“It was the first of May when the ship reached Hobart Town.
“Here the convict gang were handcuffed, two and two, sent on shore under strong guard, and transferred from the custody of the ship’s officers to that of the authorities in the town.
“They were lodged in jail that night, and the next morning assigned to their work.
“And now John Weston’s troubles began. As a felon convicted of a capital crime, and condemned to death, who had had his sentence commuted to transportation and penal servitude for life, he was at once classed among the worst criminals and sent on to Port Arthur, the prison to which the most heavily sentenced of the British convicts were at that time doomed.
“True, the chaplain of the transport-ship had tried to interest the jail chaplain and the colonial authorities in favor of the boy; but all in vain. Chaplains have no authority and precious little influence in the convict settlements.
“So John Weston, who had done very little evil in his brief life, poor lad! was shipped off to that perdition of evil-doers—Port Arthur.
“It would be too cruel to harrow your heart with any description of his sufferings there, where every thing that could revolt his nature surrounded him.
“No more of that. One day he was sent for to the office of the commandant, where he received the first letter that he had seen since leaving England. It was a joint letter from Joseph and Lil, telling him of their settlement at Seawood on the New Jersey coast in America. Also of the good wages Joseph was getting, and of their hopes soon to come out and join him.
“Join him! How little they knew or suspected of his dreadful condition! They evidently thought that some chance of redemption had been given him, that he had been assigned to some easy duty as clerk, messenger, or bookkeeper in some of the officers’ quarters; that he would soon get his ticket-of-leave, and only a little later his free pardon! And they would come out and join him and settle down to sheep-farming as hopeful colonists, as the too sanguine chaplain had led them to anticipate.
“When the real truth was—too horrible to dwell upon!