“I want to get away from here,” and stepped past them, but the woman laid her fat, coarse hand on his sleeve.
“Come 'ome with us, brother. P'r'aps yer 'ave a mother or a wife waitin' to 'ear from yer, an' we——”
He dashed her hand aside savagely—“Blast you, no; let me go!”
Then with awkward, shambling gait he pushed through the curious crowd at the prison gate, crossed the street, and entered the nearest public-house.
“Another soul escaped us, Sister Hannah,” squeaked the little man; “but we'll try and rescue him when he comes out from the house of wickedness and abomination.”
“Better leave him alone,” said a warder in plain clothes, who just then came through the gate, “he won't be saved at no price, I can tell yer.”
“Who is the poor man?” asked Sister Hannah, in a plaintive, injured voice.
“Sh! Mustn't ask them questions,” said the little man.
But he knew, all the same, that the tall, gaunt man with the sallow face and close-cropped white hair was Harvey Challoner, once chief officer of the ship Victory, sentenced in Melbourne to imprisonment for life for manslaughter, but released at the end of ten years.