'Me?' growled the convict hoarsely, glaring for a moment at Lance with his wolfish eyes—eyes which rarely met those of another steadfastly. 'I did ten stretch on the Derwent afore I come across the Straits—ten long years. That warn't enough for 'em, for I hadn't been a year at Bendigo when I was "lumbered" for robbing a cove's tent as I'd never been nigh. No! God strike me dead if I had! I knew the chap as did the "touch" as well as I know you. He and Black Douglas did it between 'em. But I'd a bad name. I'd come from the other side, and I was picked upon. I was seen going towards the tent the night before. The chaps that lost their gold swore to me; they wanted to "cop" somebody. And there was I, as was going straight and had a good claim and didn't need to rob nobody, and thought I had a chance in a new country, there was I—"lagged" and dragged aboard again, and me no more in it than a sucking child. I went mad pretty well, and here's the end of it. But by ——' and here the half-insane felon swore a terrible oath, 'I'll give 'em something to talk about afore I'm done, and it'll be true this time—true as death—death—death!'

Here the unfortunate creature, whose features had gradually assumed an expression of ungovernable rage, lashed to fury by the thought of real or fancied injustice, raised his voice to a shriek like the cry of a wild beast, and with every feature working like those of an epileptic, fell on the floor of the deck helpless and insensible.

'What's all this?' demanded a warder, marching to the spot, yet cautiously, as always doubtful of a rush among the fierce animals over which he and his comrades ruled. 'Dash it all, you fellows are like a lot of old women—jabber, jabber. I shall have to put some of you in the black hole if you don't look out.'

'It's only Scotty, sir,' answered a crafty-looking convict who had been looking on, with a strange mysterious smile. 'He's got a fit or somethink. He's always mad when he gets on that Bendigo yarn of his.'

'Oh, Scotty, is it?' replied the warder carelessly. 'Throw a bucket of salt water over him; he'll come to directly. Your hour's up all but five minutes, men. You can go below and keep quiet, or it'll be worse for some of you.'

So below they went, in tens and tens, one after the other, murmuring and cursing among themselves, devoting Scotty, Lance, and the warder to the least respectable deities, yet not daring to raise their voices lest the dreaded 'black hole' or the more terrible 'box' should be apportioned to some of them with indiscriminate severity.

Lance, perhaps, was the only one who retired to his cell with a feeling of satisfaction. Gloomy was the evening, dark yet not stormy. Brooding over all things hung an enshrouding, clinging fog. The lights of the vessels in the bay were invisible until the boats almost ran against their sides, then they appeared like blurred and wavering moons. The invisible flocks of sea-birds flying landwards, true precursors of a storm, wailed and shrieked in curiously weird cadence, like the ghosts of shipwrecked mariners. Yet no breath of rising wind or gathering tempest stirred the black waveless plain which stretched for so many a mile seaward and lay illimitable between the murky shores. To those long versed in sea signs—and there were many such on board this mockery of a ship—a storm was imminent. Phantom-like, motionless, lay the President on the oily moveless deep, a corpse-like hull upon the lifeless water. In that hour she seemed a derelict of that dread fleet which the poet dreamed of in his weirdest, grandest poem:

'And ships were drifting with the dead
To shores where all were dumb.'

If there was a period of comparative rest and peace in that lazar ship, choked to the gunwales with human nature's foulest disorders, it was between the second and third hour after midnight. Before that time there was little or no repose, much less silence. The restless felons, debarred from work or exercise, were loath to sleep or to permit such indulgence to others. But from about an hour after midnight to the lingering winter dawn a certain, or rather uncertain, quantity of sleep was procured. Not incorrectly may it be said that then in all abodes of sin and wretchedness.