The Spider and the Fly

Charles Garvice

Charles Garvice

The Spider and the Fly / or, An Undesired Love

CHAPTER I

A SWIM FOR LIFE

It is sunset; a dusky red is spreading out from the horizon and throwing a duskier reflection upon the sullen sea and its more sullen shore. A weird, awful shore it is, encumbered with huge rocks and strangely hewn stone.

A grim, shuddering waste, made grimmer and more terrible by strange, stray specks of humanity, that, seen in the falling sunlight seemed rather distorted creations of fancy than actual human beings; from stone to stone they pace, stepping with a peculiar, halting, laborious gait, and looking sullenly earthward as if their eyes were chained to the hateful, barren shore and the looking upward were death.

Look closer and gain fresh cause for wonderment. There is a strange likeness in these dim figures. They move alike, their gaze is directed sullenly downward alike, they are dressed alike. A sad, dingy, gray garment, half shirt, half tunic, relieved in all cases by a patch of crimson across the arm, upon which is stamped, in letters of black relief, a number. Their feet are shod with thick, heavy, iron-soled boots; a coarse, hideous cap is upon their heads, and the hair beneath it is cut almost to the skin.

The faces – ah, no! who could describe those faces? Who can speak of those crime-stamped brows, those passion-distorted lips, and those despairing eyes?

Listen! There is no sound but the sudden crash, crash of the falling stone that the coarse-grained hands are pushing, and the bent, gray-clad shoulders are heaving, from the quarries. One other sound still, heard only at intervals when the stone is silent, and that is the tramp, tramp of the sentries, who, like the figures of Death and Eternity in the old Roman temple, forever, day and night, march to and fro on the battlements, forever, night and day, keeping watch and ward on the terrible, gray-clad figures, that despairingly toil upon the barren plain below.

It is the convict station at Portland, and the figures are the shadows of some of England's vilest criminals.

The sun sinks lower, the warders, stationed at measured intervals between the various gangs, yawn with weary impatience and long for the sound of the prison bell. When that rings, which it will do within half an hour, the gangs will have finished their work for the day and the march for the gloomy prison upon the heights will commence.

The warders yawn impatiently, but the silent, gray-clad figures feel no impatience. They have nothing to long for, nothing to hope for.

One and all toiling on this particular plain toil on till death, and that has been longed for so long that it seems so far off as to be hopeless.

Death comes to men free and happy, but them it seems to avoid; it leaves them to their most awful punishment of life.

The quarter has chimed, the warders have grown more impatient, perhaps less vigilant, or does this tall, thin figure with No. 108 stamped upon his arm only fancy so? For he has broken the rule which says that no man shall separate himself from his particular gang, and is crouching behind a bowlder. Is he resting? His hazel, hunted eyes flash from the nearest warder to the sentinels upon the battlements. His hand grasps the chain at his leg to deaden its rattle as he glides along. His eyes drop from the sentinel and travel swiftly but keenly along the grim rank of the next gang. They rest upon one gray-clad figure numbered ninety-nine. His breath comes faster, he crouches until his breast touches the ground, and, though his lips are too tightly pressed for speech, his eyes seem to speak in the intensity of their gaze.

Perhaps No. 99 feels their gaze, for as he stoops with the gang to heave the hard, cruel stone he lifts his small, villainous eyes and sees the dark, piercing ones fixed so earnestly upon him. A start, imperceptible, thrills through him, and, as he raises his shoulder, he contrives to lift one hand as a signal that he has seen and understands.

No. 108 seems