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I need not tell you the last penny is at your disposal. It might be possible to bribe. Indeed, Lord Bute is all-powerful to-day and he would perhaps procure a pardon for you at my entreaty. He is so kind as to admire my scribblings. . . Or you might live among your fellow-convicts somewhere over sea for a while longer.

In the midst of the garden stood the quadrangular building of the hospital, the steep roof forming broad verandahs. There were gray figures sitting or lounging there also, but the Commandant said that Number 1280 would not be found among these, for he fled as much as might be from the society of his fellow-convicts.

Even after he was seized with sickness, which brought him exceedingly low, he ceased not to strive against the weakness of the body, that he might do good to his fellow-convicts.

Daily he came to think more of his clipped wings, of his exclusion from the world, and less of the fortuitous liberty he enjoyed. Nor did the contrasting of his comparatively easy lot with that of his unfortunate fellow-convicts bring him the satisfaction a differently constituted mind might have derived from it.

Lying in his narrow space in the semi-darkness he tossed his limbs about, and closed his eyes in vain he could not sleep. His utmost efforts induced only an oppressive stagnation of thought, through which he heard the voices of his fellow-convicts; while before his eyes was still the burning Hydaspes that vessel whose destruction had destroyed for ever all trace of the unhappy Richard Devine.

I thought to myself, 'All that's no good on a night like this. And I made up my mind that if a body of my fellow-convicts came down to the pier which was sure to happen soon I would shoot her through the head before I shot myself. I knew the 'comrades' well.

Immune from the degrading punishments and privations of his fellow-convicts, he was enabled to keep his self-respect, and was treated without harshness even by the soulless planter to whom he had been sold. He owed it all to gout and megrims. He had won the esteem of Governor Steed, and what is even more important of Governor Steed's lady, whom he shamelessly and cynically flattered and humoured.

Guevara, Riquelme, and their fellow-convicts, were discharged almost without the form of a trial, and it is even said were received into favor and countenance. Roldan, from the very first, had been treated with confidence by Bobadilla, and honored with his correspondence. All the others, whose conduct had rendered them liable to justice, received either a special acquittal or a general pardon.

The former, after a little time, I discovered to be three of my fellow-convicts one of them a desperate fellow, of the name of Norcot, a native of Middlesex, who had been transported for a highway robbery, and who had been eminently distinguished for superior dexterity and daring in his infamous profession.

Cross at once flew into a violent passion, and with much foul language accused poor May of having thrown the chip at him. This the young fellow warmly denied, whereupon Cross, taking his pistol out of his belt, struck the sailor on the mouth with the butt. In an instant May returned the blow by knocking the overseer down, and was then seized by two of his fellow-convicts.