ckers to assist in
the business of devastation, had left behind it some tools and timber,
and at the eleventh hour a boat's crew was sent to bring away the
debris. The tools were duly collected, and the pine logs--worth
twenty-five shillings apiece in Hobart Town--duly rafted and chained.
The timber was secured, and the convicts, towing it after them,
pulled for the ship just as the sun sank. In the general relaxation of
discipline and haste, the raft had not been made with as much care
as usual, and the strong current against which the boat was labouring
assisted the negligence of the convicts. The logs began to loosen, and
although the onward motion of the boat kept the chain taut, when the
rowers slackened their exertions the mass parted, and Mr. Troke, hooking
himself on to the side of the Ladybird, saw a huge log slip out from
its fellows and disappear into the darkness. Gazing after it with
an indignant and disgusted stare, as though it had been a refractory
prisoner who merited two days' "solitary", he thought he heard a cry
from the direction in which it had been borne. He would have paused
to listen, but all his attention was needed to save the timber, and to
prevent the boat from being swamped by the struggling mass at her stern.

The cry had proceeded from Rufus Dawes. From his solitary rock he had
watched the boat pass him and make for the Ladybird in the channel,
and he had decided--with that curious childishness into which the mind
relapses on such supreme occasions--that the moment when the gathering
gloom swallowed her up, should be the moment when he would plunge into
the surge below him. The heavily-labouring boat grew dimmer and dimmer,
as each tug of the oars took her farther from him. Presently, only the
figure of Mr. Troke in the stern sheets was visible; then that also
disappeared, and as the nose of the timber raft rose on the swell of the
next wave, Rufus Dawes flung himself into the sea.

He was heavily ironed, and he sank like a stone. He had resolved not to
attempt to swim, and for the first moment kept his arms raised above his
head, in order to sink the quicker. But, as the short, sharp agony of
suffocation caught him, and the shock of the icy water dispelled the
mental intoxication under which he was labouring, he desperately struck
out, and, despite the weight of his irons, gained the surface for an
instant. As he did so, all bewildered, and with the one savage instinct
of self-preservat