"Rather different to Brompton, eh? I suppose you had not much of a view there?"
"View!" she exclaimed; "if there had been one, we could not see it! for in the first place we were shut in by high, dirty brick walls, and in the second, all the lower windows were muffled glass; there was one window at the end of the school-room that overlooked the road, and though it was pretty high up, it was all painted, but some one had scratched a little space in it, right in the middle, and often and often, when I've been saying my lessons, or reading translations in class, every idea has been sent right out of my head, when I've looked up at that pane and seen an eye watching us—it always seemed to be watching me! but of course that was imagination; it used to make me feel quite hysterical at times, and many a bad mark it cost me!"
"Well, you are not likely to get any bad marks here," said her father, laying his hand on her shoulder as he spoke; "and you think you will like Port Blair?"
"Like—why it seems to me to be a kind of paradise! I wonder half the world does not come and live here," she replied emphatically.
To this remark ensued a rather long silence, a silence that was at length broken by a noise as strange to Helen's ears, as the lovely scene before her was to her still admiring eyes; this noise was a loud, fierce, hoarse shout, something like an angry cheer. She glanced at her father with a somewhat heightened colour, and in answer to her startled face he said,—
"Those are the convicts! they leave off work at twelve o'clock, they are busy on the barracks just now. Stay where you are, and you will see them pass presently."
The approach of the convicts was heralded by a faint jingling of chains that gradually became louder and louder; and in a few moments the gang came in sight, escorted by four burly, armed warders. Helen drew back, pale and awe-struck, as she watched this long, silent procession file past, two and two, all clad in the same blue cotton garment, all heavily manacled, otherwise there was but little resemblance among them. There passed the squat Chinaman, chained to the tall, fiery Pathan (who flung as he went by a glance of bitter hatred and defiance at the two European spectators); they were in turn followed by a brace of tattooed Burmans, who seemed rather cheerful than otherwise; then a few mild Hindoos, then more Arabs, more Burmans, more fierce Rohillas, more mild Hindoos!
Helen stood almost breathless, as they glided by, nor did she speak till the very last sound of clanking chains had died away in the distance.
"Poor creatures! I had forgotten them!" she said; "this place is no paradise to 'a prisoner.'"
"Poor creatures!" echoed her father, "the very scum and sweepings of her Majesty's Indian Empire—poor murderers, poor robbers, poor dacoits!"