I saw no convict, but when I returned to the cuddy with my bucket full of water, on looking through the windows which commanded a view of the main-deck, I observed a number of the felons all hard at work brushing, swabbing and cleaning. For an hour I worked with Frank, scrubbing the cuddy deck, drying it, replacing the lengths of carpet and so on. The steward then told me to get a hook-pot from the pantry and go to the galley for some hot coffee for Frank and myself. I found a hook-pot and stepped on to the quarter-deck, meaning to walk forward by the narrow gangway; but a number of seamen on some job there blocked it, so I went past the sentry at the barricade gate.

I was trembling, and felt myself pale. There were many convicts about, and any one at a moment might turn and prove to be Tom. Some were coiling ropes away, some slapped the deck with swabs, some were cleaning the paintwork; they were all ironed. The decks, dark with brine, were greasy, the motions of the ship quick and uncomfortable, and the irons, robbing the limbs of all elasticity, caused many of the unhappy wretches to slide and stagger as they moved about, for which they would be sharply and sometimes brutally yelled at by the convicts who overseered them. The prize-fighter was savagely swabbing near the main-hatch. He struck the deck as though he would split it. I was obliged to pass him close. He saw me and nodded, and said in a low, thick, sarcastic voice, ‘Dice work to put a gentlebud to.’

‘Attend to what you’re about there!’ roared a man on the other side of the deck.

I pushed on. A convict stood at the ship’s side, coiling a rope over a pin. His face was averted, but as I neared him he moved his head to look in the direction of the poop. It was Tom. Our eyes met. He did not know me and turned his gaze away, then looked again, then stared as if paralysed. His hands were arrested as though he had been struck dead; his face whitened to the complexion of death. I brushed past him close, saying in a low voice, but distinctly, ‘Tom, dearest, it is Marian. We are together and shall yet be happy,’ and so saying I went on without again looking and entered the ship’s galley.

But the sudden encounter, seeing him in irons, so affected me that I could scarcely draw my breath. I noticed with a pang of exquisite distress that he looked ill; his complexion an unhealthy white, his cheeks sunk, his eyes hollow and leaden. When I was in the galley I stood struggling to get my breath before attempting to speak; then I heard a commotion outside. The stout cook pushed past me, and, putting his head through the galley-door, cried, after staring a few moments: ‘Blowed if it don’t look as if the poor chap was dying!’

I sprang through the door and saw Tom supported by two or three convicts. He lay in their arms in the posture of a man lifted on to his feet but unable to stand. In a minute or two he struggled and stood erect, and I heard him say: ‘There, lads, I thank you. Just a passing faintness. Take no more heed of me;’ and, picking up the rope, he continued in his task of coiling it over the pin. I watched him coil a second rope away and then re-entered the galley.

‘I wonder them coves ain’t a-fainting every hour,’ said the cook, as he filled my hook-pot with hot coffee. ‘No grog and no baccy! Think of that; and a vindier diet than fo’c’sle allowance. Burgoo may be good eating for them as thinks the bagpipes good music; but you may take it from me, my lad, that it ain’t the sort of stuff for a growed-up man to go to bed on. There’s too much sop a-going in prison fare. A gent who’s brought himself up for years on champagne, salmon, and the best of eating, signs the wrong name to a bit of paper and’s put aboard a ship like this, where he gets nothen to eat but cocoa and ship’s beef and burgoo. Can the likes of such men help fainting? Ask yourself. I dessey the covey as swounded just now was a nob in his way before he was took. There’s no telling who’s who down below. Out of the road now, my lively! Here’s the sailors a-coming for their tea.’

I got into the narrow gangway and so made my way aft that I might not again pass Tom. My dread was for myself rather than for him. If I drew close and once more looked him in the face, my passion of love must vent itself in some desperate betraying manner. Girl as I was, I found a curse in my heart for the barbarity that weighted my sweetheart’s ankles with iron, and a curse for the law that had suffered two villains to swear his liberty, fortune, happiness away and make a broken-hearted convict of him.

I drank a little coffee in the pantry with my fellow-servant, but ate nothing. The German supposed I was fretting over having run away and good-naturedly tried to cheer me. However, as the time passed, my spirits improved, for now I knew beyond all doubt that Tom was on board; and he also knew beyond all doubt that I was with him, and it comforted me to reflect that without any further explanation he would understand why I had made no attempt to bid him farewell at Woolwich.

And still I was anxious. He would soon discover, by observing me as I passed to and fro, that I had been put to menial work unfit for the lady of his love, for the girl of his heart, for a woman who had been greatly indulged, who knew nothing of hardships, whose means were ample for one of her degree. I feared his spirit would chafe and fret over the thought of my being a common helper in the cabin—cuddy-deck scrubber, a ship’s scullery boy—and that to deliver me from these degrading offices he might betray me, tell the story of our love, and exactly reveal my condition, not doubting, I dare say, that Captain Sutherland would then charge me for my passage and treat me as a passenger. And, indeed, I should have been very willing to be a passenger, to pay any exorbitant sum for that privilege, had the thing been contrivable now that I was on board. But could it have been managed? No. Because whether I revealed myself as a woman with a secret which nothing could make her avow, or whether I owned my sex and frankly declared that I had followed Tom because of my love for him, in either case the stern and suspicious doctor would either oblige me to land at any port we had occasion to water at, or compel the captain to pass me into the first ship that would receive me.