during his reverie, and the first faint streaks of
dawn began to lighten in the sky. Haggard and pale, he rose to his feet,
and scarcely daring to think about what he proposed to do, ran towards
the boat. As he ran, however, the voice that he had heard encouraged
him. "Your life is of more importance than theirs. They will die, but
they have been ungrateful and deserve death. You will escape out of this
Hell, and return to the loving heart who mourns you. You can do more
good to mankind than by saving the lives of these people who despise
you. Moreover, they may not die. They are sure to be sent for. Think of
what awaits you when you return--an absconded convict!"

He was within three feet of the boat, when he suddenly checked himself,
and stood motionless, staring at the sand with as much horror as though
he saw there the Writing which foretold the doom of Belshazzar. He
had come upon the sentence traced by Sylvia the evening before, and
glittering in the low light of the red sun suddenly risen from out the
sea, it seemed to him that the letters had shaped themselves at his very
feet,

GOOD MR. DAWES.

"Good Mr. Dawes"! What a frightful reproach there was to him in that
simple sentence! What a world of cowardice, baseness, and cruelty, had
not those eleven letters opened to him! He heard the voice of the child
who had nursed him, calling on him to save her. He saw her at that
instant standing between him and the boat, as she had stood when she
held out to him the loaf, on the night of his return to the settlement.

He staggered to the cavern, and, seizing the sleeping Frere by the arm,
shook him violently. "Awake! awake!" he cried, "and let us leave this
place!" Frere, starting to his feet, looked at the white face and
bloodshot eyes of the wretched man before him with blunt astonishment.
"What's the matter with you, man?" he said. "You look as if you'd seen a
ghost!"

At the sound of his voice Rufus Dawes gave a long sigh, and drew his
hand across his eyes.

"Come, Sylvia!" shouted Frere. "It's time to get up. I am ready to go!"

The sacrifice was complete. The convict turned away, and two great
glistening tears rolled down his rugged face, and fell upon the sand.

CHAPTER XVII. AT SEA.

An hour after sunrise, the frail boat, which was the last hope of these
four human beings, drifted with the outgoing current towards the mouth
of the harbour. When first launched she had come nigh swamping, being