SHE DRESSES AS A BOY
On our sitting down to dinner I made him gather by my looks that I
would talk of anything sooner than Tom before my maid. When I had
dismissed the girl, Will lay back in his chair and said: ‘It will be a
withering stiff joke, Marian, if Butler sails in the _Childe Harold_.
It will be precious awkward for me. I shan’t be able to speak to him,
I suppose--not even to nod, I dare say. A perfectly innocent man, too;
one of the best sailors out of London or Liverpool, a man who’s dined
with father and mother and been a welcome guest at their house.’
I waited a moment and then said: ‘And my sweetheart, and husband some
day. Why didn’t you add that?’
‘It was at the end of my tongue. It’ll increase the awkwardness. It’s
beastly unpleasant enough to see the friend of your family dressed as
a Newgate dandy and in chains, but when you’ve got to cut him--I mean
when the sentinels won’t let you look at him--he being all the while
your first and only cousin’s sweetheart and engaged to be married to
her! But if he’s to be one of our convicts, I’ll take some big risks,
Marian, to let him know that I consider him as innocent as I am, and
that I’m all his friend down to the very heels of me.’
‘Will, I have an idea, and I want you to help me to carry it out.’
‘What is it?’
‘Do you love me?’
‘With all my heart, and will do anything I can or dare do for you and
Tom.’
‘Tom is sure to sail in your ship, and I must sail in her too.’
‘But how? But how?’ said he, a little petulantly. ‘Haven’t I told you
that the ship won’t book passengers? They’ll reconstruct her below
decks fore and aft, and every inch of her is hired for the lodging of
convicts and soldiers and sailors.’
‘I mean to sail in her for all that. It’s to be done, and I’ll tell you
how I mean to do it.’ And here I got up and began to pace about the
room with excitement whilst I talked. ‘I can’t ship as a woman, but I
can ship as a boy and as a stowaway.’
His face screwed itself up into a strange expression of mingled mirth
and amazement.
‘I’ll make a smart-looking boy,’ I continued. ‘I saw a lad this morning
that might well have been a girl. The sight of him put this scheme into
my head. I’ll get my hair cut close and dress as you do. I’ll have
a story ready; I’ll take a name, and when I’m discovered I’m just a
common runaway, one of the scores of lads and grown men who every year
sneak into ships and coil themselves out of sight and turn up far out
at sea. And you tell me, Will, this isn’t to be done?’
‘You’d do anything. You’d scrub Old Nick white. What wouldn’t you do
for Tom?’ said he, still preserving his kind of gaping look. ‘But
you’re never in earnest, Marian?’
‘I swear by my dead father, I am, then,’ said I, confronting him and
speaking in deep tones which trembled with passion, enthusiasm, and
resolution.
‘You’ll get no clothes to deceive the eye with that figure of yours,’
said he.
‘If that’s the sole objection, come here to-morrow, Will.’
‘The sole objection!’ he cried. ‘One of a score, you mean. What do you
know about the sea? Oh, yes, you can give the names of things; but call
yourself a stowaway, and tell me where you’re going to hide?’
‘You shall tell me,’ said I, sitting close beside him.
He ran his eyes over the room whilst he reflected, and said: ‘Here’s
to be a gutted ship; keep that in mind. Down aft ’ud be out of the
question; they’d have you out before you warmed the hole you hid in,
and you’d be ashore packing along with a constable before the Isle of
Dogs was out of sight.’
‘Then it won’t be aft,’ said I.
‘Forward! Why, yes,’ he went on, continuing to run his eyes over the
room, in his struggles to realise the inside of his ship. ‘There’s the
fore-peak--a big rat-trap, full of coals, spare swabs, broom-handles
and oil-cans. Could you hide down there?’
‘Yes.’
‘What! In blackness? Midnight with a dense fog isn’t in it for
blackness alongside the fore-peak with a hatch on.’
‘What care I for blackness? I know where the fore-peak is. It’s a place
right forward under the forecastle. It’ll be the place for me to hide
in. You’ll be able easily to contrive to help me to drop below into it.’
‘You’re never in earnest?’
‘Don’t say that! I must be with Tom. I have sworn to myself to follow
him, and wouldn’t it be a sure way, the only sure way, of my being
with him, of my getting to the same place he’s bound to, of my ending
all risks of missing him and finding that he’d been sent to another
settlement which, without friends to help me, I might never be able to
hear of--wouldn’t my sailing in his ship be the only sure way for him
and me to keep together?’
The young fellow grew thoughtful as he listened.
‘I don’t say,’ he exclaimed, ‘that it’s quite impossible; but look
here, Marian. Suppose, if only for the sake of argument, I call over
the roll of such objections as occur to me.’
‘Do so.’
‘I’ll suppose that you are dressed as a boy and that you deceive the
eye.’ I nodded. ‘I’ve agreed to sneak you on board, but how am I to do
it.’
‘A little thinking will show us.’
‘I succeed,’ he continued, ‘in getting you into the fore-peak
unobserved. How long are you to be kept below?’
‘I’ll go on board,’ said I, ‘when the ship is alongside the hulk. I’m
your friend, a visitor. You’ll be on the look-out for me. Who’ll notice
us? You’ll easily walk me forward under pretence of showing me the
ship. Tell me this: Where do you ship your crew?’
‘At Gravesend.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, I’m sure. The ship’s worked by lumpers and riggers till the
convicts are aboard. We then drop down to Gravesend and await the
crew, who arrive in a hoy in charge of a crimp. All this I know. You
may take my word for it.’
‘Who occupies the forecastle until the crew come on board?’
‘Nobody. The lumpers and riggers sleep ashore.’ His eyes brightened,
and he cried: ‘I see what you’re driving at! You’ve thought it out
pretty closely, Marian! But you’re never in earnest, surely?’
‘Go on with your objections, dear.’
‘We’ll suppose you’re safely stowed away in the fore-peak. The convicts
come on board. I keep a bright look-out, and find that Butler is not
one of them?’
‘I have considered that,’ said I. ‘You’ll manage to communicate
with me. If Tom is not one of the convicts, I must come out of my
hiding-place whilst the captain is able to send me ashore. If Tom’s on
board, I’ll not want to hear from you till England’s miles astern.’
‘How am I to communicate with you down in the fore-peak?’
‘You’ll find out, dear. There are ways. And aren’t you a sailor, Will?’
He laughed, but without much merriment, and said: ‘Suppose I smuggle
you into the fore-peak when we’re off Woolwich. We may be a week
beating down Channel, and another week before we’ve got far enough to
suit you to show yourself. Head winds are head winds at sea. How are
you going to feed yourself in the black hole?’
‘We’ll lay in a stock of provisions,’ said I.
‘Who’s to stow the grub?’
‘You--by degrees.’
He laughed again and said: ‘How are you going to find where the food
is? You’re not to be trusted with a light down there, you know.’
‘The food must be placed where I can put my hand on it in the dark.’
‘And before we’ve been twenty-four hours under way the hatch is lifted,
and down drops a huge whiskered man called a bo’sun with a lighted
lantern right on top of you.’
‘No hatch can be lifted in such a hurry,’ said I, ‘but that I can find
time to hide myself. But pray go on spinning these little cobwebs which
you call difficulties.’
‘I’ve knocked up a regular barricade already,’ said he; ‘something
bigger than you’re going to climb, Marian.’
‘Do you think so?’ I said, smiling. ‘Well, I’ll heighten your barricade
for you, and still you shall help me to scale it. I’m a boy stowaway;
I must carry nothing to sea but the clothes I stand in. But you’ll
ship a large crew, and you’ll have a big slop-chest, so there’ll be
the materials for a rig-out when I want one. I emerge when the proper
time comes and am walked aft to the captain. Now, what will he do with
me? He may put me on the articles as an ordinary seaman. That must
certainly end in my helping the cook or doing cabin-work. But then,
there’s my sex to fall back upon in case of impracticable duties. I
declare myself a woman--let them invent a motive for my being on board;
they’ll find me dumb in that. Some of the guard are sure to be married,
the wives will be on board, and there’ll be female quarters for me if I
own my sex. But it will be a strong forcing of my hand to bring me to
it. Once a boy, Will, I’m a boy till I step ashore.’
He stared at me with admiration and excitement, as though he listened
to some wild, romantic story of adventure.
‘All that is material lies shaped in my mind,’ I went on. ‘Of course, a
great deal must be left to chance.’
‘What will father and mother think?’
‘They mustn’t know. Why need they know, Will? Put it thus: In any case
I go where Tom is sent. That being certain, what can it signify to aunt
and uncle how I go? Instead of following in a passenger ship, I choose
to make sure of my object in leaving home by putting myself into the
same vessel with Tom. Your telling your father would only lead to this:
He and your mother will tease me to death with representations of my
folly without causing me to swerve a hair’s-breadth in my resolution.
And they might do me this mischief: with the best intentions in the
world, they might inform your captain that I mean to dress up as a boy
and hide myself in his fore-peak. No, not a word to father or mother,
Will. This is quite my business and our secret.’
All the while I was talking I was pacing the room, occasionally
stopping to gesticulate or to approach him close and grasp him by the
arm. Now he got up and began to walk about, too, rolling to and fro as
though the floor had been a ship’s quarter-deck, whilst he swore that I
had too much spirit for a woman, that my scheme was too daring, that if
I knew what a fore-peak was like in a heavy head sea, with the prospect
of a fortnight of blackness along with the risk of dying of hunger and
thirst, without possibility of escape unless I was liberated, I’d quit
the scheme as hopeless.
But all this I had expected. I had never dreamed he would immediately
come into my plans. He said he raised objections for my sake, not
for his own. To be sure, he would get into very serious trouble if
it was discovered he had helped me to smuggle myself into the ship.
He was willing to take all risks to do me a vast service and to make
me happy; but wasn’t it his duty to keep me, his cousin, a handsome,
well-nurtured, fine young woman, out of the black and filthy fore-peak
of a merchantman and preserve me from what might follow discovery?
I let him talk and feigned to sympathise with his generous, sympathetic
dread of the consequence of my scheme. Yet some time before we sat
down to the tea and toast I rang for, I had worked him by entreaty,
sometimes by tears, by eager impassioned representations of
possibilities of my plan into a partially acquiescent mood. He kissed
me, held my hand, called me his sister, declared he would help me if
he dared; I must give him time to think; he’d go on board his ship and
take a look round and talk over the matter with me again. We arranged a
meeting for the day after next, and he left me after solemnly promising
to keep my plan and our conversation secret.
I sat alone all that evening thinking of this long talk. One objection
of his perhaps sunk a little with me when I was by myself musing; he
had figured me arriving at Hobart Town where I was without a friend,
and he had imagined Tom being sent up country to a part where the only
house for miles might be the person’s to whom the Government handed
him. But I resolutely said to myself: I must take my chance; this may
not happen; in any case I shall be in the country where my sweetheart
is.
Partly to please myself, and partly to convince my cousin, I went to a
large outfitter’s shop in the Minories next morning, and representing
that I wished to make a present of a suit of clothes to a young sailor
friend I asked the shopman to show me a number of sizes in pilot coats
and cloth trousers. I said that I was about the height and breadth
of the young man for whom I wished to buy the clothes. The shopman
measured me round my chest, took the length of my arms and of my figure
and then made up a parcel of the clothing that came nearest to the
measurements. A lad walked behind me to my house with this bundle, and
sat in the hall whilst I took the clothes to my bedroom and secretly
put them on.
The first suit I tried fitted me as though cut for my shape; though the
material was stout, it buttoned loosely over me and gave me the chest
of a plump lad. The trousers had the flowing cut of the tarpaulins of
those days; the swell of the cloth at the extremities made my feet look
ridiculously small, and I saw that I should require stout boots if my
feet were not to betray me.
I stood in front of the glass and was perfectly well satisfied with
the figure I made. I have already said that my beauty inclined toward
coarseness, and I counted upon this as a perfecting touch for the
masquerade when I should have had my hair cropped close. I kept what I
needed, and paid the lad who took away the remainder of the clothes.
My purchase comprised a cap, waistcoat, coat and trousers, and a large
red cotton pocket-handkerchief, a flannel shirt, and a loose silk
neckerchief such as seamen wear in a sailor’s knot. These things amply
sufficed for the experiment I desired to make.
Some time on the following day, before the hour at which I expected
Will, I dressed myself in the sailor’s clothes, but my hair was so
thick and plentiful that I was scarcely able to coil it all away upon
the top of my head so as to secrete the bulk of it under my sailor
lad’s cap. After a fashion I succeeded; I held up a glass and observed
that, with the cap on, the back of my head might very well pass for a
man’s at a little distance. I next rubbed some rouge over my temples
and eyebrows and cheeks to give my face a look of sunburn.
On the staircase I met my maid. She started, and cried out, and stared,
not in the least degree recognising me.
‘What pretty girl are you?’ said I, ‘maid or mistress? A fine woman
looked out of her bedroom window just now, and seeing your hall door
open I made bold to enter. Where is she? I can’t find her.’
I spoke at length purposely to try an experiment with my voice on
her accustomed ear, but seemingly my attire had changed my voice as
completely as it had transformed my figure.
‘How dare you enter this house?’ she exclaimed, and then she began to
screech out: ‘Miss Johnstone, here’s a strange man in the house. Mr.
Stanford----’ And she ran downstairs calling for Mr. Stanford.
I sprang and caught her when she was on my parlour landing and twisting
her around exclaimed:
‘Don’t you know me? I’m your mistress. I wish to play a joke off on my
cousin. Look, do you know me?’ and I thrust my face into hers.
She uttered a variety of exclamations such as, ‘Well, I never!’ and
‘Who’d ha’ thought it?’ and ‘Lor’ what a handsome young chap you make
to be sure, miss,’ and giggled and blushed and eyed me from top to toe
with astonishment.
‘Would you know me after looking a bit?’ said I.
‘No, miss. There never was no artfuller make-up in a stage play.’
‘Didn’t you recognise my voice?’
‘It sounded like your figure looks,’ said she.
‘Well,’ said I, ‘when Mr. Will Johnstone arrives, open the door, show
him in as though you supposed I was in the room, and then shut the door
smartly upon him.’
Whilst I waited for my cousin I practised some walking. I got in front
of the long glass and advanced toward it, and marked such points of my
gait as I considered suggestive and suspicious. I found my steps too
short, but after practising a little I guessed it would not be very
difficult to walk like a man. I looked short in my clothes and appeared
to have dwindled six or eight inches, so greatly is stature heightened
to the eye by the long robes of my sex.
Whilst I was rehearsing as a young sailor-man in front of the glass, I
heard Will’s knock downstairs. I placed myself in front of the window
as though I was a stranger waiting. The door of the room was opened and
shut by my maid according to my orders, and on turning I saw Will.
‘Oh, I beg pardon,’ said he, ‘I thought Miss Johnstone was here.’
‘She’ll be here shortly,’ said I.
He stared hard and oddly, as though he pricked his ears on my speaking,
but certainly he no more recognised me than my maid had. I continued to
look out of the window and spoke with my back to him.
‘A pleasant day,’ said I.
‘Aye, it’s nice weather,’ he answered. ‘You’re of my calling, I see.
Been long ashore?’
‘I’ve not been to sea yet,’ I answered, half turning my head his way to
talk to him. ‘My cousin Marian’s kindly taken me by the hand and given
me a rig-out and found me a ship.’
‘Cousin Marian!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m a cousin of hers, too. What cousin
might you be?’
‘My name is Simon Marlowe,’ said I, rounding upon him and looking him
full in the face. ‘My mother was Miss Marlowe. Who are you?’
I don’t believe he would have known me even then but for the sudden
laugh I burst into at the sight of his face. That laugh was my own,
familiar to his ear as the whistle of his boatswain’s pipe.
‘Well, I’m shot!’ he cried, with a gape of astonishment, then burst
into a roar, capered up to me and, grasping me by the hands, skipped
to and fro like a savage, eyeing me all over and swearing whilst he
danced that he wouldn’t have known me in a hundred years; that I was
the prettiest little sailor-man in the world. Twenty such things he
said, then released me to clap his hands while he laughed until he was
purple.
I pulled off my cap and tossed it on the sofa and sat down, copying the
rolling motion of the seaman in every movement of my body.
‘You must go upstairs and shift before I can talk,’ said Will. ‘Look at
your hair! I shall die of laughing.’
I ran to my bedroom, changed my clothes, dressed my hair and returned.
I was secretly half wild to hear what he had to say, and had no notion
of spoiling this interview by keeping him merry and roaring at my
clothes. I found him looking at Tom’s miniature.
‘What a handsome chap he is!’ he exclaimed; ‘but I fear the hulk will
rub some of his beauty off.’
‘There’s no hulk afloat or jail ashore that’s going to spoil his
beauty,’ said I. ‘What can you tell me to give me heart?’
‘Are you still in earnest?’
‘Oh, don’t begin so, dear.’
‘It’s a wild, mad scheme,’ said he. ‘Father and mother will think me
a fiend for helping you instead of reporting you. But I see this, you
mean to follow Tom, anyhow. No man living deserves such a magnificent
love as yours. You’re one mass of loyalty and devotion from head to
foot.’
‘Will, you are here to say you will help me!’ I exclaimed, bending
toward him and lifting my hands and clasping them in a posture of
prayer to him in the passion of anxiety that was upon me.
‘I am more willing to help you,’ said he, ‘than I was when you talked
to me the day before yesterday--for this reason: I’ve been on board
the _Childe Harold_. She don’t tow over to Deptford till Wednesday
next. I met our carpenter on the quayside, and asked him if he knew
how they meant to fit out the vessel for’ard. He said he’d heard they
meant to bulkhead a space off in a line with the forecastle entrance
above, to serve as a prison, the hospital to be aft. “Will they leave
the store-room bulkhead standing?” said I. “Yes,” said he; “otherwise
the prisoners ’ud be climbing into the forecastle through the hatch.”
I went aboard and had a look. When I talked to you about the black
fore-peak, I had forgotten the line of main-deck that runs right
for’ard. The space betwixt that line and the deck overhead is used as a
store-room. Why had I forgotten this? Because, to tell you honestly the
truth, Marian, I was never once down in that part of the vessel so as
to remember it. The store-room would make a different hiding-place from
the fore-peak I described. The fore-peak’s under it. There they keep
the coals. You never could have hidden in it. But the store-room should
be middling clean; black as a dog’s throat, mind you, but not deep like
the fore-peak. The forecastle, where the men sleep, is immediately
over. If a person wanted to get out, he could knock on the closed
hatch, and there’ll be men in the forecastle to hear him. The horizon
has cleared a trifle since I looked into that store-room.’
‘How big is this store-room?’
‘A good size,’ he answered. ‘Seven feet high; the beam I don’t know.’
‘And the forecastle hatch is within reach of my hand to thump at if I
want to get out?’ I exclaimed. ‘It will be the one place in the whole
ship for me, Will!’
‘There’s no other place, and that’s a fact.’
‘The stores’ll be clean and sweet enough, I dare say--bolts of canvas,
casks of stuff, spare lines and such things. I’ll be able to put myself
out of sight if your bo’sun or any other man should come down with a
light. I shall need water to drink. How about that?’
‘You’re talking as if the job was settled.’
‘It is settled,’ I cried, taking him by the shoulders and playfully
pushing him backward in a sudden transport of mingled emotion. ‘Is not
fresh water to be sneaked below whilst the ship’s fitting? I’ll think
it over and tell you how it may be done.’
‘I’m not coming to you to learn my business,’ said he with a toss of
his head that ran a gleam from his eyes like a sparkle of water swept
by a sudden wind.
‘What are you going to do this afternoon, Will?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Come with me to the East India Docks, and we’ll board your ship and
talk things over. We’ll then go the Brunswick Hotel, drink tea there
and settle everything.’
He eyed me doubtfully; his heart was not yet in it, though the dear
fellow was coming my way. I went upstairs to dress myself for the trip,
the hour being about three, with daylight enough to follow to serve my
end. Yet though we were together till eight o’clock that night, talking
and planning and scheming, I found him still as reluctant at the end
as at the beginning. He had three objections. First, he considered
that his keeping the matter secret from his father and mother was like
telling them a lie. Next, Tom might not prove one of the convicts of
his ship. Suppose he (Will) should be unable to communicate with me
in my hiding-place until I had been carried too great a distance from
England to be set ashore; I should be in a convict ship, a woman locked
up with rogues and villains, sailing to Tasmania for no purpose at
all, with the chance of missing my sweetheart and never meeting him
again in this world. And, third, the young fellow seemed to shrink from
the notion of my being alone in a colony.
I began to despair of him at last, and, growing defiant after three or
four days of talking with him without his drawing closer to my wishes,
I resolved to look about me and see how I might help myself, and I
plainly and hotly told him that, whether he chose or not to give me a
hand in my enterprise, he would find me on board his ship all the same,
if it came to my spending a year’s income in bribing the lumpers and
riggers at work on the vessel to conceal me.
He went away from this talk and nothing then was settled; but on the
following morning he came by appointment to go with me for a turn on
the river as far as Woolwich, and on our way to Blackwall he said he
had made up his mind to help me.