THE CONVICT SHIP
VOL. II.
NEW LIBRARY NOVELS.
UNDER SEALED ORDERS. By GRANT ALLEN. 3 vols.
A LONDON LEGEND. By JUSTIN H. MCCARTHY. 3 vols.
THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS. By ALAN ST. AUBYN. 2 vols.
THE DRIFT OF FATE. By DORA RUSSELL. 3 vols.
BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. By WALTER BESANT. 1 vol.
THE MINOR CHORD. By J. MITCHELL CHAPPLE. 1 vol.
HIS VANISHED STAR. By C. EGBERT CRADDOCK. 1 vol.
ROMANCES OF THE OLD SERAGLIO. By H. N. CRELLIN. 1 vol.
VILLAGE TALES AND JUNGLE TRAGEDIES. By B. M. CROKER. 1 vol.
MADAME SANS-GÊNE. By E. LEPELLETIER. 1 vol.
MOUNT DESPAIR. By D. CHRISTIE MURRAY. 1 vol.
THE PHANTOM DEATH. By W. CLARK RUSSELL. 1 vol.
THE PRINCE OF BALKISTAN. By ALLEN UPWARD. 1 vol.
LONDON: CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
THE CONVICT SHIP
BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF
‘THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR’ ‘MY SHIPMATE LOUISE’
‘THE PHANTOM DEATH’ ETC.
[Illustration]
IN THREE VOLUMES--VOL. II.
London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1895
PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON
CONTENTS
OF
THE SECOND VOLUME
CHAP. PAGE
XVIII. SHE IS TAKEN BEFORE THE COMMANDER 1
XIX. SHE IS QUESTIONED BY THE DOCTOR 30
XX. SHE CONVERSES WITH HER COUSIN 56
XXI. SHE ENTERS UPON HER DUTIES 73
XXII. SHE SEES HER SWEETHEART 92
XXIII. SHE VISITS THE BARRACKS 108
XXIV. SHE ALARMS HER COUSIN 128
XXV. SHE DELIVERS HER LETTER, AND SEES A CONVICT PUNISHED 144
XXVI. SHE ATTENDS CHURCH SERVICE AND WITNESSES A TRAGEDY 159
XXVII. SHE LISTENS TO A CONVERSATION 181
XXVIII. SHE OVERHEARS TWO SAILORS TALKING 196
XXIX. SHE IS ALARMED BY WHAT IS SAID BY THE OFFICERS 207
XXX. SHE CONVERSES WITH HER SWEETHEART 221
XXXI. SHE DESCRIBES A STORM 242
XXXII. SHE DESCRIBES THE SEIZURE OF THE SHIP BY THE CONVICTS 256
XXXIII. SHE DESCRIBES THE BEHAVIOUR OF THE CONVICTS 287
THE CONVICT SHIP
CHAPTER XVIII
SHE IS TAKEN BEFORE THE COMMANDER
I was awakened from a deep slumber by the glare of a lantern upon my
eyes, by the weight of a heavy hand upon my shoulder, and by a deep
voice roaring out: ‘Here y’are, then! Another convict, is it? Who’s
to say what’s right aboard a craft where everything’s wrong? Out you
come, my lively!’ And, still half asleep and blinded by the light and
deafened by the fellow’s roaring voice, I was dragged as though I had
been a child out of the sail and held erect.
A second man holding a lantern raised it to my face and peered at me. I
had seen both fellows in this place before; they were the boatswain and
the sailmaker.
‘What are you a-doing down here?’ said the sailmaker.
The boatswain now let me go, and I stood upright before the two men,
still dazed and horribly frightened, though my wits were slowly
returning.
‘I’m doing no harm,’ said I, blinking at the light, which, as it was
held close, put an insufferable pain into my eyes. ‘I hid myself. I
want to get to Australia.’
‘Australia, is it?’ thundered the boatswain. ‘Why, you young rooter,
d’ye know we ain’t bound to Australia? Where did ye come aboard?’
‘Woolwich.’
‘D’ye know this is a convict ship?’
‘Yes, I know it.’
‘Has he been a-broachin’ of anything?’ said the sailmaker, holding high
the lantern and slowly sweeping its light round the interior.
‘What are ye?’ said the boatswain, whose voice was louder than that of
any man I had ever heard or could dream of.
‘A runaway boy,’ said I. ‘Take me on deck. I’m sick for the want of
light.’
‘Sails, d’ye hear him?’ said the boatswain. ‘By the great anchor, as my
old mother used to say, but here’s one I allow as has squeezed through
the hawse-pipe on his road to the quarter-deck, for, hang me, if he
hain’t a-hordering of us already.’
‘What’s your trade, Jimmy?’ said the sailmaker, addressing me. ‘Nuxman
or jigger, or are you a lobsneaker, hey? Self-lagged, by the Lord!’
‘Come along aft and see the capt’n,’ said the boatswain.
He then spoke to the sailmaker about the sails which they had
apparently descended to view, and, catching me by the arm, walked me
under the hatch, where he came to a stand.
‘Been here since Woolwich, ye say?’
‘Yes,’ I answered.
‘All in the dark?’
‘Yes.’
‘What have you eaten and drunken?’
‘I brought some food with me.’
‘Are you one of a gang?’ And here he rolled a pair of large glassy
eyes over the casks and coils of rope. He was a very powerful seaman,
deeply bitten by small-pox and without a right ear.
‘I am alone,’ said I.
‘Up ye go!’ he cried, and he partly hoisted and partly tossed me
through the hatch on to the upper deck.
It was broad day, though the interior of the forecastle into which I
had emerged was gloomy. Beyond the forecastle-entrance the white and
windy sunshine was coming and going to the frequent sweep of clouds
athwart the sky. The brightness of that light thrilled my eyes with
pain, and I turned my back upon it, putting my hand to my head for a
few moments.
‘’Tisn’t everybody, mates, that goes to sea afore the mast as signs
on,’ said the boatswain, generally addressing a few sailors who had
risen from their sea-chests or lounged out of the shadow forward to
look at me.
‘If this here was a female convict ship, Mr. Balls,’ said one of the
men, ‘you’d find that that there covey was after one of the gals.’
‘Let him wash hisself,’ said another seaman, speaking with his hands
plunged deep in his pockets, ‘and there’ll be nothen likelier aboard
us. Dummed if he don’t remind me of my Mary Hann.’
‘Let’m sit,’ said another of the sailors. ‘I’ve got a drop of grog in
my chest. I started on my first voyage in the fore-peak and knows what
head seas mean down there to a country stomach.’
‘Sit and breathe,’ said the boatswain, backing me to a chest. ‘Fetch
your sup along, Joe. He don’t look much of a rascal, do he?’ And I
observed that he eyed me very closely and with looks of surprise
and doubt which somewhat softened the fierceness of his one-eared,
glassy-eyed face.
I was glad to sit. My strength had been fearfully overtaxed by
confinement and by my mental sufferings and want of air. I was afraid I
should faint and my sex be discovered. A pannikin with a dram of black
rum in it was given to me. I smelt the fiery stuff and asked for water.
‘Neat, my warrior, neat, and down with it!’ cried the fellow who had
given me the rum. ‘Water’s for washin’ in. Don’t talk of rum and
water. Soap and water, my heart; that’s it.’
‘Give the lad water,’ said the boatswain. ‘Blowed if I’m going to take
him aft drunk.’ One of the fellows brought a pannikin of water and
turned a small quantity into the rum. I looked up into his face and
thanked him with a smile and drank.
‘Ever at sea afore, Jacky?’ said a sailor.
‘D’ye hear the grit of old hoss in his squeak that you asks that?’ said
the deep-lunged boatswain.
‘And to think,’ said a surly-looking sailor, ‘that the town-crier’s
still a-ringing for him and his grandmother still a-calling at every
public-house to see if he ain’t there!’
‘What d’ye say to a rinse, bo’, afore ye lays aft?’ said the fellow who
had offered me the rum. ‘A clean face may stand the little chap in with
the old man,’ said he, addressing the boatswain.
‘Have a clean-up, young ’un, afore I takes ye aft?’ said Mr. Balls.
‘Yes,’ I answered.
The boatswain stepped out, and in a few moments returned with a tin
dish of cold water and an old towel. ‘Turn to now and polish away,’
said he. ‘Bear a hand. A clean face is like a clean shirt; it gives a
man a chance.’
I dipped a corner of the towel into the water and rubbed my face, and
when I had looked at the towel I judged I had wanted washing very badly
indeed. By this time some fourteen or fifteen seamen had come about
me; they lounged and stared, and commented freely in growling, very
audible voices upon my appearance and new suit of pilot cloth. It was
the forecastle dinner-hour, whence I concluded the time was something
after twelve. Nearly all the ship’s company were below, some seated on
their chests, eating, a few in their hammocks, smoking, and looking
at me over their swinging beds; some, who had drawn close, brought
their dinners in their hands, a cube of beef or a hunch of pork on a
biscuit, that served as a trencher; these fellows flourished sheath-
or clasp-knives, and they chewed slowly, as men whose teeth had long
grown artful and wary in the business of biting on shipboard.
The interior was indeed a grim, gloomy, massive picture; the men were
rudely and variously and some of them half savagely attired; the place
was roofed with hammocks; tiers of bunks arched into the head where
they vanished in the gloom. A lamp swung under a great beam, and its
light was needed, despite the brightness of the day outside, and of
the shaft of daylight that floated through the open scuttle forward
and hung in the obscurity like a square of luminous mist, as a sunbeam
streams through a chink of closed shutter. A number of stanchions
supported the upper deck, and suits of oilskins hung upon nails swayed
against these wooden supports like hanged men as the ship bowed and
lifted her head. The atmosphere was scarcely supportable with its
mingled smells of strong tobacco and the fumes of the kids or tubs in
which the greasy boiled meat had been brought in.
‘Aft with us now, youngster,’ said the boatswain, ‘and give an account
of yourself. And may the Lord ha’ mercy on your soul! This here’s a
convict ship; there’s nothen going under six dozen. Everything over
that’s a yard-arm job.’
He grasped me by the arm and walked me out of the forecastle, but not,
I thought, with the temper he had dragged me out of my hiding-place
with. By this time my sight had strengthened, and, though the broad
daylight outside brought the tears to my eyes, the pain passed in a
moment or two.
I glanced at the deck of the ship, but should not have known the
vessel as the _Childe Harold_. Strong barricades, studded with iron
spikes, had been erected a little way abaft the foremast and upon the
quarter-deck, leaving a narrow open space betwixt this after-fencing
and the front of the cuddy. Each barricade had a gate. At the
after-gate stood a red-coated sentry, with a loaded musket and fixed
bayonet. At the great central or main-hatch stood another sentry. In
the recess formed by the overhanging lap of the poop-deck was a stand
of arms. The barricades made a huge pen of the waist, main-deck, and
part of the quarter-deck. On the left or port side ran a strong
barrier, like a great fence, leaving a narrow gangway betwixt it and
the bulwark. This I afterwards understood was to enable the sailors and
others to go backward and forward without constantly obliging them to
pass the sentries and enter the space barricaded off for the convicts.
I glanced behind me as I walked with the boatswain, and saw a sentry
stationed at the forecastle, and two more, each with muskets and fixed
bayonets, paced the break of the poop athwartships to and fro in a
regular, pendulum, sentinel swing, which brought them crossing each
other always in exactly the same place. I had young, very keen eyes.
All these points I had collected before we had gone half the length
of the main-deck gangway. Not a convict was to be seen. I had caught
a sight of two men walking together on the poop right aft, near the
wheel, and I also saw Will on the poop standing to leeward beside
another young apprentice; and on the other side of the deck, at the
head of the poop-ladder, was the officer of the watch.
As I advanced with the boatswain I saw Will look, make a step toward
the brass rail which protected the fore-end of the raised deck and
stare a moment; he then wheeled round, walked to the side and gazed at
the white wash of passing water. The ship was under a great spread of
canvas, heeling over and sailing fast, and the yeasty swirl alongside
was swift and dazzling. I could not see the horizon over the weather
bulwarks; but to leeward it was all open sea, green, ridging and
flecked, with a cold blue sky over the trucks and many large white
clouds sailing down into the west. Two or three women, with shawls over
their heads, sat on the edge of a little square hatch under the break
of the poop; some children were running about near them. These women
stared very hard at me as I passed.
‘Hullo, bo’sun!’ called out the man who was standing at the head of the
poop-ladder. ‘What have you got there?’
‘A stowaway, sir.’
‘When did you find him?’
‘Just now, sir.’
‘Where?’
‘Under the forecastle.’
‘Step him up here.’
The boatswain made me ascend the poop-ladder, himself following. This
was a deck well remembered by me; I had spent a long hour upon it with
Tom and Will when we visited the ship in the docks. All was unchanged
here; the boats swung in their davits; the sweep of deck went white as
a freshly peeled almond to the grating abaft the wheel; the skylights
sparkled and the bright brass binnacle-hoods mirrored the sun in
crimson stars. On high the full-breasted canvas rose in space after
space of milky softness with a stately swaying of the button of the
truck, as the ship leaned to the sea and lifted to windward again.
The person who had ordered the boatswain to bring me on to the poop
was, as I afterward got to know, the second mate, Mr. Thomas Masters,
a full-faced man, short and strong, his nostrils tinged with purple,
no visible throat, and a strange, leering smile upon his mouth when
he looked or spoke. Will left the poop by the other ladder; his
fellow-apprentice leaned against the lee rail staring at me. The
second mate turned his face in the direction of the two men whom I had
observed walking aft abreast of the wheel.
One of these two cried out: ‘Who’s that, Mr. Masters?’
‘A stowaway, sir,’ answered the second mate.
Both persons approached. As they advanced along the deck, a third man
came up out of the cuddy or saloon through the companion, and joined
them. The three stepped up to me. One was Joseph Sutherland, the
captain of the vessel, a lean man with a slight stoop, about forty
years of age. His face was thin; the skin had a look of leather from
long exposure to weather; his eyes were a weak blue with a tear in each
corner, which kept him mopping with a pocket-handkerchief. Yet I liked
the expression of his face; there was the heart of a man in it.
The second person was Surgeon Russell-Ellice, R.N., the doctor who had
supreme charge of the convicts. This man was without any hair on his
face; and the hair on his head was cropped as close as mine was or a
convict’s. He had large, soft brown eyes and a brown skin, blue on the
cheeks and lip, where he shaved. His mouth was firm, with an expression
that seemed to lie between scornfulness and self-complacency. He had a
manner of thrusting out his chest and backing his head when he spoke,
and of so holding himself when he stood or walked as to stretch the
inches of his stature to their limits.
The third person was Captain James Barrett, of the --th Regiment of
Foot. He was the captain in charge of the guard. He was of the average
type of British officers; smart, well-dressed, good-looking, with a
glass which he put into his eye to examine me.
I ran my gaze over the faces of these three, not then knowing who they
were, though I guessed by their air that they were chiefs in the ship.
I did not feel afraid; my end had been triumphantly accomplished. I
needed but look over the rail on either hand to know that we were out
upon the wide ocean, that, though England indeed could not be very
far astern, yet the land was as far away for my purpose as if it had
been a thousand leagues distant. And then there was the consideration
of my sex to give me nerve; these people were gentlemen. I had but to
declare myself to make sure of tender usage. But though I did not mean
to do this, and prayed heartily that no occasion might arise to force
me into it, yet the sense of it was a refuge that wonderfully supported
my spirits, the more particularly now that I had observed there were
women on board and quarters where, should the worst come to the worst,
I could live with my own sex.
The captain and the doctor (as I shall henceforth call Surgeon
Russell-Ellice for the sake of brevity) eyed me all over for some
moments without questioning me--the captain with looks of surprise and
wonder that came very nearly to commiseration, the other with frowns
and suspicion like fire in his gaze.
‘What are you doing on board my ship?’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘I wish to get to Australia, sir,’ said I.
‘What! Without paying? Do you know that this is a convict ship?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I could have him brought to the gangway for this,’ said the doctor.
‘Has he been searched, bo’sun?’
‘No, sir.’
The doctor stamped his foot. ‘Search him!’ he cried.
Captain Sutherland looked on as though he recognised a superior in the
doctor. At this moment Will came up to the lee ladder and leaned beside
the other apprentice, listening and watching. The boatswain threw open
my pea-jacket and drove his huge hands into my pockets. I was thankful
not to feel the blood in my cheeks; had this piece of rude handling
reddened my face the doctor would have found me out. His soft but
scrutinising eyes were upon me.
‘He’s a plump young man,’ exclaimed Captain Barrett, in an aside to the
commander of the ship. ‘What’s in your hold to make him fat?’
The boatswain drew out my handkerchief, the two new clay pipes I had
put in my pocket that I might seem a man when the crowning occasion
arose, and the tinder-box and matches. Happily I had left the little
parcel of candles in the sails. The boatswain dived his immense tarry
fingers into the pockets of my waistcoat and found nothing.
Whilst I was being searched I observed that one of the sentries who
marched athwart the poop was the man who had looked over the rail when
I was in the boat alongside off Woolwich. I met his glance and saw he
did not remember me. I never once turned my eyes in the direction of
Will.
‘Is that all?’ said Dr. Russell-Ellice.
‘That’s all, sir,’ replied the boatswain, replacing my cap on my head,
after feeling the lining.
‘Where do you say this lad was found?’
‘Just for’ards of the bulkhead under the fo’c’sle.’
‘It’s a store-room,’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘Has it been searched?’ exclaimed the doctor.
‘I dunno what ye mean by searched,’ answered the boatswain sullenly,
resenting as a merchant seaman the imperious manner of the Royal Naval
surgeon.
‘Captain,’ cried the doctor. ‘You know what I mean; explain to this
man.’
‘Have you overhauled the store-room, Balls, for others of this fellow’s
pattern?’ said the captain.
‘No, sir.’
‘Then go with the sergeant of the guard,’ said the doctor; ‘examine
every nook and corner, and make your report.’
‘Ay, ay, sir,’ answered the boatswain very sulkily again, and swinging
round on his heels he quitted the poop with a sullen walk eloquent
of malediction. The doctor drew back as if he would admit it was now
the commander’s right to ask questions. Captain Barrett gazed at me
strenuously through his eye-glass. His intent regard made me feel very
uneasy.
‘What’s your name?’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘Simon Marlowe, sir.’
‘What are you?’ I hung my head. ‘No need,’ he exclaimed, ‘to ask if
you were ever at sea; your hands are like a woman’s.’
‘He’s a deuced good-looking chap, doctor,’ said Captain Barrett in
another aside. ‘Plump as a partridge, by the great horn spoon! What
runs a chap to fat down in your hold, captain?’
‘What have you come to sea for?’ said the captain, speaking with a
severity whose forced note my ear could not miss. Indeed, he seemed to
find a sort of pleasure in looking at me.
‘I want to get to some friends in Tasmania, sir,’ I answered.
‘What names?’
I was ready for him; for weeks I had been rehearsing too diligently the
part I was now playing not to be ready. ‘Satchell, sir.’
‘Where do they live?’
‘At Hobart Town.’
‘What’s their address, boy?’
‘I don’t know, sir. I’ll find out when I arrive.’
The doctor grinned gravely.
‘“Arrive!”’ cried the captain. ‘How do you know I’ll allow you to
arrive, as you call it? “Arrive,” you monkey! You’ve committed a
felony; you’ve broken into private premises; for all I can tell, you
may have broached the cargo of the ship. There are men in that prison
down there,’ said he, pointing to the main-hatch, ‘who are being
transported for life for smaller crimes.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I would do nothing wrong. I will gladly pay for my
passage with my labour if you will give me work--such work as I can do.’
The doctor put his hand on the commander’s arm and whispered in his
ear. Captain Barrett exclaimed: ‘If you’re satisfied with the lad’s
account of himself, Captain Sutherland, he shall wait upon me, if you
like.’
‘What work have you for two servants?’ exclaimed the doctor.
‘I like his pluck, d’ye know,’ answered Captain Barrett, ‘and just now
he happens to be rather friendless, Ellice.’
The doctor looked annoyed and walked to the rail.
‘Where do you come from?’ asked the commander.
‘London, sir.’
‘Who are your people?’ Again I hung my head.
‘He is in the right to look ashamed,’ said the doctor. ‘Take it that he
has brought great grief and distress upon a respectable family by his
mysterious disappearance. I don’t believe for a moment,’ continued he,
eyeing me sternly, ‘that he has friends at Hobart Town. It’s just an
ordinary runaway case. He may have robbed some kind employer--perhaps
defrauded his own father. His clothes are new and good. Where did you
get the money to buy these clothes with?’ he asked. I kept my head
hung. ‘Lads of your sort,’ he continued, ‘get hold of cheap romancing
works--vile, lying fictions--books which represent Jack Sheppard as
a greater man than Wellington. Little by little they advance till
they end there,’ said he, pointing, as Captain Sutherland had, to the
main-hatch. ‘Down there, weighted with irons, branded as criminals,
leaving their native country for ever, expelled by the just laws of an
outraged community, are many men who have begun as you have begun--nay,
who may have started on their downward career with a great deal more of
modesty than you have exhibited.’
Captain Barrett let his eye-glass fall, whistled softly and lounged aft
to the wheel.
All this while the decks had remained comparatively deserted. Just at
this moment a boatswain’s mate tuned up his whistle, and a number of
seamen came out of the forecastle and went to work in various parts of
the ship forward. The doctor continued to lecture me; but I was looking
at the strange, grim scene of decks and did not heed him. You would
have thought, at sight of the barricades, that the ship was full of
wild beasts; that man-eating and ravening creatures took the air in the
space inclosed by the savage, iron-studded, bristling fence work.
Suddenly, the sentry at the main-hatch stiffened his figure, as though
to a sudden call to attention. He guarded a door at the extremity of a
short wooden passage, broad enough to allow one person to pass through
at a time. A man clothed as a convict stepped through this door. On
perceiving him the doctor broke off, and went to the brass poop rail
and overhung it, gazing eagerly. A second and a third convict appeared,
then a fourth; this man held a fiddle in one hand and a bow in the
other.
And now I heard a sound of heavy clanking footfalls, as though a
long end of chain cable was being dragged along the deck, and one
after another, to the number of perhaps seventy or eighty, issued the
convicts, every man, saving the first four, wearing iron rings and
chains upon his ankles, the chains triced up to the waist. They were
clothed in the same garb I had observed on board the _Warrior_; a dingy
sort of gray striped with red and a kind of Scotch cap. The convicts
who had led the way cried out sharply: they delivered their orders
fast and fierce, like a drill-sergeant savage with yokel recruits. The
fellows ranked themselves into a line with something of the discipline
of soldiers; then the fellow who held the fiddle put it into his neck
and began to screw out a march.
‘Attention! Left turn!’ shouted one of the unshackled convicts. ‘Quick
march!’
The fiddle played, and away stepped the line of men, all keeping time
to the music, faltering but a little to the movement of the ship, and
their irons clanked and their chains rattled as they tramped.
I lost all sense of my situation when I saw those convicts. I made
a step to the side of the doctor, and my eyes seemed on fire as
I gazed. Tom was not one of them. I guessed that this was a gang
brought up to exercise and take the air according to the notions of
Doctor Russell-Ellice. It sickened my heart, but it made my spirit
mad to witness those wretches marching round and round within the
wild-beast-like enclosure, to listen to the mocking squeak of the
fiddle threading the dull metallic tramp of the ironed felons, to
feel that Tom was one of them and amongst them below, ironed as they
were, apparelled and disciplined as they were, guarded by soldiers
with loaded muskets--himself as innocent as I, as the dark-eyed doctor
beside me, as the commander of the ship, who appeared to have forgotten
me in watching this strange march of felons clanking round and round to
the tune of the fiddle.
‘That’s my idea,’ said the doctor to the captain. ‘That’s the way to
keep them in health. You may judge by their manner of marching that
they enjoy the music.’
The captain looked at his second mate and smiled sarcastically.
Another person had by this time arrived on the poop; he, like Captain
Barrett, was attired in undress uniform. I afterward learned that he
was Lieutenant Chimmo, one of the two officers in charge of the guard.
They approached and looked hard at me--so hard that I imagined Captain
Barrett had divined my sex. Their observation won the attention of
Captain Sutherland, by whom I had been unheeded whilst he watched the
convicts. He said: ‘Get you down there to leeward and wait till you’re
wanted.’ He spoke sternly, but almost in the same breath of his speech
his face relaxed, and he exclaimed: ‘Are you famished!’
‘No, sir.’
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, as though vexed that the captain
should pity me.
‘Get you down to leeward,’ repeated the commander; and I went and stood
at the rail.
Will was aloft in the mizzen-top and the other apprentice in the
ratlines of the mizzen shrouds at work there. I looked up at Will, who
kissed his hand. The act was boyish and indiscreet, and I averted my
face, for I did not then know he was not to be seen from the other side
of the poop.
The clear wind was sweet and refreshing after my many hours of
confinement. I glanced over the side and watched the feather-white
swirl of cloudy foam; the yeast burst in a rainbow splendour from the
bow and raced astern in ridges of snow, and I saw the spreading wake
of the flying ship dancing miles distant in the airy green that ran in
a twinkling horizon round the sky. Far ahead slanted a sail, and far
abeam to leeward was a dash of dusky-red canvas, whence I concluded
that the coast was not very remote.
The tramping convicts marched round and round in single file to the
tune of the fiddle. Some of them were little more than boys, eighteen
or twenty years of age, and one or two of them were gray-haired men.
Their dress was so levelling, and it seemed besides to stamp so strong
an impression of rascality upon their faces, that one could not look at
the ironed gang without supposing them all rogues and criminals of the
worst sort. And yet I’d fancy, as they came facing aft toward the poop,
I could see some countenances which would have passed in the streets
and in company for comely, honest faces. But the general type was very
villainous; the brow low, overhanging, and scowling: the eye small,
deep-set, and restless; the mouth coarse and heavy, and the jaw strong,
thick, defined like a beast’s.
My eye rested upon one man. I was certain I had seen him before. He
was immensely broad-shouldered, pitted with small-pox. His arms were
too long for his body, and the thickness of them and the fists were a
giant’s. His eyebrows were black; his eyes a deep and fiery black; his
nose coarse, spread, flat and heavy at the nostrils. He had the look of
a Jew, and after I had watched him a little while, I said to myself:
‘Yes, now I remember. He is Barney Abram, the prize-fighter, who was
under sentence of transportation for life in Newgate when I visited Tom
in that jail with Uncle Johnstone.’
I craved to see my sweetheart. I waited for the hideous fiddle to
cease squeaking, and for the gang to go below and a second gang to
take its place, hoping that Tom might be one in this second gang. I
say I waited. Rather, I stood hoping. Why they kept me waiting down
to leeward on that poop I could not imagine. I guessed it would shock
me horribly to see Tom with irons on, marching in convict’s attire, a
mere machine at the will of warders, themselves convicts; yet did I
passionately wish to see him that I might make sure he was on board,
for though I never dreamt that Will had mistook, still I yearned to
satisfy myself with my own eyesight. But the gang continued to march
round and round to the strains of the fiddle. Oh, the mockery of the
blithe Irish tune the fellow played, timed by the metallic tramp of
felons on the echoing deck!