Soon after eleven o’clock, a tipsy figure, approaching Tom, stood lurching and backing and filling. The man was a sailor. He asked, with a drunken, broken laugh, if he should take the wheel.
‘Get away to your hammock!’ shouted Tom. ‘We’ll see to the ship. Off you go, and tell the rest of you to turn in till you’ve slept the drink off.’
The man went reeling forward, and in a maudlin voice broke into a song as he worked his way off the poop.
But nothing could be done till the silence of drunken sleep was upon the ship. I never could have dreamed that of two hundred and twenty odd convicts, all would have overpowered themselves with liquor. There were grey-haired men and men of education, people who had filled good positions ashore. One, as I have said, was a surgeon, another had been an officer in the army. There were several clerks and young fellows who had been apprenticed to respectable callings. One had been a harbour missionary. No need to lengthen the dismal catalogue. A few, at least, I had thought would have held aloof from the hellish revelries of the cuddy, have come on deck and breathed the fresh night-air and watched the beautiful moonlight after a moderate sup or two from Abram’s and the hare-lipped man’s buckets. Such persons I had looked for, and wondered how we should be able to get away without their hearing or observing us. But, it seems that there was not a convict in the whole living mass of wretches, counting two hundred and thirty souls, less Tom and the fellows that had lost their lives in the morning, who had not entered heart and soul into this hideous merry-making.
Tom found out that by going down the companion-steps and taking a view of the interior. The hour was then about a quarter to twelve. About half a score of the felons were still awake, but drinking always. They were too drunk to make much noise, and happily too overtaken in liquor to be able to light their pipes. The heat was killing, Tom said. He should not be surprised if several of the people were found dead.
‘Bates,’ said he, ‘get you now down with Will and overhaul the slop-chest and bring up what you know is needful. They’ll take no notice of you in the cuddy. They’re nearly blind drunk; they’re at the aftermost end where Abram was, and the atmosphere’s black with tobacco, and the cabin lights burn pale. Johnstone, I don’t want Marian to leave my side. Here’s the key of my cabin-door. Bring up the clothes.’
Bates and my cousin went away. Tom now said he would go the round of the ship.
‘We must see all the lights out before we leave her,’ said he. ‘Think of a fire with the people in the state they’re in!’
He walked to the lifeless figures on the poop and moved them with his foot; they lay as senseless as the plank they rested on. He then passed down the steps and I lost sight of him. I guessed that the convicts had been too drunk to climb the poop-ladder, or to attempt the poop by the companion-steps; that was why there was none on this deck save those two or three of Barney Abram’s party who had stumbled, and, being down, had instantly slept.
I looked into that part of the night where the brig lay and dimly discerned her. I forget where the moon at this hour stood, and with what bulk she had risen. Silence was gathering on the convict ship. Occasionally the hoarse, tipsy call of a man in the cuddy vexed the ear, but those noises were rare, and I was pretty sure that another quarter of an hour would do the wretches’ business and sink them in the universal stupor. I wondered if the moon had ever before shone down upon a more shocking picture of human bestiality. And yet how exquisitely was the ship painted by the night beam in the midst of that vast ocean hush! The sails hung like sheets of cloth of silver; every shroud had a glint that resembled a thread of silver wire; stars of white fire sparkled in the brass of the binnacle hood and in the glass of the skylights, and the rail seemed encrusted with diamonds and precious gems. The whole ship hung pale upon the sea, with never a pulse to rock her; her spires rose phantasmally to the stars, but her beauty was ghostly and the horror of sin was in it.