“—Or we may escape.”
Richard glanced around the deck where guards, armed to their teeth, trod in ceaseless vigil, and then looked away to the shore, where a few cabins marked the station of the shore patrol who took up the watch where the ship guard left off, thus making assurance doubly sure.
“With the sea and a double guard against us, the chance is not worth the counting.”
“A resolute man could swim ashore from here.”
“Methinks he could most easily, especially with the tide in his favour; but if he eludes the watch here, the patrol yonder will shoot him like a rat when he crawls out of the water. No, Peter, I have gone over it all in my mind, calculated the method of reaching the water, the length of the swim, and the best place to land. I have even tried to get speech with Dame Grant when she comes with her wares, to see if she could not be bribed to aid me; but the warden never takes his eyes from her until her sales are over and her boat ready to start. She has a solemnly sour face, but mayhap a gold piece would soften her heart to mercy. It was for this that I have hoarded Colborn’s gold.”
“I, too, thought of the bumboat woman, but gave up hope of aid from her, seeing how she is watched. ’Twere as much as her life is worth to give us the smallest assistance,” answered Peter.
“Yes, we are cut off from every chance, condemned—doomed—and seeing this, I have given up hope.”
“I am some twenty years your senior, Richard, and I say to you that a sane man never ceases to hope.”
“Then mayhap I am insane—sometimes I think it may be so. Surely, it was the arch-fiend himself who put it into the hearts of the English to turn these disease-infected hulks into prisons; no mere mortal mind could have in itself conceived such a thought. The fever or the vermin—which were worse, ’twere hard to say. To rot here inch by inch, and the fight going on outside! God, but ’tis hard!”