SHE VISITS H.M.S. ‘WARRIOR’
I remained at home several days, seeing nobody, waited upon by my
maid and denying myself to everybody. My aunt sent to inquire after
me, and my maid’s answers satisfied her. I pulled the blinds down and
sat alone in my grief, with Tom’s miniature upon my knee. But always
at dusk I stole forth and walked in the Old Bailey, close against the
walls of Newgate Prison, that I might be near my dear one. I wrote to
him and took my chance of the letter reaching his hands. I told him
that no man was ever more truly loved by his sweetheart; that wherever
he went I would go; and let them send him where they would, he would
find me there; and I swore to him that he was innocent, the victim of a
monstrous, transparent conspiracy, and I said I prayed every night to
God to punish the villains who had brought us to this miserable state.
It was about a fortnight after the trial that one of my trustees,
Captain Galloway, asked me by letter for an appointment; he presented
himself with Captain Fairman, the other trustee. They were both bluff,
hearty seamen of the old school, somewhat resembling each other,
though not connected. The motive of their visit was to get me to give
up Tom. Captain Galloway had not forgotten my treatment of his son,
and talked with ill-advised heat. He did not deny that he considered
Captain Butler guilty. I listened with contempt at first, but this gave
way to temper which rose into wrath, and I fairly gave the devil they
had aroused within me his way. When they had gone I caught sight of
myself in a mirror, and I looked as flaming and red and swelling and
breathless as any mad murderess in a padded cell.
I guessed my aunt was at the bottom of these captains’ visits. She must
have asked Mr. Stanford to talk to me too; otherwise I doubt if he had
dared venture it. Yet I listened to the fellow patiently till he told
me that he spoke as the representative of my mother on earth; that made
me think of my father and I started up. I meant no physical violence
though I was capable of it then, but my manner of jumping up was so
menacing that he instantly started from his chair and hastened out of
the room, slamming the door after him.
I would not trust my uncle to obtain news of Tom. I knew that all
interested in me wished me to break off with my sweetheart, and would
hoodwink me if they could by keeping me in ignorance that Tom had
been sent out of the country. A clerk named Woolfe who had been in my
uncle’s employ had started for himself; he was a shrewd, unscrupulous
young dog. I bargained with him to get me news of Tom, and to work all
methods of communication practicable by bribery. From him I learned
that my sweetheart had been removed from Newgate to Millbank. The
fellow took a hundred guineas from me in all, but did no more for the
money than discover where Tom was; and one day, about four months
after Tom’s conviction, this young rogue of a lawyer called upon me at
Stepney to say that Tom had been transferred from Millbank to H.M.S.
_Warrior_ hulk, moored off Woolwich Dockyard.
‘Are you sure?’ I cried.
‘I am now from Millbank,’ said he.
‘And what will happen next?’ I demanded.
‘They’ll keep him at forced labour at the dockyard,’ he answered, ‘till
a transport hauls alongside the hulk for a cargo.’
‘When will that be?’
‘Impossible to say, miss.’
‘Will you get me the rules of the hulk?’
‘They are the same as the jails.’
‘But I have not seen Captain Butler since his conviction, nor heard
from him, nor know whether he has received my letters.’
He answered that he would make inquiries and call. He was intelligibly
punctual, because he had to receive ten guineas, but he brought me what
I wanted to know, and to my joy I learned that I was at liberty to
visit Tom next day, and that he would be brought on board to see me if
he was ashore when I arrived.
The morning following I dressed with care. I wore black clothes. I had
worn black ever since my sweetheart was taken from me. I put on a black
veil, and going into the street, walked till I met with a coach, and
drove to Blackwall. I had not visited those parts since Tom and I and
the others had seen Will Johnstone off, and I dared not glance in the
direction of the hotel in which my sweetheart had made love to me and
asked me to marry him. Indeed, my heart needed all the fortitude my
spirit could give it.
It was a bright, hot day. The sky was high with delicate, frostlike
cloud, and the running river blue with the reflection of the heavens.
The wind was a light summer breeze and blew from London, and many ships
of many rigs floated before it, some of them lifting lofty fabrics of
swelling breasts of canvas, some of them dark with a weather-stained
look, like my father’s coasters. Here at Blackwall I took a boat, and
told the man to row me to the _Warrior_ hulk.
‘You know her?’ said I.
He was an elderly man, dressed in a tall hat and jersey; he exposed a
few yellow fangs as he lay back on his oars and said:
‘Know her? Yes. Know the _Warrior_! Yah might as well ask me if I know
St. Paul’s. Going aboard?’
‘Yes.’
‘Friend aboard?’
I inclined my head.
‘I had a nevvey locked up in that there hulk,’ said the man. ‘He had
six year. Now’s out and doon well. He drove a light cart drawn by a
nag as could trot, and called hisself a pig-dealer. Do ’spectable
pig-dealers break into houses o’ night? The _Warrior_ cured my nevvey.
He ain’t above talking of that ship. Get him in the mood, and he’ll
spin yah some queer yarns about her.’
‘How are the prisoners treated?’
‘Sights o’ stone-breaking and stacking o’ timber. They put my nevvey
to draw carts. They sunk his name and caa’d him a number. A man doan’
feel a man when he’s a number. But the job my nevvey least enjoyed was
scraping shot.’
‘How are they fed?’
‘By contract. Yah knows what that means. Beef all veins. Ever heard of
“smiggins,” miss?’
‘No.’
‘It’s hulk soup: convicts’ name for greasy warm water. Call it twenty
year ago, I was passing a hulk stationed afore the _Defence_ came up; a
boat was ’longside with provisions for the day; what d’ye think? With
my own eyes I see the prisoners as was hoisting the grub out of the
boat chuck it overboard. Was they flogged?’
He shook his head, grinning horribly.
His manners and answers shocked and depressed me, and I asked him no
more questions.
‘Ain’t it rather sing’ler,’ said he, after a few minutes’ pause, ‘that
there’s only one flower as ’ll grow upon a convict’s grave?’
‘Is that so?’
‘Ay. And what flower d’ye think it is, miss?’ said he, again showing
his fangs.
‘I don’t know.’
‘It’s a nettle. If yah should care to visit the burial-ground yonder,’
he continued, with a backward nod of his head in the direction of
Woolwich, ‘yah ’ll see for yourself. As if nothen would blow ower a
convict but that! Of course the finger o’ nater’s in it. The finger o’
nater’s got the straight tip for most jobs. It’s daisies for the likes
of you and me, and nettles for them as goes wrong.’
I was too agitated to converse with such a heartless creature as this.
My mind was full of Tom. I wondered how he would greet me--how I should
find him looking. We should be allowed but a quarter of an hour. What
time would that give me, to whom a long summer day was all too brief in
which to tell him how I loved him; how I meant to follow him; how our
loyalty to one another should, if God permitted, triumph yet over the
horrors and the sufferings which might lie between the now and the hour
of victorious emergence!
We were still about a mile from the hulk, when I observed a large
ship in tow of a tug coming up the river. She sat deep in the water
and was plainly fresh from a long voyage, rusty about the bows and
weather-stained along the line of her painted ports; but she carried
the smartness of a frigate aloft in the well-squared yards, from which
all canvas had been unbent, and in the perfectly-stayed and lofty
topgallant-masts, whose royal yards had been sent down. I seemed to
recognise the large house-flag she flew at the main.
‘What ship is that?’ I asked, well aware that Thames watermen know
every ship out of London.
He turned his chin on his shoulder and viewed her leisurely and
answered:
‘The _Childe Harold_.’
‘The _Childe Harold_!’ I cried, and I threw up my veil to look at her.
Will Johnstone’s ship! I could scarcely credit my eyes. She glided,
stately and slow, in the wake of the tug. Her home was at hand, the
forest of the East India Docks was in sight, and the paddles of the
little steamer were beating the water slowly.
I observed a crowd of people on the forecastle, and a number of men and
women walked the poop, or after-deck. The red flag streamed brightly
from the peak, the glass and brass about her sparkled, the little
circular windows in her side flashed like gems as they took the sun,
and the raiment of the ladies fluttered in many tints. Here and there
a sailor was trotting aloft, and a man standing high and conspicuously
on the forecastle was shouting, with one hand against his mouth, to the
tug. As the noble ship passed she made a holiday picture of the water
round about her and the land on either hand. I stared hard, hoping I
might catch a sight of Will, but the distance between was too wide to
enable me to distinguish faces.
‘There’s no finer ship out of London,’ said the waterman. ‘She’s from
Australey. That’s where the gents yah’re going to visit are sent
to. If there’s naught but nettles to be blowed out of dead convicts
there’s blisterin’ fine cities to be growed out of live ones. I’m
going to Australey myself some of these here days--just to take a look
’round--work my way out and home again. A shilling a month ’ud do. I’m
no sailor man.’
He sank into silence. The _Childe Harold_ floated away astern, and now
right ahead of us and near loomed the giant figure of the prison-hulk
_Warrior_, her head pointing toward London. Another hulk lay moored
close by. All these hulks, those off the Arsenal, as well as those off
the Dockyard, were as familiar to me as the fingers of my hand. Over
and over again had I passed them and looked at them during my lonely
pleasant jaunts upon the river, but always with an incurious eye; but a
new, deep, fearful significance had now to my gaze entered the grim and
hideous fabric of the mountainous _Warrior_. I viewed the rows of ports
savagely and massively grated, and thought of the many eyes of crime
and suffering, of guilt--and, O my God! of innocence too--which might
have peered through those metal meshes at the outside scene of flowing
river, with the spirit of liberty strong in the speeding craft, in the
flight of the cloud, in the feathering of the hissing ripple.
She was a hideous ship, horrible in her suggestions of human crime and
despair. Rows of coarse convict linen fluttered betwixt her pole masts,
at the head of the foremost of which streamed the long pennon of the
State. She was bulged up all about the bows with rude band-box-like
buildings; cowled ventilating-shafts gaped above her decks; the dull
gleam of gilt and glass about her vast quarter-galleries and stern
affected the imagination as a faded memorial of times when her sides
bristled with the black dogs of war, when her copper sheathing trembled
like a glance of sunset under her, when she lifted star-searching
spires to the sky, space upon space of symmetric whiteness swelling
soft as sifted snow to the glittering buttons of her trucks.
There was an off gangway ladder, with a warder standing like a sentinel
at the head of it. The convicts were ashore, all of them, saving a
few, silent at their trades under deck. A singular hush lay upon the
big ship; though the morning was advanced and wide and brilliant, and
the river alive with stemming barges and row-boats and sailing craft
of all sorts, and alive too on the banks where the Dockyard was, and
higher, where were many low wharves and dismantled hulks and riverside
public-houses, and higher yet, where the Arsenal was, with its
chimneys pouring smoke and feathers of steam darting from great square
buildings; such was the stillness upon this slumbering mass of prison
hulk, that, as we drew alongside, I could hear no sound but the sob of
the stream of tide washing along the bends and an occasional groan of
aged timber as the sweep of the water strained the old fabric upon its
bed of mud.
I bade the waterman wait, got upon the ladder, and ascended. The warder
or officer at the gangway inquired my business. I told him I was a
visitor come to see one of the convicts, Thomas Butler. He bade me
pass on to the quarter-deck, where were assembled two or three groups
of persons who were also arrived to visit friends. The people might
have come on board by way of a gallery which connected the ship with
the shore on the port or left-hand side; this gallery was defended
under the forecastle by a huge iron palisade with two strong gates for
padlocking.
The warder at the gangway spoke to an officer who stood within earshot.
He crossed the deck and the shore was hailed, but I know not by whom
nor heard what was said. I had lifted my veil to look at the _Childe
Harold_ and kept it up. My pulse throbbed fast, and I knew I was very
white, but my mood had become resolved by temper. My heart turned
sick at the sight of the wide decks with their grimy incumbrances of
convicts and officers’ galleys and hammock-houses and other heaped and
sordid and filthy-looking structures. I thought of Tom as an innocent
man doomed to soul-killing work ashore and heart-breaking immurement
in this hulk, locked up below at night with hundreds of felons, many
of whom had been fetched by the hands of justice out of the gutters
and slums and rookeries of that city whose atmosphere even in the far
distance tinged and tainted the blue of the summer sky.
I stood viewing the ship and wondering at what part of her my
sweetheart would appear. A man came from the forward end, looking from
right to left with inspecting eyes as he walked; he approached and
lightly surveyed me and the others who were waiting. He was a strongly
built man, dressed in a sort of uniform frock coat decorated with a
riband and clasp; on his head was a large bell-shaped cap like to what
I have seen in pictures of German and Russian officers. The expression
of his face was firm, but there was a colouring of kindness in it. A
glow of interest kindled in his ball-like eyes, and saluting me with a
flourish of his hand to the peak of his cap, he asked whom I had come
to see.
‘One of the convicts, Thomas Butler,’ I answered.
He stepped over to a warder, then returned.
‘Are you his wife, madam?’
‘I am his sweetheart and engaged to be married to him,’ I said,
colouring, and raised my hand to my veil, though I left my face
exposed, nevertheless.
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, with a sigh of pity.
‘He is innocent, sir. Devils in the shape of men have falsely sworn him
into this dreadful situation.’
‘They are all innocent who come here; they are all innocent,’ said he
in a voice of great irony.
‘Are you the captain of this ship, sir?’
‘This ship has no captain,’ he answered, smiling. ‘I am the
deputy-governor.’
‘Captain Butler is sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation; shall I
know when he sails?’
‘The rules will allow him to communicate with you. Our regulations are
carried out with great consideration. You observe that if a friend
calls while a man is away at labour, he is sent for.’
‘How often may I see Captain Butler?’
‘Every three months.’
‘Oh, sir!’ I clasped my hands and rocked myself; then summoning my
former spirit, for I was eager to get all information possible from
this communicative and sympathetic personage, I said: ‘How often may I
write to him and he to me?’
‘Every three months,’ he repeated, but softly, with a glance at the
waiting groups who had insensibly stolen toward us to listen.
‘He may sail within the next three months, and I shall not know where
he is gone.’
‘The regulations will permit of his communicating with you through the
governor before he sails, and you will be allowed to bid him farewell.’
‘And will he be able to tell me to what part of the world he is to be
sent?’
‘That’s not always known at the Admiralty, down, sometimes, to the last
minute. A convict ship has before now brought up in the Downs bound to
Hobart Town or Norfolk Island, and her destination has been changed by
express to Botany Bay.’
He touched his cap with a slight bow having thus spoken, and crossed to
the other waiting poor folks as though willing to be questioned.
I paced a little space of the deck. I could have held him long in
converse; I had, methought, a thousand questions to ask. On a sudden,
happening to look along the deck to the left, I saw a number of men
appear. Some of them were convicts and the others were the guard. They
came into the ship by the gallery that stretched from the quay to the
gangway. The convicts were dressed in a rusty brown suit with red
stripes upon it; they all looked alike, so horribly levelling is the
garb of the felon. A woman who was waiting shrieked out and ran some
steps, and a little boy of ten or twelve, whose hand was grasped by a
young woman, called out:
‘Father! Father!’ and began to cry piteously, still calling: ‘Father!
Father!’
The warders came to a pause near the hatch. There were four convicts;
three of them were embraced by the women who had been waiting, the
little boy meanwhile continuing to cry loudly, and two of the women
sobbing piteously; the fourth advanced and paused with his eyes upon me.
It was Tom, but for a few minutes I did not know him. His face was a
fiery red and wet with sweat, as though he had been brought fresh from
some exhausting labour; his hair was closely cut, and his beard was
cleanly shaved. The loathsome garb had as utterly transformed him as
though he had been wrapped in the shroud of the dead. I cried his name
and fled to him. He locked me in his arms, and so we stood for a little
while speechless.
‘My Marian!’
‘Oh, Tom, time is precious and I have much to say! Have you received
any letters from me?’
‘None.’
‘I have written to you often. Why did they not give you my letters?
But you would not think because you did not hear from me that I was
forgetting you?’
‘Have you heard from me, Marian?’
‘No, Tom.’
‘I have written. But a prison-governor may stop a felon’s letters, and
mine have been stopped, and they have not given me yours. We may have
written too strongly.’
He started and looked at me a little wildly and cried:
‘Marian, why are you here? This atmosphere is pollution. Look at my
dress; look at these hands. I have worn chains; I am driven as though
I were a mad and dangerous beast; I am herded with ruffians, and I am
innocent! I swear by your pure heart, Marian, I am guiltless of the
crime for which they have put me into this ship and for which they send
me ashore by day to--to---- Why are you here, dear?’ he cried, still
wildly, and now a little incoherently. ‘They have hellishly sworn me,
innocent as I am, into this. They have made a felon of me. They are
sending me from my country, and my heart must break--my heart must
break!’ he said, sobbing convulsively. ‘And they will bury me in a
convict’s grave. Oh, Marian, it is at an end between us--it must be so.
I am a convict, ruined and for ever dishonoured. Look at me!’
My heart was bursting whilst I listened to him, but the great God, who
knew that my sweetheart was a cruelly and terribly wronged man, gave
me, of His mercy, heart and spirit. I had much to say, and the moments
were flying. I looked at him with a smile and grasped his hand in both
mine. He struggled faintly, but I continued to hold his hand.
‘Tom, you are not dishonoured, you are not ruined. You are wronged.
Only that, my darling; no more. Hear me, dear,’ and I softened my
voice, for I was sensible of the deep thrill of my earnestness in every
syllable that fell from me. ‘I have come to tell you that my love is
unchangeable; that my love for you now is sanctified by your misery,
and that it is deeper, truer and holier, Tom, than ever it was before.
Oh, hear me, love, and take heart! Wherever you go, I will go. I shall
learn where they send you and accompany you or follow you. Nothing
but death can separate us. I have walked night after night beside the
prison walls that I might be near you, and whilst you are here I shall
be near you. They cannot separate us. Always believe, always know, that
whilst you are in this ship--yes, whilst they are trying to break your
heart ashore--I am present--oh, not in sympathy, not in love, not in
spirit only, Tom, but near you, but close as they will let me be to you
in my own person. Does that comfort you?’
He lifted my hand and bowed his head upon it.
‘Something may happen at any time to prove your innocence,’ I continued.
‘What could happen, Marian? Will Rotch ever admit that he perjured
himself merely to get charge of my ship and to punish me for reporting
him and for my treatment of him at Valparaiso?’
‘But your banishment is not for life, Tom.’
‘It is! It is!’ he cried. ‘Who ever returns from transportation?’
‘They will give you your liberty after a time; you will be free, and I
shall be with you. I have money, and we will establish ourselves and be
happy, my darling.’
‘My noble heart, your love breaks me down!’ he cried, looking up and
grasping me by the hands, then covering his eyes.
‘I was talking with a man before you came, Tom. He is the
deputy-governor. Yonder he stands. He tells me that you will be allowed
to write and inform me when you are to sail. You will receive the news
and have leave to convey it. Will you do so?’
He viewed me in a shrinking way.
‘Oh, Tom, Tom, you must swear to write to me!’ I cried in a sudden fit
of despair. ‘Swear it! If you do not write, how shall I know when you
have gone and where you have gone? Swear you will write! Swear it!
Swear it!’ I clutched him by the arm in my passion of eagerness and
desire, repeating: ‘Swear it!’
‘You must not follow me. You must not leave your home for me.’
‘Swear it, Tom!’
‘I shall be a servant, a slave out in Australia, a convict always,
whether freed or not.’
‘Oh, swear it, Tom!’
‘They may flog me--chain me in a gang----’
‘Swear to write and tell me when you sail.’
He was silent, breathed deeply, then his eyes lighted up with love,
and he exclaimed in a low voice:
‘I swear it!’
‘Would it be for you to divide us, Tom?’
He faintly smiled and answered:
‘You know me to be innocent, Marian.’
‘Yes, as I am of that crime they have charged you with.’
‘What do they say of me? What is thought?’
‘Tom, what does it matter? You are innocent, and I love you.’
‘My noble heart, God bless you. What does your uncle think?’
‘Time’s up?’ cried a warder.
‘You have sworn it, Tom. Remember!‘
‘I will write, dearest, I swear it, I will write.’
‘Come, my man!’ shouted one of the guard.
‘Remember, Tom!’ I exclaimed.
‘I will write to you,’ were his last words.
I stood watching him as he walked with the other convicts and the guard
to the gangway gallery. The excitement and grief of this meeting
worked like a fever in me. My breast was violently heaving, my eyes
were dry and hot, as though full of fire, my lips parched as though
pale and broken with thirst. I stepped over to the deputy-governor and
said:
‘Will money help a man in this ship?’
‘No, madam,’ said he shortly, eyeing me with a look of grave surprise.
‘I will send fifty pounds to you or the governor, and as much again
when that money is spent, to furnish Thomas Butler with comforts
outside the horrible prison fare.’
‘Gently, madam. The prison fare is not so horrible as you think.
Many get such food here as they never see out of jail and never get
money enough to purchase after their discharge. Cocoa, bread, beef,
soup--such food is not horrible. But the wealth of the Indies would not
help your friend in this hulk.’
I bowed to him, dropped my veil, went to the side and entered the
wherry. The waterman began to talk; to this moment I believe it was
he and not his nephew who had been a convict. I kept my lips sealed,
and the man sank into silence whilst he rowed steadily in the direction
of Blackwall. When we turned a bend so as to get a sight of the docks,
I spied the _Childe Harold_ lying athwart the stream, with her head
close in to the dock entrance. The waterman looked at her and said he
guessed she was hindered by some difficulty of the tide. Addressing the
fellow for the first time, I bade him pull close under the stern of the
ship, as I desired to hail her. I stared anxiously as we approached,
thinking I might see Will Johnstone. A number of men were travelling
round a capstan on the forecastle, and a hurricane chorus swept in
regular pauses from their lungs as the pawls clanked to the thrust of
the handspikes. A knot of people were gathered on the pier-head; a few
figures walked the poop-deck.
We pulled close under the stern of the ship where the water was
sparkling in diamonds and trembling in gold to the windy flash and
the ruddy gleam of the sun-touched windows and the gilt work, and on
looking up I saw no less a person than my cousin Will himself in the
act of handling the peak signal halliards to clear the ensign.
I cried out, ‘Will, Will, is that you, Will?’ and threw up my veil.
He heard me and looked over, and after staring an instant full of
wonder, he violently clapped his hands with boyish joy, and shouted
down: ‘Why, Marian, is that you? Have you come off to meet me? How kind
of you! How’s mother? How’s father?’
‘They are well, Will; they are very well. How brown you are! You are as
broad and tall again as you were.’
‘You look very white down there, Marian. Come on board and give me all
the news.’
‘No, I cannot come on board. I shall be seeing you very soon.’
‘How is Captain Butler? Are you married yet, Marian? Oh, there’s a lot
for me to hear! I haven’t had a syllable of home news since we left
Sydney. We’ve made a ripping passage home--seventy-eight days from
Sydney Heads to Soundings.’
‘When shall I see you, dear?’
‘The moment the ship’s in dock I’ll go home. Father can’t have heard
that the ship’s in the river, or he or mother would be here to meet
me, wouldn’t they? If you’re going straight ashore, Marian, and ’ll be
seeing them soon, tell ’em I shall be home this afternoon, and ’ll be
glad of a good blow-out--roast beef to be the main thing; I don’t care
what they surround it with. I’m stiff with the brine of the harness
cask. Is Captain Butler in England?’
‘You shall have all the news when I see you at my house, Will. You are
busy now. We’ll meet to-morrow, Will.’
‘To-night, to-night, Marian! I have a hundred fine yarns to spin you.’
‘Thank God you are safely returned,’ said I, and kissing my hand to
him, I sank into my seat, and the boatman plied his oars.
‘Fine young gent, that,’ said the boatman, ‘but a first voyager, I lay.
Them young gents is all for eating after the first voyage; after the
second they’s all for drinking. And who’s a-going to blame ’em?’ said
he, smacking his lips. ‘Didn’t Noah himself take to drink after a few
weeks of the Ark--and yon’s a nine months’ job.’
I paid the man, landed, walked till I came to a coach and drove to
Stepney. I remained alone and at home for the remainder of the day.
My heart ached, and sometimes I wept; yet I was thankful to have seen
Tom, thankful to know he was sure now that I was faithful to him,
thankful for all that had passed between us, few as our words had been.
In the evening I received a note from my aunt telling me that Will
was returned, and begging me to come to supper. I sent word by the
messenger that I was low and poorly, and hoped to see Will at my house
very soon.