I bade the waterman wait, got upon the ladder, and ascended. The warder or officer at the gangway inquired my business. I told him I was a visitor come to see one of the convicts, Thomas Butler. He bade me pass on to the quarter-deck, where were assembled two or three groups of persons who were also arrived to visit friends. The people might have come on board by way of a gallery which connected the ship with the shore on the port or left-hand side; this gallery was defended under the forecastle by a huge iron palisade with two strong gates for padlocking.
The warder at the gangway spoke to an officer who stood within earshot. He crossed the deck and the shore was hailed, but I know not by whom nor heard what was said. I had lifted my veil to look at the Childe Harold and kept it up. My pulse throbbed fast, and I knew I was very white, but my mood had become resolved by temper. My heart turned sick at the sight of the wide decks with their grimy incumbrances of convicts and officers’ galleys and hammock-houses and other heaped and sordid and filthy-looking structures. I thought of Tom as an innocent man doomed to soul-killing work ashore and heart-breaking immurement in this hulk, locked up below at night with hundreds of felons, many of whom had been fetched by the hands of justice out of the gutters and slums and rookeries of that city whose atmosphere even in the far distance tinged and tainted the blue of the summer sky.
I stood viewing the ship and wondering at what part of her my sweetheart would appear. A man came from the forward end, looking from right to left with inspecting eyes as he walked; he approached and lightly surveyed me and the others who were waiting. He was a strongly built man, dressed in a sort of uniform frock coat decorated with a riband and clasp; on his head was a large bell-shaped cap like to what I have seen in pictures of German and Russian officers. The expression of his face was firm, but there was a colouring of kindness in it. A glow of interest kindled in his ball-like eyes, and saluting me with a flourish of his hand to the peak of his cap, he asked whom I had come to see.
‘One of the convicts, Thomas Butler,’ I answered.
He stepped over to a warder, then returned.
‘Are you his wife, madam?’
‘I am his sweetheart and engaged to be married to him,’ I said, colouring, and raised my hand to my veil, though I left my face exposed, nevertheless.
‘Ha!’ he exclaimed, with a sigh of pity.
‘He is innocent, sir. Devils in the shape of men have falsely sworn him into this dreadful situation.’
‘They are all innocent who come here; they are all innocent,’ said he in a voice of great irony.