in need of a friend to warn her of her danger, and she should find that friend in Thomas Blacker.
The major stood twirling his moustaches by the water's edge until the boat's keel slid into the sand. His eye was on the convict, a tall, bearded, round-shouldered man, who hung his head (as well he might, thought the major) before that ferocious orb. It was the visitor who helped Mrs. Astley to alight on dry land, and there and then broke out, without a word of apology for his presence in her garden. Did she know what she was doing—trusting herself in that cockleshell with a transported ruffian—a desperado who would murder her in a minute if it seemed worth his while? Had no one told her the harbour was full of sharks? But the land sharks in Sydney itself, the felons and malefactors stalking at large there in the light of day, were as bad and worse; yet she could trust herself willingly to one of these!
Mrs. Astley had changed colour at his words.