Dark Torment Read Online Free PDF Page B

his wrist and the other clenched on the seat of his
breeches. Sarah quickly averted her eyes from that mutilated back, but not
before she saw that the convict was at least partially aware of what was
happening. He was trying to walk, his knees wavering as his bare feet shuffled
weakly across the deck. The sailors had no patience with his puny efforts. They
dragged him along between them. Even sagging at the knees as he was, he was
taller than either of them. Sarah could see that it was a struggle for the
convict even to hold his head upright; he tried, but instants later his head
slumped forward in defeat.
    In her outrage, Sarah had completely forgotten her reason for
going aboard the
Septimus
in the first place. But as soon as their
little group approached the dray, her eyes widened with remembrance. Liza! Liza
hated the sight of blood at any time, claiming it made her nauseated. And with
her already feeling ill . . . Sarah broke away from her father to hurry
forward, meaning to warn her sister to turn away from the distressing sight.
But she was too late; even as she approached the trap where Liza sat, the
sailors were lifting the convict into the dray. His back was presented to Liza.
With her sister, Sarah again absorbed the full impact of blood welling from
more than two dozen open wounds, of bared tendons and drying crusts of blood
and swarming flies. . . . She turned back to her sister just in time to see
Liza’s eyes roll back into her head; she was barely able to catch the
younger girl before, with a little moan, she slumped over in a dead faint.
    From Lowella to Melbourne and back usually took three days. This
time the trip home seemed twice as long. Liza was ill and had to lie with her
head in Sarah’s lap as Sarah drove the trap. The heat was suffocating,
even with a fringed parasol set in a holder to ward off the glare of the sun.
Clare’s hooves kicked up whirlwinds of dust that seemed to seek out every
tiny opening in Sarah’s clothes and settle grittily against her
sweat-soaked skin. Behind them, the bullocks drawing the dray raised even worse
clouds of dust; Sarah shuddered to think of what must be settling into the
convict’s open wounds as he lay sprawled flat on the wagon bed. It was
useless to hope that any of the other convicts sitting scrunched together in
what was left of the space would try to keep the worst of the dirt and flies
out of those wounds. They were likely cursing their mate for crowding them in
such heat. Percival, driving the dray, must be even more hot and miserable than
she was herself. Only Edward, riding astride at the head of the procession, had
any hope of escaping the miseries of the dust; he could outride it.
    For a while their route took them along the banks of the Yarra
Yarra River. There was little more than a trickle of water left to wend its way
through steeply sloped banks of sun-dried mud. Huge eucalyptus trees towering
overhead usually provided plentiful shade, but not this day: the sun had left
them with only a few small, dry leaves. The red stringybarks, ashes, and
slender beech trees had suffered the same fate. Their denuded branches
stretched pitifully toward the sky. The ghost gums with their thick gray trunks
were just as dry, but their lack of water caused alarm rather than pity: if the
heat became too intense, they were likely to explode. Many a brush fire had
been started by the spontaneous combustion of a ghost gum in the dry season.
    It was nearly dark by the time their little procession pulled into
the yard of the inn where they would pass the night. The Markhams were well
known at Yancy’s place. They nearly always passed the night there on
their way to and from Melbourne. In fact, they had spent the previous night
there before riding on to Melbourne that morning.
    After being shown to the room they would share, Sarah helped Liza
to bathe and eat and saw her into bed. By then she wanted nothing so much as a