The convict ship Childe Harold drove steadily down the North Atlantic with the trade-wind, and then, losing those prosperous gales something north of the Equator, crept stealthily through a wide, white, gleaming zone of calms, blurred with fainting catspaws as a mirror is dimmed by the breath. No incident of any sort broke the profound monotony of the routine of shipboard life. Captain Barrett and the subaltern killed the time by firing at a mark with pistols, by cards, chess, deck quoits, fishing for sharks, and the like. Their duties were trifling. The sergeant of the guard seemed to do all the work. The discipline of the sea had the regularity of the tick of a clock. Sights were punctually taken, the log hove, the watch relieved—so it went on. The crew came and went to the sound of Balls’s pipe or to the warning voice of the officer of the watch.
I was now looking very close into the sea life, and was of opinion that it was a sickening, tedious calling. The atmosphere of romance which had coloured my early thoughts of it, got from my father’s and his friends’ merry or wild or exciting yarns, had perished out of my mind long before we were up with the Equator, as the term is. The captain was burdened with enormous responsibilities. The safety of a large, valuable ship freighted with human lives was dependent upon him, and his pay was perhaps less than the wages of a head-waiter of a City tavern. The mates were at the mercy of the captain, who could break them if he chose, send them forward to do common sailor’s work and ruin them. They lived without friendship. One was superior to the other. The captain addressed them only on matters of ship work, and talked familiarly with nobody but the doctor and military officers. There were three mates. Two of them led lives as lonely as the ship’s figure-head; the third, who was a person of no consequence, would carry his pipe into the boatswain’s or apprentices’ berth, and so kill time for himself.
I had not guessed that this was the life of the deep when I used to listen to the ocean talk of my father’s friends at Stepney or view the ships in the Thames, and create a fairy sea with rich skies and spicy breezes for them to sail over. It was my acquaintance, however, with the forecastle side of the life that completely ruined my idealism. I could not wonder that sailors should be the mutinous and growling dogs they are represented when I peeped into the forecastle and smelt the smells and blinked at the gloom and beheld the damp and the dirt, the half-clad figures of men who had shipped without a shift of clothes and whose wage would not bring them within hail of the slop-chest; when I saw the lumps of green pork or blue and iron beef carried from the galley into the forecastle along with the slush-thick peasoup or the dingy, bolster-hard duff at which any famished mongrel of the London streets might hiccough.
‘Is it the same everywhere at sea?’ I once asked Will.
‘No,’ he answered, ‘the crew are well fed and well treated aboard us—comparatively speaking,’ he added, with a grin.
‘And do you like the life?’ said I.
‘The country must have sailors, young woman?’
‘I would rather be a convict,’ said I.
‘Yet it was not always thus, you know, my pretty Mary Jane,’ he exclaimed, singing. ‘When Butler was a sailor you nailed your heart to the foremast; now he’s a convict you want to clank it through life, eh?’
‘It was not always thus, Mary Jane, because I had never been to sea. I read in books and listened to talk and painted on clouds. Now I am at sea. I have watched the life and swear that I would rather take a convict’s discipline along with a convict’s chances than be a foremast hand.’
My work was light, and this was a wonderful mercy, seeing that I had been made a cuddy-servant without anybody knowing I was a girl. I washed glasses, fetched and carried dishes, cleaned knives and plate and so on. This was no more than housemaid’s work, down even to the scrubbing of the deck, which was the same as washing the floor of a room. Added to this, I slept alone in a comfortable cabin and had all such conveniences as a young woman who masquerades as a boy could need.
I was nearly of Will’s height, and his clothes fitted me, and when the weather grew very hot I wore his flannel shirts, serge jacket buttoned up to conceal my figure, and white drill trousers. I also got him to buy me a new grass hat from one of the sailors, and thus attired, I looked the smartest, sauciest young fellow that ever stepped the decks of a ship. The captain and the mates knew how I came by the clothes I wore, and asked no questions.
The Woolwich apparel remained in the upper bunk. Long before this I had opened it and inspected the contents, and found every article as I had packed it. It was a very large bundle; it contained my hat and bodice and skirt and the under-linen and shoes I had removed when I dressed myself as a boy.
Meanwhile the doctor was highly satisfied with the progress the convict school-classes were making. He would come to the table and rub his hands and declare, with one of his grave smiles, that since such and such a date So-and-so—and here, perhaps, he would give the initials of a convict or quote several examples by their initials only—had got the Lord’s Prayer by heart and was beginning to pronounce words of two and even three syllables. I am sure he was a benevolent, good, pious man, but repulsive to my sympathies by sternness and officialism and, perhaps, by the thought that Tom was under him, in his power, of no more account than the rest of the prisoners, many of whom were being transported for vile and some for diabolical crimes.
I’d keep my ears open to hear if he spoke of Tom; but he never uttered my sweetheart’s name nor indicated him by any fashion of his own. Strange to relate, one of his favourites was now the prize-fighter Barney Abram. It puzzled me to imagine by what acts this man Abram had succeeded in gaining the doctor’s good opinion and confidence. Certainly during service no man was so attentive as the prize-fighter. I see him now with his head slightly on one side, his eyes fixed upon the doctor with an expression of half-complacent admiration, as though what he heard was not only doing him good but amazing him with the beauty and eloquence with which it was delivered. Then I gathered that Barney was very zealous in the school-work. I remember the doctor telling Captain Barrett that the tears stood in the prize-fighter’s eyes whilst he expressed his gratitude for the opportunities provided by the discipline of the convict ship for improving his understanding and qualifying him to think and reason as a rational, responsible being. Captain Barrett looked silently at the doctor through his eye-glass; but immediately the doctor had quitted the table the captain turned to Lieutenant Chimmo and spoke in a low voice, and then they both laughed wildly. Indeed, the subaltern beat upon the table as though he would suffocate.
I remember again, one afternoon, that I was sent with a tray of seltzer and glasses to the poop. The commander of the ship was seated in company with the doctor and the two military men. An awning was stretched overhead, and its shadow was pleasant with the breath of a small breeze off the beam, and it danced with a strange pulsing of lights from the diamond twinkling of the brilliant blue sea.
We had by this time crossed the Equator; I believe our latitude was about three degrees south. Sentries paced the fore part of the poop as usual; the sentry forward sheltered himself in the gloom of the corner of sail; a few convicts were lounging in a lifeless manner betwixt the barricades. Tom was one of the convicts. He sat at the foot of the mainmast in the shadow of it with his elbows on his knees, his brows betwixt his clenched fists, his head hanging down, his eyes rooted to the deck, his whole posture extraordinary with its suggestion of that sort of grief which turns a man into stone.
Captain Sutherland and the others sat near the foremost skylight that stood but a short distance from the break of the poop. The captain told me to put the tray down on the skylight and fetch a bottle of brandy. I returned with the brandy and a corkscrew, when, just as I was about to draw the cork, the doctor lifted his hand, and with an odd pleased look, bade me stand still and make no noise. Then it was that I heard a sound of singing; the melody was a hymn, but I cannot give it a name; I have since believed it was the air of a well-known hymn sung to words which were written by some convict converted into an honest man by the doctor during a previous voyage.
I judged by the volume of sound that about ten men sang; they sat under the hatch where the gratings made a frame like a bird-cage, otherwise we should not have heard them. They sang well, in good time, and one deep voice was noticeable for its manner of working into the singing in a harmonising way as though the fellow knew music.
Captain Barrett asked a question.
‘Hush, I beg of you,’ said the doctor, with a face of grave satisfaction.
No one could have listened to the voice of the finest Italian opera-singer of the day with more relish and ardent attention than the doctor to the chanting of the convicts.
The singing ceased. I stood at a little distance, with the brandy and the corkscrew, waiting to be told to draw the cork.
‘Whose was that deep voice?’ said Captain Barrett.
‘Barney Abram’s,’ answered the doctor.
‘Was it a Christian hymn they sang?’ asked Captain Barrett.
‘Certainly,’ responded the doctor. ‘Do you suppose that I would allow any other sort of hymn to be sung in this ship?’
‘What’s Barney’s creed?’ said the subaltern.
‘He’s coming right,’ answered the doctor, severely. And then turning to Captain Sutherland, he exclaimed: ‘I know you take an interest in these matters. You will be gratified to learn that Abram expressed a wish yesterday to be received into our Church.’
‘Indeed!’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘That could only be done by a bishop or a clergyman, I suppose?’ said the subaltern.
The doctor, without answering, left the poop, walked to the main-hatch and addressed some words to the men at the bottom of it.
‘What’s your opinion of Barney’s conversion?’ said Captain Sutherland to Captain Barrett.
‘My opinion is,’ answered the other, ‘that I shall give instructions for the sentries to keep an extra sharp eye upon him.’
‘Now the hymn’s over, suppose we get that cork drawn?’ said the subaltern.
I started on the captain of the ship turning to look at me. My eyes had been fastened upon Tom, who, on the doctor approaching the hatchway, had risen and gone to the rail, and stood there looking out to sea. The convicts came up in divisions to breathe the air. It was so burning hot that the doctor had stopped the walking exercise. Tom’s division happened to be up, and my eyes were rooted to his pale face as he stood looking over the rail into the dim blue distance, when I was startled by Captain Sutherland turning upon me.
‘Draw that cork,’ said he; ‘I had forgotten you.’ And he said to Lieutenant Chimmo, but he did not mean that I should hear him: ‘Do you observe that this lad is always at one’s elbow when the convicts are under discussion?’
This speech brought some colour into my face; I was sensible that I blushed and was deeply vexed that I did so. All three watched me draw the cork out of the brandy bottle. I poured brandy into the tumblers and filled them up with foaming seltzer and handed the draughts to the gentlemen. Captain Barrett looked me hard in the face when I handed him his tumbler. My fears made me find detection in his stare; I thought to myself in his heart this man has found out that I am a woman.
I went toward the companion hatch to re-enter the cuddy; Lieutenant Chimmo said loudly, as though indifferent whether I heard or not: ‘What a devilish good-looking chap he is! He blushes like a girl.’
‘There’s a mystery about the youngster,’ said Captain Barrett. ‘He puzzles me.’
I did not catch what the captain let fall, but feeling alarmed and eager to know if more was said, I ran hastily down the companion steps and posted myself under the open foremost skylight.
‘What makes you think so?’ I heard Lieutenant Chimmo say.
‘He seems too stoutly built for a lad,’ answered Captain Barrett.
‘I’ve met young fellows more girlish-looking than that lad,’ exclaimed Captain Sutherland. ‘The apprentice, Johnstone, I understand, knows all about him. Johnstone is of respectable stock. His father is a solicitor near the Tower; I’ve never done business with him, but he has helped many a poor gentleman of the jacket out of difficulties.’
The subaltern spoke of several effeminate officers whom he had met with in various places. He mentioned one Captain Dawson, who, he said, was called Pretty Polly. He wore his hair parted down the middle; it was a rich auburn and waved, and the fellows of his regiment tried to persuade him to let it grow to see to what length it would descend. He had no hair except eyebrows and eyelashes upon his face; his complexion was amazingly delicate, much more so than young Marlowe’s. He blushed readily; his voice was a contralto, and when he sang you thought you were listening to a woman.
This reminded Captain Barrett of a girlish-looking cornet named Sheridan. Then Captain Sutherland furnished an instance of a singularly effeminate second mate; after which, amid frequent sippings of brandy and seltzer and puffing of paper cigars, the conversation went again to Barney Abram, thence to other matters; whereupon, satisfied that they had done with the topic of girlish-looking boys, I went to the pantry, breathing a little more freely, though still somewhat uneasy, for I was afraid of the meaning I had found in the stare that Captain Barrett had regarded me with.