Title:      The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh
            A Penal Exile in Australia, 1825-1844
Author:     James Tucker  (1803-1866)
* A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook *
eBook No.:  0301281.txt
Edition:    1
Language:   English
Character set encoding:     Latin-1(ISO-8859-1)--8 bit
Date first posted:          September 2003
Date most recently updated: September 2003

Production Notes:
First Published in 1929 by
Jonathan Cape Publishers
London


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A Project Gutenberg of Australia eBook

Title:      The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh
            A Penal Exile in Australia, 1825-1844
Author:     James Tucker  (1803-1866)

First Published in 1929 by
Jonathan Cape Publishers
London


*************************

An "authentic" version of Ralph Rashleigh was first published in 1952.
Details of the publication history of this ebook and some biographical
details of the author will be found at the end of this ebook.

*************************




This 1929 text was the first edition of the manuscript and was
substantially edited. It includes an introduction by Frederick Edwin Smith,
The Earl of Birkenhead (1870-1930). The 1844-45 manuscript of the
novel cites the author as Giacomo di Rosenberg, presumed to be a pseudonym
of James Tucker.





PUBLISHERS' NOTE



Australia has long ago freed itself from the cloud of Botany Bay, and the
ignominy of that first chapter of history is almost forgotten, even by those
Colonial families who can trace their ancestry back to the Criminal Colonies of
Tasmania and New South Wales.

Indeed, there are very scanty records of that early adventure, when men as
famous as Wainwright (who poisoned his cousin because her ankles were too
thick) left their country for their country's good. A convenient fire destroyed most
of the records some years ago, and hundreds of Australians sighed with relief and
consigned their sheepstealing, murdering or revolutionary ancestors to the
oblivion of a short memory. Now, the history of the colonies needs this particular
exciting chapter to make it complete, for some great men went to New South
Wales with shackles on their wrists. Some of them were architects and painters,
writers and thinkers; grandfathers any but the snobbish would be proud to own.
The Adventures of Ralph Rashleigh are therefore a rare and valuable record of an
exciting aspect of colonization.

Since all such early records may come under the suspicion of the unbeliever, it is
wise for us to explain the exact circumstances under which this manuscript has
come into the limelight of print. It was sent to us by Mr. Charles H. Bertie, the
well-known librarian of Sydney, New South Wales. Mr. Bertie explained to us
that it had come into his hands from a man who had inherited it from his wife's
father, in whose possession it had remained for thirty years. Mr. Bertie read the
manuscript and was so sure of its importance that he had it typed and sent to us in
England. We recognized its value and interest, but the archaic literary style of the
writer made us doubt whether the book would be acceptable to modern readers.
So the manuscript was rewritten, but with absolute fidelity to the original story.
It has been translated from its archaic form without losing the vitality of the story
or the intensity of the background. No incident of importance has been omitted
and nothing added to the sense or colour of the original script.

Following the typescript came the original manuscript from Mr. Bertie, an aged
foolscap book of undoubted antiquity. The book contained the story of Ralph
Rashleigh, written patiently and well, in about a hundred and fifty thousand
words.

Some pages of this precious and ragged original are reproduced in this book,
although their faint stains and yellowing edges are naturally lost in the process of
reproduction.

The Author's name on the title page is given as Giacomo di Rosenberg, and,
upon one or two plays in manuscript which were found with the Rashleigh
manuscript, the name of Otto von Rosenberg appears. From this conjunction of
names it would seem that both are variations of a pseudonym. There is also an
introduction to the narrative which is as follows:--


'ADVERTISEMENT.'

The tale contained in the following pages, was compiled by the Editor as it fell
from the lips of the person, who was at once the author, and in some sort the hero
of the adventures therein related, chiefly with a view to dissipate the ennui, and
vary the monotony, at times inseparable from the circumstances of a life in the
bush of Australia.

As, however, the truth of many of the leading incidents is known to the Editor
personally, and that others have been vouched for by persons of undoubted
veracity, it is now offered to the public, who, it is hoped, will receive it with the
indulgence due to the rude, unadorned production of

'A SQUATTER.'

31st December, 1845.


It has been impossible to identify the Squatter or the hero of the tale, although
the events recorded have been verified and there are a hundred points which prove
the narrative to be authentic. The name, Ralph Rashleigh, is admitted to have been
an alias, and careful research into existing records suggest that it is actually an
alias of an alias, since, while one of the characters who was in Newgate Prison
with him has been authenticated, in an ensuing footnote, by an account of his trial
in the Sessions Papers, there is no record of the trial of any man named Rashleigh
for the crime recounted in the book. It would seem that every name, except those
of public persons, which occurs in the narrative has been deliberately altered. The
reason for this is, doubtless, that the book was written, and intended for
publication, very soon after the events with which it deals had occurred, and when
many of the people mentioned were alive. The Squatter's note is dated 31st
December, 1845.

Errors in the book occasionally serve to confirm its reliability. As an instance,
Sir John Jamison, a well-known resident of Regentville at the time, is referred to
as the Chief Justice. Sir James was not Chief Justice, but almost certainly he
would have been chairman of the local bench of magistrates, since he was the
most conspicuous resident of the neighbourhood of the Emu Plains Agricultural
Establishment, at which Rashleigh was employed. Convicts had only gossip on
which to found information, and it would be intelligible for the chief magistrate to
be described among them as Chief Justice, if justice is assumed to refer to a justice
of the peace, and not to a position paralleling that of the Lord Chief Justice.

The ship, the Magnet, in which Rashleigh was taken to Australia, has been
authenticated; the places in which he was employed and in which he lived, and the
conditions prevailing during his sojourn in them, are all correctly described.
This was no work of an inventor of tales, but the labour of love of the squatter
who made this fair--this very fair--copy of the massed notes which he had
written down as the tale 'fell from the lips of the person, who was at once the
author, and in some sort the hero of the adventures therein related, chiefly with a
view to dissipate the ennui, and vary the monotony, at times inseparable from the
circumstances of a life in the bush in Australia.'

The diary is acknowledged to be one of the highest forms of literature and the
most interesting form of history. Now come the diaries and personal records of the
New World, and on the heels of the records of Aloysius Horn comes this
diary-classic from the Antipodes, authentic as to its origin and amazing for
the picture it gives of the first dark chapter of the genesis of Australia.




INTRODUCTION



I am, on the whole, after consideration, of opinion that this remarkable volume
of memoirs may be accepted as authentic. It records the life of a criminal who was
convicted at the London Sessions for the crime of burglary just one hundred years
ago, and provides material for reflection to all who have an interest in the
evolution of the penal code. It is a book which might be read with profit by those
ultrahumanitarian persons who would remove almost entirely the punitive quality
from the legal means which society adopts for the disciplining of its recalcitrant
members.

There is a powerful, because vociferous, minority of citizens who would
abandon the death penalty utterly, even for the crimes of murder, high treason,
piracy and the causing of disaffection among His Majesty's forces. They are
among the revolutionaries of law, and their activities must be restrained if the law
of England is to remain the pattern of justice which it has been, and is still
admitted to be, throughout the world.

This man, Ralph Rashleigh, had the advantage of a decent upbringing, but, out
of weakness of character, adopted what seemed the easier life of crime at an early
age. After one short term of imprisonment for uttering spurious coins, he began to
practise bolder and more profitable crimes, though never adopting violence
towards any person in effecting his depredations.

He was a mild-natured man, with no worse criminal instincts than those
necessary to become a successful thief and burglar.

The crime for which he was finally tried was not a very desperate venture,
consisting merely of feloniously entering a private house and robbing the butler's
pantry of the silver which was stored there. Such, it would be thought in these
days, was not a crime for which a man deserved to die by hanging, but this was
the sentence first pronounced against Ralph Rashleigh.

The capital sentence was commuted to transportation for life, and something of
what it meant of hardship and suffering is recounted in the pages of this stark
narrative.

One hundred years ago, and less, sentences of this severity were passed as a
matter of course upon all who committed crimes against property. The theft of a
spoon, a handkerchief, any trifling object, was punishable by death, or
transportation for periods of seven or more years. It was not until 1861 that to
hang a man for theft was completely abolished, but most cases of theft had by then
ceased to be capital offences. In that year a series of statutes consolidating and
amending the criminal law was passed, though not without considerable
opposition from responsible authorities. There must therefore be alive at this time
many people during whose lifetime men were actually sentenced to death for petty
thefts, and whose contemporaries of childhood were transported as juveniles for
such crimes. The Sessions Papers of the period give many cases of boys of fifteen
and sixteen who were sentenced to long terms of transportation for such petty
thefts.

The system of penal transportation which was in operation at the time when the
hero of this chronicle was sent out to New South Wales was a development of
what had been in operation for centuries. The Barbados and the West Indies had
long before the beginning of last century been used as working asylums for
criminals and prisoners of war; and, with the discovery of Australia, it was
intelligible, though never defensible, that labour should be supplied in this manner
for the opening and clearing of the country. It may be recalled that Cromwell had
no compunction about shipping Irish and other prisoners of war to Jamaica to help
in the conquest of that fever-infested island; and that, further, he despatched
thousands of Irish girls and women to become wives to his transportees.
The living conditions of pioneers in any new and untamed country must always
be harsh and meagre, and while, in these softer times, we may shudder at the
extremities of hardship and misery endured by the convicts described in this book,
it must be kept in mind that their conditions were hardly more onerous than those
of the free population.

Australia in the eighteen-twenties and eighteen-thirties was largely unexplored,
and the white population were still severely taxed to win the bare means of
existence from its soil. That the forced labour of the convict population was only
made productive by the use of the lash and other harsh punishment was natural,
but the position of a well-behaved man was not much worse than that of a seaman
in the navy or a deck-hand on a clipper. Flogging had been for centuries a method
of punishment in both the services, and the use of the belaying-pin on shipboard
was regarded as not only normal but justifiable. We need not, therefore, fling
ourselves into overmuch emotion over the sufferings of the convicts of New South
Wales as they are recorded in this book.

The transportation of criminals under which Ralph Rashleigh served his
sentence worked admirably on the whole. The men could serve their term, obtain
their freedom, receive a grant of land, and establish themselves as farmers and
squatters, to live a healthier and more useful life than ever they would have done
in the homeland. On the other side of the sheet is the record of gangs of outlaws
and bushrangers, of whose practices this book contains a comprehensive survey.
These men were rebels or criminals by nature; desperate as their story is, it is not
worse than that of the wild men in any new country. To name but one instance,
there have been, within the memory of the present generation, gangs of desperate
gunmen in the United States of America whose activities matched in lawlessness
those of the gangs of Australian bushrangers.

The evolution of a civilized society is a slow and painful process; the harshness
of the laws under which it develops is seldom greater than is dictated by the needs
of the community for its protection and peace. There is no just cause to feel shame
that such experiences as are here recorded could befall Britishers. One may,
perhaps, regard the disappearance of the transportation system, and all that it
connoted of human suffering, with relief and satisfaction; but in an historical
sense it can be said that the wisdom and justification of that system lay in the
incontrovertible fact that it worked well.

BIRKENHEAD




THE MEMOIRS OF RALPH RASHLEIGH



Chapter I


Ralph Rashleigh was the son of London shopkeepers of decent
rank, received a sound education, and at the end of his schooling he was
articled to an established conveyancer in the vicinity of Chancery Lane. At
the termination of the second year of his training it is known that, by virtue
of a provision in his indentures whereby he was entitled to a small but
sufficient allowance, he was able to leave his master's roof-tree and live in
a lodging of his own.

He had been subject to the normal amount of discipline and surveillance
until this freedom came to him, but there is no great evidence that he was
harshly treated, or that he was greatly irked by this restraint. Indeed, very
little is known of his early youth, and nothing at all about his character and
attainments as a child. Record is meagre, indeed, of the years prior to his
assumption of the alias of Ralph Rashleigh. It is known that after attaining
the freedom of a personal lodging his chief concern, out of office hours,
was to indulge himself in such pleasures as his slender means afforded. He
was a weak, easy-going fellow, not positively vicious, but apt to pursue
any reasonably safe course which would add to his means of living flashily
as a man-about-town. His legitimate means being scanty, he was prevented
from going to excess with his tavern companions and from exercising the
more expensive pleasures. He was a man tasting and savouring fragments
of dishes, the whole of which only could have satisfied his taste and
hunger. His appetite for the lighter satisfaction of life was continually
whetted, but never really satisfied.

There was among his acquaintance a young articled clerk, similarly
circumstanced to himself, who seemed not to be under any monetary
disability. Rashleigh came to know that Hartop, as the man was named,
had no private means, and he began to wonder at his ability to spend in a
single night's drinking more than Rashleigh himself could afford to spend
in a week. Evidently Hartop knew of some way to come by money, which
was outside his friend's experience, and Rashleigh waited for an occasion
to discover what the particular trick of Midas might be. The opportunity
occurred one night when unrestrained drinking had reduced them both to
the condition in which reserves vanish and confidences are carelessly
exchanged. Rashleigh, as Hartop ordered another generous round of drinks,
asked him bluntly how he managed to spend so much money on drink and
pleasure.

'You are only an articled clerk, like myself, yet you seem to have ten
times as much cash as I. How do you manage it?' he asked.
Then Hartop told him how simple it was. He was in touch with coiners of
spurious sovereigns, who sold them to him at a reasonable rate, which left
a considerable profit to the purchaser. There was, of course, a certain
element of risk in changing and passing them, he explained, but that risk
could be reduced very simply to a minimum. A single rule of action solved
the whole problem. This was: never to have more than one spurious coin
on one's person at any time, and, if possible, always to have a genuine
sovereign with which to replace the counterfeit, should it be detected. The
visions of comparative wealth which the prospect conjured up in
Rashleigh's mind, made the risks and the criminality of the affair dwindle
into insignificance, and he eagerly accepted Hartop's offer to supply him in
a few days with twenty spurious sovereigns. He was the more blinded to
the dangers of the course which he was so wholeheartedly ready to take up,
by the immunity from them which his friend had been fortunate enough to
enjoy. Hartop related experiences of his own in disposing of the coins
which made safety seem utterly assured, provided one followed the one
golden rule.

For long the event seemed to prove that one could escape detection with
the ease and impunity which Hartop claimed. Rashleigh discovered himself
cunning and resourceful as a petty malefactor, and his success in the
disposal of spurious sovereigns removed the spur which had hitherto kept
him to his work. He abandoned his habits of punctuality and industry and
became insufferably negligent and careless. The remonstrances and advice
of his principal were ineffectual, and in a few months the exasperated
conveyancer dismissed him and cancelled his articles. The success of his
new, dishonest method of securing his needs and occasional luxuries made
this apparent calamity appear as a relief to Rashleigh, who, however, was
astute enough to realize that he must affect some legitimate occupation in
order to allay suspicion. His work had developed him into a penman of
surpassing capacity, both as to speed and beauty in the writing of legal
documents, and he resolved to set himself up as a law scrivener. His
regimen thereafter was to work as a free-lance for two or three hours a day,
in his lodging, and to spend the rest of his time wherever in and around
London he could count upon opportunities for disposing of his coins.

For some time his success and immunity continued, and when he
ventured farther afield to fairs and races in the country, his prosperity
increased. He discovered from experience that country people were easy
victims, and he decided to abandon the golden rule of carrying only one
counterfeit coin at a time. He went to Maidstone to attend the annual fair,
was forced to submit to being searched when a townsman made an outcry
at receiving from him a spurious sovereign, and, a second counterfeit being
found on his person, he was arrested and committed for trial upon a charge
of uttering counterfeit coins. At the next Assizes he was found guilty and
sentenced to twelve months' imprisonment with hard labour.

In the eighteen-twenties, although prison treatment was severe to
harshness, its discipline did not include the banning of free speech between
prisoners. Rashleigh was set to the tasks of picking oakum and beating
hemp in the company of other criminals, many of whom were experts in
crime. In their perverse vanity these old hands boasted of their
achievements in the past, and detailed their plans for future coups when
liberty should be theirs again. Rashleigh speedily became a humble and
eager disciple, studying assiduously all that he could learn of the art and
craft of crime. At the end of his term he was released, and walked out of
prison a master-craftsman of his illegal trade, anxious to put to practical
tests the theoretical knowledge which he had acquired.

His immediate plan of action had long been mature in his mind. An old
cracksman had told him of a jeweller's shop in the city of Winchester
which could be easily and profitably rifled, and the two had agreed to make
the attempt together as soon as his informant was released. Confident of his
capacity, Rashleigh decided to commit the robbery singlehanded, without
waiting for his associate, and on his release proceeded immediately to
London, where he converted into cash such possessions as he had left there
in store. He next went to an address given him by a fellow-prisoner and
purchased a full equipment of burglar's tools. These he packed into a bag
with a complete change of clothing, and without delay took coach to
Winchester. There he put up at a small inn on the outskirts of the town, and
after eating dinner, found his way to the shop which he proposed to burgle.
The directions and details given him by his informant proved correct, and
having entered the shop and purchased a small trinket, he returned to the
inn possessed of all the information he required for the completion of his
plans. He supped early, paid his bill, and went to bed, leaving instructions
with the landlord that he was to be called at two o'clock in the morning, at
which hour a coach would be due to start for Portsmouth.

It was a sleety November night, utterly dark, as he walked through the
empty ancient streets to recommence his criminal career. It was such a
night as no sane person would venture out into unless compelled, and
Rashleigh reached the shop without meeting a soul. He set to work swiftly,
and with chisel, brace and bit and hacksaw, removed a panel of the
protecting shutter. Cutting the glass and removing the wire grating
presented no difficulty, and he was about to load himself with booty from
the window, when the raucous voice of a watchman crying the hour gave
him pause. He quickly pinned a sheet of dark brown paper over the panel
opening, and hurried to concealment in an ancient dark archway a few
doors from the jeweller's. The inclemency of the night favoured him. The
watchman did his duty faithfully but swiftly, and observed nothing as he
hastened by on his way back to the warm comfort of the watchhouse. As
the sound of his retreating footsteps grew faint, Rashleigh returned to the
shop, filled his bag, his pockets and his hat with gold, silver and gems, and
replaced the paper screen to postpone discovery as long as possible.
Thrilled with success, he made his cautious way to the wood which he had
selected as a hiding-place on the previous day, and buried his booty
carefully. He then set out to place as long a distance as possible between
himself and Winchester by day-break, by which time he found he had
covered twenty-four miles. He breakfasted at a wayside public-house, after
which he mounted a passing coach to Farnham and determined to stay a
day or two in that town.

He took a room at a small inn there, and spent the hours of daylight
sleeping away the fatigue of his night's work. In the evening he rose and
went downstairs to the bar parlour, where he heard news of his recent
depredation. A man had just arrived from Winchester, and was recounting
to the assembled company the details of a most audacious robbery which
had occurred in that city during the previous night. Rashleigh called for a
drink and listened with unapparent interest. The man's story was that
fifteen hundred pounds' worth of jewellery had been stolen from a
Winchester shop, and that the whole city was in a ferment of excitement
and conjecture. The local opinion was that the robbery had been committed
by a gang of expert thieves. The magistrates had already examined all the
loose and suspicious characters among the less fortunate residents, and had
filled their day with a mort of arrests, searchings and questionings such as
had not troubled Hampshire since, as the man put it, 'William Rufus, the
king, was found dead of an arrow.' Finally the distracted magistrates, as
eager to act as to talk, had arrested two harmless sailors begging their way
to Portsmouth, and had sent the pair of them to jail for six months, because
the only account of themselves which they could give was the truth itself.

Rashleigh heard the tale with relief touched with ironic amusement. No
suspicion attached to him yet: that was clear and comforting. It was,
however, too soon to attempt to remove his plunder from its hiding-place
in the woods, yet he disliked the idea of going so far away as London. He
therefore decided to visit some relatives who lived at Southampton, as if he
were still employed as a lawyer's clerk, and was taking a holiday.

During his stay at Southampton an adventure befell Rashleigh which
was, unknown to him, premonitory of a still more desperate one which was
to occur to him in later years. He had taken advantage of a fine winter day
to walk out to Netley Abbey, a noble pile of ruins in the New Forest, and,
lingering later into the afternoon than was discreet, he lost his way back to
town. It was dark before he hit upon a beaten path which appeared to run in
the right direction, but, after walking along it for some distance, he
discovered himself on the western bank of Southampton Water among
ruins and rocks. Rashleigh had all a townsman's fear of darkness in open
country, and his anxiety was not lessened by the recollection that he had
heard his relatives speak of ruins on this part of the coast as being the haunt
of deerstealers, smugglers, and others living on the fringes of outlawry. It
was therefore with considerable caution and a sense of uneasiness that he
stumbled towards the only light which was visible in the November
blackness. He had gone only a few yards when the light disappeared, to
show again some minutes later. Half inclined to think that the light, which
continued to show only spasmodically, must be the will-o'-the-wisp of
which he had heard, he was on the point of abandoning its guidance, when
he was startled to hear a voice, near yet below him, cry out:

'Bob! Bob! is it all right?'

Immediately the light shone again very close, and Rashleigh dropped
silently to the grass-covered ground, quaking with fear. He saw that the
light shone from a lantern in the hands of a tough-looking sailor whose
murderous expression made it clear that the pistols stuck in his belt were
rather for use than ornament.

'Is Curtis in sight?' called the voice below.

'No, he ain't,' answered the lantern-bearer gruffly, walking forward and
appearing to meet the ascending man behind a crumbling wall, which hid
them from the view of the scared onlooker. The conversation between
them made him crouch low and motionless.

'It's damned strange!' said the first speaker.

'Sure it is, an' I don't like the looks of it,' said Bob.

'It can't be for fear of the Hawks that he ain't turned up,' continued the
other. 'They are all off the Wight on the look out for Jack Simmons. He
sent a note to an old pard of his at Cowes a-purpose so it got into the hands
of the preventive men. Wrote that he would try it on to-night at Blackgang
or the Undercliff, and I heard as how the Southampton and Portsmouth
cutters, with all the spare officers, have been sent over to the island.'

The men were obviously uneasy, and Rashleigh gathered from the
snatches of the ensuing talk that they feared that they might have been sold
by their spy in the preventive service. Then the conversation ended, and for
some minutes Rashleigh lay wondering how he was ever going to get out
of the fix he was in.

'By cripes, there she is!'

The excited exclamation was immediately followed by a loud, long
whistle, obviously a prearranged signal. Instantly the quiet and stillness
were broken by the sound of trampling horses all round the spot where
Ralph lay hidden. Next the splash of oars told him that a boat was
approaching. He raised his head to look, and saw three boats pull ashore.
Numbers of men immediately surrounded them and unloaded their cargoes
with frantic haste, using as few lights and making as little noise as possible.
Swiftly the contraband was tied on the backs of the waiting horses, and
placed in two light wagons which had been brought down to shore when
the signal had been given.

Suddenly another whistle sounded, and startled heads were raised among
the smugglers as it was repeated at a little distance.

'The Hawks!'

'Blast them, they're coming!'

Rashleigh heard the exclamation spoken in low vicious tones. The
smugglers gathered into a group, apparently taking orders from their
leader.

'Jump now, you swine!' he heard the man say. 'Drive off them wagons
and horses while we keep the bleeders back for a bit. Get away with the
swag. Get!'

Wagons and horses disappeared at a gallop into the darkness, evidently
taking some track which Rashleigh had failed to observe. The remaining
smugglers dropped prone to earth, or sheltered behind rocks and ruined
walls, as a strong patrol of the Coastguard advanced round a projecting
point, visible because of the links [torches] which they carried, throwing a
wavering light over the scene, so that Rashleigh--now frantic with fear--could
see the lugger off-shore crowding all her canvas to make a get-away. The
Coastguard party fired a few shots after her, but made no attempt at
pursuit, confining their efforts to the capture of the landed cargo. They
came towards the place where the concealed smugglers lay, the lights they
carried rendering them easy targets. As soon as they were within sure
range, the flashes of twenty muskets stabbed the darkness. Two officers
fell, and the remainder retreated quickly out of danger. They next
attempted to outflank the enemy, and turned inland, only to find
themselves exposed to a punishing volley from the snugly-concealed gang.
The patrol returned the fire as best they could, shooting more or less
blindly at the spots where the musket flashes revealed the presence of the
smugglers. In desperation the leader of the King's men, calling upon his
followers, charged in among the smugglers, who, firing a final volley,
leaped up and met the cutlasses of their attackers with clubbed guns.
Chance alone saved Ralph from being trampled upon and shot while the
mêlée went on all around where he lay shivering with fright. The opposing
leaders met in personal combat only a few yards away, to be joined by their
followers.

Sudden cheers mingled with curses and imprecations against the Hawks,
broke from the inland wood as a reserve of smugglers came to the
assistance of the gang.

At this the Coastguard seized their officers and insisted upon
withdrawing from a now hopelessly unequal fray. Shots were exchanged as
they retreated in good order along the beach, but the smugglers made no
attempt at pursuit. Instead, they began hurriedly searching for their dead
and wounded comrades. Lanterns were lit, and Ralph mastered his quaking
limbs and lay shamming dead. A man held a lantern over him, and uttered
a cry of surprise at finding someone who, by his dress, was obviously
neither smuggler nor preventive man.

'Who in hell's this?' he cried. 'Here, Jack, here's a gunman. Let's run
through his pockets, anyhow.'

The man addressed, a fierce-visaged, whiskered ruffian, came up and
held the lantern close to Rashleigh's face.

'By the hokey! He ain't dead. He's either shamming or he's in a swound.'

'Shake a leg there, you two,' came the leader's voice. 'We've got to get
going--and quick. What you hanging about for?'

'Here's a bloke as pretended to be dead,' answered Jack. 'By his dress,
reckon he's a spy.'

'A spy--hey?' said the leader. 'We'll put him from pretending death
any more--ever. He shall swing from the Beaulieu Oak before the night's
an hour older.'

What self-possession Rashleigh had managed to retain left him in a swirl
of utter panic, but all his wild babblings for mercy were ignored. Seizing
him by the arms, Jack and his companion hurried him along at a run
between them. They were in the wake of the retreating gang and feared to
lose contact, and consequently paid attention to nothing but the direction
from which occasional guiding whistles came. At the end of the run, which
Ralph guessed must have been three miles, they came to a halt in a forest
clearing in the centre of which was an enormous and ancient oak.

The smugglers' leader, with two other men, stood at the foot of the tree,
and immediately asked Rashleigh who he was. The unfortunate man
answered in a voice stammering with terror by telling the simple truth,
explaining how he came to be on the shore when the raid occurred.

'A damned fine tale!' replied the smuggler. 'You are a blasted spy, and
you're going to die in a suitable way, at the bight of this good rope. You,
Bill, count a hundred; and, Harry and Jack, you stand by ready to string
this young shaver up when Bill's done.'

Confronted with the actual rope and the tree, and the menace of the
callous leader's manner, Rashleigh was crazed with fear. In less than two
minutes he had to face God, with a daring crime as his last significant
achievement. For years he had forgotten God and all that august Name
connoted, and at the blinding realization that he was about to meet his fate
as a criminal, the fear of hell became real. He dropped on his knees before
his contemptuous persecutor and begged for pity, and swore by everything
holy and unholy that he was no spy. Might he be struck dead if he had not
spoken truth. . . .

He might have been speaking to one deaf and dumb for all the effect his
pleadings had upon the smuggler. He came out of his agony of wild,
plunging terror as he realized that the man called Bill was counting and had
reached sixty-four.

'I'll give you everything I possess,' screamed Rashleigh. 'Only let me go.'

'Sixty-five, sixty-six . . .'

The smuggler caught up the rope and began to prepare the knot for the noose.

'Sixty-eight, sixty-nine . . .'

Until then only the grip of the two men on his arms had kept him from
sinking in a collapse upon the ground, but the sight of the leader running
the rope through the knot horrified him. Strong with despair he broke from
his captors, snatched up a gun which stood against a tree, and dealt the
chief so sound a blow on the head that the smuggler crashed sprawling to
the ground and the gun broke off at the breech, leaving only the barrel in
his hand. Before the others had recovered their wits, he leapt away across
the clearing for the forest. The smuggler who pursued him was fleet of
foot, and Rashleigh, glancing back, saw that he was gaining on him. He
dodged round sharply, hoping to lay him out also with a surprise blow, but
slipped and fell in a heap. His pursuer wrested the gun-barrel from him,
struck him twice with it, and proceeded to drag him back to the tree of
doom. He was no match for the smuggler, and could only struggle
ineffectually while shouting for help. The second smuggler joined his
confederate, and between them took him back to their chief, whose head,
bleeding profusely, was being bound up by the man Jack.

He greeted Rashleigh with a grim laugh.

'So ho, my shaver, you thought you'd settled me, eh?' he said. 'But Long
Frank has got a tougher nut than you can crack. Now, lads, stop gaping.
Chuck the end of the rope over that bough, and fix the noose round that
bloody pup's neck. We'll choke him good and hearty.'

The men obeyed with alacrity. The noose, feeling cold and rough against
his skin, was adjusted round his neck; three men laid hold of the loose end
of the rope, and Rashleigh, struggling madly, felt the tautening, and then
his feet left the ground.

'Ho! you blasted thieves, we've got you at last!'

Rashleigh heard the thunderous voice just as he raised his hands to clutch
the rope round his neck, and next instant found himself miraculously in a
heap on the grass. Picking himself up in a daze, he saw the three men who
had been pulling on the rope, struggling in the grasp of a number of armed
men, who speedily overpowered them. The smuggler chief and Jack had
disappeared. All this Rashleigh realized in a flash, and was immediately
surrounded by members of the crowd who had so opportunely arrived. He
judged them from their dress to be gamekeepers, and found that his
conjecture was right. They had been out in search of deer-stealers, when
his cries for help had brought them to the spot at a run. Ralph told his tale
and thanked them, and agreed to accompany them to Southampton, whither
they proposed to escort the three captured smugglers.

Before the strangely assorted party had gone a mile, two decent-looking
men came up and, taking the head gamekeeper to one side, talked earnestly
with him. Presently Ralph was beckoned over to the little group, and asked
by the new-comers whether he would agree not to charge the smugglers if
a certain sum of money were paid him. The gamekeeper, in whose view
smuggling was a much milder crime than deer-stealing, raised no objection
to freeing his prisoners; and Ralph was only too eager to agree to a course
which would put money in his pocket and at the same time make it
unnecessary for him to appear before a magistrate. So it was settled that he
would forgive his persecutors on receipt of a sum of twenty pounds. The
bargain was confirmed over a smoking breakfast in an alehouse on the
border of the forest, Rashleigh receiving one-half of the agreed sum then,
and arranging to call at the inn that evening to receive the balance. He then
left the company to pursue their obvious intention of getting drunk
together, and went home to his anxious relatives. In the evening he
returned to the inn, received the balance of the money, and a few days later
bade his relatives farewell and went to Portsmouth for a week.

It was now three weeks since he had robbed the Winchester jeweller, and
he judged it safe to return to that city to spring his plant. He purchased a
travelling trunk and went by coach to the scene of his first major crime. He
unearthed his plunder and carried it safely to his inn in the evening,
without any untoward incident troubling him. The following morning he
arrived with his packed trunk in London and sought out a 'fence,' a
receiver of stolen goods, who had been recommended to him by one of the
old lags he had met in jail.

He presented himself at a dingy marine store in a court leading to the
Minories, expecting to find in Mr. Jacobs the traditional type of Jewish old
clothes merchant. Instead a man in the prime of life, well-clothed and with
every sign of respectability, came into the shop at his summons, and on
hearing Rashleigh speak the password, which he had learnt in prison, made
an appointment to call at his lodgings next morning to discuss the business.
Rashleigh prepared a list of the articles he had to sell, and had ready a
few specimens when Jacobs arrived. The fence had a good reputation
among his criminal customers, but Rashleigh was taking no chances. When
the fence arrived he was kept in ignorance of the fact that the goods were
in the house. He went carefully over the list and examined the specimens in
a business-like way, and then turned to Rashleigh.

'Well, how much you want for the lot?' he asked.

'In round figures, a thousand pounds,' answered Rashleigh.

He smiled at the racial gesture of consternation with which the Jew
greeted this announcement.

'A t'ousand pounds! Mein Gott, are you mad! Where you t'ink all that
moneys shall come from?' demanded Jacobs.

'Come now, Mr. Jacobs,' said Rashleigh. 'You know that you could find
twenty times that amount, if the goods were there. It's a bargain I'm
offering you.'

'I tell you how it is, zen. Money is so scarce zese days, and besides, if I
borrow ze money to pay for all zis junks, ven the devil do you t'ink I get it
back? Tell me that.'

'Oh, well, if money is as scarce as all that, Mr. Jacobs,' answered
Rashleigh, 'you can buy half of what is on the list. We can divide them into
two heaps and toss up for first choice.'

Jacobs caught at this suggestion, and offered three hundred pounds for
the fair half. Rashleigh countered by demanding three hundred and fifty.
'Not I,' retorted Jacobs finally. 'Shall I go?'

'If you won't give me what I want, you may as well go.'

The Jew went to the door and partly opened it, then suddenly returned to
whisper confidentially in his customer's ear:

'I will give you six hundred and forty pounds for the lot.'

Rashleigh shook his head, and the Jew fairly ran out of the room and
down the stairs.

A few minutes later he returned, as Rashleigh expected he would do, and
concluded the bargain at six hundred and fifty pounds, paying down Bank
of England notes on the spot, and taking the portmanteau and jewellery
with him.

Happy in the consciousness that he had successfully completed his first
big achievement in the new career which he had learnt in prison, Rashleigh
settled down to enjoy the life of unimaginative dissipation for which he
had traded his honour and his integrity. Theatres, gaming houses and
women soon absorbed the money which such hard bargaining had won
from Jacobs the Jew, and only months had passed before he found himself
again practically penniless. Whilst he was questing round for some
opportunity to renew his fortunes, he met by chance a girl who had been in
the service of his old employer. In those early days he had had an affair
with her under his employer's roof, and he found her ready to resume it.

She told him that she was now in the service of an elderly gentleman of
great wealth in Welbeck Street. Rashleigh saw his chance, and cultivated
her liking for him with ardour, so that very soon he had gained admittance
to her master's house, where he made love to her while acquainting himself
with all the details he needed to know. His intention was to break into the
house and steal the valuable silver, which, he learnt from his paramour,
was kept in the butler's pantry. In a short time he had everything he needed
for his plan of plundering the silver except an accomplice, and an
accomplice was essential. It almost seemed as if fate were eager to give
him all the assistance he needed for his schemes, for he met almost at once
one of his onetime companions in prison, who had only recently been
discharged and was penniless. He was ready for anything that would make
him some money, and gladly agreed to Rashleigh's proposal. He also
undertook to find, that night, a hackney coachman who could be relied
upon to do what he was told and keep silent.

Rashleigh's plan being now complete, he decided to act at once. At
midnight they went to the house, with the necessary housebreaking
implements, and Rashleigh entered it by means of the circular coal-plate in
the pavement, this being the only detail which had necessitated an
associate. The other man replaced the coal-plate, and walked away, the
understanding being that he should return in half an hour. In less than half
the time he had allowed Rashleigh had removed all the plate from the
pantry and had locked himself, with his spoil beside him, in the cellar. No
hitch occurred. His confederate received the plate through the coal-hole,
Rashleigh climbed out, the coal-plate was replaced, and the pair drove to a
furnished room at Paddington which he had rented the day before.
Next day he went to a famous fence in Saint Mary Axe, and came away
with two hundred pounds, which he shared with his accomplice.




Chapter II



It was only a few weeks after the Welbeck Street burglary that
Rashleigh's quick wits led him to undertake the crime which at once taxed
his endurance to the limit and provided him with money to an amount
which might have rendered it unnecessary for him to pursue the career into
which his weakness had drifted him. It happened, as he was walking down
Lombard Street on a Thursday, that he noticed that the great common
sewer was open for repairs, and also that there was an important bank a
few yards from the opening. On the instant he decided to rob the vaults,
which, he guessed, would in the ordinary course be situated in the
basement, and therefore probably accessible from the sewer. He entered the
bank on the pretext of making an inquiry regarding the failure of some
country bank, and was kept waiting for some minutes, owing to the number
of customers who were there on business. This brief time he used to take in
all that he could regarding the building. The narrowness of the frontage
confirmed his belief that there was no space on the ground floor for a
strong room, which, he concluded, must therefore be below stairs.

He determined to make his attempt to rob the place on Saturday, and
made everything ready during the two days which followed his astute
conjecture. Telling the people with whom he lodged that he was going into
the country until Monday, he set out at about eight o'clock in the evening,
with a carpet bag containing all the implements he would need, and a
sufficient supply of food and spirits. This bag he concealed by wearing a
long boatcloak. On reaching the City he went into a coffee-room until it
was well past eleven o'clock, when he paid his reckoning and went by a
circuitous route to Lombard Street, arriving there about midnight. It had
come on to rain heavily, so that he met no one, not even a watchman, as he
approached the opening of the sewer. He got into it and reached the bottom
safely. He groped his way cautiously along the sewer, noting the side
drains as he went, until he came to the one which, according to his
calculations, should be the one beneath the bank. Supplying himself with a
light by means of phosphorus and a wax taper, he crept along the branch
drain, sounding its sides until a hollow noise suggested that he was outside
one of the walls enclosing the bank basement.

He then proceeded to remove the bricks, stripping to the waist as the
closeness of the drain, combined with the strain of working hard in so
cramped a position, made him sweat profusely. Steadily and indefatigably
he worked, prising out brick after brick, losing count of time. It was not for
nothing that this section of the sewer was under repair, and two happenings
warned him in time of the danger of the feat he was undertaking. First a
crash startled him and he was almost choked with dust and powdered
mortar. When this had settled he saw by taper-light that several yards of
the crown and sides of the drain had collapsed, the debris completely
blocking his way out. He went to work again, unalarmed by this, confident
of being able to get out some other way, once he had got into the vaults.

The incident had, however, made him cautious, and he proceeded more
carefully, keeping a watchful eye on the wall on which he was working. It
was thus that he noticed in time that the wall above the hole which he was
making had begun to crack, and that, unless he took instant measures, it
would soon fall and crush his life out. He crawled away rapidly to a sound
part of the drain, and had scarcely reached safety when the cracking wall
caved in, bringing with it a large piece of the drain, which struck Rashleigh
on the head and knocked him senseless.

When he came to his senses, he discovered with dismay that he was lying
in a considerable depth of water. He groped and found his phosphorus
bottle and his tapers, which luckily had not been buried, and, having lit a
taper, he burrowed under the broken bricks until he recovered his bag, in
which he found his spirit flask unbroken. A good pull at this revived him
sufficiently to enable him to investigate the ruins of his many hours of
work. He was elated to find that the collapsing walls had left a breach
through which he saw that there was some kind of a cellar within. He
cautiously enlarged the opening, gathered his tools into his bag, and
entered. A brief examination of the place filled him with chagrin and
despair. Packing cases, old hampers, broken bottles and piles of straw was
all he found, and a strong smell of drugs. He realized, with an empty
feeling in the pit of his stomach, that he had actually entered the basement
of the house next to the bank, which, he recollected, was occupied by a
wholesale druggist.

He sat down fatigued and disheartened at the negation of all his labour
and danger, and took another pull at the flask. The spirit put new heart into
him, and he determined to try the other side of the drain so long as there
was time safely to stay in the sewer. It was only six o'clock in the morning,
and as it was Sunday, he had the whole day for uninterrupted working.
This time he worked with more circumspection, and after about two
hours, by which time his hands were dreadfully galled and blistered, he had
made an opening large enough to crawl through. A single glance in the
light of his taper assured him that he had made no second mistake.

Investigation showed several cases of silver and copper money, and several
small cases, which he prised them open, he found to contain only blanks of
bank-notes. Then he found a case of bill stamps, and he was beginning to
think that his night of tormenting labour was to prove practically
unrewarded, when he came upon a toughly made chest of antique design. It
was strongly clasped and padlocked, and resisted all his attempts to open
the lid. Sweating and breathless from his exertions, he sat down on the
chest, his brain working desperately, furious at being balked when treasure
was within an inch of his hands. He sprang up suddenly and heaved the
chest over until it stood before him bottom up. He recollected having heard
from an experienced thief in jail that a chest of this kind could often be
opened at the bottom, if there had been any chance of damp collected
under and round it, which causes the wood to rot. A careful examination
proved that the bottom of the chest was indeed almost rotten, and in a few
minutes he had broken it away. At what he found within all the toil and
moil and danger were forgotten. Bags of coined gold, and a case of Bank
of England notes, waiting there for him to take!

He emptied his carpet bag and stuffed it with as many sovereigns as he
could carry, and then crammed in every bank-note that he could lay his
hands on, until he judged that he had about ten thousand pounds. He then
hid all his implements and went back to the adjoining house, where he
made up a bed of straw in the most out-of-the-way corner that he could
find. After eating a hearty meal of the food which he had brought with him,
he lay down and slept.

He awoke at about six in the evening and decided to explore all the
druggist's cellars with a view to discovering whether there was some way
out other than the choked-up drain. The idea of removing all that heap of
bricks and rubbish was something he could scarcely bear to contemplate,
rested though he was. After examining every inch of the cellar's floorspace,
he came at last upon a grating in a corner, which, on being raised,
proved to open into the main sewer. He returned to his straw couch and
waited impatiently for twelve midnight to strike. All his anxiety to be gone
did not overcome his caution, as at that hour the City was practically
certain to be deserted on a Sunday night. Midnight came at last, and he got
through the grating, carrying his bag of booty, and crept silently towards
the opening of the sewer. Listening attentively, he waited until no sound of
footsteps or anything else broke the silence of the sleeping City, and then
clambered up into the street.

The night was as dark as it had been at Winchester, and rain was still
falling steadily, but Rashleigh's elation at the favourable conditions was
short-lived. As he made his way to the footpath, a watchman stepped
suddenly out from a doorway and stood before him. Rashleigh was startled,
but kept cool.

'Good night, watchman,' he said in his blandest tones.

'Good night, sir,' returned the watchman, a note of surprise in his voice.

'D'you know, I thought I saw you come out of that big hole!'

Rashleigh laughed with the man at the absurdity of the idea, and,
breathing deeply with relief at avoiding another awkward contretemps,
walked on.

No hackney coach being obtainable at that hour, he went down to the
river to a house which he knew was kept open all night for the convenience
of passengers arriving by the late packet boats, booked a room, and, being
too excited to sleep, spent the night alternately feasting his imagination on
the future, and reading a book which he found in his bedroom.

In the morning he took boat up to Lambeth and breakfasted, going to his
lodgings by hackney coach immediately after his meal. He concealed all
his gold and notes except about one hundred pounds, and departed by
coach for the City. Here by adroit questioning and listening, he learnt that
the police were baffled by the crime, and had that morning arrested all the
workmen employed in the repairing of the sewer, so that they could all be
closely questioned. As a number of the workmen had not returned to work,
there were some grounds for the suspicious of the authorities that the gang
was concerned in the robbery. Placards offering a reward of five hundred
pounds for the detection of the guilty parties were already posted outside
the Guildhall. Rashleigh stayed that night at the 'Swan with Two Necks,'
in Lad Lane, and next morning continued his inquiries. He, posing as a
visitor from Bristol, chatted with a civic functionary at the Guildhall, from
whom he learnt that the watchman who had accosted him on Sunday night
in Lombard Street, had come forward and told his tale. In spite of the fact
that the magistrates could make nothing of this information, Rashleigh was
alarmed, and, content with what he had learned, took coach at once for his
favourite retreat, at Farnham in Surrey. Here he decided to remain until it
would be safe to return to his lodgings, pack his spoil and leave for foreign
parts. He had heard that all the ports were being closely watched, and
therefore he did not dare to make a precipitate flight.

About a fortnight later, he was sitting at breakfast in the inn, when he
read in a newspaper that which made him leave his breakfast unfinished
and leave immediately for London. Essex Street, Strand, where he lodged,
had been burnt down, one side of the street having been entirely gutted.
Sick with apprehension, he took the first available coach, which landed
him in the evening at the Golden Cross, Charing Cross. He raced up the
Strand to Essex Street, and at a single glance he knew that complete loss
had befallen him. Only the shell remained of the house in which he had
lodged; it was a blackened ruin, and its walls were being demolished by an
emergency gang of workmen, as they were in danger of falling.

Half demented with rage, Ralph Rashleigh went into a neighbouring
tavern, and drank himself into a state of oblivion.




Chapter III



The crushing effect of the shock of his heavy loss, combined with the
strain upon his nervous system resulting from his debauch, was that
Rashleigh developed severe brain fever. The landlord of the inn found him
heavily intoxicated and put him to bed in one of his rooms, first taking his
purse and deciding to apportion his charges according to its contents.

It was not until the fourth week of his illness that Rashleigh recovered
consciousness, and it was some days before he was strong enough to take
the air. On inquiring of the landlord for his money, he was presented with a
bill which, with the surgeon's charges for visits and medicines, amounted
to over eighty-eight pounds, and the man demanded discharge of this bill
immediately. As he held the money, Rashleigh had no alternative but to
settle the bill, extortionate as he knew the charges to be. All that remained
to Rashleigh was the sum of seven pounds ten shillings and eightpence,
and the suit of clothes in which he stood.

Wasted in health and strength, preyed upon by remorse and hopelessness,
he determined to abandon his life of crime and take up again his
occupation as a legal copyist. He left the inn for a small furnished
apartment near the Temple, and after a week's recuperation, visited an old
employer and asked for work. The lawyer received him in a friendly way
and promised that he would have some work ready for him the next day,
and Rashleigh made his way back to his lodging with an easier mind than
he had had since he had first begun to utter spurious coins.

On his way home an incident occurred which made mock of his good
resolutions and committed him to a terrible future. A man passing in the
custody of a police officer, on the way to the watch-house, hailed
Rashleigh, who, on turning to look at him, discovered that it was his
accomplice in the robbery of the house in Welbeck Street. Suspecting that
Rashleigh was the pal of his prisoner, the officer passed the word to one of
his colleagues, and in less than a quarter of an hour Rashleigh found
himself arrested and lodged in the watch-house, ignorant of the charge
upon which he had been arrested. After an anxious night in the cells, he
was brought next day before the magistrate of Bow Street to hear the
officer charge Thomas Jenkins (alias Thomas Jones, alias Thomas Smith,
and a number of other aliases) with having been concerned in a daring
robbery of a house in Adelphi. The police case against him was proved to
the hilt. It appeared, however, that Jenkins had been seen in the company
of an associate on the evening of the robbery, whom the police were
prepared to swear greatly resembled Rashleigh. After Jenkins had been
committed for trial at the Old Bailey, Rashleigh was put into the dock, but
the only evidence which could be found against him was of a negative
character. He stated with considerable heat that he was not a thief, but a
legal copyist. It was decided to remand him for a week, so that inquiries
could be made.

When he was again brought before the magistrate, he found that his
associate in crime, Jenkins, had turned King's evidence against him and
had made full confession of his story of the Welbeck Street crime, and had
implicated the hackney coachman who had assisted in the removal of the
booty, as well as the receiver who had bought it from them. Whatever
defence Rashleigh might have been able to put up was destroyed by his
inability to explain how he had occupied himself during the previous
eighteen months. The police had made inquiries and found that his claims
to be a copyist were based upon his visit to the lawyer whom he had
mentioned on the day of his arrest, and the fact of his imprisonment for
uttering spurious coins was put in. Rashleigh was therefore committed to
Newgate to take his trial at the ensuing sessions for burglary, which at the
time was a capital offence.

Strongly secured by leg-chains and handcuffs, Rashleigh was hustled into
the prison van, with two prostitutes committed on the charge of pocketpicking;
a girl, fresh from the country, who was committed to prison for
having stolen a few articles from her mistress; an apprentice boy charged
with robbing his master's till; an old beggar who was to be tried for a street
assault; and, finally, a brutal-looking Irishman who had beaten his wife so
severely that her life was despaired of. On the way to the prison the van
was filled with the noise of the wailing of the servant-girl, the bawdy
cross-chat of the two strumpets, and the wild curses of the Irishman, so that
it was a relief to Rashleigh when at last the van stopped outside the prison
gates. The van door was thrown open and its prisoners unloaded by
torchlight; then Rashleigh and the others were hurried through the prison
gates to the accompaniment of brutal jeers and jests from the mob which
collected nightly to greet the arrival of prisoners.

A feeling of icy despair came over him as he heard the grating noise of
the hinges and the rasp of the great bolts as the door was closed, shutting
him off from the free world, as it seemed, for ever. All the prisoners were
subjected to a strict search, but all their money and other innocent articles
were immediately returned to them. A wardress led the women in one
direction, and a turnkey ordered Rashleigh and the other men to follow him
along a gloomy passage, the walls of which were festooned with fetters and
handcuffs, between which hung fire-arms of all sizes and dates. The sight
of these added to Rashleigh's feeling of dread, but it was the instruments of
punishment and torture, some of them then obsolete, which made the most
terrifying impact upon his imagination. The passage ended in a small room
in which a clerk entered the personal description of each of the criminals,
after which they were moved on through a small yard until they were
halted by a grated door. After some delay this was opened, and they were
admitted into this new wing of the building and led up three flights of stone
stairs into a large, badly-lighted apartment, the unglazed windows of which
were strongly secured by iron bars. Except for a rough table and two or
three wooden forms, the room was unfurnished, though scores of prisoners
were sitting and lying around its floor. The turnkey handed his batch of
prisoners over to the man in charge of the ward, who gave to each of them
a chunk of black bread, a length of coco-nut matting, and a coarse horserug.

On the instant of the door closing upon the turnkey, a rug was flung over
Rashleigh's head from behind, and he was pulled to the ground. The same
treatment was meted out to all the new-comers, and all were stripped of
their clothing by their fellow-prisoners. Rashleigh was too dispirited to
resist, and when the laughing prisoners had had their way with him, he
secured his rug and mat, spread them on the ground, and lay naked down to
sleep. The combined distractions, however, of the vermin with which the
place was overrun, the noisy talk and other nameless annoyances from the
dregs of humanity who were now his associates, combined with the intense
cold and the unease of his mind, made sleep quite impossible. He spent the
night tossing and tumbling, brooding remorsefully upon the past, and
making golden resolutions for the future. Rising before the majority of his
fellow-prisoners were stirring, he examined the pile of clothing which he
saw lying in the middle of the floor, and finding his own clothes, dressed
quickly and went to warm his frozen body by the fire. At eight o'clock
several buckets of this gruel, which served as breakfast, were brought in,
but in spite of the poor quality of the food, Rashleigh made a hearty meal
with the gruel and the black bread which had been given him the previous
night. After breakfast the prisoners attended prayers in the chapel, and then
those who were so inclined went to wash themselves at the pump. After
this the order of the day seemed to be simply to stand around in the yard,
talking and waiting for any messages or parcels which might be brought by
friends.

Rashleigh stood among the disconsolate group of men who had hope of
neither message nor parcel, and who could only look on in envy at the
more fortunate prisoners. His interest was suddenly arrested by the
appearance of a man who, in answer to the name of William Tyrrell,[*] went
forward through the door to the visitors' room. There was something about
the man which made Rashleigh think that he had seen him before, and, on
asking another prisoner who Tyrrell was, he learnt that he was a swindler
undergoing a sentence of three months' imprisonment. While the inmates
broke up into groups and gangs--'schools' as they were termed--and
settled down to various forms of gambling, Rashleigh watched the door
through which Tyrrell must return. Without losing sight of the door for
more than a few moments, he was able to observe that gaffing, or
tossing-the-ha'penny, was the favourite form of gambling, which, despite the
smallness of the unit stake, roused the players to a frenzy of excitement,
and was carried on to the accompaniment of such an assortment of
language as could only be heard in Billingsgate, Chequer Alley, and
Winfield Street. Quarrels occurred and rings were formed in proper prizefighting
order, and the protagonists, cheered by their seconds, fought the
issue to a knock-out. Betting was carried on over these battles, and he saw
one man pledge his very shirt and shoes in support of his favourite. It
astonished Rashleigh that men could keep so free-hearted and careless in
such circumstances, when many of them knew that only a miracle could
save them from the gallows in a few weeks' time.

[On the seventh day of the Fifth Sessions at the Old Bailey in 1827, the trial of
William Tyrrell took place. The Sessions Papers gives the following account:
William Tyrrell was indicted for a fraud. Samuel Bills: I keep the Blue Posts
public-house in Holborn and book for the Kentish Town coach. On the 17th of April the
prisoner (who was a stranger to me) came to the office and produced a brown-paper
parcel with this ticket to it (looking at it): the parcel was to be sent to Kentish Town;
the ticket purports to be from the Angel, St. Clements, and charges 1s. 8d. carriage
and 6d. porterage. It was directed to Mr. Sheen, Kentish Town, he demanded 2s. 2d.
which I paid him; he brought another parcel about three o'clock the same afternoon,
and had a ticket with that, purporting to come from the Angel, and charging 2s. 2d.
which I paid him, believing to be correct. Cross-examined by Mr. Barry. Q. Did you
know where they came from? A. No; the ticket only denotes that they came from the
country; the parcels were found to contain nothing but brown paper. James Phipps: I
am a coachman. I took the parcel to Mr. Sheen, of Kentish Town, but it was a hoax.
Joseph Werrett: I took a parcel to Hampstead, but could not find the person it was
directed to. Joseph Walters: I am porter at the Angel, St. Clements, we often send
parcels by the short stages and a ticket like these, with our charge. Cross-examined
by Mr. Barry. Q. Is this one of your tickets? A. We used these about two years ago;
the prisoner was employed at the Angel about four years ago. Samuel Hopson: I
took the prisoner in charge; he said poverty drove him to it, and that he had a wife
and three children; I believe he was in great distress. Mr. Barry addressed the Court
on behalf of the defendant and called several witnesses who gave him a good
character. Guilty. Recommended to Mercy--Confined Three Months.]

At last Tyrrell reappeared, and as he passed him, Rashleigh recalled
where it was that he had seen him. The occasion had been when Tyrrell
was being taken in custody of a constable to Hertford Jail, and Rashleigh
had entered the inn at which they were passing the night en route. He had
sat in with the policeman and plied him so generously with liquor, that the
fellow had fallen into a drunken sleep, whereupon Rashleigh had taken
from his pocket the key of the room in which the prisoner was confined,
and released him. He had further given him sufficient money with which to
make good his flight. Rashleigh went over and talked with Tyrrell, who
almost at once recognized him as the man who had so opportunely laid him
under an obligation. He asked Rashleigh how he was fixed in prison, and
on learning that he was practically penniless and without any influence or
friends, Tyrrell at once showed that he was no ingrate. He explained that he
had, by dexterous bribing of jail officers, obtained a place in one of the
best and most luxurious rooms in the whole prison, where he had every
facility for enjoying life; and that he had always all the money he needed.
He promised to arrange it that Rashleigh should be removed into this
desirable ward, and offered in any case to let him share his mess until the
Sessions.

The principal turnkey of the jail came presently to the yard gate to
superintend the distribution of the meat and soup to the prisoners, and
Tyrrell seized the opportunity to ask the officer to allow Rashleigh to be
transferred to what was known as 'Smugglers' Ward.' The force of his
appeal was driven home with a handsome bribe, surreptitiously pressed
into the turnkey's hand, and Rashleigh received permission immediately to
change his ward. It proved that Tyrrell had not exaggerated the comforts
which were to be had in this notorious ward. The beds were all cleanlooking,
and a number of them were screened off separately with coarse
curtains, thus dividing the main room into small private apartments, which
were actually rented by the wardsman weekly to those who could afford
them. There were decent tables and chairs, and other furniture, and
generally Rashleigh decided that there were worse places in which to hunt
comfort than His Majesty's Jail.

Tyrrell gave him a share of his own two-bedded apartment, enclosed like
the rest with curtains. It contained several shelves and a table with drawers,
all loaded with articles of petty merchandise which gave it the appearance
of a huckster's shop. A corner of the cubicle was actually used for the latter
purpose, as Rashleigh discovered when, a few minutes after their arrival,
several prisoners came to purchase tea, sugar, coffee, milk, eggs, bacon,
butter, and other eatables, and the two of them were occupied for more
than an hour supplying the customers. His benefactor then ordered a meal
to be prepared for them, and Tyrrell noticing his guest's surprise, explained
that 'Smugglers' Ward' kept its own hours and had its own regimen of
existence independent of prison routine. It was true, he said, that all had to
attend prayers in chapel every morning for half an hour with the ruck of
prisoners, but they returned to their beds and remained snugly in them until
the ward had been thoroughly cleaned out, their boots and clothes brushed,
and their breakfasts cooked by their servants. Every one of the prison haut
ton who could afford the luxury, employed a servant, while others less
opulent clubbed their resources and shared the cost of a servant between
them. These servants, Rashleigh discovered, were mostly the Johnny Raws,
simple-minded countrymen, or young apprentices, who had not acquired
sufficient guile to supply their wants, and were glad to earn a little cash and
extra food by serving the more fortunate prisoners.






Chapter IV



Once Rashleigh and his ward-mates were locked up for the night, they
spent the time much as they would have done in some favourite tavern,
drinking, singing, gambling, and tale-telling. Porter was permitted by the
regulations, but bribery and corruption made it easy to introduce into the
ward all brands of wine and spirits, which, in such circumstances, were
drunk to excess whenever the quantity was adequate. Over their liquor the
hardened criminals related their exploits with the pride peculiar to their
kind, and the beginners in crime were eager in their initiation, and longed
for freedom principally to seek opportunities of equalling or excelling the
feats of their hard-drinking preceptors. Raw shop-lads, awaiting trial for
peculations from their masters' tills, sat at the feet of old offenders, and
listened agog to the stories of the rich rewards which came from a career of
plunder. Decent youngsters were in this fashion easily misguided into
desiring a life of lucrative villainy, abandoning for ever in their minds any
thought of returning to a law-abiding existence.

Day followed day, its programme unvarying. Attendance at prayers in the
morning, hours spent in loitering purposelessly through the day, with
songs, yarns and drinking in the evenings. The approach of the Sessions,
however, steadied the inmates of Smugglers' Ward. There was much to be
done. They had counsel to fee, attorneys to instruct, and defences to draw
up. Rashleigh's acquaintance with the law made this occasion one of
golden opportunities. He was engaged to write letters, prepare statements
and plot the course of cross-examination of dangerous witnesses. He was
well paid for these services, and was able not only to fee counsel for
himself, but also to fit himself out in decent clothes in which to attend the
approaching trial. He was shrewd enough to realize, however, that his
chances of acquittal were practically nonexistent. Thomas Jenkins and the
hackney coachman, who had been concerned with him in the robbery, had
told stories which were corroborative and conclusive, and he realized that
his hopes were further minimized by the fact that the Crown, in finding
him guilty, would automatically prove their case against the very
troublesome Jewish fence who had received and paid for the stolen plate.

The police had for years been waiting for an opportunity to arrest this man,
and the establishing of Rashleigh's guilt was all they needed now in order
to seize the chance which his accidental arrest had put into their hands.
Nevertheless, with the shadowy hope that mocks despair, he prepared his
defence with all the skill he had, and waited for the opening of the
Sessions, at which the destinies of four hundred unfortunates were to be
determined.

The dreaded day came when the Sessions began, and Rashleigh watched
with increasing amazement the light way in which the returning prisoners
took their sentences. Scarcely a man showed any sign of regret, remorse or
concern, as they came back from their ordeal by trial. Men who had
received less than seven years' transportation were as gleeful as if they had
been acquitted, and those who had been sentenced to a flogging, jested
about the mere 'teasing' which they were to receive from the lash. Seven
years' transportation he heard referred to, with a laugh, as a 'small fine of
eighty-four months,' and even those sentenced for fourteen years, and for
life, seemed to treat their doom as a jest. Looking on, it made him shudder
to hear those who had received the death sentence comment upon their fate
as though it were some obscene and brutal joke to look forward to a
hanging.

The day came when, by the calendar, Rashleigh knew that his turn had
come. He turned sick with fear as he found, on examining the list, that
several housebreakers were to be tried in sequence on the same day. He
waited his turn in a frenzy of despair as, one after another, his comrades in
crime came back, all doomed to death. He could not even pretend to join in
the laugh which greeted the sally of one man, that 'They were celling them
all, like bloody bullocks, to the knackers,'--meaning to the condemned
cell. There had been a dangerous outbreak of burglary in London during
the past winter, and it was obvious that the citizen jurors meant to put a
stop to the crime by allowing no suspected offender to escape.

At last Rashleigh's turn came to stand in the dock, an amusing spectacle
for the crowded spectators, who behaved with scanty consideration for the
dignity of the Court. The lawyers made a show of examining their briefs,
and the trial began.

Ralph Rashleigh was indicted by that name for having on a certain day
and date, set forth in the arraignment, with force and arms feloniously
broken into and entered the dwelling-house of Westley Shortland, Esq., in
the night-time, and for having therein stolen, taken, and carried away, a
large quantity of silver plate, his property, contrary to the statute and
against the peace of Our Sovereign Lord the King, his crown and dignity;
the indictment being interlarded with a vast number of other legal phrases.
To this, of course, he pleaded 'Not guilty,' and put himself upon his trial.

A jury was now empanelled, and the advocate for the prisoner having
declined to challenge any of their number, the case proceeded. The learned
Counsel for the Crown, after an eloquent exordium, in which he dwelt at
great length upon the many daring depredations recently committed under
cover of the night upon the properties of the peaceful and well-disposed
inhabitants of the town, proceeded to give a sketch of the case in question,
as he had been informed it would be proved in evidence, and he wound up
by reverting to the skilful and adroit manner in which the robbery had been
perpetrated, at the same time charitably requesting the jurymen to dismiss
all prejudices from their minds and try the case solely by the statement of
the witnesses. Nevertheless, he gave it as his private opinion that the
prisoner at the bar was a scoundrel of the deepest dye, steeped in crime to
the very lips. The evidence of Mr. Shortland's butler was now taken; he
swore that having obtained his master's permission to pay a visit to a sick
friend for a day or two, he had collected the whole of the plate under his
care and safely locked the articles in the pantry on the night in question. A
female servant next deposed to finding the pantry locked up, but all its
valuable contents missing, on the following morning, and the approver
then completed the whole case by giving a clear and detailed story of the
manner in which the prisoner and himself had actually committed the
crime in question. His evidence was sustained by that of the hackney
coachman, who had also been admitted to give testimony on the part of the
Crown, and though Rashleigh's counsel most cunningly cross-questioned
both these witnesses, and elicited from Jenkins in particular the admission
that he had been a thief from his earliest youth, and of his having been
actively engaged in the commission of every species of crime during a
period of twenty-five years, yet the damning fact of the want of any regular
or honest mode of livelihood on the part of Rashleigh rendered all efforts
abortive, and after a brief pause the jury, without retiring, found Ralph
Rashleigh guilty of the crime of burglary.

The atmosphere of the court became suddenly tense with morbid
expectancy: the dramatic moment had arrived. The Recorder addressed the
prisoner in a silence broken only by his voice. Ralph did not hear the
sentences preambling the words of his doom. Only when the awful formula
'and hanged by the neck until you be dead' was spoken, did he realize that
the sentence which he had dreaded had actually been passed upon him. A
shiver ran through his frame, and then his consciousness seemed to be
drugged. The court became unreal as a scene in a dream. Under the
guidance of a warder he walked like a somnambulist from the dock,
scarcely seeing the people on the crowded benches whose eyes preyed
upon his misery. Still realization did not come as he meekly followed the
warder down the gloomy passage from the Sessions Hall to the jail yard.

He smiled foolishly at Tyrrell when the man asked him what luck he had
had, and left it to the turnkey to provide the answer with the word 'Cells,'
which he shouted to the officer waiting to receive prisoners sentenced to
death. He smiled again at Tyrrell's words of encouragement as his ward-
mate shook his hand, and the significance of the small packet which he
found himself grasping at the end of the handshake entirely eluded his
stunned intelligence. Scarcely knowing that he held the packet, he suffered
the turnkey to hurry him along through yards and passages, until they
reached the great ward where the condemned men were housed during the day.

It was still only the third day of the Sessions, yet there were over forty
men, most of them young, already herded together under sentence of death
by hanging. They greeted Rashleigh with loud cries of 'Fish, oh!'--'One
more in the net!' and asked him what particular crime had been his.

'Crack,' he replied, bewildered by the high spirits of his questioners.

'There's twenty-eight of us now,' said one, 'all jugged for housebreaking.'

'The scragsman [hangman] will make a rare haul out of us,' cried
another: a sally which was greeted with roars of laughter, as if to jest about
their coming end was to touch the very apex of humour.

During the midday meal Rashleigh sat next one of his late companions in
Smugglers' Ward, speculating upon the probable number of those
condemned who would actually be hanged. It was well known that after
each Sessions a certain proportion of the sentences were commuted to
transportation, but so haphazard appeared to be the method by which the
lucky ones were selected, that it was impossible to speculate who among
them all would escape hanging. Tales were told of authentic cases in which
hardened criminals with a long record of offences were allowed to escape
and young thieves were hanged. These stories had the effect of still further
depressing Rashleigh, whose anticipations were darkened by complete
hopelessness.

He managed to keep despair at arm's length during the afternoon by
joining in the gambling and singing in which the bolder and less
imaginative spirits indulged, and keeping his eyes averted from the
spectacle of the few miserable creatures who paced gloomily up and down
the ward, muttering and groaning in fear.

At night the prisoners were broken up into threes and led to the
dormitories in which they were to sleep during the short remainder of their
lives. The cells were twelve feet by eight, containing three rude bedsteads,
on each of which were two rugs and a straw mattress. It was already dusk,
and as no artificial light was provided, Rashleigh and his two cell-mates
lay down to sleep in the falling darkness. It was only now that the
awfulness of his position made its full impact upon his imagination, and he
hid his head beneath his rugs as if to hide himself from the terrifying
thoughts which whirled through his brain. In despair he began to consider
suicide, thinking out one means after another, yet abandoning them as they
occurred to him. Suicide was succeeded by the hope of escaping from the
prison, and he revolved the problem in his mind as the peals of a
neighbouring clock recurred hour after hour and found him sleepless. This
reminder of time's passing brought more vividly before him the realization
that his hours on earth were actually numbered, unless----. Hope leapt in
his heart as he remembered that there was a chance--a good chance, he
told himself fiercely--of being reprieved and transported. At last he
began to sleep fitfully, only to be tormented with dreams more devastating
to his peace than his waking terror. He dreamt of a funeral bell tolling for
his execution; accompanied by the priest, he reached the scaffold, ascended
to the platform, and saw below and around him the mocking faces of a sea
of spectators; he felt the cold rough hempen rope touch his neck, felt the
anguish of the eternal moment of the drop, and, as in his dream he
struggled against strangulation, the pain was so intense that he awoke to
find himself bathed in cold sweat and his limbs numbed. He lay crushed by
the dread of the dream, fighting against the thoughts which assailed him,
praying for the day to dawn.

As soon as he heard sounds of movement in the passage outside, he
sprang from his pallet bed and paced the small floor until the turnkey came
to lead him and his two companions in duress to the day ward. Light of day
and the cheerful company of his fellows reassured him.

By the time the Sessions had ended there were altogether sixty-five men
in the condemned side, all under sentence of death. At first the days passed
in slow monotony and the nights in terror, akin to that of the first night, but
gradually Rashleigh became mentally calloused to the anticipation of the
dreaded prospect ahead of him, and began to plan seriously to escape. He
discovered that his cell was on the outer wall of Newgate, and broached his
scheme to his two night companions. One of them was too apathetic and
miserable even to want to escape, but the second man was enthusiastic.
The two of them, therefore, began operations that same night, with the two
files which had been in the parcel which Tyrrell had pressed into
Rashleigh's hand, and a piece of iron about two feet long which had once
been the handle of a frying-pan. This was sharpish at one end and served as
a chisel.

Choosing a place behind their beds, they began laboriously to scrape the
mortar from the joints between the stonework of the wall, carefully
collecting the dust into their pockets and throwing it among the ashes of
the fire in the morning when they went into the day ward. In three nights
they had loosened enough stonework for their purpose, but on removing
the ashlar blocks, they were chagrined to find that there was a timber
framing on the outside of the wall. They replaced the stones and made new
plans to cope with this new difficulty. Next day they purloined two sharp
tableknives, which they notched into the semblance of saws with their files,
and sharpened the teeth as well as they could. Also they bribed a turnkey to
procure them a phosphorus box and a piece of candle. On examining the
partition next night, they found that it was simple weather-boarding such as
is used to finish the gable ends of a roof.

That night they succeeded in their task of cutting away a sufficiently
large hole to enable them to crawl out. They found that the hole debouched
under the apex of a roof abutting on to the prison, and there was nothing to
prevent them climbing through on to the joists of the garret. Once there,
they set about removing the tiles from the roof. Freedom already seemed to
be theirs when, in his eagerness to reach up, Rashleigh's companion slipped
from the joist and crashed through the lath and plaster of the ceiling of the
room below. The next thing he knew was that he was sprawling on the bed
of an old woman, who had instantly awakened and was shrieking 'Rape!
Fire! Murder!' at the pitch of her voice, despite all the efforts of the man to
pacify her and explain his intrusion.

Rashleigh, motionless as a rock, listened to this, and to the sound of
hurrying footsteps which proved that the household had been aroused.
Under cover of the noise, he crept over to the hole in the ceiling and
peeped through. He saw the door burst open and half a dozen men and
women, mostly in night attire, rush into the room. His companion,
immediately the door was opened, bolted past his would-be captors and
plunged down the stairs. Above the chatter of voices in the room beneath
his feet, Rashleigh heard the sound of a struggle on the stairs, and judging
from this that his friend had been captured, he thought it best to make his
escape on to the roof. Nerved by despair, he tore away battens and tiles,
and scrambled through the hole he had made. In his panic he missed his
hold on the roof and began to roll at everincreasing speed down the steep
slope. His expectation of sudden and violent death when he should pitch
over the roof edge to the ground below, was disappointed. The jerk which
he was expecting occurred, but instead of dropping through space, he
found himself gasping in icy water. He struck out to swim to the edge of
this roof reservoir, and clutching the parapet wall, climbed out on to it. The
pitchy darkness prevented him from knowing how far from the ground he
was, and also made any attempt at exploring the roof extremely perilous.
There was nothing for it but to sit where he was astride the wall, and wait
for dawn. During the hours through which he sat soaked to the skin and
almost frozen, Rashleigh had leisure in which to regret ever having
attempted to escape. Compared with his predicament the rough comfort of
his prison seemed like luxury.

Light came at last, and Rashleigh saw at once that there was small chance
of escape. He was on the top of a flat unbroken wall, and the flagged
courtyard at its foot was over forty feet below his precarious perch. His
only method of concealment was to jump back into the water, though even
there he could be seen from the roof. He was just as securely imprisoned as
he would have been in the strongest cell in Newgate. So hopeless was his
position, that he began almost to hope that someone would see him, and
this hope was realized so suddenly that he nearly pitched to the ground
with the violence of the start he gave.

'Ha, my fine fellow!' cried a gruff voice, and gripping wildly at the wall,
Rashleigh looked up and saw a turnkey holding a carbine to his shoulder,
sitting at the foot of a chimney-stack. 'You're there, are you?' taunted the
turnkey. 'Well, you're safe enough where you are; and we've got your pal,
too.'

'Don't shoot me!' cried Rashleigh, alarmed at the sight of the unwavering
barrel pointing towards him.

'You keep still and I won't,' rejoined the turnkey. 'But move an inch, and
I'll topple you over full of lead.'

Someone now observed him from below. A ladder was brought and,
descending it, Rashleigh was at once seized and hustled back to prison.
After a week on bread and water in a dark cell, he was heavily ironed and
allowed to join his fellows in the day ward.

The ensuing days passed without incident until one afternoon during the
fifth week after the Sessions the prisoners were taken early to their cells
and the doors closed upon them. In a little while the sound of cell doors
opening and closing, and the voice of the prison chaplain, warned the men
that the critical hour had come at last.

Death or reprieve--which?

This question drummed in the mind of every man. Rashleigh stood, his
breath coming quickly, until the cell door opened to admit the Sheriff in his
official dress, and the chaplain in his robes. His breath caused a fluttering
sensation in his throat as he listened to the Sheriff addressing one of his
cell-mates.

'William Roberts, your case has received His Majesty's most gracious
consideration, but your frequent previous convictions and the
circumstances of peculiar atrocity with which your last crime was
accompanied, utterly preclude the possibility of mercy being extended to
so hardened a criminal. You must therefore prepare to expiate your
offences on the scaffold. You are ordered for execution in fourteen days
from the present.'

While the unhappy man struggled against completely breaking down
before the irrevocable destruction of his last gleam of hope, the chaplain
addressed him with a homily on the need for prayer and repentance, which
the fellow seemed not to hear. Rashleigh, fear tightening his heart-strings,
watched his rolling eyes and his ineffectual struggle to speak, with a
fascination that had no sympathy in it: the dread of the moment for his own
fate had stunned all feelings of altruism. He was not kept long in suspense.
The Sheriff addressed him and his remaining cell-mate jointly,
pompously announcing that, in the exercise of his Royal prerogative of
mercy, His Majesty had graciously been pleased to spare their lives, but
that to vindicate the insulted laws of his realm, they must prepare
themselves to be transported for the remainder of their lives as criminal
exiles in a distant land, and nevermore to set foot upon the soil of England.
Another homily from the chaplain, impressing upon the two prisoners the
necessity of falling on their knees and giving thanks to God for sparing
their most unworthy lives, was interrupted roughly by Rashleigh's
companion.

'If ever I do pray to God,' he said fiercely, all his hate and defiance of
society concentrated in his voice, 'it will only be to beg that I live to see
you hanged, you prayer-mumbling, sanctimonious old swine, taking
pleasure in hitting at poor b----s when they're down. Go to hell!'

The Sheriff failed to suppress a smile as he followed the angry cleric out
of the cell.




Chapter V



'Lags away!'


This was the cry which, a few nights later, warned the transportees who
had been respited that the time had come for them to be taken down to the
hulk on the coast, in which they would be confined until the next convict
ship was due to sail. Rashleigh and more than fifty other men were
crowded into two large vans, handcuffed, heavily ironed, and chained
together and to the van sides. As soon as all the prisoners were thus
properly secured, the vans were driven off at a brisk pace towards an
unknown destination. There were several of these convict hulks on the
coast, and no hint was given to the prisoners as to which of them they were
bound for. Rashleigh, however, recognized through the window familiar
places and buildings, and knew that they were driving down the main
Portsmouth Road. With the needful changing of horses, and by driving
continuously, the vans reached the dockyard late on the following
afternoon, and the prisoners were at once paraded on a wooden wharf,
alongside which lay the gloomy hulk of the old Leviathan.

This vessel was an ancient '74 which, after a gallant career in carrying the
flag of England over the wide oceans of the navigable world, had come at
last to be used for the humiliating service of housing convicts awaiting
transportation over those seas. She was stripped and denuded of all that
makes for a ship's vanity. Two masts remained to serve as clothesprops,
and on her deck stood a landward-conceived shed which seemed to deride
the shreds of dignity which even a hulk retains.

The criminals were marched aboard, and paraded on the quarter-deck of
the desecrated old hooker, mustered and received by the captain. Their
prison irons were then removed and handed over to the jail authorities, who
departed as the convicts were taken to the forecastle. There every man was
forced to strip and take a thorough bath, after which each was handed out
an outfit consisting of coarse grey jacket, waistcoat and trousers, a
round-crowned, broadbrimmed felt hat, and a pair of heavily nailed shoes. The
hulk's barber then got to work shaving and cropping the polls of every
mother's son, effecting in many cases such metamorphoses that Rashleigh
was unable to recognize numbers of those who had come aboard with him.
Before leaving the forecastle, each man was double ironed, and then taken
on deck to receive a hammock, two blankets and a straw palliasse.

A guard marched the laden and fettered prisoners below decks, where
they were greeted with roars of ironic welcome from the convicts already
incarcerated there. The lower deck was divided up into divisions by means
of iron palisading, with lamps hanging at regular intervals, and these
divisions were subdivided by wooden partitions into a score or so of
apartments, each of which housed from fifteen to twenty convicts. As
Rashleigh and his companions were marched past the occupied pens, they
were greeted by a chorus of the cry, 'New chums! new chums!' and howls
of jeering laughter. In a few minutes all the new-comers were
accommodated in their new quarters.

Rashleigh got little sleep that first night, being pestered by the silly tricks
of the older hands, who delighted in tormenting the raw recruits. He
managed to doze towards morning, and awoke to a consciousness of a most
pungent and offensive smell. He glanced over the side of his hammock and
saw that most of his pen-mates were up and gathered round a wooden tub
--known as a 'kid'--into which they were dipping spoons. As he
realized that it was from the contents of this tub that the disgusting smell
came, his messmates told him that this was breakfast and that he had best
hurry if he wished to have any. He was hungry enough and obeyed the
summons with haste. He filled a borrowed tin can with the foul-stenched
mess, and took a spoonful. The taste made him splutter, being, if anything,
more loathsome than its smell, and he gave up the idea of breakfast
forthwith. The ingredients, he was told, were a very coarse barley, and the
tough meat which was the convicts' allowance on alternate days, boiled
together until it became the malodorous, tacky mess in the tub.

The dietary on the hulk, apart from this so-called soup, was a portion of
cheese of the maximum indigestibility three days per week. On the days
when meat was not allowed, breakfast and supper consisted of a pint of
coarse barley plain-boiled in water, and in addition each man was given
one pound of black bread, with a pint of sour vinegar miscalled table beer.

Work of some kind was provided for all the convicts, a certain number
being detailed in cleaning the hulk, cooking, and as servants to the officers.
The rest were sent each day to labour in the dockyard in gangs. Rashleigh,
without any consideration for his fitness for the work, was placed in a
timber gang, and found himself yoked with about twenty others to a large
truck, each man being attached by a broad hempen band which was fixed
over one shoulder and under the opposite arm. The foreman of each gang
was a veteran sailor of the Royal Navy, who was apt to visit upon the
convicts the same kind of tyranny as he had been subject to from his
officers when he had been on shipboard, though his mercy could be
purchased by the price of drinks, obtainable at the local taps.

Rashleigh's ganger was a natural tyrant who delighted in the crippling
and injuring of the men in his charge. They were all ignorant of the correct
way of handling timber, and he would deliberately compel his gang to
proceed so awkwardly that great baulks of timber would crash from the
skids and smash a leg or an arm. These injured were carried off to the
hospital, where their death or recovery depended upon the whim of the
naval surgeon, whose coarse joke was 'that he was getting terribly out of
practice, and the amputation of a few limbs was just the thing he needed to
keep him from getting rusty.' While Rashleigh was attached to the hulk,
scarcely a week passed without some poor devil giving the surgeon the
practice he required.

Rashleigh, being unused to such heavy manual work, was at once treated
as a skulker and malingerer, and so came in for a double share of
oppression. Overstrained, bullied, and more than half starved, he came to
look forward with a feeling of relief to the day when the ship should arrive
that was to take him to New South Wales. There was small comfort in this,
however, as a vessel had sailed a few days before his reaching the hulk,
and another was not expected to leave for three months.

The terrible strain was too much for his constitution, and he fell ill, and
being transferred to the hospital ship, he was prodigally treated with
purgatives, bleedings and blisterings, until he was as near dead as a man
well could be. The rest, however, despite the vigorous medicinal treatment,
benefited him and he managed to survive by pouring into the urinal the
medicines that were given him, and after some weeks graduated to the
convalescent ward.

One day three patients died, and Rashleigh was one of the gang of
convalescent convicts chosen to form the burial party, over on the Gosport
side, in a graveyard known as Rat's Castle. When the grave had been dug,
the guard waved a signal, and the gang sat around among the unnamed
mounds, which were the graves of convicts, awaiting the coming of the
boat to take them back. Rashleigh fell into a mood of profound
melancholy, when suddenly the idea of escape flashed through his mind. In
a glance he took in the fact that the guard was some distance away with his
back turned, that the boat had not yet left the side of the hospital ship, and
that most of his fellow-convicts were asleep on the ground. Ten yards away
were the ruins, affording a fine screen from observation, and beyond them
the water. It might be done. The irons had been struck from one leg while
he was ill, the chains being attached to one side only, so that there was a
good chance that he could swim in spite of them, as the weather was warm.
About a mile up the shore was a thicket of osiers in which he could conceal
himself while endeavouring to remove his irons.

Not giving himself time to hesitate, he slipped across to the ruins, dodged
through them, flung off what clothing he could, and slipped silently into
the stream, swimming away softly. No sound of an alarm came, and he
proceeded painfully but surely, swimming, wading and floating, until he
reached the osiers, where he found a small creek, up which he swam until
he came to a thickly-wooded spot. He scrambled ashore and sat down for
awhile in hiding to recover his spent strength. Urged by the imperativeness
of putting as wide a distance as possible quickly between him and the hated
hulk, he set to work to try to wriggle himself out of his irons. It was
painful, galling work, but owing to his emaciation he managed at last to
slip the fetter from his raw and bleeding ankle.

He threw the fetter and his trousers into the deep water and swam across
the river, making towards a pile of buildings which he could just make out
at a short distance in the gathering dusk. He found that they were cattlesheds,
but there was no house near; and in any case he was unwilling to
encounter anybody in his state of complete nakedness. He decided to put in
his night among the cattle. He made a deep pile of some litter, and
burrowing his way into the centre of it for warmth, went to sleep until
dawn. He was awakened by a boy coming to turn out the cattle. By the
time he had thoroughly realized where he was, the lad had got some
distance from the sheds. Rashleigh yelled to him, and the boy came up to
him gaping with astonishment. Rashleigh told him the story that he was a
poor sailor who, having got drunk the previous night and lain down by the
water-side, had awakened to find himself stripped of all his clothes, and he
begged the lad with great earnestness to find him some sort of clothes with
which to cover himself until he could get to Portsmouth. The boy promised
to do the best he could and set off for his master's house, returning in about
an hour with a blue smock and checked shirt and a wagoner's hat and a pair
of cord breeches and low shoes. They were all old and worn, but clean
enough, and when Rashleigh had put them on, the boy told him that he
could go up to the house, where he might get something to eat if he were
hungry. Rashleigh thanked him and asked the way to the house, saying that
he would go and wash himself in the river and follow when he was ready.
In a few minutes he had thoroughly cleansed himself and prepared to
face life anew in the guise of a country bumpkin. Hungry as he was, he
thought it might be indiscreet to take advantage of the hospitality suggested
by the boy, as his main concern was to increase the distance between
himself and the hulk. He therefore set off at a brisk pace along the stream,
but after going about a mile, he heard a woman's voice hailing him:

'Hi, Tummas, I zay!'

At first Rashleigh did not realize that the woman was hailing him, but
after walking on for awhile, he heard the voice close behind him roar out:
'Darn thee, Tummas! Stop, I zay!'

At this he turned suddenly and found himself fronting a pretty country
girl of about sixteen or seventeen years of age, who was very much out of
breath and for some moments stood, gaping with astonishment at finding
herself with a stranger.

'Why,' she stammered, 'thee bain't Tummas, arter all!'

'No, I am not Thomas, my pretty dear,' agreed Rashleigh, 'but I would
be just as willing as he could possibly be to do anything to oblige you.'
The girl was staring intently at the clothes which Rashleigh was wearing.
'Drat it! This be so loike our Tummas's slop. Why, I could a'most ha'
sworn to it by the patch on the back!'

'And very likely,' replied Rashleigh. 'It probably was your Thomas's
slop, for it was given to me about a mile back by a boy after I had been
robbed of all my clothes.'

'What! Robbed of your clo'es, all on 'em?' cried the girl, shocked. 'And
did 'em leave thee quite naked?'

'They did so,' answered Rashleigh. 'And I have got a very long way to
go without a penny to help myself.'

'Poor fellow!' said the country girl. 'If thee'd care to come back again a
bit, mother'll give you zummat to eat, and thee looks as if thee'd be the
better for that.'

Rashleigh decided that it was, after all, worth the risk, and he went with
the girl to the cottage in which she lived with her mother, who listened
with sympathy to the story of his night of misadventure while she prepared
a substantial breakfast of bread, bacon, and small beer.

As soon as he had done, Rashleigh pleaded his need of haste and set off
at once in the direction of Winchester, and on Portsdown Heath he
overtook a pedlar who was burdened with a heavy bundle in addition to his
pack. Rashleigh, adopting a country dialect, fell in with the man, who,
finding that their destinations were in a similar direction, offered Rashleigh
a shilling if he would carry the bundle for him to the end of the day.

Rashleigh, being penniless, was only too glad to avail himself of the offer,
and accompanied the man until evening, when he received his shilling, and
the two of them went into the village inn for a bite of supper.
None of the company took any notice of Rashleigh as he entered, and
having eaten his bread and cheese, he sat quietly in a corner, slowly
drinking his beer. He was on the point of dozing off, when suddenly the
inn door was flung open and a file of soldiers marched in and guarded both
doors. The sergeant in charge of them then walked round the room, intently
examining every one in the bar. Rashleigh had taken off his hat, and his
close-cropped hair immediately caught the sergeant's attention, and he
asked Rashleigh his name.

'Thomas Harper,' he lied.

'What are you?'

'A labouring man.'

'Where do you come from?'

'Havant.'

'Oh, do you?' said the soldier. 'And when were you there last?'

'A week ago.'

'Humph! A week ago! And where have you been since?' pursued the
sergeant remorselessly.

'Why, at Portsmouth, if you must know,' replied Rashleigh, who was
beginning to lose his temper at the pertinacity of his questioner, who now
drew his sword.

'Yes, at Portsmouth. That is true, anyhow. I know that, because you
'listed there.'

'Me, 'listed!' cried Ralph haughtily. 'No, indeed I did not, my good
fellow.'

'Ha, ha! my country labourer!' said the sergeant with a laugh. 'Whoever
heard of a countryman from Havant talk in a toney tongue like that!'

Rashleigh cursed himself for a fool for allowing his anger to overcome
his discretion so that he spoke in his normal London accent.

'No, no, my fine shaver,' continued the sergeant, 'you never came from
Havant; and now I have got you, I'll take good care you don't go there,
neither.'

At this he gave a sign to two of his men, who seized Rashleigh and
secured him with a pair of handcuffs, whereupon the whole party went
outside the inn. They took possession of a hayloft and had supper brought
to them, after which Rashleigh was secured to two of the soldiers by
handcuffs, and the three of them lay together in the hay to sleep.
Rashleigh was more annoyed than perturbed at the predicament in which
he had been placed, because he felt confident that the mistake of arresting
him as a deserter must be discovered immediately he came up for
examination.

They breakfasted at a very early hour the next morning, and immediately
set off to march to Portsmouth. The sergeant walked alongside Rashleigh,
and taunted him with his folly in trying to impose upon an old soldier by
endeavouring to pass himself off as a countryman. Rashleigh answered
shortly that they would soon find out their mistake.

'Why, then,' jeered the sergeant, 'I suppose you are some king's son in
disguise! Well, next time you desert from the Army, I would advise you to
buy yourself a wig, for it was the cut of your hair that gave you away.'
Infuriated by this reminder of his stupidity in having removed his hat the
previous night, and by the sergeant's sarcasm, he replied haughtily that he
was no deserter and he had never enlisted in his life, and expressed the
opinion that the life of a dog was better than that of a soldier, and for his
own part he would rather turn a nightman than enlist. The sergeant flew
into a rage at this insulting remark, and threatened to knock Rashleigh's
teeth down his throat if he said another word, and for the remainder of the
journey the guard joined the sergeant in baiting the prisoner.

They reached the 'lines' of Portsmouth in the evening, and Rashleigh
was confined for the night in the guard-room. Next morning he was
removed to Gosport Barracks, where, as he had predicted, it was quickly
discovered that he was not the deserter in whose pursuit the party had been
dispatched, and the sergeant received a sound rating for his stupidity in
arresting the wrong man. He was immediately set at liberty, but he had the
misfortune to encounter the sergeant as he was crossing the barrack square.
Rashleigh was so elated at his escape, that he could not resist the chance of
abusing the man roundly for the oppression which he had heaped upon him
on the trip to Portsmouth. The sergeant saw the opportunity for avenging
the insult to his dignity, roared for the guard, and gave Rashleigh in charge
for abusing him while on duty. He was handcuffed and confined to the
watch-house, and in the evening was brought before the Mayor of
Portsmouth.

His concocted story of who he was and how he came to be dressed in the
clothes of a country labourer, failed properly to convince either the mayor
or the clerk of the Bench, who called the sergeant to state his case. The
complaint lost nothing in its voluble telling, and concluded with a
statement that the prisoner had threatened to kill the witness.

'Upon my word,' said the magistrate, glaring at Rashleigh, 'a very pretty
fellow to abuse the honourable profession of a soldier, who spends his life
fighting for his King and country, while such rapscallions as you skulk
through that same country, looking for opportunities to rob their
neighbour's hen-roost. Come, what have you to say for yourself, you
blackguard?'

Rashleigh's reply was to the effect that the witness had greatly
exaggerated his offence, that he had not threatened the man's life, but had
only reproached him for the harshness with which he had been treated
while a prisoner under his charge.

Two or three of the sergeant's comrades-in-arms thereupon stepped
forward, offering to corroborate the accusations against the prisoner, but
the Mayor, having intimated that he would not trouble them when the case
was so obviously established, addressed Rashleigh.

'Now, my fine fellow,' he said sarcastically, 'you thought to impose
upon this court with your lying story. Well, this is the way we deal with
such insufferable scamps as you--you can go to jail for a month as a rogue
and vagabond who has failed to give a proper account of himself, by any
manner of means. But I won't give you that light sentence; I'll remand you
for a week as a suspicious character, and I have little doubt that before the
week has passed we shall have the hue and cry after you for some
villainous depredation. Take him away!'

As he was being taken from the Mayor's court, he saw one of the guards
of the Leviathan standing by, probably waiting to report the escape of a
convict. This man immediately walked up to Rashleigh and scrutinized him
carefully, snatching off the wagoner's hat.

'Aha! my pretty-spoken gentleman!' he cried, recognizing him at once.
'So you're nabbed already, are you!'

In a few moments Rashleigh stood again before the Mayor, who heard
with obvious delight the true identity of the fellow whom he had so
shrewdly suspected. Knowing well how escaping convicts were dealt with
on recapture, he was content to hand Rashleigh over to the hulk authorities
for punishment. Strongly ironed and chained, he was now removed to the
hulk with a pistol-barrel pressed against his temple, and was at once
confined in a dungeon known as the Black Hole, situated in the ship's eyes
below water-level, and left there solitary, except for the company of droves
of rats, without food. The tedious hours wore horribly away, and in the
utter darkness he only learnt that the day had dawned through the sound of
tramping feet on deck as the convicts set off to work. It was some hours
after this before his prison door was opened by the guard, who took him up
to the quarter-deck. Here, impressive and terrifying in their full-dress
uniforms, were assembled the captain, his mate, the surgeon, and other
officers of the Leviathan. After a very brief trial, in which he could offer
only the natural love of liberty as defence, he was sentenced to receive ten
dozen lashes, in the presence of all the convicts, that same day.

He spent the day until sunset in the Black Hole, and was then led up to
the quarter-deck, passing between the lines of convicts who had been
paraded to witness his punishment. The formality of reading over his
offence and sentence was quickly performed, and the convict was ordered
to strip. Naked, he was securely bound to the gratings which had been
lashed to the bulwarks, and a powerful boatswain's mate stood ready with
the lash.

Rashleigh had been warned by other victims of the lash that shrieking
and writhing only added to the pain, so whilst he was being secured to the
grating he had caught his shirt in his teeth like a gag, so that he could not
so much as whisper.

The first dozen strokes from the knotted raw-hide lash were like jagged
wire tearing furrows in his flesh, and the second dozen seemed like the
filling of the furrows with molten lead, burning like fire into the raw flesh.
These two sensations of intense and intolerable pain alternated until the
first four dozen--each of which was laid on by a separate seaman with a
fresh lash--had been applied, after which his whole body seemed
numbed, and the feeling during the remaining six dozen was curiously as
though his lacerated and bloody back was receiving heavy thuds from great
clubs.

The flogging endured for longer than an hour, and when he was unbound
he collapsed insensible on to the deck, whence he was borne to the hospital
ship. Resuscitation was effected brutally, and he came to his senses
screaming with the pain inflicted by the salt dressing which had
immediately been applied to his unsightly back. The pain caused by this
rudimentary treatment was infinitely worse than anything he had felt
during the actual flogging, so that he was nigh driven out of his mind by
the stabbing, gnawing horrors of the action of the salt upon his wounds. He
cursed and roared under the treatment, which was repeated every day as
each new dressing was applied, though it was the rough stripping of the old
ones from the festering back that gave Rashleigh a never-fading memory of
the torture of being flayed alive.

Some tough qualities of constitution and spirit, however, brought him
through his continuous ordeal, and after a month or so he was
convalescent, recovering just in time to join a draft of convicts for New
South Wales, by the good ship Magnet [A vessel named Magnet conveyed
despatches from Governor Darling and the Colonial Office for several years,
at this period.] of London, Captain James Boltrope.




Chapter VI



Washed, shaved, close-cropped, supplied with two new suits each, and
newly double-ironed, the convicts selected for the draft were paraded
aboard the Leviathan for examination by the surgeon-superintendent of the
Magnet. The few sickly men were rejected and their places filled by
robuster transportees, and the approved men were marched aboard a large
lighter and transferred to that vessel, swinging at anchor in Spithead.
Despite the harshness of the conditions to which he knew that he was
going, Rashleigh carried his heavy irons with a light heart, and watched the
distance between the hulk and the lighter increase with a feeling of vast
relief.

The prisoners were immediately taken between-decks to their sleepingquarters,
where each was given a numbered bed and a blanket, and left for the night.

The good ship Magnet was of about five hundred tons burthen. The
greater part of the main deck was relegated to the use of the convicts, who
numbered one hundred and fifty; and the deck was divided into two
sections by a strong bulkhead, the smaller section being for the
confinement of the thirty boy convicts who were aboard. The hatchways
were secured with elm stanchions, in a stout framing of which all the
exposed woodwork was covered closely with broad-headed nails, so that
the structure was practically proof against being cut. In one of these
hatchways, between the men's and the boys' prisons, were communicating
doors, so small that only one man at a time could pass through them. A
military sentry was posted, day and night, in the hatchway, to deal with any
attempt at mutiny or other dangerous conduct.

The military guard consisted of two commissioned officers, six N.C.O.'s,
and forty private soldiers, some of whom were accompanied by their wives
and families. The routine of the ship was arranged so that, during the
voyage, the convicts were allowed the liberty of the deck from sunrise until
sunset, under an armed guard of three soldiers posted at points of vantage
which gave them full surveillance of the tough bunch of derelicts in their
charge. A boatswain and six mates were selected by the surgeonsuperintendent
from among the convicts, and they were made responsible for the
cleanliness and orderliness of their fellows. The convicts' foodration
was what was known in the transport service as 'Six upon Four,' six
convicts sharing between them the rations normally allowed for four Royal
Navy sailors. The food was mainly salt tack, and on alternate days a small
portion of wine or lime-juice was issued. Water was the only item of diet
which had to be carefully apportioned: the food, such as it was, was
plentiful.

In addition to the surgeon's sanitary party selected from the prisoners,
there were also chosen another boatswain, two cooks, and other servants,
who formed monitors or leaders of the squads of eight into which for
purposes of food supplies the convicts were divided.

During the few days when the ship lay to in Spithead before sailing,
Rashleigh was tempted, by the sense of irrevocableness of his departure
from England, to do as his comrades were mostly doing, and write to let
his connexions know of his fate. His better instincts overcame this
sentimental urging, and he determined to fade out of their knowledge, lost
to them for ever in his degradation, under his assumed name. Bumboats,
carrying all manner of supplies, hovered daily round the Magnet, and
Rashleigh's slender store of money was soon expended on modest supplies
of tea, sugar, and other trifling comforts for the long voyage. Although he
was, in a sense, glad to be leaving England, he was affected strongly by the
good fortune of some of the men whose mothers, wives, sweethearts and
children came on board to take farewell of their men folk. His own
friendlessness, contrasted with this affection, sorrow-ridden as it was,
made him feel more than ever a pariah, one who had been driven out of the
herd, absolutely, for ever. He was glad when the period of waiting was
over, to see the anchor weighed, the sails unfurled and bellying to the
breeze, and to feel the slight motion of the ship as she slipped jauntily
between the mainland and the Isle of Wight.

As night fell on the English Channel, the convicts were ordered below to
the sleeping-berths, between decks. These were framed of deal boards,
supported by stanchions and quarterings, and subdivided in compartments,
each sleeping six men in very close proximity. These sleeping-berths were
framed in rows along each side of the ship, with a double row between
them separated by narrow passages.

Rashleigh, being a good sailor, enjoyed what amusement could be got
from the conduct of those who were unused to the motion of the ship.
Many of them had never been to sea, and the vertiginous motion of the
vessel caused by the broken sea of the Channel, filled them not only with
nausea but with terror. Soon after being shut below, the sea freshened, and
at first there was much confusion among the closely-packed prisoners.
Those who were not too terrified to do other than lie in the immobility of
fear, filled the night with a contrasting chorus of oaths and prayers.
Gradually, however, a semblance of quietude came, and Rashleigh went to
sleep, but as he was lying athwart the ship and she started rolling, his rest
was continually broken by the violent motion. The increasing seas at last
made sleep impossible, and he sat up for greater comfort, listening with
awe to the crash of the waves against the bows, and feeling the shiver that
ran through the ship at each thudding impact.

Suddenly the Magnet hit a really big sea with a crash that made
Rashleigh instinctively shrink back. There was a scattered noise of timbers
falling overhead, as a great wave broke over the ship and poured a volume
of water down the main hatchway, carrying the sentry violently against the
bulkhead, and filling the prisoners' berths feet deep. Over a hundred
sleepers awakened in the unfamiliar surroundings, to find their beds awash
with sea water, let loose a pandemonium of terrified cries. The water, as
the ship rolled, half drowned first one row of men and then the other. The
cry went up that the ship was sinking, and panic took possession of the
convicts. Rashleigh looked on in a state of terror, knowing there was
nothing to be done; even when a few of the bolder spirits rushed at the
small doorway in the hope of breaking through and gaining the deck, he
made no move to join them. Their efforts to break through the wicket were
in any case unavailing. An officer came with the assurance that there was
no danger, leaving the prisoners to pass the remainder of the night
comforted by the news that the big crash had been caused by one of the
yards giving way. As most of the convicts knew of no yard except a
measure, they were none the wiser for this explanation. Next morning the
pumps were got to work and everything made ship-shape.

Fair weather favoured the Magnet thereafter, and the Equator was
reached without any incident occurring to interrupt the strict routine on
shipboard. There was a good deal of fun in the ceremony of 'Crossing the
Line,' about fifty of the prisoners being ducked and shaved in tribute to
Father Neptune. Rashleigh, because of his clerkly education and capacity,
had been selected by the surgeon-superintendent to act as his clerk, a
position which provided him with many comforts, and happened also to
prevent him being implicated in a daring scheme which was set afoot for
the seizing of the vessel.

The boys' prison was separated from the sleeping-quarters of the military
only by a bulkhead, as it was from the senior convicts' quarters on the
opposite side. Some of the irrepressible young thieves had succeeded in
loosening a board in the bulkhead, giving them access to the soldiers'
quarters. It became known to the men that one of the smallest-built lads
made a practice of slipping through the narrow space and stealing tea,
sugar, tobacco, biscuits, and anything else he could lay hands on; and some
of the wilder spirits saw in this a chance to carry out a plot for successful
mutiny. They persuaded the boy that he should, on a chosen night, steal
three muskets which, he said, stood in a rack in the soldiers' berth, and
which were supposed to be kept continually loaded. The plot was that, the
muskets thus secured, they should be passed through into the men's prison,
and in the morning when the convicts were let up to wash the deck, some
of those who were up first should go to the forehatch and receive the stolen
muskets from those in the prison below. During the proceeding the other
men on deck were to be very active in throwing water and generally
bustling to and fro to attract the attention of the three sentries--one at the
forecastle, one at the waist, and the third on the poop--of whom only the
last would be armed. The two sentries forward were to be surprised, seized
and thrown overboard, while at the same signal, the one on the poop was to
be shot dead. A party would then cut loose the breeching of a loaded
cannon on the deck, and run it to the companion ladder leading to the
soldiers' quarters. Simultaneously another party was to rush aft and secure
the officers.

The day came, and to the point of seizing the forward sentries and the
covering of the sentry on the poop, everything went according to plan, after
which everything went to pieces. The stolen muskets proved to be
unprimed; the sentry on the poop gave the call to arms, fired his piece at
random, and was immediately thrown overboard. The fastenings of the
cannon were too tough for the crude implements which the convicts
possessed, and they were unable to cut it loose, no one having a knife.
By this time the soldiers were pouring up the companion ladder, only to
be knocked backwards by the clubbed muskets in the hands of the now
desperate prisoners. Two commissioned officers clambered through the
cabin skylight, gained the poop, and shot out-of-hand two of the boldest
among the convicts. This sudden turn in affairs cowed the others, who fell
back, giving the soldiers the opportunity to gain the deck. Instantly a volley
of musketry poured into the ranks of the prisoners, of whom five fell dead,
three jumped overboard, and the rest were driven below by the pricking
bayonets of the infuriated guard. The whole of that day they spent without
food below, and on the following morning they were mustered early on deck.

All ranks of the military were under arms, one line being formed across
the poop and another across the forecastle, while a gun had been lashed in
front of each, beside which stood a seaman with lighted match. Both
muzzles were trained upon the main hatchway where the convicts huddled
in a cowering group, thoroughly abashed by the formidable precautions
against any renewed attempt at mutiny. The ship's boatswain called each
convict by name, and as each answered, he was ordered up to the quarterdeck
on which the ship's and military officers were assembled in all the
impressiveness of full uniform. The only one of the three sentries who had
escaped death on the previous day, was called upon to scrutinize each man
as he came forward, with a view to identifying those who had been on deck
during the attempted seizure; and each prisoner was stripped. If no wound
showed, and the sentry failed to identify the man as a participant in the
mutiny, he was interrogated as to his knowledge of the details of the plot
and to the identity of the ringleaders responsible for the outbreak, the
promised reward for accurate information being immediate benefits for the
r