e odds even once and
for ever. In the day-time they travelled on, seeking each a pretext to
creep behind the other. In the night-time when they feigned slumber,
each stealthily raising a head caught the wakeful glance of his
companion. Vetch felt his strength deserting him, and his brain
overpowered by fatigue. Surely the giant, muttering, gesticulating, and
slavering at the mouth, was on the road to madness. Would the monster
find opportunity to rush at him, and, braving the blood-stained axe,
kill him by main force? or would he sleep, and be himself a victim?
Unhappy Vetch! It is the terrible privilege of insanity to be sleepless.

On the fifth day, Vetch, creeping behind a tree, takes off his belt, and
makes a noose. He will hang himself. He gets one end of the belt over
a bough, and then his cowardice bids him pause. Gabbett approaches;
he tries to evade him, and steal away into the bush. In vain. The
insatiable giant, ravenous with famine, and sustained by madness, is not
to be shaken off. Vetch tries to run, but his legs bend under him. The
axe that has tried to drink so much blood feels heavy as lead. He will
fling it away. No--he dares not. Night falls again. He must rest, or go
mad. His limbs are powerless. His eyelids are glued together. He sleeps
as he stands. This horrible thing must be a dream. He is at Port Arthur,
or will wake on his pallet in the penny lodging-house he slept at when a
boy. Is that the Deputy come to wake him to the torment of living? It is
not time--surely not time yet. He sleeps--and the giant, grinning with
ferocious joy, approaches on clumsy tiptoe and seizes the coveted axe.

On the north coast of Van Diemen's Land is a place called St Helen's
Point, and a certain skipper, being in want of fresh water; landing
there with a boat's crew, found on the banks of the creek a gaunt and
blood-stained man, clad in tattered yellow, who carried on his back an
axe and a bundle. When the sailors came within sight of him, he made
signs to them to approach, and, opening his bundle with much ceremony,
offered them some of its contents. Filled with horror at what the maniac
displayed, they seized and bound him. At Hobart Town he was recognized
as the only survivor of the nine desperadoes who had escaped from
Colonel Arthur's "Natural Penitentiary".

END OF BOOK THE THIRD

BOOK IV.--NORFOLK ISLAND. 1846.

CHAPTER I. EXTRACTED FROM THE DIARY OF THE REV. JAMES NORTH.

Bathu