much courage as if she had been the strongestminded woman that ever denied her sex. "Is it all over ?" she asked.

"Yes, thank God!" said Vickers, pausing on the threshold. "All is safe now, though we had a narrow escape, I believe. How's Sylvia ?"

The child was lying on the bed with her fair hair scattered over the pillow, and her tiny hands moving restlessly to and fro.

"A little better, I think, though she has been talking a good deal."

The red lips parted, and the blue eyes, brighter than ever, stared vacantly around. The sound of her father's voice seemed to have roused her, for she began to speak a little prayer: "God bless papa and mamma, and God bless all on board this ship. God bless me, and make me good girl, for Jesus Christ's sake, our Lord. Amen.”

The sound of the unconscious child's simple prayer had something awesome in it, and John Vickers, who, not ten minutes before, would have sealed his own death warrant unhesitatingly to preserve the safety of the vessel, felt his eyes fill with unwonted tears. The con

trast was curious. From out the midst of that desolate ocean-in a fever-smitten prison

ship, leagues from land, surrounded by ruffians, thieves, and murderers-the baby voice of an innocent child called confidently on Heaven.

Two hours afterwards-as the Malabar, escaped from the peril which had menaced her, plunged cheerily through the rippling water the mutineers, by their spokesman, Mr. James Vetch, confessed.

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They were very sorry, and hoped that their breach of discipline would be forgiven. It was the fear of the typhus which had driven them to it. They had no accomplices either in the prison or out of it, but they felt it but right to say that the man who had planned the mutiny was Rufus Dawes."

The malignant cripple had guessed from whom the information which had led to the failure of the plot had been derived, and this was his characteristic revenge.

"The examination of the prisoners who were concerned in the attempt upon the Malabar was concluded on Tuesday last. The four ringleaders, Dawes, Gabbett, Vetch, and Saunders were condemned to death; but we understand that, by the clemency of his Excellency the Governor, their sentence has been commuted to six years at the penal settlement of Macquarie Harbour."

END OF BOOK I.

HE south-east coast of Van Diemen's Land, from the solitary Mewstone to the basaltic cliffs of Tasman's Head, from Tasman's Head to Cape Pillar, and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates' Bay, resembles a biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continual action of the ocean which, pouring round by east and west, has divided the peninsula from the mainland of the Australasian continent and done for Van Diemen's Land what it has done for the Isle of Wight--the shore line is broken and ragged.

Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragments of island and promontory which lie

water.

scattered between the South-West Cape and the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms, assumed by melted lead spilt into If the supposition were not too extravagant, one might imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a careless giant upset the crucible, and spilt Van Diemen's land in the ocean. The coast navigation is as dangerous as that of the Mediterranean. Passing from Cape Bougainville to the east of Maria Island, and between the numerous rocks and shoals which lie beneath the triple height of the Three Thumbs, the mariner is suddenly checked by Tasman's Peninsula, hanging, like a huge doubledropped earring, from the mainland. Getting round under the Pillar rock, through Storm Bay to Storing Island, we sight the Italy of this miniature Adriatic. Between Hobart Town and Sorrell, Pittwater and the Derwent, a strangely-shaped point of land-the Italian boot with its toe bent upwards-projects into the bay, and, separated from this projection by a narrow channel, dotted with rocks, the long length of Bruny Island makes, between its western side and the cliffs of Mount Royal, the dangerous passage known as D'Encastreaux Channel. At the southern