ollow him. She was going as passenger,
as emigrant, anything, when she saw Mrs. Vickers's advertisement for a
"lady's-maid," and answered it. It chanced that Rex was shipped in the
Malabar, and Sarah, discovering this before the vessel had been a week
at sea, conceived the bold project of inciting a mutiny for the rescue
of her lover. We know the result of that scheme, and the story of the
scoundrel's subsequent escape from Macquarie Harbour.

CHAPTER IV. "THE NOTORIOUS DAWES."

The mutineers of the Osprey had been long since given up as dead, and
the story of their desperate escape had become indistinct to the general
public mind. Now that they had been recaptured in a remarkable manner,
popular belief invested them with all sorts of strange surroundings.
They had been--according to report--kings over savage islanders, chiefs
of lawless and ferocious pirates, respectable married men in Java,
merchants in Singapore, and swindlers in Hong Kong. Their adventures had
been dramatized at a London theatre, and the popular novelist of that
day was engaged in a work descriptive of their wondrous fortunes.

John Rex, the ringleader, was related, it was said, to a noble family,
and a special message had come out to Sir John Franklin concerning him.
He had every prospect of being satisfactorily hung, however, for even
the most outspoken admirers of his skill and courage could not but admit
that he had committed an offence which was death by the law. The Crown
would leave nothing undone to convict him, and the already crowded
prison was re-crammed with half a dozen life sentence men, brought up
from Port Arthur to identify the prisoners. Amongst this number was
stated to be "the notorious Dawes".

This statement gave fresh food for recollection and invention. It was
remembered that "the notorious Dawes" was the absconder who had been
brought away by Captain Frere, and who owed such fettered life as he
possessed to the fact that he had assisted Captain Frere to make the
wonderful boat in which the marooned party escaped. It was remembered,
also, how sullen and morose he had been on his trial five years before,
and how he had laughed when the commutation of his death sentence was
announced to him. The Hobart Town Gazette published a short biography of
this horrible villain--a biography setting forth how he had been engaged
in a mutiny on board the convict ship, how he had twice escaped from the
Macquarie Harbour, how he