The shadow vanished. It was the last we ever saw of the convict ship. It was the fittest of all disappearances for her. The folds of the morning darkness swallowed her up as though she had been thundered at headlong speed into the blackness of death’s dominions, whose obscurity was thickened yet by the vapours of the inextinguishable fires.
I started, sighed, and passed my arm through Tom’s.
At about eight o’clock this morning there was a lull in the wind; it then shifted suddenly into the south-east, blowing small at first, but freshening afterwards until it had settled into the steady pouring of the trade gale. I held the wheel while the three braced the yards forward, and soon the little brig was humming along on what sailors call a taut bowline with her fore and main royals set, and as fair a prospect of fine weather to windward as ever the noble commercial breeze of the South Atlantic painted in clouds and dyes of clear pure blue.
This same morning, after breakfast, I still steering the little ship, Tom and the others overhauled the vessel afresh. They lifted the main-hatch and took a look below. They entered the lazarette, searched the fore-peak, closely again examined the crew’s sleeping-quarters. They met with everything essential in the equipment of a small brig—suits of sails, carpenter’s tools, boatswain’s stores in plenty. Indeed, Tom said she was the best found craft of her sort he had ever seen.
He found a brace of pistols and ammunition for them in the captain’s cabin. There were no other small-arms on board.
When the brig had been trimmed for the trade-wind, they went to work to chock and secure the Childe Harold’s quarter-boat in the place where the brig’s long-boat had stood; afterward, Will mixed a pot of paint and painted out the name ‘Childe Harold, London,’ in the stern of the boat. Mr. Bates then carefully gauged the stock of fresh water and found a handsome supply, sweet and good.
And now, till we made the island of Tristan d’Acunha, there befell nothing worthy to detain you. We found no difficulty in managing the brig. Larger ships than the Old Stormy had been handled and safely worked across the wildest and widest breasts of ocean in the world by crews at least as small as ours. My share consisted in cooking, preparing the cabin table for meals, steering when my watch came round and when Tom was weary of standing at the wheel or wished to get upon the deck-house top to look about.
Both Will and Bates fell very quiet. They read Tom’s resolution in his face and they heard it in his voice, and they came into his scheme of touching at Tristan as though they themselves had been escaped convicts eager to hide.
Many a long talk did I have with Tom over his project, and I know that I never breathed a syllable in opposition to his wishes. Particularly do I recall a conversation we held one night in the first watch; he steered, and I, who was tired, sat on a chair close beside him. The trade-wind sang shrill betwixt our leaning masts; regularly as the beat of a clock the brig heeled to the slant of the windward surge and bowed her lee side till the froth spat and snored along the very line of her bulwark-rail.
‘No, Tom,’ said I, answering him; ‘don’t call it banishment. Banishment for me must be where you are not.’