The Convict Ship, Volume 3 (of 3)

by William Clark Russell

Two of the sailors agreed to remain. Will, who had come to my side, told me that they were the poorest, most skulking and worthless of the forecastle hands. The convicts, however, cheered when these fellows said they would stay, and the armed men opened to let them pass into the crowd. Will’s fellow-apprentices looked up at him as they went to the boat, and one made a face as though to express his disgust at what he took to be my cousin’s disloyalty or cowardice. I marked the effect of this upon Will, and grasped him by the arm, whispering passionately: ‘Not a word!’ and knew by the working of his face that I was just in time to arrest some angry protesting sentence that might have endangered him and me too.

Whilst the seamen filed through the gangway, I chanced to look down upon a crowd of convicts on the quarter-deck, and spied a fellow pick another man’s pocket. He did it with admirable nimbleness and dexterity. Both men, the thief and the victim, were dressed in Lieutenant Chimmo’s clothes. The man that was robbed was the rogue who had held up Captain Sutherland’s gold watch and chain as though he meant to play at bob-cherry, and it was this watch and chain which the other sneaked with inimitable adroitness.

I supposed no one but myself saw this; many stood about, close, too, and the fellow stole the watch with the most foolish, staring, innocent face you could imagine, looking at the seamen going through the gangway as though he could think of nothing else. But scarcely had he snugged the watch and chain in his side-pocket, when another convict next him whipped it out with incredible skill and swiftness. Indeed, I should not have remarked the motions of the rogue’s hand but for the gleam of the gold. A minute later, the first convict put his hand to his pocket and missed the watch. He turned furiously upon the second convict, shouting: ‘A thief! A thief!’ for all the world as though he had been some respectable man in the streets just robbed. The felon who had the watch roared out: ‘A thief! A thief!’ and fell upon the second convict whose pocket he had picked. A scuffle followed. The second convict, whose guilt appeared to be assumed by all who stood near, as though they knew him as a thief without morals and capable of robbing a brother-thief, was kicked and beaten, and a mob of shouting convicts, with this rascal in the midst of them, surged forward, and I took notice that the rogue who shouted the loudest and kicked the hardest was the fellow who had the watch.

This commotion caused no uneasiness amongst the crowd who stood on the side of the deck where the open gangway was. No doubt they understood what had happened, and guessed that enough were concerned in the scuffle to insure justice being done.

By this time both quarter-boats were filled with the seamen. I dare say there were eleven or twelve men in each, and more could not have gone without peril, for they were small boats, though they were stout and fairly new. Bates had seen that each craft had its proper equipment of mast, sail, oars, rudder, and the like. One of the ringleaders, a sallow-faced convict with a hare-lip and but two or three fangs in his upper jaw, roared down to the seamen to shove off, and in a few minutes both boats were heading in the direction of the long-boat, which had come to a stand awaiting them. Many convicts sprang upon the bulwarks and howled out insults in the wickedest language of the slums, in the most revolting speech of the great city rookeries and haunts of sin and infamy. The seamen rowed away in silence.

Tom came on to the poop and looked at me a little while with a face of grief and horror, as though his very soul shrank up within him, to think that I should be a spectator of such scenes and a hearer of such language. I read his mind; he would not approach me to speak.

Barney Abram followed, and with him were the hare-lipped man and some score of convicts, of whom half might have been principals in the seizure of the ship.

‘Let’s get to busidess,’ said Abram. ‘Talk to the people as was arradged, Butler.’

On this, Tom, laying hold of the brass rail, leaned forward and cried out that every man was to come together on the quarter-deck, as he had a few words to say to them. Mr. Bates stole up the ladder to my side and, without speaking, gazed with a look of bitter distress at the receding boats. Still was the ocean as polished a plain as ever it had been during the morning. The sun flashed up the water into blinding dazzle in the north-west, and the heat was terrible. There was no motion in the ship to fan the lightest of the topmost cloths; the atmosphere floated like the breath of an oven, without refreshment of the draughts which circle about a deck when the becalmed craft leans with the swell and her courses and topsails swing. The convicts massed themselves upon the main-deck; their faces were white or scarlet with the heat. The drink had been distilled out of them by the roasting temperature, and the unhappy beings stood looking up at Tom with as orderly a bearing as ever they exhibited when the doctor addressed them.

‘Men,’ said my sweetheart, ‘I’ve taken charge of this vessel. It’s the interests of everybody aboard her that I’ve now to consider; it’s for us, all assembled as we are, to consider what’s to be done. And first understand this: No ship can be sailed without discipline. Look aloft, men, at those vast heights. You see for yourselves what a complicated thing a ship is. If I and the mate of your own election,’ and here he pointed to Mr. Bates, ‘give an order, it must be promptly obeyed. If not—but you’re not fools—you can guess what must follow if we’re not obeyed. I’ll not interfere in any arrangements which don’t affect the safety of the ship. You’ll sleep where you choose, and eat when you choose, and whatever you do that doesn’t concern our lives will be no business of mine. But remember, there are nearly two hundred and fifty of us!’