e drunk on duty was the one unpardonable sin. He
looked across the darkness of the sea, to where the rising and falling
light marked the schooner. The Commandant was a long way off! A faint
breeze, which had--according to Blunt's prophecy--arisen with the night,
brought up to him the voices of the boat's crew from the jetty below
him. His friend Jack Mannix was coxswain of her. He would give Jack
a drink. Leaving the gate, he advanced unsteadily to the edge of the
embankment, and, putting his head over, called out to his friend. The
breeze, however, which was momentarily freshening, carried his voice
away; and Jack Mannix, hearing nothing, continued his conversation.
Gimblett was just drunk enough to be virtuously indignant at this
incivility, and seating himself on the edge of the bank, swallowed
the remainder of the rum at a draught. The effect upon his enforcedly
temperate stomach was very touching. He made one feeble attempt to get
upon his legs, cast a reproachful glance at the rum bottle, essayed
to drink out of its spirituous emptiness, and then, with a smile of
reckless contentment, cursed the island and all its contents, and fell
asleep.

North, coming out of the prison, did not notice the absence of
the gaoler; indeed, he was not in a condition to notice anything.
Bare-headed, without his cloak, with staring eyes and clenched hands, he
rushed through the gates into the night as one who flies headlong from
some fearful vision. It seemed that, absorbed in his own thoughts, he
took no heed of his steps, for instead of taking the path which led to
the sea, he kept along the more familiar one that led to his own cottage
on the hill. "This man a convict!" he cried. "He is a hero--a martyr!
What a life! Love! Yes, that is love indeed! Oh, James North, how
base art thou in the eyes of God beside this despised outcast!" And so
muttering, tearing his grey hair, and beating his throbbing temples with
clenched hands, he reached his own room, and saw, by the light of the
new-born moon, the dressing-bag and candle standing on the table as he
had left them. They brought again to his mind the recollection of the
task that was before him. He lighted the candle, and, taking the bag in
his hand, cast one last look round the chamber which had witnessed his
futile struggles against that baser part of himself which had at last
triumphed. It was so. Fate had condemned him to sin, and he must now
fulfil the doom he might once hav