Dawes, glaring, makes no answer.
“You shall have fifty lashes, my man,” said Frere. “We'll see how you feel then!” The fifty were duly administered, and the Commandant called the next day. The rebel was still mute.
“Give him fifty more, Mr. Troke. We'll see what he's made of.”
One hundred and twenty lashes were inflicted in the course of the morning, but still the sullen convict refused to speak. He was then treated to fourteen days' solitary confinement in one of the new cells. On being brought out and confronted with his tormentor, he merely laughed. For this he was sent back for another fourteen days; and still remaining obdurate, was flogged again, and got fourteen days more. Had the chaplain then visited him, he might have found him open to consolation, but the chaplain—so it was stated—was sick. When brought out at the conclusion of his third confinement, he was found to be in so exhausted a condition that the doctor ordered him to hospital. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, Frere visited him, and finding his “spirit” not yet “broken”, ordered that he should be put to grind maize. Dawes declined to work. So they chained his hand to one arm of the grindstone and placed another prisoner at the other arm. As the second prisoner turned, the hand of Dawes of course revolved.
“You're not such a pebble as folks seemed to think,” grinned Frere, pointing to the turning wheel.
Upon which the indomitable poor devil straightened his sorely-tried muscles, and prevented the wheel from turning at all. Frere gave him fifty more lashes, and sent him the next day to grind cayenne pepper. This was a punishment more dreaded by the convicts than any other. The pungent dust filled their eyes and lungs, causing them the most excruciating torments. For a man with a raw back the work was one continued agony. In four days Rufus Dawes, emaciated, blistered, blinded, broke down.
“For God's sake, Captain Frere, kill me at once!” he said.
“No fear,” said the other, rejoiced at this proof of his power. “You've given in; that's all I wanted. Troke, take him off to the hospital.”
When he was in hospital, North visited him.
“I would have come to see you before,” said the clergyman, “but I have been very ill.”