"I don't know. I'll swear it wasn't me!"
"I suppose they let themselves out, then. You men!"
Although this short dialogue had been conducted by no means sotto-voce, the noise did not seem to have had the slightest effect in rousing the prisoners out of slumber. Even when the Major called to them they gave no sign.
"You men!" he shouted again; "it's no good shamming Abraham with me!" He stooped to shake the man who was lying on the plank at his feet. "Good--good God! The--the--man's not dead?"
"Dead!" cried the governor, kneeling by the Major's side upon the stones.
The sleeper was very still. He was a man of some forty years of age, with nut-brown tangled hair and beard. If not a short-sentence man he was still in the early stages of his term--for he lay on the bare boards of the plank with the rug, blanket, and sheet wrapped closely round him, so that they might take, as far as possible, the place of the coir mattress, which was not there. The bed was not a bed of comfort, yet his sleep was sound--strangely sound. If he breathed at all, it was so lightly as to be inaudible. On his face was that dazed, strained expression which we sometimes see on the faces of those who, without a moment's warning, have been suddenly visited by death.
"I don't think he's dead," the governor said. "He seems to be in some sort of trance. What's the man's name?"
"'Itchcock. He's one of the 'oppickers. He's got a month."
It was Warder Slater who gave the information. The governor took the man by the shoulder, and tried to rouse him out of sleep.
"Hitchcock! Hitchcock! Come, wake up, my man! It's all right; he's coming to--he's waking up."