SHE VISITS THE BARRACKS
I have said that this passage of wet, violent weather lasted about four
days. On the morning of the fourth day of it the steward sent me to the
galley on some errand I forget the nature of. The cook was wild with
temper. Everything seemed to have gone wrong with him. The baker had
offered to fight him for his day’s allowance of rum. He had scalded
himself, besides, during an unusually heavy lurch. When I looked in on
him he swore and told me to wait. It was all the same to me. It had
ceased to rain, and I stood under the lee of the galley for shelter
from the wind.
It was a grey, dark, dismal, roaring day. The seas rolled in hills of
green, and the foam of them, as their heads broke, was blown high up in
white smoke. The ship looked strained aloft. Her lee rigging and gear
were arched out by the gale; the bands of topsails were dusky with wet,
and the wind screamed like children flying in terror. The barricades
gave the ship a most miserable appearance. The decks sobbed with the
ceaseless soaking, and the white water flashed inboards through the
scupper-holes wherever the vessel buried her lee side. At the far
end of the poop was the helmsman, sharply rising and falling against
the whirling soot of the sky. The officer of the watch, clothed in
oilskins, stood grasping a stay near a quarter-boat. A single sentry
stood at the head of the poop-ladder. The poor fellow was sodden, and
seemed withered by the ceaseless pouring of the blast. One cannot but
feel sorry for soldiers at sea. The forecastle sentry looked equally
wretched. Those on the main-deck were in some degree sheltered by the
weather bulwarks. A strange smell of cattle, hay, poultry, and pigs,
came from the long-boat, within and under which the live-stock were
stowed. A dismal, wet, roaring, frost-cold picture. The melancholy
horror of it is upon my spirits as I talk to you, and yet this was but
the first week of what might prove a passage of months.
I heard the boatswain’s voice of thunder giving orders to some seamen
on the other side of the galley. Presently he came round to my side
of the deck, and on seeing me called out, ‘I’ve got some o’ your
property. The chief mate says I’m to hand it over to you. Here’s the
handkerchief,’ said he. ‘There was two pipes. Well, I can’t return ’em
because they’re broke. Here’s yer tinder-box and arrangement, and a
pretty contrivance it is. When I get ashore I shall ask my young woman
to make me a present of such another.’
‘You are very welcome to it, Mr. Balls.’
‘Say you so? Smite me if I haven’t been swearing you was a gentleman
born and bred ever since I first lugged you out of the t’garns’l. Well,
I’m truly obliged. As pretty a little----’ and he walked off, talking
aloud as he looked at the tinder-box.
I heard the cook speaking with great excitement to his mate, and
guessed that I should do well to keep quiet until he told me that
he was ready. A few minutes later a soldier’s wife rose through the
hatch near the cuddy-front--they called it the booby-hatch--and came
forward. She had a shawl over her head, and was bringing a pudding to
the cook to be baked. A sudden heave of the ship drove her against the
lee bulwarks. I went to her help, took the dish from her, and put it
into her hands again when we had reached the galley. She was the pretty
young wife who had before taken notice of me with smiles. The cook
spoke insolently to her--asked her if she thought he’d shipped to do
nothing but look after such small mucking jobs of barracks pastry as
that there. He wasn’t ‘no blushen’ soldiers’ cook.’ If it depended upon
him there’d be no army. ‘What! Keep a scaldin’ lot o’ gutterpeckers in
money, good wittles, and fine clothes at the expense of the nation,
whose sailors has to do all the real fighting when it comes to it?’ He
said much in this way, shouting loudly, and sticking and thrusting and
gesticulating with a long, dangerous-looking fork used for bringing
up the meat out of the coppers. The woman threatened to fetch the
sergeant. The cook, with a horrid laugh, begged her to lose no time.
His coppers were ready, he said, and he’d warrant the sergeant boiled
to a turn before four bells. After more of this Mr. Cook took the
dish from the woman, eyed and smelled it, with a sarcastic leer, and
requested the woman to clear out.
She stood at my side, breathing short, and very angry and flushed, and
said if she told her husband of the cook’s behaviour he would kill him.
I advised her to take no notice of the fellow. All sea cooks in a gale
of wind were bad-tempered to a proverb. They had much to put up with.
Only think of being forced to cook in a kitchen that was continually
rolling about, saucepans sliding, sea-water bursting in, hungry
sailors, with knives in their hands, full of threats and oaths if time
was not punctually kept. I put the case humorously, and she began to
laugh and to peep at me with her bright eyes.
She asked me what I waited for, and, one thing leading to another, she
seemed in no hurry to quit me. And, indeed, we stood very snug, warm,
and sheltered under the lee of the galley. We got upon the subject of
the quarters below.
‘What sort of barracks have you?’ said I.
‘Come down and see them when you can,’ said she.
‘Whom must I apply to for permission?’ said I.
‘You’ll want no permission, I believe,’ she answered. ‘You belong to
the ship. But I’ll speak to my husband, and the sergeant’ll make no
difficulty.’
‘I should like to see the convicts’ quarters,’ said I.
‘You’ll be able to get a peep at them through the door in the steerage
bulkhead. I may be able to manage that for you, too,’ said she. ‘Dick
has sentry there for some time to-day. If you’ll stop here, I’ll find
out at once, and come back and tell you the hour.’
I thanked her, earnestly hoping that the hour would fit in with my
duties. Before she returned the cook was ready for me. I went toward
the cuddy, and as I passed the booby-hatch the soldier’s wife came up.
‘You’re welcome to step below whenever you please,’ said she. ‘The
sergeant’s got an eye upon you and wants to ’list you,’ she added,
laughing. ‘And a sweet young soldier you’d make--a heart-breaker,
indeed,’ said she, looking at me with a shake of the head. ‘Dick’s on
sentry at twelve. If that’ll suit, come then. He’ll take no notice
whilst you look.’
Twelve was the very hour I would have named. It was my dinner-hour, and
I had a clear half-hour at the very least before helping to prepare
the cuddy luncheon. When eight bells struck I came to the hatch, but
warily. The doctor was talking to the captain at the after-end of the
cuddy, and I did not mean that either of them should see where I was
going. It still blew hard, and was very thick, and the officers were
unable to get an observation of the sun. I stooped, that the two men
in the cuddy might lose sight of me. By the looks of the sentry at the
quarter-deck barricade I guessed he knew that I was going to pay his
quarters a visit, and that it was all right. But I cared not who saw me
descend unless it were the officers of the ship and guard.
I put my foot over and easily went down an almost perpendicular
ladder. I found myself in a somewhat strange interior. On the right,
or starboard, hand was a long cabin, which Will afterwards told me had
been designed for a midshipman’s berth. This cabin was occupied by
the unmarried soldiers. On the left-hand side were a number of rough
whitewood cabins, rudely erected--such cabins as are put together for
the use of poor emigrants. The married couples and children slept in
them. Light descended through the booby-hatch, but the day was very
scowling, as you know, and it needed some use to see well. A couple of
tables were cleated athwartships, and two or three of the women were
preparing them for dinner. A few soldiers were sitting about reading
or talking. In one of the berths a baby was crying loudly, and several
children sat in a group in a corner playing.
The good-looking young wife came from some part of these quarters,
or barracks, as I descended. She showed me a married couple’s
sleeping-berth, and bade me, as I was a young man, put my head boldly
into the single men’s cabin and not mind them. I seemed to look,
but in truth I had no eyes but for the strong, gloomy, prison-like
bulkhead which served as the afterwall of the convicts’ prison. This
bulkhead stretched from side to side. It was studded with iron knobs,
mushroom-shaped. A number of holes were bored in it--perhaps twenty.
I knew the object of those holes. They were intended to receive the
muzzles of muskets, so that a volley of twenty muskets could be fired
at once into the throng of convicts confined below in case of an
uprising or other tragic trouble. I also observed what resembled a disk
in the centre of this barricade, somewhat low down. I asked the woman
what it meant. She inquired of a soldier, who answered that it had been
a hole to receive the muzzle of a cannon, but that the orifice had been
stopped.
‘It’s handy to command with grape and canister in case of a
difficulty,’ said the soldier, speaking with an Irish accent. ‘A great
gun, loaded to the muzzle, is the right way to keep an oye upon such
lads as thim yonder. ’Tis wan of them oyes that never winks nor slapes.’
On the right of the barricade was the door, where stood the sentry--the
‘Dick’ of my pretty companion. I had supposed that the main-hatch was
the only means of entering the ’tweendecks; but this afterdoor, it
seems, was always used by the doctor for going his rounds.
‘Tell him to look and be quick, Jane,’ said the sentry.
‘Clap your eye to a hole,’ said the young woman. ‘Dick dursn’t open the
door for you.’
I did so, and saw almost as much as if the sentry had opened the door.
The light was faint and dim; such daylight as there was hung round
about the main-hatch where the stanchions came down from the sides of
the hatch in the form of a gigantic square bird-cage. There were no
scuttles or portholes, no skylights for the admission of light or air
overhead. The place seemed full of men, shadowy heaps of them, with
a number of dim shapes in motion, giving a look of wild, unnatural
vitality to such of the ghostly mob as sat and were at rest.
The soldier’s wife put her eye to a loophole beside mine. I asked
her what those restless figures were about, and she answered they
were messmen and mess helpers preparing for the convicts’ dinner by
half-past twelve. A double tier of sleeping shelves divided into
compartments, each wide enough to accommodate several men sleeping side
by side, ran the whole length on either hand of these ’tweendecks. I
heard a subdued growl of voices and the frequent clank of irons, but
high above all sounded the ceaseless straining and crazy complaining of
the numerous bulkheads which went to the equipment of the ship in this
part.
Far forward on the left was a sort of cabin; I knew it was the prison
by Will’s description. The hospital lay in this end, and I could not
see it. The air was fairly sweet and fresh where I stood, owing to
the booby-hatch lying wide open, protected as it was by the cuddy
recess; but I seemed to fancy a dreadful oppression and closeness of
atmosphere in those ’tweendecks where the many shadowy shapes were
herded. Which of all those spectral figures was Tom? Oh, my heart!
To think of him in his innocence, ironed, entombed in that close and
dimly-lighted prison, forced to lie of a night, side by side with
felons, obliged to listen to their hideous talk, to their boasts of
past crimes, to their threats of darker villainies yet, when the moment
should come to free their hand.
‘Now, Jane, your friend must be off,’ said the sentry, ‘or the
doctor’ll be coming along.’
I nodded civilly to him, thanked his pretty wife, and went on deck. I
was half mad with grief and passion. The reality had far exceeded my
imagination of the wretchedness and horror of the prisoners’ quarters.
I believe I should have been less shocked had I passed into the
’tweendecks by way of the main-hatch; but it was like taking a view of
some nightmare imagination of human misery to peer through the loophole
into that tossing, straining, and groaning interior, dimly touched
with daylight in the centre, faintly irradiated by lantern-light in
other parts, the whole strange shadow of it thickened and jumbled by
the scarcely determinable shapes of men sitting, standing, moving, the
clank of irons coming from them, and the low growl of speech.
I went about my work as usual, helped at the luncheon-table, exchanged
sentences with Frank, cleaned and polished as was now my business;
but all the while I was secretly raging with sorrow and temper. I was
asking myself: Is it not in my power to release Tom from this horrible
hell? Have I not the wit to devise a scheme for giving him his liberty?
They may flog me, they may hang me if they will; let me but enable
Tom to get away from that loathsome jail below, and they may do what
they will. Twenty fancies occurred to me. I thought of my cousin Will
assisting me to secrete my sweetheart in some part of the ship, as
I had lain hidden, where I should be able to feed him and where he
would lie until the ship’s arrival! Then I thought of his escaping
in a quarter-boat which I would secretly provision for him! But why
pursue the catalogue of these ridiculous dreams? They were a girl’s
passionate, ignorant fancies, born of despair and wrath. In some of my
fancies I was as wicked as the worst of the wretches below. I would
have sacrificed every life on board, including my own, to procure Tom’s
liberty, to free him from the horrors the unjust hand of the law had
heaped upon him. I would have set fire to the ship, I would have gnawed
a hole in her bottom as patiently as a rat’s tooth penetrates a plank,
if by burning, if by sinking, the vessel I could have liberated my
sweetheart.
But I cooled down by degrees. Indeed, this morning the steward kept me
running about, and I could only think in snatches; so that meditation
was thin and brief, and its influence light and passing.
During the afternoon, some considerable time before sunset, the wind
shifted, the sky cleared, and we had fine weather. Sail was made on the
ship. The sea ran in a strong, dark-blue swell, which shouldered the
sunshine from brow to brow, and filled the ocean in the south-west with
a roving splendour. Two or three white sails of ships showed upon the
horizon. I supposed that by this time we had been blown some distance
out of the Bay of Biscay. Certainly our course had been straight and
our speed thunderous during the past dark days of storm.
Shortly after the weather cleared the convicts were ordered on deck.
I stood in the cuddy door to see them assemble. They came up one by
one, and were massed in lines close to the barricade, with their faces
turned toward the poop. I supposed they had been disciplined aboard the
hulk. The convict ‘captains’ and felon overseers found no difficulty
in marshalling them. The men fell in as though they had been soldiers,
wheeling about and taking up their positions whilst the decks rang with
short, sharp cries of command and the tramp of ironed feet. I took a
step on to the quarter-deck and looked up at the break of the poop, and
there saw the doctor, with Captain Sutherland by his side. The officers
of the guard were at the rail, and behind stood a number of the guard
under arms.
As the barricade obstructed my sight, and as I was determined to see
what was going on, I picked up a tray and went down the port gangway
alley, as though I had business at the galley. The yards were braced
somewhat forward, and I stood close to the great maintack, which
sheltered me from the sight of the poop. Here I could observe without
being seen. Unhappily, my position brought the backs of the convicts
upon me. Tom was not to be distinguished among that throng of closely
packed felons. A few were in the hospital; two or three in the prison.
There might be two hundred and twenty men gathered together behind the
barricade--all facing aft--their faces upturned to the doctor.
His purpose in assembling them was to deliver a lecture. He spoke
loudly and with earnestness, but seemed to have no sense whatever of
irony. It was strange that a person of his experience should not guess
that the greater part of his discourse would be listened to with the
tongue in the cheek. He talked to the convicts as though they had been
a congregation of respectable worshippers, people who led an honest
life in their trades and houses six days, and on the seventh attended
church, instead of a body of men of whom two-thirds were hardened
scoundrels--seasoned, stewed, salted down in crime; miscreants who
would return to their old villainies, and to viler villainies yet, the
instant they were at large, if the country they found themselves in
provided them with the chances they wanted.
I remember he told them they were one large family, and that the
opportunities during the voyage of exercising the best and kindliest
feelings would be ample. Every one was to prefer his brother to
himself. They were not only to be careful of each other’s comforts,
but to be kindly watchful over each other’s speech and behaviour.
‘I forbid,’ said he, ‘the use of all irritating or provoking speech
or gestures in your intercourse with each other, the employment of
all vulgar epithets and unmanly nicknames, the use of which always
indicates a low and undisciplined mind.’ I listened for a general laugh
when he pointed out the necessity for convicts cultivating a humble,
meek, and gentle spirit--submissive, contented, and thankful; of their
ever remembering the injury they had inflicted on their country, and
particularly the expense to which they had put the Government!
The prisoners swayed with the movements of the deck. They all seemed
to listen with attention to the doctor’s discourse, but then any man
will appear to listen with attention to the speech of another who has
it in his power to flog him for not doing so. It was a strange scene,
familiar enough in those days, never more by any possibility to be
beheld again. On high spread the canvas in cloud upon cloud, swelling
to the western brightness; soft masses of vapour rolled stately under
a sky of deep, liquid blue; the swaying mass of convicts in the sickly
hue of their prison dress, their irons like a chain cable stretching
the length of the planks, half filled the barricade inclosure; at the
brass rail above stood the doctor, flourishing his hand whilst he
addressed them, and the listeners beside him were thrown out strong
upon the eye by the red line of soldiers standing close behind. A pause
seemed to fall upon the ship; the sailors dropped their work to stare
and hearken; the second mate and the apprentices strained their gaze
from the lee side of the poop at the rows of faces; far aft was the
helmsman, stretching his neck and turning his head on one side and then
on the other, as though to hear what the doctor said.
‘The youngest amongst you now,’ continued the doctor, ‘in some measure
understand that it is in the strictest sense a moral discipline which
I desire to see in operation on board this transport. In further proof
of which I shall give orders that those irons--the badges of your
disgrace--with which you are at present fettered, be removed from the
whole of you; and I do most ardently hope that when I have once caused
them to be struck off, you will not by your conduct demand of their
being again replaced; for what can be more disgraceful to you and
painful to me than the clanking of those irons as you walk along the
decks?’
The address lasted about three-quarters of an hour. Captain Barrett
replaced and let fall his eye-glass with impatience. A number of the
convicts were now sent below, to return presently, as I supposed,
when the others should have taken their allowance of exercise. I
dared not linger, and walked slowly aft, sending searching looks at
the prisoners, though I did not see Tom. How was I to deliver my
letter? But it chanced that I had sight of many strange faces. A gang
of prisoners passed close as I went toward the cuddy; a few were
grey-haired men, bowed and wrinkled; some were young, and I marked that
all these had defiant looks. One countenance, quickly as it passed,
impressed me strongly; the man had fine, large, black, flashing eyes,
and was a handsome, dark person, half a head taller than those who
trudged near him; he held himself erect, and I seemed to notice a
sort of theatrical air in his strides spite of the irons. I had heard
someone say there was an actor among the felons, and I guessed that man
was he.