The Convict Ship, Volume 2 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

Here I was sent into the pantry, and lost what followed. I gathered, however, on my return, from what the doctor and the others let fall, that the matter was settled, and that the convicts in divisions, the guard being under arms on the poop, were to be brought up on deck to view the partial eclipse of the moon.

Dinner was over in the cuddy by seven. The captain and military officers went on to the poop to smoke, and I carried coffee to them whilst Frank waited upon Mr. Bates and his brother mate. The doctor, who did not smoke, and who drank his wine well watered, descended the booby-hatch to acquaint the prisoners with his intentions, and to make the necessary arrangements. It was a true tropic night, splendid and silent. Often do I recall that night, and always with a bitter sense of the blindness of the human mind, of our incapacity to see one minute ahead of us. The moon at this hour was rising, and the lunar dawn lay in a streak of dim red along the eastern seaboard. I do not remember the hour; it was not yet eight bells; in the west was a fast-waning flush, for we floated in a part of the ocean where the night crosses the sea in a stride. Not a breath of air! The waters stretched flat as a surface of polished ebony, and only at intervals there ran a sighing sort of movement over the sea, which sent a delicate stir through the canvas, and set the dew raining from aloft in little pattering showers. In the south there was much lightning; the leap of the violet sparks flashed up the battlements and ragged brows of a mass of electric cloud. The water reflected the play, and sometimes a little note of distant thunder came humming across the glass-smooth surface. Elsewhere under the brightest of the stars hung tremulous wakes of silver fire.

Even now, early as it was, the mighty shadow of the ocean night was majestic and awful with the wild, flashful colouring of lightning in the south, and the dustlike multitude of stars over the three glooming spires of our ship, and the rising moon rusty-red and imperfect and distorted, as though lifting heavily through some noxious belt of African river vapour.

What I saw, however, was quickly embraced by my sight. Having put the gentlemen’s coffee upon the skylight, I durst not linger.

The steward found me plenty to do till a quarter before nine. I then went to my cabin to refresh myself with a wash. When I came into the cuddy again, I found the lamps turned down and heard a sound of many feet in motion. I stepped into the recess and found nobody there. I walked a little way forward along the gangway alley, and looking up at the poop, saw the guard drawn in a line near the rail. The awning was furled, and the moonlight sparkled on their firearms, and the bayonets glanced as the lightning leapt in the south.

A division of convicts was in the inclosure, standing in dusky groups, and at every man’s feet stretched his shadow, with scarcely a move of the clean black line of it, so reposefully did the ship sleep. I saw a crowd of seamen on the forecastle and heard women’s voices, and guessed that the wives had gone forward to view the eclipse.

The moon was now bright. You could distinguish faces by her beam. I went slowly along the gangway alley, looking hard at the prisoners, and when about midway I saw a man standing alone, with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the moon. It was Tom. I stopped. I must tell you that this fore-and-aft barricade, which was designed as a convenience more than as a prison barrier, was not above five feet high, and formed of strong wooden rails, sufficiently wide apart to disclose the figure. I coughed, and then Tom saw me.

I advanced very slowly in the direction of the forecastle and then came to a stand and seemed to look at the moon; and when I warily turned my eyes upon the inclosure I observed that Tom had advanced as I had and was abreast of me, though he had drawn nearer to the fore-and-aft barricade. My heart beat quickly, for if I could speak to him now it would be the first time since that day when I had whispered as I passed and when he had discovered that I was on board.

I walked a little way farther. This carried me out of sight of the poop, unless any one should come to the head of the port poop-ladder and stare along the alley. The yards were braced forward, and the corner of the foresail lay between me and the moon, and plunged in shadow that part of the deck where I again halted. I saw that Tom had walked with me on the other side of the barricade, and when I stopped he stopped, too, so close that had he sighed I should have heard him. The shadow that was upon me was upon him and stretched athwart the deck, darkening the two galleys and the great mass of long-boat; but under the yawn of the foresail the forecastle whitened out in the light, with the silvered figures of many persons upon it, and beyond hung the jibs, falling like streaks of snow to the bowsprit and jibbooms. Outside the shadow in the inclosure the moonshine lay like frost upon the planks, and the shapes of the convicts, in their pale apparel, showed like figures in yellow wood. They moved or stood in groups; here and there was a lonely shape. The nearest group to where I had come to a stand was at a distance of about twenty paces, close against the fore-and-aft barricade. The yet distant lightning flashed upon the canvas, and high as the royals which crowned the towering fabric of cloths the sails flashed and faded in the electric play as though to the revolution of some gigantic violet-tinted lantern.

I kept my back upon Tom and seemed to be looking up at the sky; he stood with his right side toward me gazing aft as though he heeded me not. We spoke swiftly under our breath.