Dawes snatched her from the ground, and bursting into a joyous laugh, swung her into the air. “Tell me,” he cried, holding up the child with two dripping arms above him, “what you will do for me if I bring you and mamma safe home again?”
“Give you a free pardon,” says Sylvia, “and papa shall make you his servant!” Frere burst out laughing at this reply, and Dawes, with a choking sensation in his throat, put the child upon the ground and walked away.
This was in truth all he could hope for. All his scheming, all his courage, all his peril, would but result in the patronage of a great man like Major Vickers. His heart, big with love, with self-denial, and with hopes of a fair future, would have this flattering unction laid to it. He had performed a prodigy of skill and daring, and for his reward he was to be made a servant to the creatures he had protected. Yet what more could a convict expect? Sylvia saw how deeply her unconscious hand had driven the iron, and ran up to the man she had wounded. “And, Mr. Dawes, remember that I shall love you always.” The convict, however, his momentary excitement over, motioned her away; and she saw him stretch himself wearily under the shadow of a rock.
CHAPTER XV. THE CORACLE.
In the morning, however, Rufus Dawes was first at work, and made no allusion to the scene of the previous evening. He had already skinned one of the goats, and he directed Frere to set to work upon another. “Cut down the rump to the hock, and down the brisket to the knee,” he said. “I want the hides as square as possible.” By dint of hard work they got the four goats skinned, and the entrails cleaned ready for twisting, by breakfast time; and having broiled some of the flesh, made a hearty meal. Mrs. Vickers being no better, Dawes went to see her, and seemed to have made friends again with Sylvia, for he came out of the hut with the child's hand in his. Frere, who was cutting the meat in long strips to dry in the sun, saw this, and it added fresh fuel to the fire in his unreasonable envy and jealousy. However, he said nothing, for his enemy had not yet shown him how the boat was to be made. Before midday, however, he was a partner in the secret, which, after all, was a very simple one.
Rufus Dawes took two of the straightest and most tapered of the celery-top pines which Frere had cut on the previous day, and lashed them tightly together, with the butts outwards. He thus produced a spliced stick about twelve feet long. About two feet from either end he notched the young tree until he could bend the extremities upwards; and having so bent them, he secured the bent portions in their places by means of lashings of raw hide. The spliced trees now presented a rude outline of the section of a boat, having the stem, keel, and stern all in one piece. This having been placed lengthwise between the stakes, four other poles, notched in two places, were lashed from stake to stake, running crosswise to the keel, and forming the knees. Four saplings were now bent from end to end of the upturned portions of the keel that represented stem and stern. Two of these four were placed above, as gunwales; two below as bottom rails. At each intersection the sticks were lashed firmly with fishing line. The whole framework being complete, the stakes were drawn out, and there lay upon the ground the skeleton of a boat eight feet long by three broad.
Frere, whose hands were blistered and sore, would fain have rested; but the convict would not hear of it. “Let us finish,” he said regardless of his own fatigue; “the skins will be dry if we stop.”
“I can work no more,” says Frere sulkily; “I can't stand. You've got muscles of iron, I suppose. I haven't.”
“They made me work when I couldn't stand, Maurice Frere. It is wonderful what spirit the cat gives a man. There's nothing like work to get rid of aching muscles—so they used to tell me.”