before.
Not that Dick Jarman--the solitary station keeper--ever indulged this
fancy. An escaped convict from one of her Britannic Majesty's penal
colonies, a "stowaway" in the hold of an Australian ship, he had landed
penniless in San Francisco, fearful of contact with his more honest
countrymen already there, and liable to detection at any moment. Luckily
for him, the English immigration consisted mainly of gold-seekers en
route to Sacramento and the southern mines. He was prudent enough to
resist the temptation to follow them, and accepted the post of semaphore
keeper,--the first work offered him,--which the meanest immigrant,
filled with dreams of gold, would have scorned. His employers asked him
no questions, and demanded no references; his post could be scarcely
deemed one of trust,--there was no property for him to abscond with but
the telescope; he was removed from temptation and evil company in his
lonely waste; his duties were as mechanical as the instrument he worked,
and interruption of them would be instantly known at San Francisco. For
this he would receive his board and lodging and seventy-five dollars a
month,--a sum to be ridiculed in those "flush days," but which seemed to
the broken-spirited and half-famished stowaway a princely independence.
And then there was rest and security! He was free from that torturing
anxiety and fear of detection which had haunted him night and day for
three months. The ceaseless vigilance and watchful dread he had known
since his escape, he could lay aside now. The rude cabin on the sand
dune was to him as the long-sought cave to some hunted animal. It seemed
impossible that any one would seek him there. He was spared alike the
contact of his enemies or the shame of recognizing even a friendly face,
until by each he would be forgotten. From his coign of vantage on that
desolate waste, and with the aid of his telescope, no stranger could
approach within two or three miles of his cabin without undergoing his
scrutiny. And at the worst, if he was pursued here, before him was the
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