The Storyteller.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 December 1915, Page 9 (Supplement)

The Storyteller.

VENGEANCE IS MINE

A TALE OF BASS STRAITS. George Shadwell suddenly paused in lii» half-completed task of skinning the seal, rose from his knees, and listened. A thick fog impenetrable as a blanket, lay over the flat, rocky islet, obscuring objects only a few feet distant, but its very density-like blindness seemed to render the listener's ears abnormally acute. No, he had not been mistaken; it was the sound of oars. He was left. God! What a fool he had been to let his mate between him and the boat. BuV surely, he reflected, Gus wouldn't leave him. Gub, whose life he had saved wmh he was knifed by an American XBjto, and, with a finger and thumb fSßwd, was at the black's mercy. the four years Shadwell had senW in the chain-gang, where many a dan would peach on his pal for a fig of tobacco, had not entirely destroyed hit belief in human nature. PerhapaGua had only returned to the cutter for something; but why hadn't he let him know! "Gus! What's up, Gust" Shadwell ihonted, as he rushed, regardless of a spill over the skinned carcase of a seal, to the place where the dingy had been pulled up on the rocks. There was no answer Curee his luck; curse the fog. Had it not been for that he might have swum for it.

The cutter was not more than a couple of cables' lengths out, and in the blindness of his rage Shadwell lost sight of the impossibility of boarding her. "Gus, you ! I'll be level with you yet," and, Bhaking his fist in impotent fury in the direction in which he supposed the cutter lay, Shadwell relapsed into silence, and listened. A sound of the creaking of blocks came across the water, followed soon after by the clank of the windlass. Shadwell realised it was all up. He was in a tight place, and he knew it, for he had been in many tight places before.

It had been a close call the night he was escaping from Port Arthur across Eaglehawk Neck, when one of the dreaded dogs of the cordon had growled, and roused the dosing sentry. Strange to say, it had only been the sharp challenge, '"Who goes there?" that had proved his salvation, for its very suddenness had paralysed the oath of disappointment that rose to his lips. Recapture, however, would have only meant a hundred lashes, and solitary in the dark cell, punishment which hiß iron constitution had stood before, but his present position, in all probability, meant death by slow, lingering starvation, or, what was worse, by thirst. Few vessels sight King Island to-day; still fewer the southern end of it, off which the islet lay, but in 1837 hardly any vessels traversed the straits at all. An occasional schooner from Launceston, with scores or stock for the new settlement at Port Phillip, would pass far to the eastward, or one of Messrs Henty's whalers, making for the Pacific fisheries, might run through the straits, but these shaped a course well to the north, to avoid the dangerous Harbingers or Naravine. Of these facts Shadwell was well aware, for was it not owing to the infrequency of visiting vessels that he and Gus had remained unmolested on Cape Barren Island for the past three years? He had little hope of being picked up, but the system, whatever its faults, produced in those who survived its severity a stoicism which enabled them' to endure hardship without a murmur, and Shadwell calmly commenced to calculate his chances. There was no fear of immediate starvation, • for the carcases of the seals, whose skins had aroused the avarice of his mate, would provide ample food, unpalatable, it is true, till they went bad, and he had no misgivings as to being able to club others on their return to the rookery, while crayfish were easily caught in the pools at low tide. Water was his chief anxiety. The larger indentations of the rocks in the centre of the islet, least ejjposed to the sprays of the gales, held some slightly brackish, but evaporation was rapid, and it was doubtful if the supply would suffice for a week. A light air, springing up from the south-west, gradually dispersed the fog, and, as the atmosphere became clearer, Stake's Point and the coast of King Island loomed up. A mile and a-half separated the islet from the nearest point, but it might jrist as Well have been a hundred miles, lor the tides rendered any attempt to swim the passage impossible, and the heavy surf breaking on the coast would have made landing a task beyond the endurance of the strongest. Despite his huge and muscular frame toughened as it was by constant toil in the chain-gang, Shadwell was cursed with an imagination; a trait possibly derived from some remote strain of Celtic ancestry. As twilight faded, and darkness came

on, despondency replaced the stoicism that /)»ad upheld him during the day. Crouch-r-'ing for Bhelter under a rock on the leef side of the islet, for the wind had freshened, and was now blowing half a gale, he conjured up unpleasant visions of his fate. But stronger than his apprehenf~"\ sion was his craving for revenge. When, at last he dropped off into a troubled sleep, he dreamt lie was struggling with Guß. He had him by the throat, but grip hard as he could, his efforts were powerless to strangle him, and the only result was to produce a diabolical grin from his would-be victim. Day after day dragged by, and Shadwell had lost count of time; not from inability to mark its passage, for at first he had placed a stone daily on a certain rock, but merely from lethargy. Everything was an effort; everything but to 101 l in the sun and brood on his revenge, until one idea obsessed him, that of revenge. One day it would be by the knife; on the next it seemed more pleasurable if lie could feel his hands on the throat of his victim, slowly crushing out his life, and gazing on his open mouth and distended eyes.

Three months passed, and winter was well advanced, when an unusually heavy gale sprang up, and Shadwell, whose meagre diet had chilled his blood, sought the most sheltered spot, on the leeside of the islet. Here, under a jutting rock, sheltered from the driving spray, which the hurricane drove in sheets right over the islet, Shadwell had almost dropped off to sleep, when he was suddenly startled by hearing a voice shouting out til* wards. "Let sol"

Jumping up, he peered into the semiobscurity. There was just sufficient light to enable him to make out the white loom of a boat rising and falling on the heavy swell. With a shout he rushed to the rock nearest to where the boat lay, but in his haste he tripped in a crevice, and, in falling, struck his head with sufficient force to render him insensible. His luck was in, however, for the crew of the boat hadjheard his shout. When Shadwell returned to consciousness he found himself in a bunk. Oilskins and clothing leisurely swinging to the roll of the vessel, just perceptible in the dim light, afforded by a slush lamp, told the absconder that he was back in the long-forgotten atmosphere of a fo'c'sle. The Prudence of Martha's Vineyard had most of her tubs full, and was returning to the American port. Her hardbitten master, who lmd little respect for' colonial regulations respecting assisting absconding prisoners, one of whom he shrewdly suspected Shadwell to be, being somewhat shorthanded, did not ask any awkward questions when the half-starv-ed man was sufficiently recovered to come on deck. In four months the whaler had reached her port of registration, ahd Shadwell i found himself ashore, free, but penniless, in the quiet little whaling town. On the rough, but plentiful, food of the Prudence, Shadwell's magnificent constitution had soon recovered from the semi-star-vation on the islet, and he easily procured employment in one of the shipbuilding yards, handling the heavier timber, a task to which he had served a ferim apprenticeship in the chain gang at Port Arthur. Though the work was hard, the pay was good, and Shadwell was enabled to live well; better, in fact, than he had ever been accustomed to. One would have thought that, free at last from the constant apprehension of arrest, he would have been content to settle down; but the craving for revenge, a craving more understandable in the Latin temperament than in such a stolid specimen as the ex-convict, drove him to risk another visit to Van Diemen's Land.

Early one morning in the month of ■June, some 18 months later, the transport Lord Cornwallis, with female convicts, 130 days out from Portsmouth, dropped anchor in the Derwent.

The breeze which had enabled the unwieldy old East Indiaman to work up the river was fast dispersing the mist hanging over the wooded slopes of Mount Wellington, and Hobart-Town appeared at its best. The passengers, both bound and free, were eagerly drinking in their first sight of land, after the tedious voyage from England, with what varied feelings may be imagined. Below, the captain was going through the ship's papers with the port officer, a task which caused the former considerable worry, for his education wa3 by no means equal to his seamanship. Under the superintendence of the mates the crew were busily engaged furling the huge single topsails and courses, coiling down the braces, and clearing the quarter-deck. Amongst those engaged in the later task was Shadwell. A long, fair beard and the scar received from his fall on the rocks would have proved an effective disguise, without the slightly nasal twang acquired during his sojurn in the States, had any of the penal authorities taken it into their heads to search the Lord Cornwallis for absconders. But the risk was slight. It was departing vessels that underwent rigorous scrutiny, the administrators of the system knowing, from experience, that once away no escapee was likely to take any chances ! of again placing himself in their clutches I by Tevisiting the scene of his imprisonment.

When the captain and port officer reappeared on deck, the former, ordering his third mate to lower away the quarter boat, and follow his ashore, descended the ladder, and took his seat in the stern sheets of the Government boat. It was an anxious moment for Shadwell, and it seemed an hour till the crisp order —"Hoskins, Brown, Hodges, and Colcroft," by which alias Shadwell was known, "lower and man the quarter boat."

The captain and official reached the quay about five minutes ahead, and had hardly disappeared into the port office when the mate's boat reached the stone quay. There was a marked absence of life. No one was on the water front, usually thronged on the arrival of a ship from England, but more especially when one brought a consignment of female frailty. Even the doors of the numerous taverns lacked their habitual supporters. Brown, a cockney member of the crew, remarked: "It ain't quite as crowded has the Heast India Dock Road."

This was the mate's opportunity. "No, I can't make it out. I'll just cut across and see what's up, Don't you men leave the boat."

Clambering ashore by the aid of an iron ringbolt let into the masonry, the mate was a moment later heading for the door of the Hope and Anchor.

The men would have been more than human had they been able to resist, after a four months' voyage, the attractions of the many taverns which then adorned the water front. Having made the boat fast, they were soon in the taproom of the Admiral Collingwood, draining four glasses of'heady rum, served out by a tousled-headed, truculent virago. "Where's everybody got to?" enquired the cockney, after swallowing his drink. "Why, up seeing Calfin's gang turned off, of course. They rounded them up at Sorrell last month." Shadwell had known Calfin at Port Arthur, and a morbid desire to see the last of the redoubtable bushranger, who has eluded the authorities for over three fears, took possession of him. Leaving the others, whose thirst was stronger than their curiosity, he walked up Murray Street to the crest of the hill, where the executions were carried out. On reaching the spot he found the ceremony over. The chaplain having disrobed, his surplice rolled up under his arm, was returning home, chatting cheerfully with a friend. A file of soldiers, in charge of a young lieutenant, whose blanched face clearly showed his distaste for his late duty, was merrily swinging up Macquarie Street to the inspiring strains of drums and fifes, while the townspeople were rapidly dispersing in various directions. Only the seven principal actors in the tragedy remained. Swinging aloft in the light breeze, their ghastly forms bore grim testimony to the fate of all who crossed the system. For Shadwell they had an extraordin- ' ary fascination, and he approached

closer. Despite the caps, that effectually concealed, the features of the dead, something about the second figure from the right seemed strangely familiar, the unusual breadth of shoulder and the shortness of the legs. Taking a furtive look to see if he was observed, Sliadwel] walked over to the foot of the gallows Glancing up at the form that had a quarter of an hour earlier been a man he saw that the left hand lacked a flngei and a thumb. —"Flaneur," in the Australasian.