He led me through the saloon on to the main-deck, and so through the gate in the after barricade where the sentry stood. I followed him without alarm, though I wondered with all my might why he should bring me into this convicts’ inclosure. Did he mean to send me below to live among the felons, or to be locked up in their bulkheaded prison? Not very likely. But what did he mean to do?
There was not a convict to be seen within the barricades. The sunset was rich and thunderous, and the air full of red light; the wind had freshened and blew very cold. The watch on deck were shortening sail, and the three royals and the mizzen top-gallantsail and some fore and aft canvas were slatting and jumping overhead, with a few seamen hoarsely bawling at the clew-lines, and some hands sprawling aloft. The first mate was now in charge, and he stood on the poop looking up, watching the fellows climbing. This man I had seen aboard the ship in the East India Docks. Tom knew him and had shaken hands with him. The captain was walking with the two military officers, the sentries crossed and recrossed the poop-break, and round about the little booby-hatch, close against the cuddy front, were two or three soldiers and a few women and children.
‘Pass the word for Barney Abram,’ said the doctor to the sentry at the door of the main hatch.
The soldier did so, and after a minute or two the prize-fighter, with irons on his legs and a chain triced up to his waist, came through the door, attended by a convict warder, or ‘captain.’ He was a fierce and brutal-looking creature when you saw him close. His face was pitted with small-pox, and embellished besides with the scars of many bloody conflicts in the ring. He wore an extraordinary expression; it was not a grin; it was not a smirk; it was a fixed, crafty leer of knowingness.
‘Abram, look at this young man and tell me who he is,’ said the doctor.
The prize-fighter, resting his elbows in the palms of his immense hands, leaned his ugly face forward and stared at me; he contracted his brows whilst he looked as though he hunted through his memory. At last he exclaimed: ‘I devver saw the young gentlebud before.’
‘He says he knows you,’ says the doctor.
‘By sight,’ I exclaimed.
‘That’s dot ibprobable,’ said the prize-fighter, with a glance at the sentry and a complacent look-round, and holding up his head.
‘Look at this young man,’ said the doctor. ‘Where have you met him?’