第14章

It was a run indeed now, and what Joe called, in the only two words he spoke all the time, `a Winder.' Down banks and up banks, and over gates, and splashing into dykes, and breaking among coarse rushes: no man cared where he went. As we came nearer to the shouting, it became more and more apparent that it was made by more than one voice. Sometimes, it seemed to stop altogether, and then the soldiers stopped. When it broke out again, the soldiers made for it at a greater rate than ever, and we after them.

After a while, we had so run it down, that we could hear one voice calling `Murder!' and another voice, `Convicts! Runaways! Guard!This way for the runaway convicts!' Then both voices would seem to be stifled in a struggle, and then would break out again. And when it had come to this, the soldiers ran like deer, and Joe too.

The sergeant ran in first, when we had run the noise quite down, and two of his men ran in close upon him. Their pieces were cocked and levelled when we all ran in.

`Here are both men!' panted the sergeant, struggling at the bottom of a ditch. `Surrender, you two! and confound you for two wild beasts! Come asunder!'

Water was splashing, and mud was flying, and oaths were being sworn, and blows were being struck, when some more men went down into the ditch to help the sergeant, and dragged out, separately, my convict and the other one. Both were bleeding and panting and execrating and struggling; but of course I knew them both directly.

`Mind!' said my convict, wiping blood from his face with his ragged sleeves, and shaking torn hair from his fingers: ` I took him! I give him up to you! Mind that!'

`It's not much to be particular about,' aid the sergeant; `it'll do you small good, my man, being in the same plight yourself. Handcuffs there!'

`I don't expect it to do me any good. I don't want it to do me more good than it does now,' said my convict, with a greedy laugh. `I took him.

He knows it. That's enough for me.'

The other convict was livid to look at, and, in addition to the old bruised left side of his face, seemed to be bruised and torn all over.

He could not so much as get his breath to speak, until they were both separately handcuffed, but leaned upon a soldier to keep himself from falling.

`Take notice, guard - he tried to murder me,' were his first words.

`Tried to murder him?' said my convict, disdainfully. `Try, and not do it? I took him, and giv' him up; that's what I done. I not only prevented him getting off the marshes, but I dragged him here - dragged him this far on his way back. He's a gentleman, if you please, this villain. Now, the Hulks has got its gentleman again, through me. Murder him? Worth my while, too, to murder him, when I could do worse and drag him back!'

The other one still gasped, `He tried - he tried - to - murder me. Bear - bear witness.'

`Lookee here!' said my convict to the sergeant. `Single-handed I got clear of the prison-ship; I made a dash and I done it. I could ha' got clear of these death-cold flats likewise - look at my leg: you won't find much iron on it - if I hadn't made discovery that he was here. Let him go free? Let him profit by the means as I found out?

Let him make a tool of me afresh and again? Once more? No, no, no.

If I had died at the bottom there;' and he made an emphatic swing at the ditch with his manacled hands; `I'd have held to him with that grip, that you should have been safe to find him in my hold.'

The other fugitive, who was evidently in extreme horror of his companion, repeated, `He tried to murder me. I should have been a dead man if you had not come up.'

`He lies!' said my convict, with fierce energy. `He's a liar born, and he'll die a liar. Look at his face; ain't it written there? Let him turn those eyes of his on me. I defy him to do it.'

The other, with an effort at a scornful smile - which could not, however, collect the nervous working of his mouth into any set expression - looked at the soldiers, and looked about at the marshes and at the sky, but certainly did not look at the speaker.

`Do you see him?' pursued my convict. `Do you see what a villain he is? Do you see those grovelling and wandering eyes? That's how he looked when we were tried together. He never looked at me.'

The other, always working and working his dry lips and turning his eyes restlessly about him far and near, did at last turn them for a moment on the speaker, with the words, `You are not much to look at,' and with a half-taunting glance at the bound hands. At that point, my convict became so frantically exasperated, that he would have rushed upon him but for the interposition of the soldiers. `Didn't I tell you,' said the other convict then, `that he would murder me, if he could?' And any one could see that he shook with fear, and that there broke out upon his lips, curious white flakes, like thin snow.

`Enough of this parley,' said the sergeant. `Light those torches.'

As one of the soldiers, who carried a basket in lieu of a gun, went down on his knee to open it, my convict looked round him for the first time, and saw me. I had alighted from Joe's back on the brink of the ditch when we came up, and had not moved since. I looked at him eagerly when he looked at me, and slightly moved my hands and shook my head. I had been waiting for him to see me, that I might try to assure him of my innocence.