reaction came, and he hated the very sound of their voices. He never
spoke, and refused to answer when spoken to. He would even take
his scanty supper alone, did his chain so permit him. He gained the
reputation of a sullen, dangerous, half-crazy ruffian. Captain Barton,
the superintendent, took pity on him, and made him his gardener. He
accepted the pity for a week or so, and then Barton, coming down one
morning, found the few shrubs pulled up by the roots, the flower-beds
trampled into barrenness, and his gardener sitting on the ground among
the fragments of his gardening tools. For this act of wanton mischief he
was flogged. At the triangles his behaviour was considered curious.
He wept and prayed to be released, fell on his knees to Barton, and
implored pardon. Barton would not listen, and at the first blow the
prisoner was silent. From that time he became more sullen than ever,
only at times he was observed, when alone, to fling himself on the
ground and cry like a child. It was generally thought that his brain was
affected.

When Vickers came, Dawes sought an interview, and begged to be sent back
to Hobart Town. This was refused, of course, but he was put to work on
the Osprey. After working there for some time, and being released from
his irons, he concealed himself on the slip, and in the evening swam
across the harbour. He was pursued, retaken, and flogged. Then he ran
the dismal round of punishment. He burnt lime, dragged timber, and
tugged at the oar. The heaviest and most degrading tasks were always
his. Shunned and hated by his companions, feared by the convict
overseers, and regarded with unfriendly eyes by the authorities, Rufus
Dawes was at the very bottom of that abyss of woe into which he had
voluntarily cast himself. Goaded to desperation by his own thoughts, he
had joined with Gabbett and the unlucky three in their desperate
attempt to escape; but, as Vickers stated, he had been captured
almost instantly. He was lamed by the heavy irons he wore, and
though Gabbett--with a strange eagerness for which after events
accounted--insisted that he could make good his flight, the unhappy man
fell in the first hundred yards of the terrible race, and was seized by
two volunteers before he could rise again. His capture helped to secure
the brief freedom of his comrades; for Mr. Troke, content with one
prisoner, checked a pursuit which the nature of the ground rendered
dangerous, and triumphantly brought Dawes ba