The Escape of the Notorious Sir William Heans by William Gosse Hay

Heans and Shaxton became rather thick on architecture during this and the next month. The "Silent Prison" was still a castle-in-the-air, however; though two sites--one near the Cascades Women's Prison and another on the opposite side of the Derwent at Kangaroo Point--had been discussed and gone over. Suddenly the whole matter had been shelved--and art and Sir William with it into obscurity--for one more important in the eyes of the officers, the gallant explorer Governor, Hobarton society, and even of Hyde-Shaxton himself: the arrival of the bombships EREBUS and TERROR in the Derwent, under the intrepid captains James Ross and Crozier, to refit for a hair-raising thrust into the ice of the pole. The Captain and his wife had been summoned by Sir John Franklin to an explorers' dinner at Government House, and all the winter months the former was on and off the EREBUS, or chuckling among the prisons and waterfalls with her officers.

The Captain would come home and chuckle over the day with his wife--and Daunt and Sir William Heans, who were sometimes with her--over Sir John Franklin's "family prayers" before the quailshoot, or "old-lady" sermons to the prisoners. "How those men listen to him without exploding," he would say, "I don't know! I give you my word, I can't! Yesterday he was up with the women in the Cascades. There they were ranged up in one of the yards in their aprons and white bonnets, lounging and smirking and bobbing at the sailor-boys as gay as paroquets. Says he, taking off his hat to them and stepping forward in his uniform, with his funny old black tragedy eyes blazing with good intentions, 'Now, women,' says he, 'any little goodness or kindness will do for your Governor. Just take that to heart. God Almighty's looking down on you in His mercy. He sees your troubles. Take a reef in, there's good girls; and see and shape a kinder course.' All the while there was young Willie Bannister nudging my arm, and asking who the woman was in the black shawl, with the brown hair: 'A stunning girl, Shaxton,' says he. Entre nous, Daunt," cries the Captain, turning on that officer, who, with Sir William Heans, was calling that afternoon on Mrs. Shaxton, "who is the convict in black? Everybody's asking about her. If she's a common prisoner, why don't they clothe her like the others?"