‘What are you doing on board my ship?’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘I wish to get to Australia, sir,’ said I.
‘What! Without paying? Do you know that this is a convict ship?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I could have him brought to the gangway for this,’ said the doctor. ‘Has he been searched, bo’sun?’
‘No, sir.’
The doctor stamped his foot. ‘Search him!’ he cried.
Captain Sutherland looked on as though he recognised a superior in the doctor. At this moment Will came up to the lee ladder and leaned beside the other apprentice, listening and watching. The boatswain threw open my pea-jacket and drove his huge hands into my pockets. I was thankful not to feel the blood in my cheeks; had this piece of rude handling reddened my face the doctor would have found me out. His soft but scrutinising eyes were upon me.
‘He’s a plump young man,’ exclaimed Captain Barrett, in an aside to the commander of the ship. ‘What’s in your hold to make him fat?’
The boatswain drew out my handkerchief, the two new clay pipes I had put in my pocket that I might seem a man when the crowning occasion arose, and the tinder-box and matches. Happily I had left the little parcel of candles in the sails. The boatswain dived his immense tarry fingers into the pockets of my waistcoat and found nothing.