"Yes," she said.
"From the Island," his head was jerked in the direction of the sea. "You're the first soul I've spoken to since we escaped except him, and he's been raving mad most of the time. You and I've got to do some talking, ma'am."
He looked about the room, lifted Donald's chair and set it before her. He had recovered his self-possession, was readjusting his plans.
"Yes?" she said.
"You know, we meant to get all the food and clothes we wanted from this hut," he said harshly. "We watched you all day from the trees and thought a man would be coming home after sundown. We didn't mean to let you off if you screamed and brought him before we'd got what we wanted.... The dog's dead. Did you know? I killed him, caught him by the throat behind the shed?"
"But that was a pity!" she cried, a note of distress in her voice.
"Pity?" He leaned forward. "But we can't afford to have pity. I saw you sitting spinning in the sun, singing to the child. My heart turned in me to see you like the women at home. But that would not have saved you. Starving men, fighting for our lives we were. Wild beasts. Pity? What pity's been shown to us? Do y' know what it means to have felt the lash, and made your escape from Port Arthur, swimming the bay at Eaglehawks' Neck, wrapped in kelp, cheating the bloodhounds chained a few yards from each other across the Neck, and the sentry who'd shoot you like a dog if he saw you? Do y' know what it was like, crawling from one end of the Island to the other in the bush at night with only a native to guide you ... not knowing whether he was going to spear you, or run you into the tribe ... making your way in a cockle-shell of a boat in the open sea without any mariner's tools at all, and only a keg of water and a bit of 'possum skin to chew to keep the life in you?
"No, you don't know! How could you?" He paused a moment, and continued desperately: "And it's no good my trying to tell you; Steve got a crack on his head the night we escaped. He was mad with thirst in the boat. I was near it myself ... and I had all the work to do, pulling and straining my eyes for the land. We had to keep out of sight of other boats too, and the Government sloop going between Port Southern and Hobart Town, for fear we'd be seen, picked up and sent back. Months of scheming it took to get so far! I'd picked up the lay of the land near the Port and the way to get about in the country beyond, from sailors. It was a man who'd got as far as the coast and had been sent back told me to look for the muddy river-water in the sea and get up the river at night. We wanted to make the Wirree because there is a man—lives near the river—we'd heard would give us food and shelter, or help us to get away to the hills.
"We got to the river and had to be low in the bush all day till night came again. Then I went up through the trees to a wooden house we could see among other houses that were all mud, or mud and stones. It was McNab's shanty. We'd got a sailor to take a letter through to him, saying we were coming and to be on the look out for us. And I'd got a message from McNab telling us how to get to him, what sort of man he was to look at, and saying he was willing to help us get away on condition that when we got on our feet we'd make it up to him—of course we had to pay on the spot too. And we'd got a bit to do it with. I've heard them say on the Island he's making his fortune, McNab....
"They say there are men in this country now—well off, holding big positions—who pay McNab what he likes because he helped them to get away. They pay because if they don't—no matter who they are, what they're doing—a word from him against them, and back they'd go to the darbies and the cells. But there's a new game now. A reward is out for the capture of escaped convicts."