Still keeping the candle burning, I seated myself on the loosened portion of the sail, and found I could easily draw canvas enough over me to conceal me in an instant at the first alarm or to keep me warm when I slept. I then blew out the light and replaced the candle in my pocket, very grateful that I had had foresight enough to provide me with the means of seeing when I needed my eyes. The blackness was at first insupportable, and again and again my hand sought my pocket for a candle; but I restrained myself when I reflected this was but the beginning, and that if I burnt out my stock of candles quickly I might have to lie for a week or ten days or perhaps a fortnight in this blackness. I comforted myself, however, by reflecting that there would be noise enough overhead to relieve this fearful oppression of stillness and loneliness when the crew came on board.
I use the word ‘oppression.’ It was physical. My spirits were easy. My conscience slept. What had I done that it should rebuke me? I was proving myself faithful to the man I had sworn to be true to, and whom I loved with all the heart which was my life, and with all the soul which was my intelligence. I was offending no father, grieving no mother, and, as to my uncle and aunt, I knew this, that whilst I chose to hold myself betrothed to a convict, it was all one to them whether I followed him in my own fashion or waited at home for his return.
By-and-by I thought I would make an experiment, and creeping out of the sail and groping about I touched a tin of preserved meat. In those times provisions were not delicately tinned as they are now. It was a common practice then to seal up whole joints of cooked legs of mutton and roast sirloins of beef in tins. Some of the tins Will had stowed for me with the aid of his corrupted lumper or rigger were of the size of small drums, others were little; these contained a sort of soup, well-known at sea, called soup and bouilli. The first tin I touched was one of them. I opened it easily with the knife, and found the contents solid enough to be removed in wedges. I then felt for a biscuit, and made my first meal. I was obliged to light a candle to seek for the pannikin; I counted fifteen quart bottles of water, one of which I opened, being thirsty. All these things were well hidden within the embrasures of the timbers and by the ropes and other matters which fenced them round about. I groped my way into the sail again after blowing out the candle, always taking care to command as much of the slack of the canvas as would enable me to hide in a moment if the hatch should be lifted.
Here now was I, fairly warm, tolerably provided for, suffering from nothing worse—but then to be sure nothing worse in its way could well be imagined—than an overwhelming oppression of silence and a blackness deeper than blindness. How does the ordinary, the average stowaway manage, I remember wondering? He sneaks in his rags into dark, rat-hidden holes, and lingers without food or water for days. Yet it is contrived; the stowaway is the commonest incident of ocean life: sometimes, indeed, he is found a skeleton at the bottom of a chain-locker; but it is the rule with him to emerge ribbed, gaunt, half-nude; he is then set to work, and lands well-lined with ship’s beef and pork to flourish perhaps in a country where he is wanted.
On a sudden I heard a strange noise. I had been some hours in this place when I caught the sound. It was a sort of dull tremble, regular in its pulse, with a metallic note threading it. I pricked my ears and strained them hard, and my heart then began to beat fast; no, I could not mistake! The sound was the tread of many shackled feet passing over the deck and descending the hatchway and coming into the prison, whose foremost bulkhead partitioned off the hiding-place in which I lay. The noise continued like a flowing of water. I heard no voices, not the dimmest echo of a human cry, nothing but the dim thrill of the tramp of many feet with irons.
Perhaps an hour may now have passed. Suddenly the hatch was thumped as though kicked, and the cover lifted. I pulled the sail over me, leaving a corner for one eye to peep out, and lay motionless.
‘I’ll fetch it,’ cried the familiar voice of Will. ‘I saw the stuff stowed, and know where it is. Here, give us hold of the lantern and stop where you are.’
His figure descended; he then raised his arm and received a lighted lantern. I dimly discerned the shadow of another figure in the hatch, the square of which lay in a faint gray. Will stepped from under the hatch, holding the lantern, and then put the light down beside a cask, so that the shadow of the cask was upon that part where I was. He moved here and there in a seeking attitude till he had approached the sail close; then said in a whisper: ‘Where are you, Marian?’
‘Hang me if you don’t roll up as though you were the sail itself,’ said he. ‘How do you like it?’