The doctor now told me to pass on to the quarter-deck, and I thought he meant to take me below and lock me up again. Instead of which he left me standing outside the barricade and went on to the poop, where he joined Captain Sutherland and his military companions, all of whom had been gazing at us from over the brass rail whilst we talked with Mr. Barney Abram. I could not understand the meaning of this doctor’s purposeless questions and behaviour, but I dare say I was right when I supposed he intended to let everybody see and understand he was first in the ship.
Always, in the days of the convict ship, the unhappy criminals were dispatched across the sea in charge of a naval medical officer appointed by the admiralty, and called the surgeon-superintendent. The ship was virtually placed in his hands to do what he pleased with, and, though I don’t suppose he was empowered to interfere in the navigation of the vessel, he was undoubtedly privileged to order the master to call into such ports on the way as he (the surgeon) might choose to name; thereby retarding the voyage of the ship, and perhaps imperilling her, as was the case with a certain convict ship which was nearly lost through the surgeon ordering that she should make Simon’s Bay under conditions of season and weather which the captain declared dangerous. Hence there was usually a strong feeling between the surgeon-superintendent and the captain and mates. I suspected something of the sort here, and believed Doctor Russell-Ellice had given himself a great deal of unnecessary trouble to prove me a rogue, merely that the captain and the mates should see what a very clever fellow he was, and how very much in earnest also in his resolution to strut to the very topmost inches of his little dignity and his brief authority.
CHAPTER XX
SHE CONVERSES WITH HER COUSIN
Presently I stepped leisurely into the recess under the poop where the soldiers and the women were. One was the pretty young woman who had given me a smile when I came on board the ship at Woolwich. She viewed me with her soft, dark eyes with a wistful admiration, but I could not observe that she remembered me. The three or four soldiers without belts, their jackets unbuttoned, lounged against the bulkhead, smoking their pipes. I was now used to being stared at, and gave them no heed. Whilst I thus stood waiting for what was next to happen, Will came along from his berth forward. When he saw me, he seemed to pause, as though not knowing what to do. With the most pronounced air I could contrive I averted my face and looked into the saloon through the window, and when I glanced again my cousin was out of sight. I was very much in earnest that he should not get in trouble through me; nay, I desired that for a long time yet he and I should keep as wide apart as the two ends of the ship. He was boyish and imprudent, and might at any moment say or do something that would lead to the disclosure of my sex, and, for all I knew, to the revelation of my motive in hiding in this ship.
The soldiers talked of the convicts, and I pricked up my ears, thirsty for all information of the gloomy, hidden quarters where Tom lived. One asked if the people were kept in irons throughout the voyage. Another answered, No; he believed the irons were taken off after the ship was out of the Bay of Biscay.
‘I couldn’t ’elp laughing,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘I was on sentry below and heard a chap say to some others: “I don’t mind praying, but cussed if I’m going to pray for the Governor of Tasmania! I’ll pray for rain if it’s wanted, but not for a bloomed Governor.” “Who asks ye?” says one of the convicts. “It’s to be a part of the prayers,” said the other. “Me pray for the Governor of Tasmania!”—and here he swore and used such language that I had to caution him.’
‘I wouldn’t pray for ne’er a Governor if I was a convick,’ said the pretty young woman, with a toss of her head and a side-glance at me. ‘It’s a shame to make a joke of sacred things. Should a convick be made to pray for his jailer? Would the Lord listen to the prayer of a sailor who asks a blessing on the bo’sun who’s just been flogging him?’
‘There’s some queer chaps downstairs,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘There’s a fellow they call the smasher—a little, gray-haired man with the kindest of faces, and speaks as soft as pouring out milk; he’s lagged for one of the most awful crimes. There’s a play-actor—dunno what right he’s got down there. They sails under false colours. Dessay if he’d got his right name ye’d find him some one as had been tiptop at Drury Lane and the best of theayters. There’s a quiet, pleasing-looking chap, lagged for scuttling.’ A woman asked what that was. ‘Sinking a ship by making a hole in her.’