‘Well enough at the first. I worked well, and did what I was tould. It was all the relafe there was. I made sure I should get my freedom in a few years. The first letther I got was from my old uncle. Mary was dead! He said nothin’ about the child, but he would bring it up, and never wished to hear my name again. This changed me into a rale divil, no less. All that was bad in me kem out. I was that desperate that I defied the overseers, made friends with the biggest villians among the prisoners, and did everything foolish that came into my head. I was punished, and the worse I was trated the worse I grew. I was chained and flogged and starved and put into dark cells. ’Tis little satisfaction they got of me, for I grew that savage and stubborn that I was all as one as a wild baste, only wickeder. If ye seen my back now, after the triangles, scarred and callused from shoulder to flank! I was marked out for Norfolk Island; ye’ve heard tell of that place?’
Wilfred nodded assent.
‘That hell!’ screamed the old man, ‘where men once sent never came back. Flogged and chained; herded like bastes, when the lime that they carried off to the boats burned holes in their naked flesh, wading through the surf with it! But I forgot, there was one way to get back to Sydney.’
‘And what way was that?’
‘You could always kill a man—one of your mates—only a prisoner—sure, it couldn’t matter much!’ said the old man with a dreadful laugh; ‘but ye were sent up to Sydney in the Government brig, and tried and hanged as reg’lar as if ye wor a free man and owned a free life. There was thim there thin that thought the pleasure trip to Sydney and the comfort of a new gaol and a nate condimned cell all to yourself, well worth a man’s blood, and a sure rope when the visit was over. Ha! ha!’
He laughed long and loud. The sound was so unnatural that Wilfred fancied if their talk had occurred by a lonely camp in a darksome forest at midnight, instead of under the garish light of day, he might have imagined faint unearthly cries and moans strangely mingled with that awful laughter.
‘Thim was quare times; but I didn’t go to ‘the island hell’ after all. An up-country settler came to the barracks to pick a groom, as an assigned servant—so they called us. He was a big, bold-lookin’ man, and as I set my eyes on him, I never looked before me or on the floor as most of thim did.
‘“What’s that man?” he said. “I like the look of him; he’s got plenty of devil in him; that’s my sort. He can ride, by the look of his legs. I’m just starting up-country.”
‘They wouldn’t give me to him at first; said I was too bad to go loose. But he had friends in high places, and they got me assigned to him. Next day we started for a station. When I felt a horse between my legs I began to have the feelings of a man again. He gave me a pistol to carry, too. Bushrangers wor on the road then, and he carried money.’
‘“You can fight or not, as you like, Tom,” he said, “if we meet any of the boys; but if you show cur, back you go to the barracks.”