cers, dragged the mass into a sitting posture.

Gabbett--for it was he--passed one great hand over his face, and leaning
exactly in the position in which Troke placed him, scowled, bewildered,
at his visitors.

"Well, Gabbett," says Vickers, "you've come back again, you see. When
will you learn sense, eh? Where are your mates?"

The giant did not reply.

"Do you hear me? Where are your mates?"

"Where are your mates?" repeated Troke.

"Dead," says Gabbett.

"All three of them?"

"Ay."

"And how did you get back?"

Gabbett, in eloquent silence, held out a bleeding foot.

"We found him on the point, sir," said Troke, jauntily explaining, "and
brought him across in the boat. He had a basin of gruel, but he didn't
seem hungry."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yes."

"Why don't you eat your gruel?"

Gabbett curled his great lips.

"I have eaten it. Ain't yer got nuffin' better nor that to flog a man
on? Ugh! yer a mean lot! Wot's it to be this time, Major? Fifty?"

And laughing, he rolled down again on the logs.

"A nice specimen!" said Vickers, with a hopeless smile. "What can one do
with such a fellow?"

"I'd flog his soul out of his body," said Frere, "if he spoke to me like
that!"

Troke and the others, hearing the statement, conceived an instant
respect for the new-comer. He looked as if he would keep his word.

The giant raised his great head and looked at the speaker, but did not
recognize him. He saw only a strange face--a visitor perhaps. "You
may flog, and welcome, master," said he, "if you'll give me a fig o'
tibbacky." Frere laughed. The brutal indifference of the rejoinder
suited his humour, and, with a glance at Vickers, he took a small piece
of cavendish from the pocket of his pea-jacket, and gave it to the
recaptured convict. Gabbett snatched it as a cur snatches at a bone, and
thrust it whole into his mouth.

"How many mates had he?" asked Maurice, watching the champing jaws
as one looks at a strange animal, and asking the question as though a
"mate" was something a convict was born with--like a mole, for instance.

"Three, sir."

"Three, eh? Well, give him thirty lashes, Vickers."

"And if I ha' had three more," growled Gabbett, mumbling at his tobacco,
"you wouldn't ha' had the chance."

"What does he say?"

But Troke had not heard, and the "good-conduct" man, shrinking as it
seemed, slightly from the prisoner, said he had not heard either. The
wretch himself, munching hard at hi