No one knew that I had gone into lodgings at Woolwich, not even Will, though I had told him that I should be leaving my home on such and such a date, and that he was to keep a sharp look-out for me when his ship lay off the Warrior. I did not want to burden him with the obligation of telling lies. My uncle might hear that I had quitted Stepney. He’d ask his son where I was; and Will, with a clear conscience, would be able to answer on his honour he had no idea.
As you may remember, Tom had written that I was privileged to bid him farewell before he sailed. I thought deeply on what I should say when we met, and finally resolved not to utter a syllable about my going with him in the same ship. He was a sailor, and would understand what I had made up my mind to suffer and endure for his sake. He might refuse, and sternly refuse, to allow me to attempt the wild, extraordinary adventure I had planned with Will. Indeed, I feared his love. He was a man to give notice of my intention sooner than suffer it. I guessed he would not bear to think of my locking myself up in a ship full of convicts. Well knowing his own profession, he would say to himself, when she is discovered how will she be treated? If she maintains her disguise as a boy, what sort of work will they put her to? If they find out that she is a woman, what sort of treatment will she receive from the master and mates, from the officers in charge of the guard, from the seamen forward? All this and much more would run in his head, and his love might betray me that he might save me.
Three days before the convict ship was to haul alongside the Warrior, I went on board the hulk. This time I gained the deck by the dockyard stairs and the gallery that stretched to her gangway. The sentry or warder, in bright buttons and a glazed military cap and a stiff stand-up collar with a bright crown upon it, asked me my business, and bade me pass when I told him that I was going to visit a convict and explained that it was an errand of farewell. It was a very gloomy sullen day; a dark fog stooped to the breast of the river and the water flowed seaward in a stream of liquid greasy mud. The few ships in motion oozed out of the fog, black, wet and gaunt, and vanished with a sulky reel. The prison-ship looked horribly grim and miserable; her decks were dark and very damp, the fog dripped from the edges of her boxed-up structures forward, the cold gleam of moisture glanced from whatever the eye rested on; the pole-masts vanished in the thickness overhead; and the air was bitterly cold with the chill of damp.
A convict, in the dress of the felon, with a bullet-shaped head and a flat face, stared at me through one of the galley-doors; he had badges upon one arm, and was probably a cook. Several warders moved about the decks, and a soldier in a red coat, but unarmed, stood forward, talking to somebody inside one of the galleys. All the convicts were ashore at their spirit-breaking work. I walked to the quarter-deck. I saw no visitors. A warder was approaching me at the moment when the deputy-governor came up through the after-hatch. I was unveiled, but whether he remembered me or not, no look of recognition was in his face. He asked me my business on board.
‘I have come to visit Thomas Butler,’ I answered, ‘a prisoner.’
‘When were you here last?’
I gave him the date.
‘You are too soon,’ said he. ‘The rules are every three months.’
‘He wrote to tell me I was privileged to pay him a farewell visit,’ I said. He bade me wait a minute, and walked to the governor’s quarters. He returned soon, and said: ‘Thomas Butler is one of a batch of convicts who are to be sent across the seas on the 12th of this month.’