This happened again and again, when, attracted by the daily coming up of the men on deck, Nic found himself watching them, unconscious of the fact that he was watched the while.
Every now and then the chief warder, a stern, fierce-looking man with a cutlass in his belt, shouted out some order; and as it was obeyed by this or that man the boy soon began to know them as Number Forty-nine or Hundred and eighty, or some other number. One particularly scoundrelly-looking fellow, who made a point of catching his eye whenever he could, for the purpose of winking, thrusting his tongue in his cheek, or making some hideous grimace, and following it up with a grin of satisfaction if he saw it caused annoyance, was known as Twenty-five; a singularly brutal-visaged man with a savage scowl, who never once looked any one full in the face, was Forty-four; and the mild, pleading-looking man, who annoyed Dominic by his pitiful, fawning air, was Thirty-three.
“Well, sir, what do you think of them?” said a familiar voice one day; and turning sharply, Nic found himself face to face with the chief warder.
“Think? I hardly know,” said Nic. “I feel sorry for them.”
“Just what a young gent like you would do, sir. Pity’s a good thing, but you must not waste it.”
“But it seems a terrible thing for these men to be sent out like this.”
“Seems, sir. But is it? You see, they needn’t have been sent out. They only had to behave themselves.”
“But some of them may be innocent.”
“Yes, sir,” said the warder drily; “but which of ’em? Look at that fellow coming round here now, slouching along, and never looking at anything but the deck. He’ll never look you in the face.”
“Yes, I’ve noticed that.”