He stared at me searchingly and seemed satisfied. But I noticed with some alarm that he observed my face with unusual attention, taking the lineaments, so to speak, one by one. He then glanced down me—afterwards let his eyes rest upon my hands, and all this in silence which might have filled an interval of nearly a minute.
‘What’s your age?’ he asked.
This was forcing my hand; but then I was a woman, and no woman is expected to tell the truth when she is asked her age.
‘I am seventeen, sir.’
‘You do not seem to have been ill-used,’ said he, again gravely smiling. ‘A plumper, healthier young fellow I never met. What made you run away?’
‘I wished to go to Hobart Town.’
‘Would not your friends have equipped and sent you out respectably had you made known your wishes?’
‘My stepfather is no friend of mine, sir,’ I answered.
He asked me what I meant to do when I arrived in Tasmania, and after putting many questions, most of which I answered, he bade me tell him what my religion was, in what churches I worshipped, and then began to lecture me; indeed, to sermonise me as though I had been a convict under him. I listened with a hung head and composed face, but I could not draw my breath freely till he was gone, for all the time he addressed me his dark, scrutinising eyes seemed to search into my very conscience. And then again I feared his perception as a medical man.
Next day was Sunday. The captain sent word forward, and the instructions reached us aft, that the whole of the ship’s company were to attend Divine service on the poop at ten o’clock. It was again a bright and beautiful day. When I went on deck in the early morning, I was in time to behold a most glorious pink and silver sunrise; our coppered forefoot had cloven the first of the warm parallels, and already the flying-fish were darting from the froth of the curl of the low wave; the ship was heaped with gleaming spaces of canvas to her trucks, and was leaning over to the pressure of the cordial breath of the north-east trade-wind. She was sailing fast; the sea was smooth, and the spitting of the narrow band of passing brine was like the sound of satin torn by the hand; and satin-like was the long gleam of the water, with a few small seabirds swiftly winging along it in chase.