With such a powerful ally outside as the mock maid-servant, the chance of success was enormously increased.

There were one hundred and eighty convicts and but fifty soldiers.

If the first rush proved successful--and the precautions taken by Sarah Purfoy rendered success possible--the vessel was theirs.
Rufus Dawes thought of the little bright-haired child who had run so confidingly to meet him, and shuddered.
"There!" said the Crow, with a sneering laugh, "what do you think of that?
Does the girl look like nosing us now ?" "No," says the giant, stretching his great arms with a grin of delight, as one stretches one's chest in the sun, "that's right, that is.

That's more like bizness." "England, home and beauty!" said Vetch, with a mock-heroic air, strangely out of tune with the subject under discussion.

"You'd like to go home again, wouldn't you, old man ?" Gabbett turned on him fiercely, his low forehead wrinkled into a frown of ferocious recollection.
"You!" he said--"You think the chain's fine sport, don't yer?
But I've been there, my young chicken, and I knows what it means." There was silence for a minute or two.