“No, to the Pilot Station.”
“About four miles.”
The convict sighed. “Too far to swim now, though I might have done it once. But this sort of life weakens a man. It must be done after all.”
“What are you going to do?” asked Frere.
“To kill the goat.”
Sylvia uttered a little cry; she had become fond of her dumb companion. “Kill Nanny! Oh, Mr. Dawes! What for?”
“I am going to make a boat for you,” he said, “and I want hides, and thread, and tallow.”
A few weeks back Maurice Frere would have laughed at such a sentence, but he had begun now to comprehend that this escaped convict was not a man to be laughed at, and though he detested him for his superiority, he could not but admit that he was superior.
“You can't get more than one hide off a goat, man?” he said, with an inquiring tone in his voice—as though it was just possible that such a marvellous being as Dawes could get a second hide, by virtue of some secret process known only to himself.
“I am going to catch other goats.” “Where?”