As Fraser—a man I’d known for years, as one who thoroughly understood convicts—thought as I did, I felt I was right about Nick’s warning, and that it would be folly to go troubling those in authority over us; so I had my meal, and at nine o’clock—one bell, as they call it on board—I went on duty with two more; and it was only then, as I stood in the main decks, looking about me by the light of the swinging lanterns, that I thought of Ninety-seven again, and the impossibility of the men making any attempt.
For there they all were safely locked up in irons; we were on duty, three of us—Fraser, me, and another—well armed; and only a few yards off there were the sentries with fixed bayonets, and fifty or a hundred armed men ready to be summoned, at the slightest alarm.
“All rubbish,” I said to myself; and then it all passed out of my mind again.
It was very hot indeed that night, and all was wonderfully still, when, as I marched slowly to and fro, with my keys in my belt, I began thinking of home and a certain person, and whether it wouldn’t be wise to stay out there and ask her to join me, when, all at once, there was a stifled sort of cry, right in forward amongst the men’s hammocks, and this was repeated again and again, as if someone was in pain.
Then came a rustling and a low whispering, and, without recalling Nick and his warning, I walked up to the grated door.
“What’s up there?” I said severely.
“Don’t quite know, sir,” said a man, drowsily. “Someone talking in his sleep, I think.”
Then the smothered cries came again.
“Do you hear there?” I said. “What’s the matter?”
A voice answered from far in:—“Someone ill here, sir; Number Seventy, I think.”