‘Ain’t Norfold Island hard by?’ exclaimed another.
‘My idea,’ said a ringleader, raising his voice as he overhung the poop-rail, ‘is to beach the vessel on the West Coast of Africa. There we breaks up into parties and disperses, and every party has their yarn ready manufactured to account for theirselves ag’in’ being met with or falling in with a settlement.’
‘Were you ever ashore on that coast?’ exclaimed Tom.
‘No,’ answered the man.
‘Then put this picture before you, one and all, for I who address you know what I am saying: Not a patch of verdure; leagues of sand like glass, glaring and shining; a few half-starved jackals; a few bushmen, who live on beetles and putrefied seals and go clothed in stinking sheepskins; a hare or two at long intervals, and a few sand-plants; the sun at noon like a lantern looming in vapours; here and there penguins braying; here and there sea-fowls shrieking, and the surf roaring always. Is that good enough for you? You’d be clean-picked bones in a week.’
All this while the ocean remained breathless. Far away were the two black specks of quarter-boats, and beyond was the gleam of the long-boat’s sail, a point of light under the horizon like the image of a star. Fortunately for the convicts, the lay of the yards flung the shadow of the canvas upon the deck. Otherwise it was broiling where the sun was. The poop was sheltered by the awning that stretched from the mizzen-mast to the brass rail. Many of the people stood with their coats over their arms and their shirts open. A mist rose from them. I figured how it had been at night in their quarters when I saw that mist and the motionless wind-sails and the main-hatch half sealed with its cage-like barricade.
‘May I speak?’ cried a man on the quarter-deck, lifting up his hand.
‘To the poi’t,’ answered Abram. ‘Every bad with ad idea bay speak; but to the poi’t.’
‘Here’s a big ship,’ said the man, in a very fair cultivated accent (he was about six-and-twenty years of age, had held a situation as a clerk and had been sentenced for forgery), ‘and we’re a numerous and powerful company of determined men, needing nothing but the organisation that Captain Butler’s capable of. I propose that we chase small vessels and capture them, send their crews adrift like those yonder, man each captured craft with a number of ourselves, every lot containing a proportion of those who are sailors or who have followed the sea. This would disperse us. Every crew would do as they thought proper with their own craft. I should be for wrecking mine on some safe coast near a town where we could represent ourselves as castaways.’
The convicts listened with close attention. Abram looked at Tom, who made no sign.