‘How do the respectable people out there,’ inquired my aunt, ‘relish our turning their country into a dustbin for our own vile sweepings and offal?’
‘The system’s liked. We send them labour for nothing. Labour they must have, and they get it free. In the West Indies they have to pay handsomely for slaves; in the colonies the slaves called convicts cost their masters nothing but their keep.’
‘Let us change the subject,’ said my aunt; ‘really all this talk of convicts and transportation makes me feel as if one was just out of jail oneself. I wish they would give Will another vessel. I do not at all like the idea of a convict ship.’
‘Pshaw!’ exclaimed my uncle, and left the room.
Next day I called upon Mr. Woolfe and requested him carefully to ascertain what or how many ships had been accepted by tender for the transport of criminals between this and a date I named to him. I promised him a handsome fee if he could accurately find this out for me. I don’t know how he went to work; probably he obtained his information direct from the Admiralty; I did not inquire. But in a few days he managed to learn all I desired to know, and without my having told him that I was aware the Childe Harold’s tender had been accepted, he informed me that the only transport taken up, the only ship, indeed, whose services were required down to the end of the year, was the Childe Harold, and that Government would not call for further tenders till the following spring.
I came down one morning to breakfast, and the first thing I saw lying upon my table was a peculiar-looking letter. I snatched it up, and instantly saw that the handwriting was Tom’s. It was not three months since I had visited him, and therefore I instinctively guessed that he was about to be removed, and that leave had been granted him to communicate with his friends. It was a supreme moment; it was a crisis in my life. My hand shook; I could scarcely open the letter. It was a prison sheet, with certain jail-rules of which I forget the nature printed in a corner. The letter ran thus:
‘My dear Marian: I am permitted to write that I may inform you I have been told by the governor I am to make one of a batch of convicts to be removed from this hulk for transportation to Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, by a ship sailing on or about November 12. I hope you are quite well. I am tolerably so. I have nothing to complain of, but I shall be glad when the time comes for our departure. The rules will permit you to pay me a visit to bid me farewell.
‘Yours affectionately,
‘Thomas Butler.’
I easily understood the meaning of the cold, formal style of this letter. A single injudicious sentence might have caused the governor, through whose hands it passed, to withhold or destroy it. Tom was right; he could not deliver himself too briefly and dispassionately.
I read this letter a dozen times over and kissed it as often. It seemed that an extraordinary coincidence was about to happen; I mean that the vessel in which Will was an apprentice was to prove the very ship which would carry Tom across the seas. I was strangely agitated; in a manner semi-delirious with the sudden wild play and disorder of my spirits. Tom was to be transported to Van Diemen’s Land. I would follow him. I would immediately find out if any vessel was sailing for Hobart on or about the date of the Childe Harold’s departure. But, then, suppose the destination of the Childe Harold should be changed without my knowing it! Or suppose she should sail without Tom, whilst I, not guessing this, should be on my way to the ends of the earth, thinking to find him there!