'Am I free? Can I go home?' asked the lad eagerly, not understanding the man's words.
The jailor burst out laughing. 'Free! What are you thinking of? Folks can't burn ricks, and be free. You are to be transported to Botany Bay for ten years, and then you will be free.'
The six months which Repton had to pass on the hulks at Sheerness among scenes of wickedness and brutality seemed afterwards like a bad dream, and the lad prayed—oh, so earnestly!—to be kept from the evil which surrounded him. Then came the day when, chained two and two, he and his companions were marched through the streets and shipped on board the Neptune, as unseaworthy a craft as ever sailed the ocean, but thought good enough for convicts.
However, the Neptune did not sink; but she took nearly a year to reach her destination, and the convicts, stowed together in the hold, suffered torments from heat and thirst in the tropics. Then small-pox broke out amongst them, and many died; the rest were more like skeletons than living men, when the Neptune at last cast anchor in Botany Bay. Here the men had to work on Government buildings, and at night were locked up in barracks, hardly more roomy or airy than the hold of the old Neptune.
Most of the convicts did as little work, and gave as much trouble as they dared, and nothing but fear of the overseer kept them from open mutiny. At last, finding the overseer alone one day, and for once unarmed, two or three of the worst convicts set upon him, and would have murdered him, if Repton had not stood by him and helped him till assistance came to overpower the mutineers.
The overseer did not forget this act of Repton's, and next time one of the merchants came to the barracks to choose a servant from among the convicts (as was then the custom), he recommended the lad for the coveted post.
Now, indeed, Repton felt almost happy for the first time since his conviction. He was still a convict, it is true, and might be flogged at his master's will, or be sent back to the convict barracks, if he misconducted himself in any way. But, for the moment, he was actually free; he lived in a little shed of his own next the stable, and groomed the horses as a free man; and the relief of no longer being herded with wicked men, day and night, was too great for words.
Repton loved horses, too, and took such care of his master's beautiful mare, and the little girl's pony, that there never was any fault to be found with him. As the months went on, he was trusted more and more by both master and mistress, and treated more like a humble friend than a despised convict.
Those were lawless days in the Colony; convicts were constantly escaping into the bush, where they lived as they could—often venturing out to rob houses, or attacking and plundering, sometimes even murdering, solitary travellers.