‘There’s no hulk afloat or jail ashore that’s going to spoil his beauty,’ said I. ‘What can you tell me to give me heart?’
‘Are you still in earnest?’
‘It’s a wild, mad scheme,’ said he. ‘Father and mother will think me a fiend for helping you instead of reporting you. But I see this, you mean to follow Tom, anyhow. No man living deserves such a magnificent love as yours. You’re one mass of loyalty and devotion from head to foot.’
‘Will, you are here to say you will help me!’ I exclaimed, bending toward him and lifting my hands and clasping them in a posture of prayer to him in the passion of anxiety that was upon me.
‘I am more willing to help you,’ said he, ‘than I was when you talked to me the day before yesterday—for this reason: I’ve been on board the Childe Harold. She don’t tow over to Deptford till Wednesday next. I met our carpenter on the quayside, and asked him if he knew how they meant to fit out the vessel for’ard. He said he’d heard they meant to bulkhead a space off in a line with the forecastle entrance above, to serve as a prison, the hospital to be aft. “Will they leave the store-room bulkhead standing?” said I. “Yes,” said he; “otherwise the prisoners ’ud be climbing into the forecastle through the hatch.” I went aboard and had a look. When I talked to you about the black fore-peak, I had forgotten the line of main-deck that runs right for’ard. The space betwixt that line and the deck overhead is used as a store-room. Why had I forgotten this? Because, to tell you honestly the truth, Marian, I was never once down in that part of the vessel so as to remember it. The store-room would make a different hiding-place from the fore-peak I described. The fore-peak’s under it. There they keep the coals. You never could have hidden in it. But the store-room should be middling clean; black as a dog’s throat, mind you, but not deep like the fore-peak. The forecastle, where the men sleep, is immediately over. If a person wanted to get out, he could knock on the closed hatch, and there’ll be men in the forecastle to hear him. The horizon has cleared a trifle since I looked into that store-room.’
‘How big is this store-room?’
‘A good size,’ he answered. ‘Seven feet high; the beam I don’t know.’
‘And the forecastle hatch is within reach of my hand to thump at if I want to get out?’ I exclaimed. ‘It will be the one place in the whole ship for me, Will!’
‘There’s no other place, and that’s a fact.’