‘Suppose he should be sent to Hobart Town and you make sail to Sydney, believing him there? You don’t know how big all that part of the world is. There’s a story of an Irishman who bought a commission in the 71st in order that he might be near his brother in the 70th. Have you got an atlas? Hobart Town’s a mighty long way from Botany Bay.’
‘He’ll tell me the settlement.’
‘But suppose it should be Norfolk Island? One of our Jacks knew that settlement. The frightfulest ruffians go there. The sailor said that when the convicts are removed they’re double cross ironed and chained down to the deck. Everybody’s afraid of them. Now what would you do there in a settlement of a few troops and scores of horrible villains?’
I smiled and said: ‘Where Tom is sent, I go;’ and then starting up, and flashing upon him in my old hot-tempered impulsive fashion, I cried: ‘I know all about Norfolk Island; I shall know what to do, Will.’ I sobered my voice and added, ‘I have been scheming for months all alone, dear. All the while that my darling has been in jail I have been planning and planning. I care not what the settlement be; let me have its name and I am ready.’
Will stayed an hour talking with me in my rooms. He then made me put on my hat and go for a walk.
From this time we were as often together as though we had been brother and sister and lived in the same house. His company wonderfully cheered and supported me. I loved him for his affectionate sympathy; above all for his seeing things just as I did. On this account I was more frequently at my aunt’s than before his return from sea. She and my uncle sometimes talked of Tom, but never now in a way to vex me. They both knew my character; they witnessed the faith and devotion in my face whenever my sweetheart’s name was pronounced; they had gathered with the utmost significance from Will what my intention was when Tom should be sent across the seas, and saw the hopelessness of entreaty. Indeed, I was my own mistress. I was of age; I was answerable to no one. They knew all this and held their peace, though both of them, and my aunt especially, were secretly very uneasy and distressed by my loyalty to a convict.
I had told Tom that I would be near him in person, and once I had a mind to take a lodging in Woolwich; but Stepney was not too far distant to enable me to easily satisfy my craving and fulfil my promise to be near him often; moreover, I never knew from day to day when I might hear that he was to be transhipped, and I wished to be ready to swiftly complete all my arrangements to follow him. And that is why I remained at home in Stepney instead of taking a lodging near the dockyard at Woolwich, though over and over again, sometimes four and sometimes five times a week, would I hire a boat and hang about the Warrior hulk.
Mr. Woolfe had got me the regulations of the prison ship; I knew at what time the convicts went ashore to their forced labour, the hour they returned to dinner, when they returned again to their tea or supper, and at what time the hatches were put over them and padlocked for the night. Indeed, I could say off the regulations and every article in the list of the prison fare by heart, and I lived in imagination in the horrid routine of the ship.
I once had a burning desire to visit the huge hulk at night when all the people were at rest in their hammocks within her and the hatches on. I had plenty of spirit as a young woman, and was, on the whole, a fearless young creature; but I own I shrank from trusting myself alone in a wherry at night on the Thames with one of the watermen of those times. I asked Will if he would accompany me. He cheerfully consented, and I arranged with a fellow at Wapping to await us at Blackwall, to save the circuit at Limehouse and Greenwich Reaches.
It was a night about the middle of September, somewhat cold, but not uncomfortably so. We reached the hulk, and lay off her close in, the waterman quietly plying to keep his boat steady in the stream. The sky was dim and the stars gleamed sparely; there was just weight enough of wind to run the water sobbing along the bends of the towering, motionless old seventy-four. The shore was dotted with spots of light, and under every one of them a thread of gold wavered like a wriggling eel striking for the depths. The deep hush of the night lay sensibly as the darkness itself upon the flat marshes of Plumstead and across the river where the Plaistow level stretched. The passing ships went by silent as shadows. Now and again a man’s voice would sound aboard one of them; I’d hear the rumbling of a yard suddenly let go or the rattling of the hanks of canvas leisurely hoisting. Here and there the grated ports of the hulk showed in a square of dim light, but even as I watched a clear-tongued bell on board was twice struck.