“Not alive!” cried the poor wretch, waking with a start, and raising his arm to strike. “Keep off!”
“It’s all right,” said Frere. “No one is going to harm you. Wake up.”
Rufus Dawes glanced around him stupidly, and then remembering what had happened, with a great effort, he staggered to his feet. “I thought they’d got me!” he said, “but it’s the other way, I see. Come, let’s have breakfast, Mr. Frere. I’m hungry.”
“You must wait,” said Frere. “Do you think there is no one here but yourself?”
Rufus Dawes, swaying to and fro from weakness, passed his shred of a cuff over his eyes. “I don’t know anything about it. I only know I’m hungry.”
Frere stopped short. Now or never was the time to settle future relations. Lying awake in the night, with the jack-knife ready to his hand, he had decided on the course of action that must be adopted. The convict should share with the rest, but no more. If he rebelled at that, there must be a trial of strength between them. “Look you here,” he said. “We have but barely enough food to serve us until help comes–if it does come. I have the care of that poor woman and child, and I will see fair play for their sakes. You shall share with us to our last bit and drop, but, by Heaven, you shall get no more.”
The convict, stretching out his wasted arms, looked down upon them with the uncertain gaze of a drunken man. “I am weak now,” he said. “You have the best of me”; and then he sank suddenly down upon the ground, exhausted. “Give me a drink,” he moaned, feebly motioning with his hand. Frere got him water in the pannikin, and having drunk it, he smiled and lay down to sleep again. Mrs. Vickers and Sylvia, coming out while he still slept, recognized him as the desperado of the settlement.
“He was the most desperate man we had,” said Mrs. Vickers, identifying herself with her husband. “Oh, what shall we do?”
“He won’t do much harm,” returned Frere, looking down at the notorious ruffian with curiosity. “He’s as near dead as can be.”
Sylvia looked up at him with her clear child’s glance. “We mustn’t let him die,” said she. “That would be murder.” “No, no,” returned Frere, hastily, “no one wants him to die. But what can we do?”
“I’ll nurse him!” cried Sylvia.
Frere broke into one of his coarse laughs, the first one that he had indulged in since the mutiny. “You nurse him! By George, that’s a good one!” The poor little child, weak and excitable, felt the contempt in the tone, and burst into a passion of sobs. “Why do you insult me, you wicked man? The poor fellow’s ill, and he’ll–he’ll die, like Mr. Bates. Oh, mamma, mamma, Let’s go away by ourselves.”
Frere swore a great oath, and walked away. He went into the little wood under the cliff, and sat down. He was full of strange thoughts, which he could not express, and which he had never owned before. The dislike the child bore to him made him miserable, and yet he took delight in tormenting her. He was conscious that he had acted the part of a coward the night before in endeavouring to frighten her, and that the detestation she bore him was well earned; but he had fully determined to stake his life in her defence, should the savage who had thus come upon them out of the desert attempt violence, and he was unreasonably angry at the pity she had shown. It was not fair to be thus misinterpreted. But he had done wrong to swear, and more so in quitting them so abruptly. The consciousness of his wrong-doing, however, only made him more confirmed in it. His native obstinacy would not allow him to retract what he had said– even to himself. Walking along, he came to Bates’s grave, and the cross upon it. Here was another evidence of ill-treatment. She had always preferred Bates. Now that Bates was gone, she must needs transfer her childish affections to a convict. “Oh,” said Frere to himself, with pleasant recollections of many coarse triumphs in love-making, “if you were a woman, you little vixen, I’d make you love me!” When he had said this, he laughed at himself for his folly–he was turning romantic! When he got back, he found Dawes stretched upon the brushwood, with Sylvia sitting near him.
“He is better,” said Mrs. Vickers, disdaining to refer to the scene of the morning. “Sit down and have something to eat, Mr. Frere.”
“Are you better?” asked Frere, abruptly.
To his surprise, the convict answered quite civilly, “I shall be strong again in a day or two, and then I can help you, sir.”
“Help me? How?” “To build a hut here for the ladies. And we’ll live here all our lives, and never go back to the sheds any more.”
“He has been wandering a little,” said Mrs. Vickers. “Poor fellow, he seems quite well behaved.”
The convict began to sing a little German song, and to beat the refrain with his hand. Frere looked at him with curiosity. “I wonder what the story of that man’s life has been,” he said. “A queer one, I’ll be bound.”
Sylvia looked up at him with a forgiving smile. “I’ll ask him when he gets well,” she said, “and if you are good, I’ll tell you, Mr. Frere.”
Frere accepted the proffered friendship. “I am a great brute, Sylvia, sometimes, ain’t I?” he said, “but I don’t mean it.”
“You are,” returned Sylvia, frankly, “but let’s shake hands, and be friends. It’s no use quarrelling when there are only four of us, is it?” And in this way was Rufus Dawes admitted a member of the family circle.
Within a week from the night on which he had seen the smoke of Frere’s fire, the convict had recovered his strength, and had become an important personage. The distrust with which he had been at first viewed had worn off, and he was no longer an outcast, to be shunned and pointed at, or to be referred to in whispers. He had abandoned his rough manner, and no longer threatened or complained, and though at times a profound melancholy would oppress him, his spirits were more even than those of Frere, who was often moody, sullen, and overbearing. Rufus Dawes was no longer the brutalized wretch who had plunged into the dark waters of the bay to escape a life he loathed, and had alternately cursed and wept in the solitudes of the forests. He was an active member of society– a society of four–and he began to regain an air of independence and authority. This change had been wrought by the influence of little Sylvia. Recovered from the weakness consequent upon this terrible journey, Rufus Dawes had experienced for the first time in six years the soothing power of kindness. He had now an object to live for beyond himself. He was of use to somebody, and had he died, he would have been regretted. To us this means little; to this unhappy man it meant everything. He found, to his astonishment, that he was not despised, and that, by the strange concurrence of circumstances, he had been brought into a position in which his convict experiences gave him authority. He was skilled in all the mysteries of the prison sheds. He knew how to sustain life on as little food as possible. He could fell trees without an axe, bake bread without an oven, build a weatherproof hut without bricks or mortar. From the patient he became the adviser; and from the adviser, the commander. In the semi-savage state to which these four human beings had been brought, he found that savage accomplishments were of most value. Might was Right, and Maurice Frere’s authority of gentility soon succumbed to Rufus Dawes’s authority of knowledge.
As the time wore on, and the scanty stock of provisions decreased, he found that his authority grew more and more powerful. Did a question arise as to the qualities of a strange plant, it was Rufus Dawes who could pronounce upon it. Were fish to be caught, it was Rufus Dawes who caught them. Did Mrs. Vickers complain of the instability of her brushwood hut, it was Rufus Dawes who worked a wicker shield, and plastering it with clay, produced a wall that defied the keenest wind. He made cups out of pine-knots, and plates out of bark-strips. He worked harder than any three men. Nothing daunted him, nothing discouraged him. When Mrs. Vickers fell sick, from anxiety and insufficient food, it was Rufus Dawes who gathered fresh leaves for her couch, who cheered her by hopeful words, who voluntarily gave up half his own allowance of meat that she might grow stronger on it. The poor woman and her child called him “Mr.” Dawes.