They would have to work and sleep in chains; they would be
yoked together, and whipped like bullocks; and if they escaped into
the bush the blacks would kill and eat them. As this dismal tale
went round, some of the boys, who were quite young and small, began
to cry, and to call for their mothers to come and help them; and then
the others began to scream and should and yell. The warders came
below and tried to silence them, but the more they tried the louder
grew the uproar, and it continued for many hours during the night.
"Britons rarely swerve
From law, however stern, which tends their strength to serve."
Discipline must be maintained; so next morning the poor little
beggars were brought up on deck in batches, stripped, triced up, and
severely flogged. Jack, and a number of other boys, said they had
not cried at all, but the officer in charge thought it was better
that a few of the innocent should suffer rather than that one of the
guilty should escape, so they were all flogged alike, and soon after
they were shipped for New South Wales.
On his arrival n Sydney, Jack was assigned as a servant to a
squatter, and taken into the bush a long way to the west. The
weather had been very hot for a long time, all the grass had withered
to dust, and the cattle were starving. The first work which he was
ordered to do was to climb trees and cut off the branches, in order
that the cattle might keep themselves alive by eating the leaves and
twigs.
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