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Updated: June 11, 2025
He knew her at once. She was Sarah Purfoy, Mrs. Vickers's maid, but he never had been so close to her before; and it seemed to him that he was in the presence of some strange tropical flower, which exhaled a heavy and intoxicating perfume. For an instant the two looked at each other, and then Rufus Dawes was seized from behind by his collar, and flung with a shock upon the deck.
"It takes a better man than you to best me. Bring him up in the morning, Hawkins, and we'll give him five-and-twenty." As he went out so great is the admiration for Power the poor devils in the yard cheered him. One of the first things that this useful officer did upon his arrival in Sydney was to inquire for Sarah Purfoy.
Gabbett's only reply to this question was a ferocious grunt, and a sudden elevation of his clenched fist, which caused Mr. Vetch to retreat precipitately. The giant did not follow; and Mr. Vetch, folding his arms, and assuming an attitude of easy contempt, directed his attention to Sarah Purfoy.
The awning had been removed, the stars were shining in the moonless sky, the poop guard had shifted itself to the quarter-deck, and Miss Sarah Purfoy was walking up and down the deserted poop, in close tete-a-tete with no less a person than Captain Blunt himself.
"Hullo! what's this?" cried Pine, bringing the lantern to bear upon it. "Lie down, my man. Eh! water, is it? There, steady with it now"; and he lifted a pannikin to the blackened, froth-fringed lips. The cool draught moistened his parched gullet, and the convict made a last effort to speak. "Sarah Purfoy to-night the prison MUTINY!"
After he was landed in Sydney, by the vessel which Sarah Purfoy had sent to save him, he found himself a slave to a bondage scarcely less galling than that from which he had escaped the bondage of enforced companionship with an unloved woman. The opportune death of one of her assigned servants enabled Sarah Purfoy to instal the escaped convict in his room.
Blicks was hopeful, but Green who came very near hanging admitted that the man was an associate of his, and the Recorder, being in a severe mood, transported him for seven years. Sarah Purfoy vowed that she would follow 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 was Sarah Purfoy emerging from her cabin. "Here is the wench!" cries Blunt. "We are talking of your eyes, my dear." "Well, they'll bear talking about, captain, won't they?" asked she, turning them full upon him. "By the Lord, they will!" says Blunt, smacking his hand on the table. "They're the finest eyes I've seen in my life, and they've got the reddest lips under 'm that "
Sarah Purfoy rose over the enemy who had defeated her, and said in level, deliberate accents, "They call him Rufus Dawes. He is a convict at Norfolk Island, transported for life for the murder which you have heard my husband confess to having committed Ah! Lady Devine had fainted. Sarah flew to Rex. "Rouse yourself, John, for Heaven's sake. We have not a moment."
The dull ripple of the water as the ship rocked on the slow swell of the sea made a melancholy sound, and the sick man's heavy breathing seemed to fill the air. The slight noise made by the opening door roused him; he rose on his elbow and began to mutter. Sarah Purfoy paused in the doorway to listen, but she could make nothing of the low, uneasy murmuring.
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