I nodded civilly to him, thanked his pretty wife, and went on deck. I was half mad with grief and passion. The reality had far exceeded my imagination of the wretchedness and horror of the prisoners’ quarters. I believe I should have been less shocked had I passed into the ’tweendecks by way of the main-hatch; but it was like taking a view of some nightmare imagination of human misery to peer through the loophole into that tossing, straining, and groaning interior, dimly touched with daylight in the centre, faintly irradiated by lantern-light in other parts, the whole strange shadow of it thickened and jumbled by the scarcely determinable shapes of men sitting, standing, moving, the clank of irons coming from them, and the low growl of speech.
I went about my work as usual, helped at the luncheon-table, exchanged sentences with Frank, cleaned and polished as was now my business; but all the while I was secretly raging with sorrow and temper. I was asking myself: Is it not in my power to release Tom from this horrible hell? Have I not the wit to devise a scheme for giving him his liberty? They may flog me, they may hang me if they will; let me but enable Tom to get away from that loathsome jail below, and they may do what they will. Twenty fancies occurred to me. I thought of my cousin Will assisting me to secrete my sweetheart in some part of the ship, as I had lain hidden, where I should be able to feed him and where he would lie until the ship’s arrival! Then I thought of his escaping in a quarter-boat which I would secretly provision for him! But why pursue the catalogue of these ridiculous dreams? They were a girl’s passionate, ignorant fancies, born of despair and wrath. In some of my fancies I was as wicked as the worst of the wretches below. I would have sacrificed every life on board, including my own, to procure Tom’s liberty, to free him from the horrors the unjust hand of the law had heaped upon him. I would have set fire to the ship, I would have gnawed a hole in her bottom as patiently as a rat’s tooth penetrates a plank, if by burning, if by sinking, the vessel I could have liberated my sweetheart.
But I cooled down by degrees. Indeed, this morning the steward kept me running about, and I could only think in snatches; so that meditation was thin and brief, and its influence light and passing.
During the afternoon, some considerable time before sunset, the wind shifted, the sky cleared, and we had fine weather. Sail was made on the ship. The sea ran in a strong, dark-blue swell, which shouldered the sunshine from brow to brow, and filled the ocean in the south-west with a roving splendour. Two or three white sails of ships showed upon the horizon. I supposed that by this time we had been blown some distance out of the Bay of Biscay. Certainly our course had been straight and our speed thunderous during the past dark days of storm.
Shortly after the weather cleared the convicts were ordered on deck. I stood in the cuddy door to see them assemble. They came up one by one, and were massed in lines close to the barricade, with their faces turned toward the poop. I supposed they had been disciplined aboard the hulk. The convict ‘captains’ and felon overseers found no difficulty in marshalling them. The men fell in as though they had been soldiers, wheeling about and taking up their positions whilst the decks rang with short, sharp cries of command and the tramp of ironed feet. I took a step on to the quarter-deck and looked up at the break of the poop, and there saw the doctor, with Captain Sutherland by his side. The officers of the guard were at the rail, and behind stood a number of the guard under arms.
As the barricade obstructed my sight, and as I was determined to see what was going on, I picked up a tray and went down the port gangway alley, as though I had business at the galley. The yards were braced somewhat forward, and I stood close to the great maintack, which sheltered me from the sight of the poop. Here I could observe without being seen. Unhappily, my position brought the backs of the convicts upon me. Tom was not to be distinguished among that throng of closely packed felons. A few were in the hospital; two or three in the prison. There might be two hundred and twenty men gathered together behind the barricade—all facing aft—their faces upturned to the doctor.
His purpose in assembling them was to deliver a lecture. He spoke loudly and with earnestness, but seemed to have no sense whatever of irony. It was strange that a person of his experience should not guess that the greater part of his discourse would be listened to with the tongue in the cheek. He talked to the convicts as though they had been a congregation of respectable worshippers, people who led an honest life in their trades and houses six days, and on the seventh attended church, instead of a body of men of whom two-thirds were hardened scoundrels—seasoned, stewed, salted down in crime; miscreants who would return to their old villainies, and to viler villainies yet, the instant they were at large, if the country they found themselves in provided them with the chances they wanted.
I remember he told them they were one large family, and that the opportunities during the voyage of exercising the best and kindliest feelings would be ample. Every one was to prefer his brother to himself. They were not only to be careful of each other’s comforts, but to be kindly watchful over each other’s speech and behaviour. ‘I forbid,’ said he, ‘the use of all irritating or provoking speech or gestures in your intercourse with each other, the employment of all vulgar epithets and unmanly nicknames, the use of which always indicates a low and undisciplined mind.’ I listened for a general laugh when he pointed out the necessity for convicts cultivating a humble, meek, and gentle spirit—submissive, contented, and thankful; of their ever remembering the injury they had inflicted on their country, and particularly the expense to which they had put the Government!
The prisoners swayed with the movements of the deck. They all seemed to listen with attention to the doctor’s discourse, but then any man will appear to listen with attention to the speech of another who has it in his power to flog him for not doing so. It was a strange scene, familiar enough in those days, never more by any possibility to be beheld again. On high spread the canvas in cloud upon cloud, swelling to the western brightness; soft masses of vapour rolled stately under a sky of deep, liquid blue; the swaying mass of convicts in the sickly hue of their prison dress, their irons like a chain cable stretching the length of the planks, half filled the barricade inclosure; at the brass rail above stood the doctor, flourishing his hand whilst he addressed them, and the listeners beside him were thrown out strong upon the eye by the red line of soldiers standing close behind. A pause seemed to fall upon the ship; the sailors dropped their work to stare and hearken; the second mate and the apprentices strained their gaze from the lee side of the poop at the rows of faces; far aft was the helmsman, stretching his neck and turning his head on one side and then on the other, as though to hear what the doctor said.
‘The youngest amongst you now,’ continued the doctor, ‘in some measure understand that it is in the strictest sense a moral discipline which I desire to see in operation on board this transport. In further proof of which I shall give orders that those irons—the badges of your disgrace—with which you are at present fettered, be removed from the whole of you; and I do most ardently hope that when I have once caused them to be struck off, you will not by your conduct demand of their being again replaced; for what can be more disgraceful to you and painful to me than the clanking of those irons as you walk along the decks?’