THE CONVICT SHIP

VOL. III.

NEW LIBRARY NOVELS.

UNDER SEALED ORDERS. By Grant Allen. 3 vols.

A LONDON LEGEND. By Justin H. McCarthy. 3 vols.

THE TREMLETT DIAMONDS. By Alan St. Aubyn. 2 vols.

THE DRIFT OF FATE. By Dora Russell. 3 vols.

BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE. By Walter Besant. 1 vol.

THE MINOR CHORD. By J. Mitchell Chapple. 1 vol.

HIS VANISHED STAR. By C. Egbert Craddock. 1 vol.

ROMANCES OF THE OLD SERAGLIO. By H. N. Crellin. 1 vol.

VILLAGE TALES AND JUNGLE TRAGEDIES. By B. M. Croker. 1 vol.

MADAME SANS-GÊNE. By E. Lepelletier. 1 vol.

MOUNT DESPAIR. By D. Christie Murray. 1 vol.

THE PHANTOM DEATH. By W. Clark Russell. 1 vol.

THE PRINCE OF BALKISTAN. By Allen Upward. 1 vol.

London: CHATTO & WINDUS, Piccadilly.

THE CONVICT SHIP

BY
W. CLARK RUSSELL
AUTHOR OF
‘THE WRECK OF THE GROSVENOR’ ‘MY SHIPMATE LOUISE’
‘THE PHANTOM DEATH’ ETC.

IN THREE VOLUMES—VOL. III.

London
CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1895

PRINTED BY
SPOTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
LONDON

CONTENTS
OF
THE THIRD VOLUME

THE CONVICT SHIP

CHAPTER XXXIV
SHE WITNESSES THE DEPARTURE OF THE OFFICERS AND SOLDIERS

By this time the awning had been spread. In the cuddy a crowd of convicts were roaring out the chorus of some vulgar popular song of that time. Will said: ‘We have had nothing to eat. Aren’t you hungry?’

‘Here, you!’ exclaimed Tom to the fellow at the helm. ‘Jump below to the cuddy and bring us some food and wine to breakfast off. I’ll not trust this young gentleman amongst them. You’re known as a friend. Johnstone, hold the wheel.’

The man went like a dog to the companion-hatch and disappeared down it.

‘A worthy example of the British sailor,’ said Tom. ‘He’s one of those fellows who’d swear a man’s life and liberty away for a noggin of rum. D’ye see that boat, Marian?’ He pointed to a long thin boat, called the captain’s gig, that hung by davits over the stern, with the line of her gunwale on a level with the taffrail. ‘She’ll give us our chance. Johnstone, that’ll be the boat we’ll make off in. The sooner the better. Hark to them below! Oh, my dear heart, what has your love for me brought you into? Johnstone, the equipment of that boat will be your duty. I shall hold you responsible for everything being in its place when we come to want her.’

‘Aye, aye, sir,’ answered the lad, with the habit of a sailor in answer to an order.

‘Is it true, Tom, that they’d hang you if they found you in command of this ship?’ said I.

‘There’s been murder and piracy, and the ringleaders would be hanged, and I, found in command of the ship, would be reckoned a ringleader. But do not fear. They’re not going to catch me. We’ll be out of the vessel soon, though heaven help the unhappy ruffians when it comes to our leaving them.’

Presently the sailor came up out of the cuddy. He brought a bottle of sherry, a broken tumbler, a plate of white biscuit, and some tinned meat. He said sullenly, as he put the stuff down on the grating, that it was all he could find. There wasn’t a whole tumbler to be seen.

‘Them convicts is gone mad,’ he said, as he sulkily grasped the wheel. ‘Them as ain’t singing’s fighting. The cabin floor’s a-running with blood. They’re mostly the young ’uns. I never bargained for the likes of this raree-show. What’s a-going to befall the fired ship if this sort of carrying-on’s to last?’

‘It was to be a roasting hot job,’ said I pointing to the injured topgallantmast.

He gave me an evil look, but, meeting Tom’s eyes, turned his head and stared away into the white, sultry, stagnant distance. I kept my back upon the bloodstains; I could not have held them in view and tasted food. Whilst we ate and drank we heard Mr. Bates calling out orders on the main-deck. I met Tom’s glance; he faintly smiled; it was the first time I had seen him smile. But, indeed, the tragedy of the morning became a kind of burlesque, when you thought of the chief mate of the ship, dressed as a convict, giving orders under the eye of Barney Abram, who was himself clothed in the apparel of the captain.

We moved forward a little way to get well into the shelter of the awning and out of hearing of the fellow at the wheel. The bottle had been half full. We emptied it and threw it and the broken tumbler overboard, and talked whilst we watched the motions of the convicts on the main-deck and listened to the choruses of the brutal revellers in the cuddy. Some of the mutinous sailors went aloft with tackles on the main and fore-yards; meanwhile a number of the convicts cleared away the long-boat, a large, squab fabric which lay stowed forward of the galley. Tom said she was big enough to safely carry forty souls.

‘I wish you and I and Will there were in her,’ said he, out of sight of this ship. ‘But she’ll provide us with the opportunity we want,’ he added, with a sideway motion of his head towards the gig over the stern.

‘What are your plans after we leave the ship?’ said I. ‘The gig’s a little boat for this vast sea.’

‘My plans,’ he answered, making as if he would take my hand, and arresting the gesture with a fierce glance at the helmsman, ‘are first of all to get away. The rest must be our fortune. Anyhow, we’ll endeavour to keep afloat till we’re picked up.’

‘It might run into weeks before we fall in with a ship just here,’ said Will, ‘and what’s to happen then? It’s very well for Marian and me—what’s to become of you, sir?’

‘What’s to become of Tom?’ cried I. ‘If you mean that, you must ask what’s to become of me too.’

Tom stood up and said: ‘The convicts mustn’t see us always together, and particularly will it not do for them to see us talking earnestly. They’re felons, with the suspicions and passions of felons. I’m going to the captain’s cabin.’

He walked briskly to the companion-way, at which he paused to look steadily round the sea, and then disappeared.

‘Why do you take me up so sharply, Marian?’ said Will.

‘Call me Marlowe. Suppose you should be overheard? Sharply? Why do you ask what’s to become of Tom? It never could be right with me if it’s to be wrong with him. And yet you say it’ll be all right for you and me if we’re picked up.’

‘If we’re picked up he may be carried to England. What then?’

‘We’ll not allow ourselves to be picked up by a ship going to England.’

‘We may be nearly dead with thirst and without provisions. Look what a sea it is! Do you know where we are? This is the junction of the two Atlantics. If you are dying of thirst you’ll be glad to be picked up, though the ship we should fall in with were bound to—to——’ And my cousin, with an expressive face, pointed downward.

‘Don’t talk to me. Leave it all to Tom. He is an old sailor, and will he risk the liberty he has got this day? I would sink and drown in his arms sooner than stay in this detestable ship, or not be by his side wherever he goes!’

‘Aye, that’s all very well. But I’m to make one in the boat, remember. I’m very sorry for Butler, and like him greatly, although hang me if I think his prison experience has improved his manners. But I don’t see my way to go down hand in hand with him.’

‘Hold your tongue!’ I cried. ‘The darling saved your life, and this is your gratitude!’

He got up and walked aft, and stood looking at the gig.

I walked to the poop-rail and gazed down at the mass of convicts who filled the decks. Some of them were throwing the remains of the barricades overboard. A considerable group stood near the port gangway, and every one of that gang carried a soldier’s musket, with its bayonet fixed. Some of those fellows had acted as first and second ‘captains’ under the doctor. They were now less noisy in the cuddy; a few in that interior did, indeed, continue to drunkenly shout out choruses. Here and there a felon roamed with lurching steps, and often with a cut face and blood upon him as though from a savage scuffle; but I soon noticed that if this sort of fellows got into the people’s way they were elbowed and kicked without ceremony even to the extent of being thrown headlong. Most of the noisiest and the wounded people were young. In truth, already was I sensible of a change in the bearing of the unhappy men. They stood in bodies watching what was going forward. The first clamorous, brutal transports, the early delirious passions which successful rebellion and the possession of freedom had excited, were sobering. Perhaps they had not met with drink enough yet to make them all the fierce, wild, shouting, exulting demons some of them had been changed into by the cuddy drams. Be this as it may, there was less confusion; the senseless bawling had become rare. On deck, the shouts broke only from the throats of tipsy scoundrels aimlessly issuing out of the cuddy into the quarter-deck throng, where, as I have said, they would be hustled and kicked, and sometimes forced into silence by being knocked down.

Mr. Bates, no longer distinguishable from the felons who remained clothed in the convicts’ garb, stood at the gangway, superintending the hoisting and lowering of the long-boat over the side. Some of the convicts worked as though they had been sailors in their day. Close beside the little mass of armed men stood Barney Abram, and near him were five or six convicts, variously attired in plundered clothes. These fellows were, without exception, of the better class of prisoners. Most of them had filled positions of some little trust under the doctor, such as cook and barber, and I guessed that they were among the recognised heads of the risen criminals.

Will joined me and began to talk of the gig and the difficulty of safely lowering a boat hanging athwartships when a vessel was in motion. I bid him leave everything to Tom and do as he was told—that is, to see that the gig was furnished ready for getting away in. He burst into a laugh at sight of Mr. Bates, and for some time could not recover his composure; in truth, the poor fellow seemed a little hysterical, and after we had been standing a few minutes drew me away, saying; ‘Let’s go over to starboard; the sentry was killed just here, and I keep on seeing his face as they threw him over the side.’

Several of the convicts came out of the cuddy by way of the companion-hatch and, finding the poop a clear deck, began to play at leap-frog and to gambol and hop and cut capers with the grace of frisky cart-horses. Their ugly faces and rowdy behaviour made a slum or back alley of that white deck. The beauty of the sea, the brilliance of the blue heavens, the fiery sparkles and lights in the polished brass and glass about the poop vanished. Those tumbling convicts instantly brought with them a flavour of London fog. The air resounded with the cry of the costermonger; an evil odour of decayed vegetables attended them, and you seemed to hear the music of the barrel-organ.

They came floundering and skylarking and caper-cutting up to where Will and I were standing; they gathered about us, and Will was for moving off, but I held my ground; I did not love their language, believe me, but it would not do to seem shy of them. They were flushed with drink, and talked rapidly and thickly in the most intolerable, coarse speech you can imagine; yet they were not so drunk as to be unintelligible. Seemingly they had been amongst the most successful in plundering the cabins. One pulled out Captain Sutherland’s gold watch, and, dangling it on high by its chain as though playing at bob-cherry, roared out: ‘This is the thumble! Here’s the yack for a nob’s gurrell!’ Another produced a pin, a third a large old-fashioned silver watch, which Will whispered had belonged to the second mate. Their talk was a compound of oaths and thieves’ slang, but they took not the least notice of me or Will; they jabbered hoarsely and thickly and swiftly amongst themselves, as though on the eve of coming to blows, breaking off presently, however, to watch the long-boat rising out of her chocks when the tackles were manned by some score or two of felons.

The great boat was got over as smartly as though all concerned in lifting and lowering her were sailors. All necessary information as to where stores, fresh water, and so forth were to be found had doubtless been obtained from Mr. Bates. Anyhow, no time had been lost, but soon after the boat had been floated a number of people, under the superintendence of some of those men whom I had taken to be the leaders, rolled a cask of fresh water, a tierce or two of beef, two or three barrels of flour and biscuit, and other matters which my memory does not carry, to the open gangway, and very rapidly all these things were stored in the boat alongside.

Just then Tom came out of the cuddy by way of the quarter-deck, and went to Bates and Barney Abram, who stood together, with whom he spoke. Tom, attended by Bates, returned to the cuddy, and after an interval reappeared with a sextant-case, a chart or two, and such appliances as I supposed they would need in the long-boat to enable them to steer a course for land. These things were handed down to some convicts who were stowing the provisions in the boat. Tom stood in the gangway and looked down, and then called out for the oars, sail, and mast of the boat to be brought along and shipped. When he had seen to this, he glanced up, and, observing me, ascended the poop-ladder.

‘Hi!’ said he, walking up to the group of convicts, who had been talking and swearing and boasting of their plunder, but were now silent. ‘What are you doing here? This is no part of the ship for you!’ he cried, cursing them. ‘Get away down to your quarters! This poop is for the captain and the mate and Mr. Abram, and the rest of us, who are responsible for the safety of the vessel, and for landing you where you may bolt and get hanged at your leisure. Off with ye! Off with ye!’ And laying hold of the sturdiest he gave him a thrust.

The convicts were used to this sort of usage, and probably would have recognised no other treatment than that of kicks and curses. They yielded as submissively as felons to the command of an armed warder, went in a body down the ladder, and mingled with their fellows on the main-deck.

‘Those people below must be sent adrift,’ said Tom, coming to my side and talking as though he thought aloud. ‘It’s a hardship, but I see the need. If they’re kept, they’ll be murdered. They start well equipped—I’ve seen to that. It’s odds if they’re not picked up in a day or two, spite of our friend Will’s misgivings. They’ll take three boats from the ship. That’ll leave two and the gig. The gig’s for us. The convicts must see to themselves. It’s not a thing to be debated. It’s every man for himself at such times as these,’ and his eye went to the stain at the head of the poop-ladder where the sentry had been butchered.

‘Tom,’ said I, ‘if the sailors are leaving the ship, who’s to carry on the work?’

‘Seven or eight rogues stay,’ he answered. ‘Four or five of the convicts have been to sea. With near two hundred and fifty souls in the ship, I should be able to manage if I chose to keep by her. How many of the crew went to your complement?’ said he, turning to Will.

‘Thirty, sir,’ answered the lad.

‘All told?’

‘Thirty ordinary and able seamen and idlers,’ said Will.

‘They looked a ruffianly lot!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘The people counted upon more help than they got. Abram asked all hands to remain; only seven or eight chums and acquaintances of the prisoners stick to the ship. Those were the scoundrels who flung themselves upon the sentries. Yes, they’ll need two quarter-boats besides the long-boat. A numerous family to send afloat, and under the line, too, with—how many women and children?’

Will gave him the number.

Tom made a grimace of pity, folded his arms and stood, with a stern face, watching what was happening in the gangway.

Mr. Bates was showing the convicts how to rig the accommodation-ladder over the side. I looked at Tom, and particularly noticed the change in his face, just as I had felt and witnessed the change in his nature and bearing. That change I had before observed, but not so clearly. The light was searching. He stood in repose, forgetting himself and viewing the proceedings on the main-deck. He was pale and thin and ill and haggard, yet his manly beauty lacked none of its old charms. Nay, there was a gain, I thought. He seemed the handsomer because of the severity of his expression. There was a fierceness that gave his lineaments a heroic cast. Suffering had deepened and accentuated all that was manly in his looks by an infusion of sternness that wanted not in scorn and haughtiness.

When all was ready with the long-boat, the armed convicts formed themselves into a lane betwixt the open gangway and the hatchway. They fell in with the precision of soldiers to the cries which commanded them, and stood erect and orderly, every man letting the butt of his musket rest upon the deck. A crowd of men, many of them armed with the small-arms which they had found in the ship, gathered around the main-hatch and obstructed the view. A fellow, with a fiddle in his hand, climbed on the bulwark-rail close to the yawn of the gangway, and putting the fiddle into his neck, screwed out a tune. He was the convict who used to play the prisoners round the decks at exercise. When the mass of felons heard this music, they burst into a great shout of laughter. Such a wild, dreadful shout of merriment has seldom gone up out of human throats. The few remaining revellers in the cuddy tumbled drunkenly out on the quarter-deck on hearing the fiddle and the shouts, and rent the air with another hideous burst of laughter.

I heard a man bawl instructions down the main-hatchway, but could not catch what he said. Abram and some others roared out an order for silence, and, tipsy as a number of them were, as great a stillness fell upon the convicts as ever had been observed in their time of discipline.

The first to come up was Doctor Russell-Ellice; he was dressed as a convict, and I did not recognise him until Will cried out. He was immediately followed by Captain Sutherland, who had also been forced into the felon’s garb. Next came Captain Barrett, dressed as a convict; then the sergeant and the soldiers of the guard, most of whom were habited in the prison apparel, though some were without coats. Neither the doctor nor the officers looked to right or left. They kept their eyes fastened upon the deck, and so passed through the rows of armed criminals to the gangway. Nothing was to be heard but the insulting squeaking music of the fiddle. The hush upon the great throng of men made the scene tragically impressive. I felt a deep pity for Captain Sutherland, and asked Tom in a whisper if his influence could not keep the poor fellow on board that he might escape with us if we got away; but Tom, without looking at me, held up his hand to warn me not to speak.

I went to the side and looked down at the long-boat. She was a large, roomy fabric, and sat high and buoyant despite her liberal equipment of food and water. These passed into her: the surgeon, the commander of the vessel, Captain Barrett, and eighteen soldiers, two of their number having been killed. They were all, as I have said, habited as convicts; and now I observed the degrading effect of the prison-dress upon the person, for the doctor, Captain Barrett, and most of the soldiers looked as sorry a set of rogues as any that were in the ship, and needed but irons and the barber to make you suppose them criminals of the most desperate kind.

A pause in the proceedings happened when the last of the soldiers had passed down the ladder and entered the boat. Abram shouted to the fiddler to stop his noise. So great was the silence among the convicts that everything said clearly reached the ear. The prize-fighter went into the gangway and looked over, and, turning to some of the people whom I had taken to be among the chiefs and ringleaders, called out: ‘There is roob for as bady agaid.’

Tom and Will came to the rail and looked down at the boat. The doctor sat in the stern-sheets with arms folded and head bowed. He exhibited no signs of life. Captain Sutherland’s posture was that of a crushed and broken-hearted man. I grieved and could have wept and entreated for the poor fellow; he was a good, harmless sailor, an excellent seaman, and his usage was barbarous, seeing that the convicts had no other cause to punish him and revenge themselves than his being in command of the ship.

When Abram called out as I have just said, Captain Barrett sprang to his feet and shouted: ‘Where are my men’s wives and children? You’re not going to send us adrift without them, are you?’

‘We’ll forward ’eb od to you later!’ exclaimed Abram, turning his head without turning his body and shouting with his massive hand at the side of his mouth: ‘Jodsud’—here he addressed a convict named Johnson, one of several armed men who guarded the entrance of the main-hatch; it was this Johnson who had bawled down to the doctor and others to come up—‘there’s roob for twedy bore id the lo’g boat! Call ’eb up!’

Tom made a stride to the head of the poop-ladder, and, in a voice whose accents rang through the ship like a volley of pistol shots, shouted: ‘Hold! Abram, the next to come up and enter the long-boat are the women and children!’

The mass of convicts looked up at him; indescribable was the effect of this universal turning of faces one way.

‘Dot lo’g ago you wouldn’t ’ave anything to do with this busidess!’ shouted Abram savagely. ‘What wasn’t your busidess thed isd’t goi’g to be your busidess dow!’

‘I’ll have no discussion!’ cried Tom with the utmost ferocity. ‘I’m a man of my word. Blood has been shed, and now you want to round off the murders with the most hellish piece of separation ever perpetrated on the high seas. We have lived together,’ he cried to them all in clear, fierce, powerful tones, ‘for many months, in the hulk and here, and I know there are scores amongst you who detest the thought of keeping poor women and little children from their husbands, whose sole offence has been their duty. Am I right? You are under the influence of men who, as your responsible leaders, elected by yourselves, should be the last to advise you to blacken yet what, God knows, is black enough, by a fiendish act of brutality and inhumanity!’

‘We don’t want to be jawed,’ bawled a tipsy convict. ‘Better bring the doctor aboard again if that’s to be the lay.’

‘Butler,’ shouted Abram, ‘I’b blowed if you’re goi’g to have your way id everythi’g!’

‘But I’ll have my way in this! I’ll have my way in this!’ cried Tom with a note of madness in his voice and the look of a madman in his face. ‘You begged me to take charge. Fifty of you whined and petitioned me, as the only navigator amongst you, to command this ship if you seized her. And I consented—on what terms? No cruelty, I said, and safety for three friends. There’s to be cruelty now—cruelty so hellish that the vilest heart amongst you must sicken and shrink if it will but give the intention a thought. You’re playing me false in this, Abram. I say—don’t do it! Don’t do it!’ he cried, raising his voice and brandishing his arms at the great mob below.

I glanced at the long-boat at this moment. The doctor had pricked his ears and was sitting looking up at the ship with a pale face of astonishment. Captain Barrett, erect in the boat, listened and stared. Captain Sutherland repeated three or four times: ‘Who is it? Who is it?’ For Tom was not to be seen by them; indeed, nobody was visible along the whole line of the ship to those people low-seated save Abram at the gangway and the fiddler and me and Will at the rail.

Some fellow near the mainmast hoarsely shouted: ‘Butler wants it all his own way. Let him chuck it and rot! There’s Bates, the mate of the ship. He’s be’n kep’ to oblige Butler. He’s a navigator. He’ll do the trick.’

‘No!’ thundered Bates, roaring out as though he were hailing the fore-topsail in a gale of wind. ‘You’ve forced me into giving orders, and I’m cursing myself for my cowardice. But so help me, you men, as I stand here, one and all of you, good and bad, drunk and sober, as you listen, sooner than that you shall keep the women and children on the chance of my taking Butler’s place, you may now—now—now,’ he roared, pointing up, ‘turn to and reeve your yardarm whip and run me aloft. D’ye hear me! Now—now!’ he screamed, in the extremity of his wrath and resolution, and having spoken he backed from the knot of convicts out of the thick of whom he had exclaimed, put his shoulders against the bulwark, folded his arms and settled himself firmly on his legs as a man prepared for the worst, and at that instant he made as heroic a figure as Tom.

Silence followed. The hush was extraordinary. The deep stillness that lay upon the white ocean seemed to come into the ship as a spirit. I saw that Abram was at a loss. He looked savagely about him and made an angry step or two as though he would pace the deck. Tom, gripping the brass rail, kept his eyes, full of fire, upon Abram; his breast rose and fell violently with the vehemence of his breathing. Resolution as fearless and magnificent as the chief mate had given expression to was visible in his posture and looks, and not the grossest and most ignorant of the unhappy creatures who stared up could have mistaken his mind.

He seemed to wait for Abram to speak, then cried out, addressing the mass of men generally: ‘Is it your wish that I should navigate this ship and carry you to where we shall presently decide?’

Most of the fellows stared at one another like fools, as though they lacked courage to answer.

‘Answer me, any of you!’ he shouted. ‘Don’t think I care how it goes. Treat me as you’ve dealt with those whose blood stains these decks, and I’ll thank you. I’m a convict—the most wretched of the wretches among you—and broken-hearted as none of you are. Use me as you will. But if I take charge, I’m captain; and if I’m captain, my will in what concerns the general safety is law. The general safety will be imperilled by the detention of the women and children. I, a fellow-convict and seaman, tell you this. Now answer me: Am I in command or not?’

‘It was settled!’ howled Abram.

‘Johnson!’ cried Tom. ‘You at the hatchway there! Order the women and children on deck and pass them into the boat!’

Johnson kept silent.

‘Do what you’re told!’ shouted a voice. Then followed a hoarse, confused uproar from fifty throats: ‘Get ’em out of the ship!’ ‘Butler’s right! Who the plague wants to keep them?’ ‘It’ll lead to murder, and we want our liberty ashore.’

‘Order the women and children on deck!’ cried Tom; whereupon some man—but it was not the convict Johnson—bellowed down the main-hatch.

In a few minutes the women came up out of the ’tweendecks one by one, every woman with a child in her arms, for there were eight and eight, though every woman was not a mother. The poor creatures’ eyes were red with weeping, their faces white with fear. The husband of one of them had been killed that morning. They were dressed in bonnets and shawls. My heart was cold as I watched them. They went to the side and passed one by one down the gangway ladder; the great crowd of convicts looked on. Not a word was uttered whilst the women walked through the lane of armed men. As they entered the boat, their husbands eagerly clasped and kissed them and kissed the children; it was like a meeting of the survivors of some terrible disaster, and the tears stood in my eyes.

The boat seemed crowded when the women were in her, though, at a pinch, another ten or twelve persons might have found space.

‘Off with you dow and bake roob for the other boats!’ shouted Abram. ‘Head right away and be th’kful you’ve falled idto the ’a’ds of hubade people! If you ha’g about dear us, s’elp be Peter, we’ll fire idto you!’

A soldier seized an oar and shoved the boat off. When she had gone clear by her own length, the soldiers threw over the remaining oars and began to row. It was about one o’clock in the afternoon; a long morning had been spent in getting that big boat out, storing, crowding, and sending her adrift. I looked around the sea; not the least breath of air anywhere dyed the molten resplendent surface that brimmed in a breast of delicate blue silver light into the morning distances. The soldiers rowed vigorously, as though all in the boat feared the convicts would play them some murderous trick if they hung within reach.

A number of people got on the line of bulwark-rail and watched the boat as she drew away. I had thought to hear a hundred vile, blasphemous insults flung after her, but nothing was said in that way. The fellows laughed and talked and pointed, but no man called out.

Barney Abram came on the poop, followed by Mr. Bates, as though the mate had been ordered to attend. The sweat was running from the prize-fighter’s face, and the scars about his brow and forehead were knitted into a scowl. My heart beat fast. I dreaded a quarrel between him and Tom, for Abram swung the deadliest fist of any man in England. Greatly to my relief, however, spite of his dark and sweating face, which seemed to give the lie to his behaviour, his manner was conciliatory.

‘You shouldn’t lose your tepper so easily, Butler,’ said he. ‘What’s the good of exciti’g yourself? You start this gentlebud off’—here he motioned to Mr. Bates—‘who talks a lot of rot to the people about yardarbs. I walked hib rou’d the deck to oblige you, that the people bight see he’s by fr’e’d; and thed, excited by you, he jaws theb about yardarbs. If they had taken hib at his word!’ He looked up, and pointing, exclaimed with his extraordinary smirking grin: ‘That’s what I thi’k you gentlebud of the sea call a yardarb. Gallus high, ain’t it, by rosebud?’ And he turned his fiery black eyes upon me.

‘The women are safe, and I’m satisfied,’ answered Tom. ‘Abram, I had looked for more humanity at your hands. You—a man of your reputation,’ he added, with an angry, sarcastic smile that instantly faded, ‘to truckle to such beasts as we’ve had to live amongst ever since we’ve found ourselves together in irons; but the matter’s ended,’ he exclaimed, with a sort of sudden bustle and hurry in his manner. ‘Let’s get the other boats away. There’s a destination to be settled and arrangements for working the ship to be made. This weather is good for talk, but it may change in an hour.’

‘Right,’ exclaimed Abram. ‘Bates, call up your bed and give your orders.’

‘Captain Butler,’ exclaimed the poor mate, ‘let me leave this ship with the crew.’

Abram fiercely rounded upon him. ‘Is this your gratitude?’ he exclaimed in his thick stunted accents. ‘Didn’t I tell you, Butler, he wasn’t to be trusted? Wolves tear hib! Why don’t the flat-catcher dow whed he’s well off?’

‘You’re here and you’ll remain here, Bates,’ said Tom, giving the unfortunate man an expressive look. ‘Get those two quarter-boats alongside and have them provisioned, and let me advise you to take a sheepshank in your tongue.’

Mr. Bates went to the rail and called to the men. Some seamen and convicts came tumbling on to the poop.

‘We’ve got hib and we’ll keep hib,’ said Abram, pulling off the captain’s cap and wiping his brow with the captain’s pocket-handkerchief, and straddling in front of Tom, a massive, terrible figure. ‘Butler, you was right. I’ve beed turdi’g it over. You card’t be singleadded. Suppose you should die. We’d let hib understa’d what betrayal ’ud cost. But what’s the good of getti’g excited? Dever lose your tepper. If I couldn’t keep by tepper’—and here he spoke with his eyes fixed on me—‘what ’u’d be by reputatiod as a public bad?’

CHAPTER XXXV
SHE LISTENS TO THE CONVICTS DEBATING

Tom and the prize-fighter talked together whilst Mr. Bates got the boats alongside and superintended the stowage of provisions and water in them. I went into the shadow of the awning to get out of the heat of the sun and to remove myself from Tom, that we might not be seen together constantly. Some of the ringleaders, as I must term the fellows whom the convicts undoubtedly regarded as heads or chiefs under Tom or Abram, joined my sweetheart and the prize-fighter, and the air speedily hummed with the eager, animated talk of the crowd. Will joined me, and we watched the long-boat. She had gone about a mile, and they had hoisted the sail for the shelter of its shadow. It hung like a sheet of silver from its yard, without a stir, so smooth was the sea, so still the air. The soldiers continued to sweep the boat along; the oars glanced like hairs of silver as they rose and fell.

Will went to the binnacle to judge of the course the boat was making. The scoundrel seaman who grasped the wheel growled out with a low, coarse laugh and in a cursing voice some remark I did not catch.

‘You wouldn’t have said that yesterday,’ exclaimed Will, and came back to me without taking further notice of the miscreant. ‘They are heading due west,’ said he. ‘I don’t suppose they will make up their minds till the other boats join them.’

‘What is the nearest land?’

‘The Brazilian coast. But the nearest is a long way off. There’s but a small chance for them outside of being picked up. And yet what a lump of a boat she is compared with the gig! When is she to be provisioned? And when are we to get away? And when we’ve got away, what’s going to happen? Good angels, I wish we were both at Stepney!’

‘Leave everything to Tom,’ said I, ‘and do as he tells you.’

He looked at me with a mutinous eye, went to the rail and stared over the side. Tom and the council of convicts had left the poop. I peered through the skylight; the cuddy was empty, the table covered with fragments and remains of food with broken china and broken bottles and glasses, and the deck scarcely fit to walk on for the wounding stuff that strewed it. I went to the break of the poop to see what they were about on the main-deck. Both quarter-boats were alongside and a gang of convicts were stowing them. The decks were filled with the people, who, since the departure of the long-boat, had grown orderly. The mass of them conversed in knots; groups hung about the galleys. They had discovered pipes and tobacco—tobacco there would be in plenty for the guard and the crew, and possibly a stock of pipes. A number of the convicts had pipes in their mouths, and their profound enjoyment of the tobacco, after months and, perhaps, years of penitential abstinence, undoubtedly helped to keep them quiet.

The sun stood something to the left of north, and the tall, motionless spaces of canvas on high cast shadows over the decks, and betwixt the rails the high noon was endurable. A thick, sickly smell of roasted paint rose from the ship’s side. If you put your hand upon the exposed wood or any piece of metal, you were burnt as though you touched hot iron. I thought to myself: If these unhappy wretches should run short of water! If this calm should hold them motionless here for days and perhaps for weeks! For calms often serve ships so in these parts, as I had heard my father and his sea friends tell. I sought to compute the number on board, and, allowing for those who were presently to leave the ship, I calculated we should muster hard upon two hundred and fifty souls. When Tom left them, what would the miserable creatures do? But, then, what was that to me? All I cared for was that Tom should come off with his life and be a free man, no longer a degraded criminal, clanking in irons, to be mangled by the cat, perhaps, at the will of any ferocious Tasmanian ruffian who might take a dislike to him. The convicts had seized the ship. One had but to look toward the now distant long-boat to appreciate the felons’ estimate of human life. I could not pity them when I thought of how they would have kept the women and children and of the havoc they had wrought below, and when I looked at their faces, recalled their songs and oaths in drink, their bestial speech, and saw the plunder on their vile backs.

Tom and Abram and a little crowd of men stood near the gangway. My sweetheart looked on. He gave no orders. Poor Mr. Bates did all the work of superintendence, and watched the convicts as they slung the provisions and water for the seamen into the quarter-boats. When this work was ended, some cries were raised; the throngs of people gathered about the main-hatch and filled the quarter-deck; the armed malefactors formed a lane as before, but this time the fiddler did not make his appearance.

A hoarse voice at the main-hatch summoned the fellows below to come up, and one after another the crew arrived. The huge one-eared boatswain, with his staring, glassy eyes, scowled round him with daring, defiant looks. Abram stood in the gangway and he halted every man ere passing him over the side to say: ‘You cad stop with us if you like. We’re short of worki’g ’a’ds and we’ll treat you as one of us. What’ll you do?’

Mr. Balls made no answer; he passed sullenly on; so did the sailmaker and carpenter. Mr. Stiles, with a bewildered look at the convicts and then through the gangway at the white gleam of sea visible there, wiped his face on the sleeve of his convict jacket and said: ‘Where might you be bound to, sir?’

Some one cried out: ‘That bloke was the ship’s steward. He’s of no use.’

‘Over you go,’ said Abram, giving Mr. Stiles a dab with his immense hand between his shoulder-blades, and the steward went with a run to the gangway and disappeared down the ladder.

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!’

He was interrupted by some voice shouting out the exact number.

‘You taste this weather, don’t ye? You can guess how it would fare with us to run short of water, and next to that would be the running short of provisions. You must be willing to go on allowance.’

‘Willing? Of course. That’s to be expected,’ broke in three or four of them.

‘Those amongst you who have been seafaring men will unite with the sailors and form a crew and take the forecastle for your quarters, which must be your own, never to be intruded upon. Is that understood?’

‘Understood!’ was the answer, in a roar.

‘The rest will form themselves into three watches under heads, as in the doctor’s time; and every watch will come on deck turn and turn about, and stand by to assist the crew by pulling and hauling, cleaning and making the ship sweet, and so helping to keep you all alive, ready for the run ashore when the hour comes.’

A great cheer echoed this sentence.

‘Mr. Bates,’ continued Tom, ‘knows where everything is stowed in this ship. He’ll sample your food for you and name you your water allowance. Use him kindly, men. He’s of first-rate consequence to us.’

When this was said, Barney Abram crossed to the mate, brought him to the middle of the break of the poop, near to where Tom stood, and there, in the sight of all the convicts, shook him by the hand. This was done in silence, but it was a very expressive performance—some might hold after the Eastern manner, seeing who was the main actor.

Tom went on: ‘I must have the captain’s cabin; the navigating instruments of the vessel are there and certain conveniences of furniture. The chief mate will also need his cabin; he’ll share it with that young gentleman,’ said he, pointing to Will. ‘If any of you in the hurry of this morning has mistaken Mr. Bates’s effects for Captain Barrett’s or the other officers’ or the commander’s, I’ll beg him to return them. He is our friend, and Mr. Abram wishes him to be well used. It is not right he should be thus dressed.’

‘Look at yourself?’ cried a voice on the quarter-deck.

‘Yes, but I’m a convict!’ exclaimed Tom, savagely.

This raised a roar; a hundred men seemed to speak at once; they yelled out to this effect—that there were no longer any convicts aboard that ship, that they were all free men, that they had got their liberty and meant to keep it, and so forth.

‘Order!’ bawled Abram, raising his arms above his head. ‘We’re here to discuss batters quietly. The capt’id’s talked very sensibly, ad I’b with hib up to the hilt as far as he’s gord. Are those your sedibents?’ said he, looking round at the little crowd of convicts who stood near.

‘There must be discipline,’ answered one of them, ‘and Butler’s talked very good sense so far.’

‘How about the stock of spirits?’ exclaimed a tall, thin, pale, grey-haired convict, dressed in an officer’s shell-jacket too short for him—so that when I think of him now it is always somehow in connection with Mr. Dickens’s incomparable figure of Smike. ‘’Sponsible men are wanted to see to that.’

‘You’re right, Williams,’ said Tom, giving him an emphatic nod.

‘Every cask of spirits,’ continued the man, speaking somewhat nasally and amidst a silence that might have rendered his voice audible as far as the forecastle, ‘is full of little devils swimming about. And every little devil, when he’s swallowed, carries seven other little devils, all a-clinging to one another’s tails, down into a man’s inside. Call it eight devils,’ said he, raising his voice. ‘One for each eye, is two; one for each ear, is four; one for the tongue’s, five; and there’s three over to keep the others goin’ it. ’Sponsible men, Abram, if that there sea is not to shut up this pleasing dream of liberty.’

‘Men,’ said Tom, ‘there’s sound reason in what you’ve heard. But I spy good sense breaking out amongst you all. Don’t let your feelings carry you away. Look at the mess in the cuddy! What good has your drunken, breaking scramble done? The sober and sound amongst you should compel the men who smashed up that pleasant interior to clear it out, and to make it a shipshape abode for those whose quarters it’s to become.’

Some one shouted: ‘We’ll have that done!’

‘Dow talk to us about where we’re to go,’ said Abram.

‘Talk to me, and I’ll advise you,’ said Tom, with his eyes upon the crowd beneath, folding his arms and standing erect.

‘You’re a navigator and know the world,’ exclaimed the sallow, ill-looking man with the hare-lip.

‘Aye, and I’ll counsel you when you’ve spoken and want advice,’ said Tom.

‘Where are we now?’ exclaimed a convict on the quarter-deck.

‘Shall I give it to you in parallels and meridians?’ answered Tom, with a sort of angry scorn in his voice. ‘You wouldn’t understand me. Suppose Mr. Bates brings you up a chart, there’s no room for hard upon two hundred and fifty heads to overhang it at once; and how many of you can read, that it should be passed around? Now listen: We’re in the middle of the ocean to the north of the Equator. Yonder,’ said he, pointing over the port beam, ‘many hundred leagues distant, is the Gulf of Guinea and the great bight of the African coast from Cape Formosa to Cape Frio.’

The convicts turned their heads all one way, staring like one man, some of them getting on their toes to look.

‘Yonder,’ continued Tom, pointing over the starboard beam, whereupon the heads of the convicts went round as before and all the poor, ignorant wretches stared as though by looking they’d see the land, ‘is the great Brazilian seaboard from Cape St. Roque to Rio Janeiro.’

I observed that Abram gazed at Tom with an indescribable smirking grin of admiration, as though struck by his familiar acquaintance with land entirely out of sight.

‘But my words,’ continued my sweetheart ‘give only a few who are educated amongst you any ideas. Yet I can tell you no more than this: That we are in the heart of the great Atlantic Ocean, and that a huge world for choice is spread on either hand, away in the Pacific by rounding Cape Horn and away in the Indian and Southern Oceans by rounding the Cape of Good Hope. Where shall I carry you to?’

A number of the convicts spoke at once.

‘Wud at a tibe! Wud at a tibe!’ yelled Abram.

‘Let’s go home!’ shouted a man on the quarter-deck.

‘Debate it,’ said Abram.

An uneasy stir ran through the mass of the convicts, and a long, deep growl of dissent.

‘Home!’ cried Tom, passionately. ‘How’s home called in English? What’s its name? Is it Newgate or Millbank or her Majesty’s ship Warrior? Is it the Dockyard and the Arsenal and irons and handcuffs, cursing warders and carbines ready for your brains? You want my advice; I’ll counsel you.’

Some angry laughter broke from the men.

‘Who’s the madman that talks of home?’ shouted Tom. ‘Shall I sail you up the Thames and moor ye alongside the hulk? Is Plymouth your port, or do you choose Portsmouth?’

‘Why not try for the islands about Torres Straits?’ exclaimed one of the convicts who had been a seaman. Several bawled to know where Torres Straits were.

‘To the nor’ard of Australia,’ replied the convict. ‘There the sea’s thick with islands. Plenty to eat and drink, mates, and casting away a ship is as easy and safe as drawing a cork.’

‘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.

‘What d’ye say to it, Butler?’ shouted a fellow.

‘Do what you please,’ answered my sweetheart.

‘Advise us,’ said the hare-lipped man.

‘It’s a landlubber’s fancy,’ said Tom.

A number of men talked at once. One of the original crew of the Childe Harold roared out: ‘It’s smothering rot! The capt’n’s laughing at you! Chase! In a craft arter this pattern, with twelve or fourteen hands and a working crew, ne’er a great gun nor a soul saving the capt’n and the mate as ’ud be capable of navigating them small craft after they was boarded and taken!’ He spat hard and turned his back in contempt.

‘My notion’s been this all through the blushen piece,’ said a beetle-browed, flat-nosed, ruffianly looking convict. ‘Sail to an oninhabited hisland and settle him. A hisland where there’s grub agoing in fruit-trees and beastesses of fish what crawls upon the beach, all which there’ll be some here as has heard of. Where water trickles sweet an’ cold, and the weather it ain’t too hot. There, upon that hisland, we can concoct and consart, and them what pleases can be took off by passing vessels. The others will be a-doing as did them mutineers of the Bounty whose capt’n he was named Bligh. We moors this ship and keeps her handy. Females ain’t ever fur to look for. In this ’ere ship wives can be brought from places which ain’t too fur off and where the colour won’t be wrong, the ’igh seas being vide of choice. That’s bin my notion all through the fired piece.’

‘Who’s next?’ shouted Abram, impatiently.

One of the remaining crew of the ship—a sailor with a cast eye and a head of hair so exactly resembling oakum that no convict could look at it without finding something personal and a sort of reflection in it—this man, who sat high-perched above the heads of the throng on the quarter-deck winch, snapped his fingers at the poop and asked leave to address the gents.

‘What d’ye want to say?’ shouted the hare-lipped man, who, I gathered, ranked next to Abram as the principal ringleader.

‘Gents, all,’ cried the fellow, ‘man an’ boy, I’ve followed the seas for two and twenty years, and in that time I’ve sailed all about the world and there’s scarce a furrin part as I haven’t visited. Now, if I was you, speaking with Captain Butler’s good leave, what I’d do’s this: Round the Horn t’other side of South Amerikay there lies what’s called the Narth Pacific Ocean. From the Sandwich Islands, right away to this side the Philippines, including of the Ladrones and the Caroline Islands, it’s all chock-a-block with the sort of little countries ye oughter visit. A lovely cordial drink they manufactures out of cocoanut juice. There’s no call for clothes. The natives are friendly disposed. Them as ain’t are easily knocked over the head. White men like yourselves live in them islands. If I was you gents, I’d get Captain Butler to steer the ship into the Narth Pacific, touch and discharge a score of ye, touch and discharge another score, touch and touch again till this here multitude was broke up. That’s my notion, gents, and your chance, and I’ll ask Captain Butler what he thinks.’

‘It’ll do!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘I would propose nothing better.’

On this there was some confusion, owing to a number of the convicts cheering, whilst others shouted questions to the poop. The silence upon the sea, and the ship lying as stirless as though she were at anchor, made this strange council of convicts somewhat ironical to my mind. It was hard to cast one’s eye over the lake-like ocean and realise the North Pacific as a part of the world that was to be come at by the vessel. Tom’s approval of the seaman’s scheme seemed to settle the matter. Many questions, most of them ignorant and ridiculous, were bawled. They were answered from the poop, sometimes by Tom, sometimes by Abram and the ringleaders, and sometimes they were answered by fellows on the quarter-deck.

After a little, and whilst the decks were a-buzz with the vast noise of talk, the prize-fighter asked Mr. Bates to produce a chart of the islands named by the seaman. Mr. Bates fetched a chart. It was a big sheet with a blue back, comprised a portion only of the North Pacific, and was very clearly drawn and printed. This chart was laid upon the skylight and the corners weighted. The principal convicts drew in a body to it.

I stood near and overheard the talk. They called up the sailor, and he pointed to three or four of the islands which he said he had visited. The hare-lipped man asked him if British ships of war cruised in those seas. He answered that here and there a small surveying-vessel might be fallen in with, ‘but nothen to take notice of,’ said he, ‘nothen that’s going to hurt ye. It’s your best chance, gents. Many sorts of vessels are a-touching at them islands for water, nuts, and sometimes for their entertainment, and often again for their convenience. The sailors run, ’specially from the South Seamen. You’ll have your yarns ready in case of questions; but down in them parts curiosity ain’t what you might call active. Stick to this here scheme, and there’s nothen to hinder any man as has a mind to retarn home from finding himself arter a year or two in Lunnon again, with dollars enough in his pocket to keep him in wittles till something turns up.’

‘All that this man says is very true,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘He’s given us a good scheme. We’re obliged to him.’

Saying this, he edged out of the crowd about the skylight and, seeing me abreast of the rail, came and stood beside me.

‘Is it a good scheme?’ I whispered, without looking at him.

‘It will amuse them,’ he answered softly. ‘I must seem in earnest. What do I care?’

‘You control them wonderfully.’

‘Poor wretches!’ he muttered, and, stepping to the companion-way, took the ship’s telescope out of its brackets and pointed it at the three boats upon the sea. Their situation was now determinable to the naked eye by the dim, tiny gleam of the long-boat’s sail.

‘They’re sneaking westward,’ said Tom, talking low with his eye at the glass. ‘The American seaboard may give me the chance I want. Eastward nearly everything afloat is British—curse the name!’

By this time, the convicts on the quarter-deck had got wind of the chart on the poop and were crowding up the ladders to look. That all might obtain a sight, Abram bawled a recommendation to them to form themselves into small divisions. This was done. The chiefs or ringleaders broke up the mass into little gangs, and one after another these gangs came to the skylight and overhung the chart. The cast-eyed sailor with the hair of oakum stood by to answer questions and pointed out the islands. Some of the educated convicts dwelt upon the chart so long, musing, running their fingers down the meridians, calculating distances and so forth, that the waiting gangs howled at them with impatience. Yet all was now orderly as one could wish—far more orderly than I had dared expect.

As the gangs passed on from the skylight aft, viewing the chart and questioning the cast-eyed man, they broke up and hung about various parts of the poop or returned to the main-deck. The coarse joke, the loud, brutal laugh was frequent; but there was no horse-play, none of the former huge, hideous, cart-horse gambolling, shouting, and tipsy fighting. The heat lay upon the people like a weight. Their spirits were sobered by the extraordinary oppression of the vast, silent, roasting calm.

‘Abram,’ called Tom, holding the telescope and still standing at my side, ‘let some of the men—those responsible for the mess—clean the cuddy out. Look through the skylight. The deck’s full of broken glass. And my advice to you and the others is to arrange without delay for the distribution of the people for the night. You’ll want cooks. Those who have been cooking so far should continue. They know what’s needed, where to seek, how to manage. Mr. Bates here will counsel you on quantities. I wish to see the ship cleared fore and aft, and everything ready for any sort of weather that may come along. Ay, and there’s more yet. Suppose an English man-of-war heaves in sight and signals us, we must know what to do and be in readiness to do it. The pennant’s an old cure for dull sight. A devilish keen eye that never winks lies spliced in the fly of every man-of-war’s whip. And d’ye see that, Abram?’ he cried, pointing at the sea over the starboard quarter.

Twenty or thirty convicts were upon the poop, and they all turned their heads and stared in a hurrying, eager way in the direction indicated by Tom’s levelled forefinger.

‘See what?’ exclaimed the prize-fighter, lifting the sharp of his massive hand to his brow, and straining his black, fiery vision.

‘That dark blue line.’

Tom stepped to the rail and cried out: ‘Stand by, all you seamen aboard this vessel, to trim sail!’ Then turning to Abram: ‘Tumble the people to their work of cleaning up, will ye?’ he cried. ‘Put the cooks to their duty; we can’t starve!’ He then turned to me and, placing the telescope in my hand, said loudly: ‘Marlowe, replace this, then go to your berth and carry what belongs to you to my cabin, and wait for me there.’

CHAPTER XXXVI
SHE SUPS WITH HER SWEETHEART

I went quickly, that the people might see how smartly I obeyed the new captain. A few convicts roamed about the cuddy, staring as though out of curiosity into the plundered berths and at the decorations and lamps, and needlessly crushing the broken glass into the carpet as they walked. I stepped warily and got to my berth, unlocked the door, and found all right within. I could not help reflecting upon what had passed since I was last here; it seemed a week since I was in this berth, so violent, hurried, and numerous had been the incidents of that day.

I made one bundle of my woman’s attire, the other clothes and a few toilet things, and went to the captain’s cabin. Then, thought I, I shall want a mattress to lie on, so I fetched the convict’s mattress, pillow and blanket, and shut the door and sat down to wait for Tom, no one during these journeys having taken the least notice of me.

It was horribly hot, and I opened the large circular port and leaned with my head in the orifice. I now heard a noise of the rippling of water, and saw the sea of a deep shade of blue to about a mile away, where it then gleamed white and polished, the calm being still unbrushed there. The ship had caught a little air of wind; ropes were flung down overhead, the soft patter of naked, the sharp beat of shod feet actively running about sounded through the planks; the silence upon the water was now broken by the voices of men singing out as they hauled, and presently at a pistol-shot distance I saw what might have been a piece of green timber feathered with weed slowly slide past.

I looked around me, and my heart was full of pity when I thought of Captain Sutherland. I pitied him, I say, and I grieved for the women and the little children, but the soldiers and the others did not appeal to me. I took no interest in the fate of the doctor and Captain Barrett, and I never could forget that one of the soldiers had shot the poor madman, and that all would have slaughtered every convict at the word of command with less compunction than the convicts themselves had sent them adrift.

The captain’s cabin was wrecked; he had slept in a handsome mahogany bunk, and its mattress was ripped open as though the beasts who did it hoped to find money or some sort of booty hidden in the hair. Two little miniatures had been left to hang upon the bulkhead; one was the captain, the other a lady, doubtless his wife, a rather pretty, grave-looking woman. I thought of how Tom and I had sat for our miniatures, and wondered if the captain’s wife were alive, whether she would ever see her husband again. Should I ever have seen Tom again but for my resolution to hide in the ship that was to transport him? This reflection made me mad.

Whilst I sat or walked about, lost in inflaming thoughts, I heard a great noise in the cuddy and, peeping out, spied some fifteen or twenty convicts hard at work brushing and tidying up the interior. Abram just then came in with a little company of the ringleaders; I may tell you that there were perhaps twelve to fifteen heads in this uprisal, not counting Tom, whom I never would name as having had a share in it.

On hearing Abram speak, I held the door open by about an inch. The prize-fighter and his crew stood close against my cabin, talking and looking on at the convicts at work. They were arranging for their own accommodation.

‘Butler takes the captid’s cabid, that’s fair,’ said Abram. ‘His y’u’g fre’d shares it. That’s Butler’s business. Bates a’d adother wud’s provided for yodder. You a’d be,’ he continued, addressing one of the convicts, ‘will take the cabid dext to the captid’s. Right aft don’t soot be; the botion there bakes be ill. The rest of you will fide pledty of roob. I recobbe’d that the better order abogst us tosses or draws for the accommodatiod dowd-stairs. We dote wadt to be suffocated by dumbers in this part of the ship; the old quarters will be thid (thinned) by those who cub aft; with the hatch oped, the widsails dowd and the barricade id shivers, they’ll be airy edough; ad thed there’s the soldiers’ quarters.’

A few minutes later Tom came in. He shut the door and took me by the hand and kissed me; sat down, and made me sit beside him, still holding my hand, whilst he gazed at me with the full affection of his dear, noble heart. He was pale with the heat. His eyelids dropped with the weariness that was upon him. He was clad, as throughout the day, in his convict shirt and trousers.

‘There is a little breeze, and we are under way again,’ said he. ‘I wish it may hold. There is no telling what ship may fall in with the boats, and the quicker I can push the vessel out of these parts the better, though I must keep the tropic latitudes aboard to get away in,’ said he, softening his voice. ‘We shall need smooth water and fine weather, dear one, and God’s care. It may be done to-night. It may be done to-morrow night. All must be in readiness.’

I told him what I had just overheard.

‘Let them do what they like,’ said he. ‘This cabin’s ours, and by that I mean that it’s yours. I can rest anywhere whilst you sleep, and can take a nap here, if you like, when you are out of it.’

I was about to speak. He smiled, and silenced me with his hand.

‘Don’t you remember the lectures I used to give you? Let all things be as I wish. Will and poor Bates will be safely lodged. It cannot be for long. A night or two. Nay a week, if you will. But long it must not be,’ he added, with a note of passion. ‘Could I keep you in this ship? What have you already heard and seen? Oh, it is not fit! It is not fit! Such scum as they are! Such foul-mouthed hogs! When I think of what I used to suffer at night in the hulk—forced to listen, lying sleepless, though nearly dead with the awful toil of the day!’

Our talk then softly and swiftly ran on many matters which I shall not tease you with, such as what we should do if we came off with our lives in the gig; the surest and yet most convenient places in the world for Englishmen to hide themselves in; my plans as to the disposal of my house in London; the drawing of my money secretly, so that the law should not be able to get at him by finding out where I was. These things and the like we talked of whilst we sat hand in hand, and sometimes he would break off to kiss me and thank me for my love and loyalty and to admire me.

I asked him how the gig was to be secretly provisioned and got ready for lowering.

‘I have arranged for that,’ said he. ‘I told Abram awhile ago on the poop, and some dozens besides heard me, that it was my practice at sea to keep my boats provisioned and watered. I then rattled about our having but three boats, talked of the big number of souls aboard, and said that in a day or two, when things had settled down a bit, I’d hunt out the carpenters and handy workmen amongst the people and put them to making a number of rafts after a design of my own, so that in case of foundering no man need lose his life for the want of something to float on. This sort of talk pleased them mightily. Convicts set a high value on their lives. The bigger the rogue the bigger the price. And of all the people in this ship Barney Abram is the man who’d be the least willing to die, be his spirit what it will when he enters a ring. So then and there I told Mr. Bates that the boats were to be provisioned and watered the first thing to-morrow morning, and I turned to Will, who stood by, and significantly ordered him to take the gig under his own care and see to her.’

‘That was clever,’ said I, clapping his hand with mine.

‘The difficulty I foresee,’ he went on, ‘is the helmsman. Yet it is to be managed. I wish there was no moon this week; but, fair or foul, I must have you out of this ship of devils.’

He then looked about him at the nautical instruments, the charts and books, peeped here and there, and took a sorrowful survey of the plundered berth. He put my convict mattress and pillow into the bunk and said that would be my bed by night—for the night or two we were to remain on board—that he would lock me up out of harm’s way and release me in the morning. I dared not expostulate; he was my master if he was not yet my lord; his least command, nay, his lightest wish, moved me as a powerful impulse. Where would my dear one himself sleep? Yet I was afraid to ask.

‘Now,’ said he, ‘I want you to keep clear of the convicts. Get away out of hearing of them. Lodge yourself here closely; you’ll not be missed. I’ll lock you in, and no one will dare trouble you. I’ll tell them you’re helping me in the navigation of the ship and acting as a sort of captain’s clerk. It’ll be but for a day or two. Meanwhile we must eat and drink. Come forward and see what’s doing in the galley.’

We were leaving the cabin, when he stopped to exclaim: ‘Do you know what a slop-chest is?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is there one in the ship?’

‘I’ve heard Will speak of a slop-chest.’

He nodded, and we then left the berth. They had trimmed up the cuddy, but the starred and splintered mirrors made a ruin of it. Abram was gone; a number of convicts lounged about the interior. Some seemed to be preparing the cabins; others were seated with their legs hoisted on to the table, others sprawled along the cushioned lockers. Most of them were smoking. A continuous hoarse, sulky growl of conversation, frequently broken by a short, deep laugh, rolled through the cuddy.

Tom called out: ‘Do any of you know if they’re preparing a meal for the people?’

‘Ay,’ answered one of the men, ‘the cooks are at work. Some beef’s been taken out of the cask, and the officer called Bates has sarved out tea and sugar—the reg’lar muck-mess, pal.’

‘Where are we to eat?’ exclaimed a heavy-faced, coarse-voiced man, who sat smoking in a lounge-chair near the mizzen-mast.

‘The chief’ll settle that,’ answered Tom. ‘There’s the whole of the ship for a dinner-table.’

We walked to the galley. The destruction of the barricades had vastly improved the look of the vessel. The decks ran in a clear sweep. Some of the men had scrubbed at the stain where the quarter-deck sentry fell, but the dye was still red in the plank. The mass of the convicts aimlessly hung about in groups. Numbers overhung the rail, staring out to sea and talking. Others crouched in clusters under the bulwarks; some had half stripped themselves. Many were on the poop, where I caught sight of Mr. Bates walking with Will.

I called Tom’s attention to the general air of listlessness. He answered: ‘It’s partly heat, partly reaction. They’ve woke up to the sense of what’s happened, and the loneliness of the sea is upon them, though they couldn’t give you a name for their sensations.’

This brought us to the ship’s galley. The convicts had partly demolished their own kitchen, yet, of the two, it had been more serviceably furnished for so great a crowd as the ship contained.

The sun was now hanging low over the western ocean. I never before beheld it so vast and so red. Its wake came straight to the side of the ship from the edge of the sea. I saw no cloud, yet a soft, gentle wind blew; all the water was dark with it, and it tenderly swelled the ship’s canvas. All plain sail was set, saving the main-royal, where the lightning had left no mast to hoist the yard on. These observations I made quickly whilst Tom put his head into the galley-door and talked to the people within.

The men who had cooked for the convicts under the doctor were the cooks now. There were three of them, dressed in clothes stolen out of the forecastle. Spite of their cropped crowns and a sort of actor’s bullet-headed appearance, that might owe something to their blue, shorn cheeks and chins, they looked, in their seamen’s attire, superior to most of the fellows who had slept before the mast. Tom questioned them. A large hook-pot of steaming tea was then handed to him. He gave it to me with a glance which I perfectly understood. They cut off a piece of beef and put it into a tin dish. With these things and two or three ship’s biscuits, which one of the convicts took from a dresser-drawer two-thirds full of that sort of bread, we made our way aft, I carrying the tea and the beef and walking after Tom, as though he used me as his servant.

One of a number of convicts at the break of the poop was Barney Abram. He called down to know what was that I had. Tom answered that it was his supper. ‘I can’t wait for you people,’ said he. ‘The mate must be relieved in a few minutes.’ We then passed into his cabin.

We wanted sugar; a ridiculous, trifling matter I should not mention but for this, that, with Tom’s leave, I went aft into that small starboard cabin which Mr. Stiles had made a larder of, and which before the convicts rose had always been richly stocked, hams and sides of bacon hanging from the upper deck, fine flour and white biscuits in casks, various sorts of tinned stuffs, with all such necessaries, not to mention luxuries, which the cabin table demanded—I say, when I entered this little room to seek for a parcel of sugar, I witnessed a crueller, more abominable scene of waste than could be invented: Flour-casks split and the deck covered with dust; broken bottles of pickles; ham and cheese, as though they had been jumped upon. Indeed, I want memory to describe this horrid picture of wanton, senseless waste and destruction. Yet I found what I sought, and took also some cheese, what I broke from one that lay already broken upon the deck, filled a tin with white biscuit out of a gaping cask, and so returned to Tom.

We made a good meal. Neither of us had tasted food for many hours. I asked Tom after he should have gone on deck to send Will to me, as the lad, being afraid to seek for food on his own account, might be half famished for all I knew. Mr. Bates I reckoned old enough and man enough to look after himself. I then saw that there was oil in the bracket-lamp at the bulkhead. Indeed, the seeing to such things had been a part of my work under the steward. When Tom had ended his meal, he got up and said: ‘I shall turn the key upon you and give it to Will, who’ll let himself in; but see that he locks you up when he leaves you.’

‘Shan’t I see you again to-night, Tom?’

‘Oh, yes. I’ll look in—say at nine. You can reckon your time by one of the chronometers. ’Tis Greenwich time, and our time will be about ——,’ and he named it.

He kissed me, and held me by the hands and looked at me as though his overflowing heart sought in vain to vent itself; then cutting the air with his clenched fist as if maddened by a sudden memory, he stepped out, turned and withdrew the key.

I waited for Will, but he did not quickly come. By this time it was nearly dark; some while earlier, however, I had thoroughly searched the cabin for means of making fire, and almost at the minute of giving up found a tinder-box and flint and matches in a little white box on a shelf. This apparatus was so like mine that I might have supposed Mr. Balls had presented it to the captain.

I lighted the lamp and sat listening to the noises in the cuddy. There was a constant tumult of voices and a clatter of metal dishes; I guessed that a crowd of the convicts were eating at the table, and, not easily finding fresh crockery, were employing the prison utensils. More than an hour had passed since Tom left, when the key was turned, and Will entered holding a pannikin of tea. When the door opened, the noise in the cuddy came in very strong and rudely; the wretches seemed to have gone off their heads again, and were bawling and singing as though something stronger than tea had filled their pannikins. They had managed to trim and light the cuddy lamps.

‘It’s time we were out of it,’ said Will, pulling off his coat and flinging down his cap with a shake of the head that drove the sweat drops in a little shower from his brow. ‘I’d rather take my chance on a bare plank than stick another week in this hell—and a hell it is, and a worse hell it is likely to become, though I hate strong words.’

‘Fall to your supper,’ said I, ‘and give me the news as you eat.’

He went to work and ate heartily. We had left plenty for him. Whilst he supped, he said that Abram had made Bates show him where the rum casks were kept. Bates told Tom of this, and Will, standing near, heard Tom ask Abram what the people intended to do. ‘“Why,” says the prize-fighter, “they’re going to brew a few bowls to drink one another’s health in. They mean to make a night of it. Don’t they deserve a little pleasure? You’ll take the head of the table, Butler, and give us a song.” “No,” says Tom, “I’m in charge of the ship——” “There’s Bates,” says Abram. “I’m in charge of the ship,” answered Tom savagely. “Don’t look to me to countenance this sort of thing. I should have hoped you and the other leaders valued your safety too highly to broach a rum-cask for the people.” A number of convicts,’ said Will, ‘who had drawn near, told Tom that if he interfered with their pleasures and liberty, they knew their remedy. Tom cursed them, and I thought would have spat at them,’ continued Will. ‘He grasped one of the strongest by the arm and, pointing to the boats, asked the man if he could count. The fellow fell back a step as though Butler had gone mad, and raised his arm to cover his face. “Count!” roared Tom. “One, two, three; good to hold about thirty men, leaving about two hundred and twenty to be roasted alive if the ship takes fire! Thirty to be picked up and hanged for this job!” he cried, with a laugh that had a real note of madness in it: “and the rest to be left here to fry or leap overboard, shrieking like the rats that’ll show them the road!” His manner, instead of further enraging, seemed to subdue the beasts. “There’ll be no fire,” said Abram; “why do’t you keep your tepper?”’

‘What followed?’ said I.

‘Butler walked away. Some of the convicts abused him when his back was turned. Barney Abram stood up for him. He said that Butler meant well, and that his anxiety for the ship’s safety proved his honesty. He was bad-tempered and a little mad; he was mad because he was being transported for what he had never done. Then, fearing I might be noticed as a listener, I slunk away, and Butler gave me the key, and told me to go to you and get some supper.’

He stayed until he had had time to make a good meal. We talked in murmurs, and nearly all our talk concerned our getting away from the ship. He told me that Bates thought that Tom would have ventured it this night had the gig been provisioned. Bates, he said, was wild to get out of the ship. He feared for his life.

Will went on deck after sitting with me for half an hour. He locked me in as he had been bidden, and when he was gone I felt afraid, for I thought to myself: What shall I do, locked up below here, if the felons set the ship on fire?

CHAPTER XXXVII
SHE DESCRIBES A WILD, DRUNKEN, UPROARIOUS SCENE

The noise of many voices had been slowly growing in the cuddy. The swell and the volume of sound were assurance that the interior was full. I wondered the people did not drink and revel on the deck, where there was plenty of room and fresh air and dewy coolness. The cuddy, perhaps, was like being ashore, and put them in mind of their old haunts. There was no likeness, indeed, to a tavern in it, yet the convicts might find something to refresh their memory of the boozing-kens in the broken mirrors and the low pitch of the ceiling or upper deck and in the bulkheads, which would answer to their idea of walls, particularly should the atmosphere become dense with tobacco smoke and sickening with the fumes of rum and clamorous as a houseful of shrieking madmen with the songs, jokes, laughter, and the many humours of the stews and kennels.

The Childe Harold was a very stoutly built ship. The cabin bulkheads were exceedingly thick and substantial. I could not hear individual voices plainly; the combined growl of the men’s speech, often rising into a sort of roar like to the noise of a breaker sweeping back from a beach after it has burst into froth, overwhelmed the particular notes and accents which swelled it. Sometimes I thought I could hear Barney Abram shouting, then there’d happen a sinking in the tumult when I’d catch a loud, coarse laugh, solitary and startling, or the voice of a man beginning a song that was quickly drowned by the freshening of the hubbub.

There was a constant scraping and squeezing past my cabin bulkhead, as though of people coming and going or thrusting to make room, with a jarring grumble of talk but indistinct to me. This sort of thing may have gone on for about half an hour. I looked at the chronometer, and calculated that it was about half-past eight. I longed for nine o’clock, when Tom had promised to come. The people were fast growing noisier. Frequent scuffles occurred just outside my door. The cuddy was densely packed, and the scuffling signified the struggle of some of the fellows to draw close to the table where the drink was.

It was short of nine by a quarter of an hour when the key was turned and Tom came in. This cabin-door was close to the cuddy quarter-deck entrance; yet the interior was so full that when Tom entered and came in with a sort of run, as though he had helped himself with his elbows, I saw the crowd, close-packed, pressed hard against Bates’s cabin opposite, as they were against mine. ‘Hold my arm,’ said Tom. I seized him, and he took me through the door and shoved to right and left to make a passage through, the cuddy entrance, that stood but five or six feet away. He then returned to lock the door.

I was now able to see and hear. The cuddy, as I had suspected, was packed full. The sailors had joined the convicts, so that there were over two hundred and forty people in that roasting interior. The atmosphere was dark with tobacco smoke, through which the large cabin-lamps loomed like the red moon in a mist. I coughed violently even on the quarter-deck whilst I looked through the open door, waiting for Tom to come out. By standing on the coamings of the booby-hatch, I got a view over the heads of the crowd and saw the whole picture.

Abram sat at the head of the table in shirt and trousers only; his black, pitted, ugly face shone with sweat; they had put one chair on top of another for him, and he sat with his legs wide apart and his feet on the table; between his knees was a pail, out of which he was ladling drink into pannikins which endlessly travelled his way, or were extended at arm’s length to him. He seemed half drunk, and occasionally withdrew the ladle full of the liquor to flourish it over his head, whilst he uttered a roar like a beast expressing joy and having no note but a roar; at such times he swayed on his perch as though he must topple over.

As yet not many of the felons were intoxicated, but anyone could see how it must be with them presently. The younger amongst the people made the most noise. Again there was the aimless shouting of the morning, the roaring chaff, the yells one to another from distant points, the frequent breaking into songs, with local choruses, swaggeringly chanted by those near the singer. The heat was frightful; I was amazed that the wretches could draw breath. At this foremost end of the table, high-perched like the ruffian Abram, was the hare-lipped convict; he, too, had a big pail of liquor betwixt his legs, the contents of which he served out with a pannikin. Nearly every man had a pipe, and again and again one or another of the convicts rose to get a light at the lamps. They stood on their chairs with a foot on the table and dodged drunkenly at the flame, with an open end of rope-yarn or a piece of wood, and whilst it burnt freely they lighted their pipes, blowing out dense clouds, and then they’d pass the burning brands to men shouting for them.

This was shocking to see. Nothing in the behaviour of the malefactors was so fearfully menacing. All that I here describe I witnessed in the few moments whilst I waited for Tom to lock the door. He forced his way out, took me by the arm, and in silence we mounted the poop-ladder. Oh, the sweetness of the air up there and the peace and beauty of that gentle tropic night! The moon was up, the dark sky was crowded with stars to the horizon, the ship was sailing noiselessly before the wind. Aloft, where the sails swelled stirless as carvings of stone, glowing in the beams of the moon that shone athwart them, all was silent. Forward, not a figure stirred. Aft, Mr. Bates walked on one side of the deck, and by the clear, white light in the air I distinguished Will at the wheel. Tom spoke no word till we were on the poop. He then said: ‘I believe we shall be able to get away to-night.’

‘The sooner the better, Tom.’

‘If they don’t set fire to the ship,’ said he, ‘we may be able to get away easily, and in a quarter-boat. I chose the gig because she hangs where she may be lowered without much risk of observation; but the people down there mean to drink themselves dead-drunk. If that happens, we’ll take a quarter-boat.’

‘Is that Will at the wheel?’

‘Aye. The dog whose trick was up refused to stand any longer when he understood there was grog going in the cabin. No other man would come aft to relieve him. So much the better. It all works for us.’

We joined Mr. Bates and went to the helm and stood there. They were now making a horrible roaring noise in the cuddy. It sounded like a great, drunken cheering of a ‘sentiment,’ or speech.

‘I’ve been watching them light their pipes,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘We must stand by, Butler.’

‘Bates, it’s to be done!’ exclaimed Tom, looking round the sea. ‘What shall we want? Nothing that may not be got and stowed in twenty minutes. Johnstone, jump forward and try one of the scuttle-butts. If there’s water, fill a couple of boat’s beakers.’

He took the wheel from the lad, who fled off the poop like the shadow of a cloud in a gale.