He grasped me by the arm and walked me out of the forecastle, but not, I thought, with the temper he had dragged me out of my hiding-place with. By this time my sight had strengthened, and, though the broad daylight outside brought the tears to my eyes, the pain passed in a moment or two.
I glanced at the deck of the ship, but should not have known the vessel as the Childe Harold. Strong barricades, studded with iron spikes, had been erected a little way abaft the foremast and upon the quarter-deck, leaving a narrow open space betwixt this after-fencing and the front of the cuddy. Each barricade had a gate. At the after-gate stood a red-coated sentry, with a loaded musket and fixed bayonet. At the great central or main-hatch stood another sentry. In the recess formed by the overhanging lap of the poop-deck was a stand of arms. The barricades made a huge pen of the waist, main-deck, and part of the quarter-deck. On the left or port side ran a strong barrier, like a great fence, leaving a narrow gangway betwixt it and the bulwark. This I afterwards understood was to enable the sailors and others to go backward and forward without constantly obliging them to pass the sentries and enter the space barricaded off for the convicts.
I glanced behind me as I walked with the boatswain, and saw a sentry stationed at the forecastle, and two more, each with muskets and fixed bayonets, paced the break of the poop athwartships to and fro in a regular, pendulum, sentinel swing, which brought them crossing each other always in exactly the same place. I had young, very keen eyes. All these points I had collected before we had gone half the length of the main-deck gangway. Not a convict was to be seen. I had caught a sight of two men walking together on the poop right aft, near the wheel, and I also saw Will on the poop standing to leeward beside another young apprentice; and on the other side of the deck, at the head of the poop-ladder, was the officer of the watch.
As I advanced with the boatswain I saw Will look, make a step toward the brass rail which protected the fore-end of the raised deck and stare a moment; he then wheeled round, walked to the side and gazed at the white wash of passing water. The ship was under a great spread of canvas, heeling over and sailing fast, and the yeasty swirl alongside was swift and dazzling. I could not see the horizon over the weather bulwarks; but to leeward it was all open sea, green, ridging and flecked, with a cold blue sky over the trucks and many large white clouds sailing down into the west. Two or three women, with shawls over their heads, sat on the edge of a little square hatch under the break of the poop; some children were running about near them. These women stared very hard at me as I passed.
‘Hullo, bo’sun!’ called out the man who was standing at the head of the poop-ladder. ‘What have you got there?’
‘A stowaway, sir.’
‘When did you find him?’
‘Just now, sir.’
‘Under the forecastle.’