I found an opportunity after the cuddy breakfast things had been cleared away to write a letter to Tom. I wrote in my cabin and used the pencil and paper my cousin had given to me. Whilst I wrote I had not felt so tranquil in spirits, so easy, nay, so happy in my heart, for months. Tom was near me. Nothing but death or ocean calamity could separate us till we arrived at Tasmania, and then I should be in the same land with him, with opportunities that I could not now imagine; this writing was like talking to him, and the sweeter because it was secret; no governor would first read my letter.
I wrote very small, in pencil, that I might put much into narrow compass. I told him of the arrangements I had made before leaving home, why I had dressed as a boy, why I had hidden myself in this convict ship instead of following by a passenger vessel. I gave him my reasons for desiring to continue as a boy, and wound up by begging him to keep up his heart, to be sure we should be happy yet in the new land, and I implored him to feel easy as to my situation, my duties being light, my berth comfortable, and my associates civil and obliging.
I folded this letter into the smallest square I could pack it into, and put it into my waistcoat pocket ready to convey to Tom at some such another opportunity as had befallen that morning. But as it turned out, the weather changed that day, and for four successive days it blew hard, with incessant rain, which often flashed in whole sheets of water betwixt the reeling masts, and not a convict appeared on deck except the messmen at meal-times to pass the food below.
During one of these wet and howling days, when the ship, under small canvas, was swinging over the hills of pallid water, I stood in the recess under the break of the poop. My work was done; I had stepped out to look at the ship before going to bed. The vessel rushed through the night in darkness, and the night itself lay black as ink around the sea with a little faintness over our mastheads as though there was a moon there. I was about to go to bed, when Will came off the poop and, distinguishing me in the light that lay on the cuddy windows, he screwed himself into a dark corner, and called. I went down the slope of deck.
‘I have been talking about you to the chief mate,’ said he. ‘I have told him that by an accident I have found out who you are. I said your mother’s name was Marlowe, and that your father, in his life, was a client of my father’s. Mr. Bates supposes that your mother married a cousin of her own name. I told him I knew that you were thoroughly respectable, and that you had left your home because your stepfather led you a dog’s life.’
‘What was the good of your telling him all this?’ said I, feeling very angry, though I controlled myself. ‘But I know how it’ll end. You’ll talk and talk till you betray me, and then that odious doctor will take the first opportunity to turn me out of the ship. All that I have suffered and passed through will go for nothing, and I shall lose sight of Tom, and perhaps be separated from him for ever,’ and now I felt as if I must cry.
‘Don’t talk like a fool,’ said Will; ‘I’m not going to betray you. I want to go on helping you as I helped you from the start, but as I ought never to have helped you. How are you going to get any clothes? Think! Don’t talk of the slop-chest. You’re not on the articles. There’ll not be a farthing coming to you. You’ve been searched, and, as you said yourself, it’s out of the question you should produce money now. Will the captain trust a stowaway? Of course not. So there’s no slop-chest so far as you’re concerned. Yet how long d’ye think those clothes of yours are going to hang upon your body, scrubbing and messing about in them as you are all day long? And when wear has turned them into Irish pennants, what are you going to do for a shift of duds? Why, you must come to me, of course. But how can I help you if I don’t know you in some such a way as to justify me in taking an interest in you? Now do you see what I would be at?’ cried he, giving me a soft, playful chuck under the chin.
‘Yes, I understand now. I ask your pardon. You are clever and look ahead.’
‘Well, that’s all right,’ said he; ‘and now I shall be able to give you a shift of linen and to mostly rig you out. Most of what’s in my chest was given to me by you. Nobody can say a word when it’s understood that your father was a client of the old man’s. It’ll raise you in the general esteem, also. So, say what you will, I’ve done you a good turn this blessed night. And now get to bed away out of this filthy yowling. Look how sweetly it rains! And I’ve still three hours to stand!’
With that he made a spring on to the poop-ladder and disappeared.