‘Attention! Left turn!’ shouted one of the unshackled convicts. ‘Quick march!’
The fiddle played, and away stepped the line of men, all keeping time to the music, faltering but a little to the movement of the ship, and their irons clanked and their chains rattled as they tramped.
I lost all sense of my situation when I saw those convicts. I made a step to the side of the doctor, and my eyes seemed on fire as I gazed. Tom was not one of them. I guessed that this was a gang brought up to exercise and take the air according to the notions of Doctor Russell-Ellice. It sickened my heart, but it made my spirit mad to witness those wretches marching round and round within the wild-beast-like enclosure, to listen to the mocking squeak of the fiddle threading the dull metallic tramp of the ironed felons, to feel that Tom was one of them and amongst them below, ironed as they were, apparelled and disciplined as they were, guarded by soldiers with loaded muskets—himself as innocent as I, as the dark-eyed doctor beside me, as the commander of the ship, who appeared to have forgotten me in watching this strange march of felons clanking round and round to the tune of the fiddle.
‘That’s my idea,’ said the doctor to the captain. ‘That’s the way to keep them in health. You may judge by their manner of marching that they enjoy the music.’
The captain looked at his second mate and smiled sarcastically. Another person had by this time arrived on the poop; he, like Captain Barrett, was attired in undress uniform. I afterward learned that he was Lieutenant Chimmo, one of the two officers in charge of the guard. They approached and looked hard at me—so hard that I imagined Captain Barrett had divined my sex. Their observation won the attention of Captain Sutherland, by whom I had been unheeded whilst he watched the convicts. He said: ‘Get you down there to leeward and wait till you’re wanted.’ He spoke sternly, but almost in the same breath of his speech his face relaxed, and he exclaimed: ‘Are you famished!’
‘No, sir.’
The doctor shrugged his shoulders, as though vexed that the captain should pity me.
‘Get you down to leeward,’ repeated the commander; and I went and stood at the rail.
Will was aloft in the mizzen-top and the other apprentice in the ratlines of the mizzen shrouds at work there. I looked up at Will, who kissed his hand. The act was boyish and indiscreet, and I averted my face, for I did not then know he was not to be seen from the other side of the poop.
The clear wind was sweet and refreshing after my many hours of confinement. I glanced over the side and watched the feather-white swirl of cloudy foam; the yeast burst in a rainbow splendour from the bow and raced astern in ridges of snow, and I saw the spreading wake of the flying ship dancing miles distant in the airy green that ran in a twinkling horizon round the sky. Far ahead slanted a sail, and far abeam to leeward was a dash of dusky-red canvas, whence I concluded that the coast was not very remote.