ng in it. He had thrown off his coat and
cap, and his sleeveless arms were bare to the armpits. The civil guard
ran to the cliff and fired. One shot hit. The man could be seen to tear
the coarse linen shirt from his breast and bind it above the wrist.

"Why does he not crouch down?" said Hugh Ritson: he did not know who
this convict was, but in his heart there was a feverish desire that the
prisoner should escape.

"He's a doomed man--he's in the race--it's flowing hard, and he'll drift
back to the island," said the doctor.

Half an hour later a posse of the civil guard, with two assistant
warders, brought the recaptured fugitive into the governor's
receiving-office. The stalwart fellow strode between the warders with a
firm step and head erect. He wore no jacket or cap, and on one bare arm
a strip of linen was roughly tied. His breast was naked, his eyes were
aflame, and save for a black streak of blood across the cheek, his face
was ashy pale. But that man was not crushed by his misfortunes; he
seemed to crush them.

"Take that man's number," said the governor.

"Ay, take it, and see you take it rightly," said the convict.

"It's B 2001," said the chief warder.

The governor consulted a paper that lay on his table.

"Send for the gentleman," he said to an attendant. "It's well for you
that you are wanted by the law officers of the Crown," he added, turning
to the prisoner.

The convict made no answer; he was neither humble nor sullen; his manner
was frank but fierce, and made almost brutal by a sense of wrong.

The next moment Hugh Ritson stepped into the office. His eyes dropped,
and his infirm foot trailed heavily along the floor. He twitched at his
coat with nervous fingers; his nostrils quivered; his whole body
trembled perceptibly.

"This is the man," said the chief warder, with a deferential bow.

Hugh Ritson tried to raise his eyes, but they fell suddenly. He opened
his lips to speak, but the words would not come. And meantime the wet,
soiled, naked, close-cropped, blood-stained convict, flanked by armed
warders, stood before him with head erect and eyes that searched his
soul. The convict rested one hand on his hip and pointed with the other
at Hugh Ritson's abject figure.

"What does this man want with me?" he said, and his voice was deep.

At that Hugh Ritson broke in impetuously:

"Paul, I will not outrage your sufferings by offering you my pity."

The officers looked into each other's fa