‘Here’s the brandy!’ cried Captain Barrett.
The doctor looked up, and extended his hand for the glass. This brought me close to the door, and for a minute or two I had a clear view of the ’tweendecks prison. The cage-like barricade at the main-hatch was full of great nails, and every nail glowed as though red-hot. I don’t know where the lightning found entrance. It flashed through the blackness of this floating dungeon as if half a dozen hatches lay open to the sky. Wherever there was iron for the electric fires to catch hold of a small blue brilliant blaze was burning, inexpressibly wild and awful to behold. I clearly saw the whole sweep of the deck—the tiers of sleeping shelves stretching on either hand, the tables, the bulkhead of the prison and whatever else there was of grim and odious furniture in that interior. Numbers of the convicts lay motionless upon their faces on the deck; many crouched in squatting postures, with their hands to their heads; a few stood erect, defiant, as though waiting and heedless of what was next to happen. One of these, I might be sure, was Tom.
No imagination could feign the terror which the figures of the prostrate and crouching convicts expressed. You needed to witness the scene, as I did, by the terrific lights that illuminated the prison and by the ceaseless glittering of the lightning streaming through the interior in shocks and explosions of dazzling light. And the roar of the thunder heard in this resonant cavity was more dreadful to listen to than the stupendous voice of it on deck, whilst a deep and ceaseless note was added to the detonations by the Niagara-like fall of hail and rain upon the echoing planks.
‘Is he dead, doctor?’ asked Captain Barrett.
‘No,’ said the doctor. ‘Have this door shut, sir, and let another sentry be posted. You can leave the brandy and go,’ said he to me; on which I returned to the cuddy and stood as before near the doorway.
I believe this terrible storm had reached the height of its rage when the ship was struck. Its fury was now waning, though the soot in the north continued to vomit sheets of flame and the thunder-shocks striking the level of the breathless sea were as the noise of the rending of mountains. I have heard of but one such another storm in which a convict ship bore part. The vessel was the Earl Grey, with two hundred and sixty-four prisoners on board. The year was, I believe, 1842, and the ship was bound, as the Childe Harold was, to Van Diemen’s Land. Dr. Browning, who was the surgeon-superintendent, mentions the storm in his account of the voyage, but he saw nothing of it, owing to his suffering from an affection of the heart which obliged him to keep his cabin. This I regret, as I should have been glad to know how the prisoners under his charge behaved on that occasion.
It was now about a quarter to eleven; the rain had ceased, but the decks were full of water, which cascaded continuously into the calm sea through the scupper-holes. The captain and his mates kept the poop. I heard the squelch of their tread as they tramped to and fro in their sodden boots. Suddenly an order was shouted, and in a few minutes two or three men came aft, one of them holding a lantern. They gathered about the pump and the second mate left the poop and joined them. I could not see what they did, but after a short interval the second mate went on the poop again, and the men, one of them swinging the lantern, walked forward.
A little clock hung under the break of the poop in the cuddy recess hard by the soldiers’ arms; a bull’s-eye lamp cast a light upon its face; this lamp was used for heaving the log, for writing up the log-slate and the like, and the clock for keeping the ship’s bells. A figure came off the poop to see the time; he was draped in streaming oilskins, which flashed out to the lightning, but his face was so muffled by his sou’-wester, that I looked two or three times before I knew him to be Will. I was still alone in the cuddy; Frank and the steward were probably in the steerage; I took a step or two that carried me to the door and pronounced Will’s name.
He drew close and said: ‘What do you think of this?’
‘It is awful,’ said I.