To this maimed and manacled rebel was the Commandant ushered by Troke the next morning.
“Ha! ha! my man,” said the Commandant. “Here you are again, you see. How do you like this sort of thing?”
Dawes, glaring, makes no answer.
“You shall have fifty lashes, my man,” said Frere. “We’ll see how you feel then!” The fifty were duly administered, and the Commandant called the next day. The rebel was still mute.
“Give him fifty more, Mr. Troke. We’ll see what he’s made of.”
One hundred and twenty lashes were inflicted in the course of the morning, but still the sullen convict refused to speak. He was then treated to fourteen days’ solitary confinement in one of the new cells. On being brought out and confronted with his tormentor, he merely laughed. For this he was sent back for another fourteen days; and still remaining obdurate, was flogged again, and got fourteen days more. Had the chaplain then visited him, he might have found him open to consolation, but the chaplain–so it was stated–was sick. When brought out at the conclusion of his third confinement, he was found to be in so exhausted a condition that the doctor ordered him to hospital. As soon as he was sufficiently recovered, Frere visited him, and finding his “spirit” not yet “broken”, ordered that he should be put to grind maize. Dawes declined to work. So they chained his hand to one arm of the grindstone and placed another prisoner at the other arm. As the second prisoner turned, the hand of Dawes of course revolved.
“You’re not such a pebble as folks seemed to think,” grinned Frere, pointing to the turning wheel.
Upon which the indomitable poor devil straightened his sorely-tried muscles, and prevented the wheel from turning at all. Frere gave him fifty more lashes, and sent him the next day to grind cayenne pepper. This was a punishment more dreaded by the convicts than any other. The pungent dust filled their eyes and lungs, causing them the most excruciating torments. For a man with a raw back the work was one continued agony. In four days Rufus Dawes, emaciated, blistered, blinded, broke down.
“For God’s sake, Captain Frere, kill me at once!” he said.
“No fear,” said the other, rejoiced at this proof of his power. “You’ve given in; that’s all I wanted. Troke, take him off to the hospital.”
When he was in hospital, North visited him.
“I would have come to see you before,” said the clergyman, “but I have been very ill.”
In truth he looked so. He had had a fever, it seemed, and they had shaved his beard, and cropped his hair. Dawes could see that the haggard, wasted man had passed through some agony almost as great as his own. The next day Frere visited him, complimented him on his courage, and offered to make him a constable. Dawes turned his scarred back to his torturer, and resolutely declined to answer.
“I am afraid you have made an enemy of the Commandant,” said North, the next day. “Why not accept his offer?”
Dawes cast on him a glance of quiet scorn. “And betray my mates? I’m not one of that sort.”
The clergyman spoke to him of hope, of release, of repentance, and redemption. The prisoner laughed. “Who’s to redeem me?” he said, expressing his thoughts in phraseology that to ordinary folks might seem blasphemous. “It would take a Christ to die again to save such as I.”
North spoke to him of immortality. “There is another life,” said he. “Do not risk your chance of happiness in it. You have a future to live for, man.”
“I hope not,” said the victim of the “system”. “I want to rest–to rest, and never to be disturbed again.”
His “spirit” was broken enough by this time. Yet he had resolution enough to refuse Frere’s repeated offers. “I’ll never ‘jump’ it,” he said to North, “if they cut me in half first.”
North pityingly implored the stubborn mind to have mercy on the lacerated body, but without effect. His own wayward heart gave him the key to read the cipher of this man’s life. “A noble nature ruined,” said he to himself. “What is the secret of his history?”
Dawes, on his part, seeing how different from other black coats was this priest–at once so ardent and so gloomy, so stern and so tender–began to speculate on the cause of his monitor’s sunken cheeks, fiery eyes, and pre-occupied manner, to wonder what grief inspired those agonized prayers, those eloquent and daring supplications, which were daily poured out over his rude bed. So between these two–the priest and the sinner–was a sort of sympathetic bond.
One day this bond was drawn so close as to tug at both their heart-strings. The chaplain had a flower in his coat. Dawes eyed it with hungry looks, and, as the clergyman was about to quit the room, said, “Mr. North, will you give me that rosebud?” North paused irresolutely, and finally, as if after a struggle with himself, took it carefully from his button-hole, and placed it in the prisoner’s brown, scarred hand. In another instant Dawes, believing himself alone, pressed the gift to his lips. North returned abruptly, and the eyes of the pair met. Dawes flushed crimson, but North turned white as death. Neither spoke, but each was drawn close to the other, since both had kissed the rosebud plucked by Sylvia’s fingers.
Chapter VIII.
Extracted From The Diary Of The Rev. James North
October 21st.–I am safe for another six months if I am careful, for my last bout lasted longer than I expected. I suppose one of these days I shall have a paroxysm that will kill me. I shall not regret it.
I wonder if this familiar of mine–I begin to detest the expression–will accuse me of endeavouring to make a case for myself if I say that I believe my madness to be a disease? I do believe it. I honestly can no more help getting drunk than a lunatic can help screaming and gibbering. It would be different with me, perhaps, were I a contented man, happily married, with children about me, and family cares to distract me. But as I am–a lonely, gloomy being, debarred from love, devoured by spleen, and tortured with repressed desires–I become a living torment to myself. I think of happier men, with fair wives and clinging children, of men who are loved and who love, of Frere for instance–and a hideous wild beast seems to stir within me, a monster, whose cravings cannot be satisfied, can only be drowned in stupefying brandy.
Penitent and shattered, I vow to lead a new life; to forswear spirits, to drink nothing but water. Indeed, the sight and smell of brandy make me ill. All goes well for some weeks, when I grow nervous, discontented, moody. I smoke, and am soothed. But moderation is not to be thought of; little by little I increase the dose of tobacco. Five pipes a day become six or seven. Then I count up to ten and twelve, then drop to three or four, then mount to eleven at a leap; then lose count altogether. Much smoking excites the brain. I feel clear, bright, gay. My tongue is parched in the morning, however, and I use liquor to literally “moisten my clay”. I drink wine or beer in moderation, and all goes well. My limbs regain their suppleness, my hands their coolness, my brain its placidity. I begin to feel that I have a will. I am confident, calm, and hopeful. To this condition succeeds one of the most frightful melancholy. I remain plunged, for an hour together, in a stupor of despair. The earth, air, sea, all appear barren, colourless. Life is a burden. I long to sleep, and sleeping struggle to awake, because of the awful dreams which flap about me in the darkness. At night I cry, “Would to God it were morning!” In the morning, “Would to God it were evening!” I loathe myself, and all around me. I am nerveless, passionless, bowed down with a burden like the burden of Saul. I know well what will restore me to life and ease–restore me, but to cast me back again into a deeper fit of despair. I drink. One glass–my blood is warmed, my heart leaps, my hand no longer shakes. Three glasses–I rise with hope in my soul, the evil spirit flies from me. I continue–pleasing images flock to my brain, the fields break into flower, the birds into song, the sea gleams sapphire, the warm heaven laughs. Great God! what man could withstand a temptation like this?
By an effort, I shake off the desire to drink deeper, and fix my thoughts on my duties, on my books, on the wretched prisoners. I succeed perhaps for a time; but my blood, heated by the wine which is at once my poison and my life, boils in my veins. I drink again, and dream. I feel all the animal within me stirring. In the day my thoughts wander to all monstrous imaginings. The most familiar objects suggest to me loathsome thoughts. Obscene and filthy images surround me. My nature seems changed. By day I feel myself a wolf in sheep’s clothing; a man possessed by a devil, who is ready at any moment to break out and tear him to pieces. At night I become a satyr. While in this torment I at once hate and fear myself. One fair face is ever before me, gleaming through my hot dreams like a flying moon in the sultry midnight of a tropic storm. I dare not trust myself in the presence of those whom I love and respect, lest my wild thoughts should find vent in wilder words. I lose my humanity. I am a beast. Out of this depth there is but one way of escape. Downwards. I must drench the monster I have awakened until he sleeps again. I drink and become oblivious. In these last paroxysms there is nothing for me but brandy. I shut myself up alone and pour down my gullet huge draughts of spirit. It mounts to my brain. I am a man again! and as I regain my manhood, I topple over–dead drunk.