CHAPTER XII. “MR.” DAWES.
The coarse tones of Maurice Frere roused him. “What do you want?” he asked. Rufus Dawes, raising his head, contemplated the figure before him, and recognized it. “Is it you?” he said slowly.
“What do you mean? Do you know me?” asked Frere, drawing back. But the convict did not reply. His momentary emotion passed away, the pangs of hunger returned, and greedily seizing upon the piece of damper, he began to eat in silence.
“Do you hear, man?” repeated Frere, at length. “What are you?”
“An escaped prisoner. You can give me up in the morning. I've done my best, and I'm beat.”
The sentence struck Frere with dismay. The man did not know that the settlement had been abandoned!
“I cannot give you up. There is no one but myself and a woman and child on the settlement.” Rufus Dawes, pausing in his eating, stared at him in amazement. “The prisoners have gone away in the schooner. If you choose to remain free, you can do so as far as I am concerned. I am as helpless as you are.”
“But how do you come here?”
Frere laughed bitterly. To give explanations to convicts was foreign to his experience, and he did not relish the task. In this case, however, there was no help for it. “The prisoners mutinied and seized the brig.”
“What brig?”