‘What do you mean by an emergency?’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘A heavy squall of wind, sir, and the ship aback with royals set.’
‘Where the deuce did you pick up your nautical knowledge, Chimmo?’ said Captain Barrett.
‘Is that an emergency, captain?’ asked the subaltern.
‘Oh, I’ve no doubt we could manage, I’ve no doubt we could manage,’ answered the captain, with something of gloomy impatience.
Here I was dispatched to the pantry, and when I returned after a considerable interval the gentlemen had gone on deck.
As Tom was always in my mind when any sort of reference was made to the convicts, I was very eager and anxious to know what the punishment of the box was—to speak of it as the doctor had—and who was the culprit. A number of prisoners were assembled between the barricades, whether employed or not I do not recollect. The steward had gone forward, in all probability to smoke a pipe with the cook, under pretence of talking about the cabin dinner. I stood in the cuddy doorway viewing the prisoners, yearning for a sight of Tom, that by a swift look or smile he might let me know he had read my letter. An apprentice struck four bells—ten o’clock. The doctor came up from the prisoners’ quarters followed by Captain Barrett and the sergeant of the guard, and the three of them stood under the break of the poop, near enough for me to overhear them, though they could not see me.
Scarcely had the bell struck when a convict in irons passed out of the main-hatch. Two convict warders were with him and each, grasping an arm, marched him to that sort of sentry box which I have before described—a contrivance of about the width of a coffin and a trifle longer or higher, with a bucket hanging from a bar over it. The convict struggled angrily, and I guessed by the faces of those who were near enough for me to read that he cursed and swore very vilely, but only now and then did I catch an oath. A man stepped forward and threw open the front of the coffin-like structure, then helped the others to twist the prisoner with his face looking inboards, and when they had put him into this posture they thrust him backwards into the box and shut him up.
He was a young fellow of about twenty-two, with the wickedest face of any man’s in the ship. A grinning, wrinkled seaman stood beside the box holding the rope that was attached to the bucket. Another seaman was near, and beside him were four or five buckets of water.
‘He’s a profane rascal, and I have no hopes of him,’ I heard the doctor say.