For the Term of His Natural Life

by Marcus Clarke

  The voices were melodious enough, and the words of the ditty—chanted by many stout fellows in many a forecastle before and since—of that character which pleases the soldier nature. Private Grimes forgot all about the unprotected state of the deck, and sat down to listen.

  While he listened, absorbed in tender recollections, James Lesly, William Cheshire, William Russen, John Fair, and James Barker slipped to the hatchway and got upon the deck. Barker reached the aft hatchway as the soldier who was on guard turned to complete his walk, and passing his arm round his neck, pulled him down before he could utter a cry. In the confusion of the moment the man loosed his grip of the musket to grapple with his unseen antagonist, and Fair, snatching up the weapon, swore to blow out his brains if he raised a finger. Seeing the sentry thus secured, Cheshire, as if in pursuance of a preconcerted plan, leapt down the after hatchway, and passed up the muskets from the arm-racks to Lesly and Russen. There were three muskets in addition to the one taken from the sentry, and Barker, leaving his prisoner in charge of Fair, seized one of them, and ran to the companion ladder. Russen, left unarmed by this manoeuvre, appeared to know his own duty. He came back to the forecastle, and passing behind the listening soldier, touched the singer on the shoulder. This was the appointed signal, and John Rex, suddenly terminating his song with a laugh, presented his fist in the face of the gaping Grimes. “No noise!” he cried. “The brig’s ours”; and ere Grimes could reply, he was seized by Lyon and Riley, and bound securely.

  “Come on, lads!” says Rex, “and pass the prisoner down here. We’ve got her this time, I’ll go bail!” In obedience to this order, the now gagged sentry was flung down the fore hatchway, and the hatch secured. “Stand on the hatchway, Porter,” cries Rex again; “and if those fellows come up, knock ’em down with a handspoke. Lesly and Russen, forward to the companion ladder! Lyon, keep a look-out for the boat, and if she comes too near, fire!”

  As he spoke the report of the first musket rang out. Barker had apparently fired up the companion hatchway.

  *

  When Mr. Bates had gone below, he found Sylvia curled upon the cushions of the state-room, reading. “Well, missy!” he said, “we’ll soon be on our way to papa.”

  Sylvia answered by asking a question altogether foreign to the subject. “Mr. Bates,” said she, pushing the hair out of her blue eyes, “what’s a coracle?”

  “A which?” asked Mr. Bates.

  “A coracle. C-o-r-a-c-l-e,” said she, spelling it slowly. “I want to know.”

  The bewildered Bates shook his head. “Never heard of one, missy,” said he, bending over the book. “What does it say?”

  “‘The Ancient Britons,’” said Sylvia, reading gravely, “‘were little better than Barbarians. They painted their bodies with Woad’—that’s blue stuff, you know, Mr. Bates—‘and, seated in their light coracles of skin stretched upon slender wooden frames, must have presented a wild and savage appearance.’”

  “Hah,” said Mr. Bates, when this remarkable passage was read to him, “that’s very mysterious, that is. A corricle, a cory”—a bright light burst upon him. “A curricle you mean, missy! It’s a carriage! I’ve seen ’em in Hy’ Park, with young bloods a-drivin’ of ’em.”

  “What are young bloods?” asked Sylvia, rushing at this “new opening”.

  “Oh, nobs! Swell coves, don’t you know,” returned poor Bates, thus again attacked. “Young men o’ fortune that is, that’s given to doing it grand.”

  “I see,” said Sylvia, waving her little hand graciously. “Noblemen and Princes and that sort of people. Quite so. But what about coracle?”

  “Well,” said the humbled Bates, “I think it’s a carriage, missy. A sort of Pheayton, as they call it.”

  Sylvia, hardly satisfied, returned to the book. It was a little mean-looking volume—a “Child’s History of England”—and after perusing it awhile with knitted brows, she burst into a childish laugh.

  “Why, my dear Mr. Bates!” she cried, waving the History above her head in triumph, “what a pair of geese we are! A carriage! Oh you silly man! It’s a boat!”

  “Is it?” said Mr. Bates, in admiration of the intelligence of his companion. “Who’d ha’ thought that now? Why couldn’t they call it a boat at once, then, and ha’ done with it?” and he was about to laugh also, when, raising his eyes, he saw in the open doorway the figure of James Barker, with a musket in his hand.

  “Hallo! What’s this? What do you do here, sir?”

  “Sorry to disturb yer,” says the convict, with a grin, “but you must come along o’ me, Mr. Bates.”

  Bates, at once comprehending that some terrible misfortune had occurred, did not lose his presence of mind. One of the cushions of the couch was under his right hand, and snatching it up he flung it across the little cabin full in the face of the escaped prisoner. The soft mass struck the man with force sufficient to blind him for an instant. The musket exploded harmlessly in the air, and ere the astonished Barker could recover his footing, Bates had hurled him out of the cabin, and crying “Mutiny!” locked the cabin door on the inside.

  The noise brought out Mrs. Vickers from her berth, and the poor little student of English history ran into her arms.

  “Good Heavens, Mr. Bates, what is it?”

  Bates, furious with rage, so far forgot himself as to swear. “It’s a mutiny, ma’am,” said he. “Go back to your cabin and lock the door. Those bloody villains have risen on us!” Julia Vickers felt her heart grow sick. Was she never to escape out of this dreadful life? “Go into your cabin, ma’am,” says Bates again, “and don’t move a finger till I tell ye. Maybe it ain’t so bad as it looks; I’ve got my pistols with me, thank God, and Mr. Frere’ll hear the shot anyway. Mutiny? On deck there!” he cried at the full pitch of his voice, and his brow grew damp with dismay when a mocking laugh from above was the only response.

  Thrusting the woman and child into the state berth, the bewildered pilot cocked a pistol, and snatching a cutlass from the arm stand fixed to the butt of the mast which penetrated the cabin, he burst open the door with his foot, and rushed to the companion ladder. Barker had retreated to the deck, and for an instant he thought the way was clear, but Lesly and Russen thrust him back with the muzzles of the loaded muskets. He struck at Russen with the cutlass, missed him, and, seeing the hopelessness of the attack, was fain to retreat.

  In the meanwhile, Grimes and the other soldier had loosed themselves from their bonds, and, encouraged by the firing, which seemed to them a sign that all was not yet lost, made shift to force up the forehatch. Porter, whose courage was none of the fiercest, and who had been for years given over to that terror of discipline which servitude induces, made but a feeble attempt at resistance, and forcing the handspike from him, the sentry, Jones, rushed aft to help the pilot. As Jones reached the waist, Cheshire, a cold-blooded blue-eyed man, shot him dead. Grimes fell over the corpse, and Cheshire, clubbing the musket—had he another barrel he would have fired—coolly battered his head as he lay, and then, seizing the body of the unfortunate Jones in his arms, tossed it into the sea. “Porter, you lubber!” he cried, exhausted with the effort to lift the body, “come and bear a hand with this other one!” Porter advanced aghast, but just then another occurrence claimed the villain’s attention, and poor Grimes’s life was spared for that time.

  Rex, inwardly raging at this unexpected resistance on the part of the pilot, flung himself on the skylight, and tore it up bodily. As he did so, Barker, who had reloaded his musket, fired down into the cabin. The ball passed through the state-room door, and splintering the wood, buried itself close to the golden curls of poor little Sylvia. It was this hair’s-breadth escape which drew from the agonized mother that shriek which, pealing through the open stern window, had roused the soldiers in the boat.

  Rex, who, by the virtue of his dandyism, yet possessed some abhorrence of useless crime, imagined that the cry was one of pain, and that Barker’s bullet had taken deadly effect. “You’ve killed
the child, you villain!” he cried.

  “What’s the odds?” asked Barker sulkily. “She must die any way, sooner or later.”

  Rex put his head down the skylight, and called on Bates to surrender, but Bates only drew his other pistol. “Would you commit murder?” he asked, looking round with desperation in his glance.

  “No, no,” cried some of the men, willing to blink the death of poor Jones. “It’s no use making things worse than they are. Bid him come up, and we’ll do him no harm.”

  “Come up, Mr. Bates,” says Rex, “and I give you my word you sha’n’t be injured.”

  “Will you set the major’s lady and child ashore, then?” asked Bates, sturdily facing the scowling brows above him.

  “Yes.”

  “Without injury?” continued the other, bargaining, as it were, at the very muzzles of the muskets.

  “Ay, ay! It’s all right!” returned Russen. “It’s our liberty we want, that’s all.”

  Bates, hoping against hope for the return of the boat, endeavoured to gain time. “Shut down the skylight, then,” said he, with the ghost of an authority in his voice, “until I ask the lady.”

  This, however, John Rex refused to do. “You can ask well enough where you are,” he said.

  But there was no need for Mr. Bates to put a question. The door of the state-room opened, and Mrs. Vickers appeared, trembling, with Sylvia by her side. “Accept, Mr. Bates,” she said, “since it must be so. We should gain nothing by refusing. We are at their mercy—God help us!”

  “Amen to that,” says Bates under his breath, and then aloud, “We agree!”

  “Put your pistols on the table, and come up, then,” says Rex, covering the table with his musket as he spoke. “And nobody shall hurt you.”

  CHAPTER X

  JOHN REX’S REVENGE

  MRS. Vickers, pale and sick with terror, yet sustained by that strange courage of which we have before spoken, passed rapidly under the open skylight, and prepared to ascend. Sylvia—her romance crushed by too dreadful reality—clung to her mother with one hand, and with the other pressed close to her little bosom the “English History”. In her all-absorbing fear she had forgotten to lay it down.

  “Get a shawl, ma’am, or something,” says Bates, “and a hat for missy.”

  Mrs. Vickers looked back across the space beneath the open skylight, and shuddering, shook her head. The men above swore impatiently at the delay, and the three hastened on deck.

  “Who’s to command the brig now?” asked undaunted Bates, as they came up.

  “I am,” says John Rex, “and, with these brave fellows, I’ll take her round the world.”

  The touch of bombast was not out of place. It jumped so far with the humour of the convicts that they set up a feeble cheer, at which Sylvia frowned. Frightened as she was, the prison-bred child was as much astonished at hearing convicts cheer as a fashionable lady would be to hear her footman quote poetry. Bates, however—practical and calm—took quite another view of the case. The bold project, so boldly avowed, seemed to him a sheer absurdity. The “Dandy” and a crew of nine convicts navigate a brig round the world! Preposterous; why, not a man aboard could work a reckoning! His nautical fancy pictured the Osprey helplessly rolling on the swell of the Southern Ocean, or hopelessly locked in the ice of the Antarctic Seas, and he dimly guessed at the fate of the deluded ten. Even if they got safe to port, the chances of final escape were all against them, for what account could they give of themselves? Overpowered by these reflections, the honest fellow made one last effort to charm his captors back to their pristine bondage.

  “Fools!” he cried, “do you know what you are about to do? You will never escape. Give up the brig, and I will declare, before my God, upon the Bible, that I will say nothing, but give all good characters.”

  Lesly and another burst into a laugh at this wild proposition, but Rex, who had weighed his chances well beforehand, felt the force of the pilot’s speech, and answered seriously.

  “It’s no use talking,” he said, shaking his still handsome head. “We have got the brig, and we mean to keep her. I can navigate her, though I am no seaman, so you needn’t talk further about it, Mr. Bates. It’s liberty we require.”

  “What are you going to do with us?” asked Bates.

  “Leave you behind.”

  Bates’s face blanched. “What, here?”

  “Yes. It don’t look a picturesque spot, does it? And yet I’ve lived here for some years”; and he grinned.

  Bates was silent. The logic of that grin was unanswerable.

  “Come!” cried the Dandy, shaking off his momentary melancholy, “look alive there! Lower away the jolly-boat. Mrs. Vickers, go down to your cabin and get anything you want. I am compelled to put you ashore, but I have no wish to leave you without clothes.” Bates listened, in a sort of dismal admiration, at this courtly convict. He could not have spoken like that had life depended on it. “Now, my little lady,” continued Rex, “run down with your mamma, and don’t be frightened.”

  Sylvia flashed burning red at this indignity. “Frightened! If there had been anybody else here but women, you never would have taken the brig. Frightened! Let me pass, prisoner!”

  The whole deck burst into a great laugh at this, and poor Mrs. Vickers paused, trembling for the consequences of the child’s temerity. To thus taunt the desperate convict who held their lives in his hands seemed sheer madness. In the boldness of the speech however, lay its safeguard. Rex—whose politeness was mere bravado—was stung to the quick by the reflection upon his courage, and the bitter accent with which the child had pronounced the word prisoner (the generic name of convicts) made him bite his lips with rage. Had he had his will, he would have struck the little creature to the deck, but the hoarse laugh of his companions warned him to forbear. There is “public opinion” even among convicts, and Rex dared not vent his passion on so helpless an object. As men do in such cases, he veiled his anger beneath an affectation of amusement. In order to show that he was not moved by the taunt, he smiled upon the taunter more graciously than ever.

  “Your daughter has her father’s spirit, madam,” said he to Mrs. Vickers, with a bow.

  Bates opened his mouth to listen. His ears were not large enough to take in the words of this complimentary convict. He began to think that he was the victim of a nightmare. He absolutely felt that John Rex was a greater man at that moment than John Bates.

  As Mrs. Vickers descended the hatchway, the boat with Frere and the soldiers came within musket range, and Lesly, according to orders, fired his musket over their heads, shouting to them to lay to But Frere, boiling with rage at the manner in which the tables had been turned on him, had determined not to resign his lost authority without a struggle. Disregarding the summons, he came straight on, with his eyes fixed on the vessel. It was now nearly dark, and the figures on the deck were indistinguishable. The indignant lieutenant could but guess at the condition of affairs. Suddenly, from out of the darkness a voice hailed him—

  “Hold water! back water!” it cried, and was then seemingly choked in its owner’s throat.

  The voice was the property of Mr. Bates. Standing near the side, he had observed Rex and Fair bring up a great pig of iron, erst used as part of the ballast of the brig, and poise it on the rail. Their intention was but too evident; and honest Bates, like a faithful watch-dog, barked to warn his master. Bloodthirsty Cheshire caught him by the throat, and Frere, unheeding, ran the boat alongside, under the very nose of the revengeful Rex.

  The mass of iron fell half in-board upon the now stayed boat, and gave her sternway, with a splintered plank.

  “Villains!” cried Frere, “would you swamp us?”

  “Aye,” laughed Rex, “and a dozen such as ye! The brig’s ours, can’t ye see, and we’re your masters now!”

  Frere, stifling an exclamation of rage, cried to the bow to hook on, but the bow had driven the boat backward, and she was already beyond arm’s length of the brig. Looking up,
he saw Cheshire’s savage face, and heard the click of the lock as he cocked his piece. The two soldiers, exhausted by their long pull, made no effort to stay the progress of the boat, and almost before the swell caused by the plunge of the mass of iron had ceased to agitate the water, the deck of the Osprey had become invisible in the darkness.

  Frere struck his fist upon the thwart in sheer impotence of rage. “The scoundrels!” he said, between his teeth, “they’ve mastered us. What do they mean to do next?”

  The answer came pat to the question. From the dark hull of the brig broke a flash and a report, and a musket ball cut the water beside them with a chirping noise. Between the black indistinct mass which represented the brig, and the glimmering water, was visible a white speck, which gradually neared them.

  “Come alongside with ye!” hailed a voice, “or it will be the worse for ye!”

  “They want to murder us,” says Frere. “Give way, men!”

  But the two soldiers, exchanging glances one with the other, pulled the boat’s head round, and made for the vessel. “It’s no use, Mr. Frere,” said the man nearest him; “we can do no good now, and they won’t hurt us, I dare say.”

  “You dogs, you are in league with them,” bursts out Frere, purple with indignation. “Do you mutiny?”

  “Come, come, sir,” returned the soldier, sulkily, “this ain’t the time to bully; and, as for mutiny, why, one man’s about as good as another just now.”

  This speech from the lips of a man who, but a few minutes before, would have risked his life to obey orders of his officer, did more than an hour’s reasoning to convince Maurice Frere of the hopelessness of resistance. His authority—born of circumstance, and supported by adventitious aid—had left him. The musket shot had reduced him to the ranks. He was now no more than anyone else; indeed, he was less than many, for those who held the firearms were the ruling powers. With a groan he resigned himself to his fate, and looking at the sleeve of the undress uniform he wore, it seemed to him that virtue had gone out of it. When they reached the brig, they found that the jolly-boat had been lowered and laid alongside. In her were eleven persons; Bates with forehead gashed, and hands bound, the stunned Grimes, Russen and Fair pulling, Lyon, Riley, Cheshire, and Lesly with muskets, and John Rex in the stem sheets, with Bates’s pistols in his trousers’ belt, and a loaded musket across his knees. The white object which had been seen by the men in the whale-boat was a large white shawl which wrapped Mrs. Vickers and Sylvia.