r. Pickwick,
that "the law is a hass." It was always England's way, he said, and, if
she didn't mind, this leniency to traitors would some day be her
undoing!

Charlie put the despised, yet precious, warrant back into his pocket,
and gazed disgustedly across the creek, where the loveliest of young
moons was rising behind a frieze of the homeless, barbaric brush.

"There was never such a place in the world," he asserted, "to hide
in--or get lost in--or to starve in. I have often thought that it would
make the most effective prison in the world. Instead of spending good
public money in housing and feeding scoundrels behind bars, and paying
officials to keep them there, supporting expensive establishments at
Dartmoor and so forth, why doesn't the British Government export her
convicts over here, land them on one of those mangrove shoals, and--give
them their freedom! Five per cent. might succeed in escaping. The
mangrove swamps would look after the rest."

As I have said, Charlie was a terrifying patriot. For most offences he
had the humanity of a vast forgiveness. He was, generally speaking, the
softest-hearted man I have ever met. But for any breach of the sacred
laws of England he was something like a Spanish Inquisitor. England, in
fact, was his religion. I have heard of worse.

The young moon rose and rose, while Charlie sat in the dusk of our
shanty, like a meditative mountain, saying nothing, the glowing end of
his cigar occasionally hinting at the circumference of his broad
Elizabethan face.

"I'll get him, all the same," he said presently, coming out of a sort of
trance, in which, as I understood later, his mind had been making a
geographical survey of our neighbourhood, going up and down every creek
and corner on a radius of fifty miles.

"If," he added, "he knows this island better than I do, I'll give him
this warrant to eat for his breakfast.... But let's turn in. I'll think
it out by the morning. Night brings counsel."

So we sought our respective cots; but I had scarcely begun to undress,
when a foolish accident for which I was responsible happened, an
accident that might have had serious consequences, and which, as a
matter of fact did have--though not at the moment.

As I told the reader at the beginning of this story, I am not accustomed
to guns--being too afraid of my bad temper. Charlie knew this, and was
all the time cautioning me about holding my gun right and so on, and
especially about sha