Home > Authors Index > William H. G. Kingston > Peter Biddulph: The Story of an Australian Settler > This page
Peter Biddulph: The Story of an Australian Settler, a fiction by William H. G. Kingston |
||
Chapter 13. Our Prisoner |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ CHAPTER THIRTEEN. OUR PRISONER. We kept a strict watch over our wretched prisoner. For his own sake I did not wish him to escape, and, far from having an intention of delivering him up to justice, my earnest desire was to try and reclaim him. I think that, under the circumstances, I should have acted as I did had he been an indifferent person; but I felt sure, from the peculiarity of his features, that he was the youngest son of my kind old patron and friend, Mr Wells. Often in his childhood had he sat on my knee when I came home from sea, and often he had listened attentively to the accounts of my adventures. He was a pretty, interesting little fellow. As he grew up he altered very much; became disobedient to his parents, and ultimately growing wilder and wilder, went, as the expression is, to the bad. For some years I had not even heard of him. Worn out with fatigue, our prisoner slept on till after the sun was up, and we were busy in marking out the ground for our slate hut, and making preparations for cutting down the nearest trees with which to build it. More than once I looked at his countenance while he slept, and called my wife to look at him. We were both convinced that my surmise was correct. On awaking at last he gazed round with an astonished, puzzled look, and sighed deeply. I happened to be near, and went up to him. "Arthur!" I said, gently, "what brought you here?" "What!--Who are you?--How do you know me?" he exclaimed, springing to his feet. "I'll answer you though--my own folly and vice and sin. I am in your power. I did not wish to take your life, but I hoped to get your gun and then to force you to give me and my mates food--that was all. You may, however, take me into camp and deliver me up to the governor and his men; if they hang me at once I shall be grateful to you, for I am weary of this life. I am a mere slave to my mates; they would murder me in an instant if I should become burdensome to them; and, bad as I am, they are so much worse that I can even now have no fellowship with them." Thus the unhappy man ran on, eagerly discharging, as it were, at once his long pent-up feelings and thoughts. For weeks and months he had been wandering about, nearly starved, and ill-treated and despised by his companions in crime. And this man had been in the rank of a gentleman, and had been educated as one, and had once felt as one! I know to a certainty that there are numbers of such wandering about the world, and others who have died miserably,--outcasts from their friends and, more terrible fate, from their God,--who little thought when they made their first downward step in the path of sin to what a fearful termination it was leading them. I let our unhappy prisoner grow calm before I again spoke to him. "You asked me," I said, "how I know your name, and who I am." And I then went over many of the incidents of his early life, when he was a happy, pleasant-mannered little boy at home. He made no reply; but he seemed to guess who I was, and bent down his head between his hands. I saw tears dropping from between his fingers. It was a good sign. I thought of the parable of the prodigal son. "He has been eating the husks: perhaps he will soon say, 'I will arise and go to my Father.'" I prayed that the Holy Spirit would strive mightily with him, and make him feel not only his sad moral and physical condition, but his terribly dangerous spiritual state. Such prayers are, I believe, never made in vain. I was eager, I must own, to begin my mornings work, but I did not wish at that moment to interrupt the man's thoughts. I waited therefore patiently till he should speak. After a time he lifted up his head, and said, "Who are you?" I told him that I remembered him as a boy--that his countenance was unchanged--and that his father had been my benefactor. "Thank God for that! if such as I am may utter that name," he exclaimed. "You'll not have me hung, then; you'll not deliver me up to a shameful death?" "No indeed, Arthur," I answered; "I will rather do my best to protect you. I do not know what crimes you have committed, and I do not wish to know; but I hope to see you restored to tranquillity of mind, and that you may find joy and peace in believing on that one only Saviour, through whom you can obtain pardon for your transgressions and reconciliation with God." I then and there unfolded to him God's merciful plan of salvation. I was sure that then was the time. His heart was softened; he was ready to receive the truths of the gospel. It was a happy thing for me that I knew the plan of salvation before I left England. I was thus enabled to impart it to this poor man and to others. His idea was that if he could but be very sorry for all his misdeeds, and commit no more, and work away hard to please God in some sort of fashion, he might have a chance of going to heaven at last. He would scarcely believe me when I told him that I found nothing of that sort throughout the Gospels and Epistles; that Christ, the anointed One, had done all that was required for us sinners; that all we have to do is to accept His glorious offer, by faith in the perfect efficacy of His atoning blood, shed for all mankind on Calvary. These truths and many more I tried to explain to Arthur, and it was satisfactory to mark the readiness with which he accepted them. He was for some time utterly prostrated and scarcely able to stand up, much less to work. We, of course, were all very busy from sunrise to sunset, and I could pay very little attention to him during the day. I gave him, however, the few books we had brought with us; but I was glad to see that the Book of books, long unread, was his chief delight. He would sit with it in his hand all day, and at night would draw near to the fire, and pore over its pages as long as the flames burnt with sufficient brightness. I felt sure from the first that he was in earnest, though J--- warned me that he was only shamming, and that as soon as he could have a chance he would be off with anything he could lay hands on. I said that I had no fear about the matter, and should not keep a watch over him. We had pretty hard work, you may be sure, and I doubt if any men could have worked harder; but we kept our health very well--indeed, in spite of the heat, I never felt stronger. We had first our own dwelling-house to get up, and then the huts for the men. Our own abode was, indeed, but a hut--larger than the others, with divisions; but there was very little finish or ornament about it. To be sure, it was a good deal larger than the cabin of the _May Flower_, though the girls complained that it was not half as neat; nor was it, indeed. Neatness was to come by and by, we said. With many settlers, it must be owned, it never comes at all. We, however, before long put up a verandah, almost a necessary appendage to a house in that hot climate. There was thus always shade and shelter on one side of the house or the other, and here my wife and daughters could sit and work, and carry on all sorts of operations. Our very first work, I should have said, was to make a pen for the sheep, where they would be secure from the natives or dingoes at night. In the daytime, when out feeding, they could be easily kept together, and they were so tame that they would follow us about like dogs. Their offspring learnt the same custom; and so instead of the sheep being driven, as in England, they throughout the whole of the country follow the shepherd wherever he leads, and know his voice. Often have I thought of the parable of the Good Shepherd when I have heard a shepherd, in a slightly undulating or hilly country, calling to his sheep, and seen the flock come trooping over the ridges from afar, and gradually drawing round him, not one being missing. As soon as we could, also, we got a garden fenced in and dug up, and a paddock for wheat. We had no wish to starve, and at that time provisions were often very scarce and enormously dear in the colony. At one time, indeed, in consequence of the non-arrival of store-ships from England, the settlers were nearly starved. _ |
||