'Warm your feet!' scoffed the convict, 'you'll be lucky if you can raise a trot without hobbles these years to come. When your time's up they'll have ye for something else, like they did me. Once they've got a cove on these ---- hell-boats they don't like to let him go again.' 'How long have you been lagged, Scotty?' inquired Lance, less indeed impelled by curiosity than desirous of turning the conversation from what he felt was a dangerous direction. 'Me?' growled the convict hoarsely, glaring for a moment at Lance with his wolfish eyes--eyes which rarely met those of another steadfastly. 'I did ten stretch on the Derwent afore I come across the Straits--ten long years. That warn't enough for 'em, for I hadn't been a year at Bendigo when I was "lumbered" for robbing a cove's tent as I'd never been nigh. No! God strike me dead if I had! I knew the chap as did the "touch" as well as I know you. He and Black Douglas did it between 'em. But I'd a bad name. I'd come from the other side, and I was picked upon. I was seen going towards the tent the night before. The chaps that lost their gold swore to me; they wanted to "cop" somebody. And there was I, as was going straight and had a good claim and didn't need to rob nobody, and thought I had a chance in a new country, there was I--"lagged" and dragged aboard again, and me no more in it than a sucking child. I went _mad_ pretty well, and here's the end of it. But by ----' and here the half-insane felon swore a terrible oath, 'I'll give 'em something to talk about afore I'm done, and it'll be true this time--true as death--death--death!' Here the unfortunate creature, whose features had gradually assumed an expression of ungovernable rage, lashed to fury by the thought of real or fancied injustice, raised his voice to a shriek like the cry of a wild beast, and with every feature working like those of an epileptic, fell on the floor of the deck helpless and insensible. 'What's all this?' demanded a warder, marching to the spot, yet cautiously, as always doubtful of a rush among the fierce animals over which he and his comrades ruled. 'Dash it all, you fellows are like a lot of old women--jabber, jabber. I shall have to put some of you in the black hole if you don't look out.' 'It's only Scotty, sir,' answered a crafty-looking convict who had been looking on, with a strange mysterious smile. 'He's got a fit or somethink. He's always mad when he gets on that Bendigo yarn of his.' 'Oh, Scotty, is it?' replied the warder carelessly. 'Throw a bucket of salt water over him; he'll come to directly. Your hour's up all but five minutes, men. You can go below and keep quiet, or it'll be worse for some of you.'