“Catch the goats! How? Put it on their tails?” she cried merrily.
“Goats are fond of salt, and when I get over to the Pilot Station I shall set traps for them baited with this salt. When they come to lick it, I shall have a noose of catgut ready to catch them—do you understand?”
“But how will you get across?”
“You will see to-morrow.”
CHAPTER XIV. A WONDERFUL DAY'S WORK.
The next morning Rufus Dawes was stirring by daylight. He first got his catgut wound upon a piece of stick, and then, having moved his frail floats alongside the little rock that served as a pier, he took a fishing line and a larger piece of stick, and proceeded to draw a diagram on the sand. This diagram when completed represented a rude outline of a punt, eight feet long and three broad. At certain distances were eight points—four on each side—into which small willow rods were driven. He then awoke Frere and showed the diagram to him.
“Get eight stakes of celery-top pine,” he said. “You can burn them where you cannot cut them, and drive a stake into the place of each of these willow wands. When you have done that, collect as many willows as you can get. I shall not be back until tonight. Now give me a hand with the floats.”
Frere, coming to the pier, saw Dawes strip himself, and piling his clothes upon the stuffed goat-skin, stretch himself upon the reed bundles, and, paddling with his hands, push off from the shore. The clothes floated high and dry, but the reeds, depressed by the weight of the body, sank so that the head of the convict alone appeared above water. In this fashion he gained the middle of the current, and the out-going tide swept him down towards the mouth of the harbour.
Frere, sulkily admiring, went back to prepare the breakfast—they were on half rations now, Dawes having forbidden the slaughtered goat to be eaten, lest his expedition should prove unsuccessful—wondering at the chance which had thrown this convict in his way. “Parsons would call it 'a special providence,'” he said to himself. “For if it hadn't been for him, we should never have got thus far. If his 'boat' succeeds, we're all right, I suppose. He's a clever dog. I wonder who he is.” His training as a master of convicts made him think how dangerous such a man would be on a convict station. It would be difficult to keep a fellow of such resources. “They'll have to look pretty sharp after him if they ever get him back,” he thought. “I'll have a fine tale to tell of his ingenuity.” The conversation of the previous day occurred to him. “I promised to ask for a free pardon. He wouldn't have it, though. Too proud to accept it at my hands! Wait until we get back. I'll teach him his place; for, after all, it is his own liberty that he is working for as well as mine—I mean ours.” Then a thought came into his head that was in every way worthy of him. “Suppose we took the boat, and left him behind!” The notion seemed so ludicrously wicked that he laughed involuntarily.