‘Step him up here.’
The boatswain made me ascend the poop-ladder, himself following. This was a deck well remembered by me; I had spent a long hour upon it with Tom and Will when we visited the ship in the docks. All was unchanged here; the boats swung in their davits; the sweep of deck went white as a freshly peeled almond to the grating abaft the wheel; the skylights sparkled and the bright brass binnacle-hoods mirrored the sun in crimson stars. On high the full-breasted canvas rose in space after space of milky softness with a stately swaying of the button of the truck, as the ship leaned to the sea and lifted to windward again.
The person who had ordered the boatswain to bring me on to the poop was, as I afterward got to know, the second mate, Mr. Thomas Masters, a full-faced man, short and strong, his nostrils tinged with purple, no visible throat, and a strange, leering smile upon his mouth when he looked or spoke. Will left the poop by the other ladder; his fellow-apprentice leaned against the lee rail staring at me. The second mate turned his face in the direction of the two men whom I had observed walking aft abreast of the wheel.
One of these two cried out: ‘Who’s that, Mr. Masters?’
‘A stowaway, sir,’ answered the second mate.
Both persons approached. As they advanced along the deck, a third man came up out of the cuddy or saloon through the companion, and joined them. The three stepped up to me. One was Joseph Sutherland, the captain of the vessel, a lean man with a slight stoop, about forty years of age. His face was thin; the skin had a look of leather from long exposure to weather; his eyes were a weak blue with a tear in each corner, which kept him mopping with a pocket-handkerchief. Yet I liked the expression of his face; there was the heart of a man in it.
The second person was Surgeon Russell-Ellice, R.N., the doctor who had supreme charge of the convicts. This man was without any hair on his face; and the hair on his head was cropped as close as mine was or a convict’s. He had large, soft brown eyes and a brown skin, blue on the cheeks and lip, where he shaved. His mouth was firm, with an expression that seemed to lie between scornfulness and self-complacency. He had a manner of thrusting out his chest and backing his head when he spoke, and of so holding himself when he stood or walked as to stretch the inches of his stature to their limits.
The third person was Captain James Barrett, of the —th Regiment of Foot. He was the captain in charge of the guard. He was of the average type of British officers; smart, well-dressed, good-looking, with a glass which he put into his eye to examine me.
I ran my gaze over the faces of these three, not then knowing who they were, though I guessed by their air that they were chiefs in the ship. I did not feel afraid; my end had been triumphantly accomplished. I needed but look over the rail on either hand to know that we were out upon the wide ocean, that, though England indeed could not be very far astern, yet the land was as far away for my purpose as if it had been a thousand leagues distant. And then there was the consideration of my sex to give me nerve; these people were gentlemen. I had but to declare myself to make sure of tender usage. But though I did not mean to do this, and prayed heartily that no occasion might arise to force me into it, yet the sense of it was a refuge that wonderfully supported my spirits, the more particularly now that I had observed there were women on board and quarters where, should the worst come to the worst, I could live with my own sex.
The captain and the doctor (as I shall henceforth call Surgeon Russell-Ellice for the sake of brevity) eyed me all over for some moments without questioning me—the captain with looks of surprise and wonder that came very nearly to commiseration, the other with frowns and suspicion like fire in his gaze.