, in the form of an earring
with a double drop. The lower drop is the larger, and is ornamented,
so to speak, with bays. At its southern extremity is a deep indentation
called Maingon Bay, bounded east and west by the organ-pipe rocks of
Cape Raoul, and the giant form of Cape Pillar. From Maingon Bay an arm
of the ocean cleaves the rocky walls in a northerly direction. On the
western coast of this sea-arm was the settlement; in front of it was a
little island where the dead were buried, called The Island of the
Dead. Ere the in-coming convict passed the purple beauty of this convict
Golgotha, his eyes were attracted by a point of grey rock covered with
white buildings, and swarming with life. This was Point Puer, the
place of confinement for boys from eight to twenty years of age. It
was astonishing--many honest folks averred--how ungrateful were these
juvenile convicts for the goods the Government had provided for them.
From the extremity of Long Bay, as the extension of the sea-arm was
named, a convict-made tramroad ran due north, through the nearly
impenetrable thicket to Norfolk Bay. In the mouth of Norfolk Bay was
Woody Island. This was used as a signal station, and an armed boat's
crew was stationed there. To the north of Woody Island lay One-tree
Point--the southernmost projection of the drop of the earring; and the
sea that ran between narrowed to the eastward until it struck on the
sandy bar of Eaglehawk Neck. Eaglehawk Neck was the link that connected
the two drops of the earring. It was a strip of sand four hundred and
fifty yards across. On its eastern side the blue waters of Pirates' Bay,
that is to say, of the Southern Ocean, poured their unchecked force. The
isthmus emerged from a wild and terrible coast-line, into whose bowels
the ravenous sea had bored strange caverns, resonant with perpetual
roar of tortured billows. At one spot in this wilderness the ocean had
penetrated the wall of rock for two hundred feet, and in stormy weather
the salt spray rose through a perpendicular shaft more than five hundred
feet deep. This place was called the Devil's Blow-hole. The upper drop
of the earring was named Forrestier's Peninsula, and was joined to the
mainland by another isthmus called East Bay Neck. Forrestier's
Peninsula was an almost impenetrable thicket, growing to the brink of a
perpendicular cliff of basalt.

Eaglehawk Neck was the door to the prison, and it was kept bolted. On
the narrow strip of land wa