The utmost I dared hope was that my sex would remain concealed until we had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. When once our ship had entered the great Southern Ocean, there would be no more land to touch at until Hobart Town was reached. Often at home, whilst thinking of Tom and resolving to follow him, had I studied the map of the world—or rather those portions of the globe which a ship traversed in her passage from the Thames to Tasmania; and I knew that there was no land betwixt Agulhas and the great New-Holland continent, saving two little islands, one called St. Paul’s and the other Amsterdam Island, the latter of which it was then customary (I had read or been told) for ships to sight to verify their reckonings. But it was a desert island, not such an island as the doctor would set me ashore on; so that after we should round the Cape I had no fear of being landed; nor was it very conceivable that the doctor, however suspicious he might prove, would think it needful to tranship me should an opportunity occur, seeing that our destination would not then be very remote, with the proper machinery for inquiry at hand there should the doctor or Captain Sutherland think proper to charge me.
I was relieved, however, by finding that, during the remainder of that day, Captain Barrett took no further notice of me. The heat was very great. The doctor said it was like a furnace in the ’tweendecks, and that some of the convicts who were sick in the hospital were suffering fearfully. The heels of three or four wind-sails penetrated the hatches, but the air blew small and fiery hot, and the gushing of it down those canvas pipes made no sensible difference in the fever of the atmosphere of the ’tweendecks, filled with the breath and the heat of the bodies of the two hundred and thirty convicts.
At dinner in the cuddy, on the afternoon of the third day, dating from the incident of the singing of the hymn in the hatch, the captain spoke of a partial eclipse of the moon that was to happen that evening at about nine o’clock. I stood behind the captain’s chair when this was said, for I must tell you that I now regularly waited at table, though Frank was above me, and I had to do work which Mr. Stiles would not have put the young German to.
The doctor lifted his head from the soup-plate which he overhung and exclaimed: ‘A partial eclipse of the moon? That will be an interesting sight!’
Captain Barrett and the subaltern asked several questions about this eclipse. The conversation flowed on. I fetched a second or third course from the galley, and whilst the captain carved, the doctor, looking at him, said: ‘I have a great mind to allow the convicts, in divisions, to witness this eclipse. The spectacle might produce a very salutary effect upon the minds of many. The loneliness of the ocean, the sight of the familiar face of the moon being slowly darkened—it will provide me with a fine subject for our address to-morrow, and the prisoners will be more likely to benefit from my discourse by having beheld the eclipse. You are sure, sir, that the hour is nine?’
‘About nine. I will presently let you know for certain,’ answered the captain.
‘We should require the guard drawn up on the poop,’ said the doctor.
‘Give your orders, Ellice,’ said Captain Barrett.
‘The soldiers and the women will enjoy the sight,’ said the doctor; ‘it is insufferably hot in the prison. These occasional indulgences often do much good.’
‘How long does the eclipse last?’ asked the subaltern.
‘I believe the disk is less than a quarter obscured,’ replied the captain.
‘That should give time for each division to take a peep,’ exclaimed Captain Barrett.
Here I was sent into the pantry, and lost what followed. I gathered, however, on my return, from what the doctor and the others let fall, that the matter was settled, and that the convicts in divisions, the guard being under arms on the poop, were to be brought up on deck to view the partial eclipse of the moon.
Dinner was over in the cuddy by seven. The captain and military officers went on to the poop to smoke, and I carried coffee to them whilst Frank waited upon Mr. Bates and his brother mate. The doctor, who did not smoke, and who drank his wine well watered, descended the booby-hatch to acquaint the prisoners with his intentions, and to make the necessary arrangements. It was a true tropic night, splendid and silent. Often do I recall that night, and always with a bitter sense of the blindness of the human mind, of our incapacity to see one minute ahead of us. The moon at this hour was rising, and the lunar dawn lay in a streak of dim red along the eastern seaboard. I do not remember the hour; it was not yet eight bells; in the west was a fast-waning flush, for we floated in a part of the ocean where the night crosses the sea in a stride. Not a breath of air! The waters stretched flat as a surface of polished ebony, and only at intervals there ran a sighing sort of movement over the sea, which sent a delicate stir through the canvas, and set the dew raining from aloft in little pattering showers. In the south there was much lightning; the leap of the violet sparks flashed up the battlements and ragged brows of a mass of electric cloud. The water reflected the play, and sometimes a little note of distant thunder came humming across the glass-smooth surface. Elsewhere under the brightest of the stars hung tremulous wakes of silver fire.
Even now, early as it was, the mighty shadow of the ocean night was majestic and awful with the wild, flashful colouring of lightning in the south, and the dustlike multitude of stars over the three glooming spires of our ship, and the rising moon rusty-red and imperfect and distorted, as though lifting heavily through some noxious belt of African river vapour.
What I saw, however, was quickly embraced by my sight. Having put the gentlemen’s coffee upon the skylight, I durst not linger.
The steward found me plenty to do till a quarter before nine. I then went to my cabin to refresh myself with a wash. When I came into the cuddy again, I found the lamps turned down and heard a sound of many feet in motion. I stepped into the recess and found nobody there. I walked a little way forward along the gangway alley, and looking up at the poop, saw the guard drawn in a line near the rail. The awning was furled, and the moonlight sparkled on their firearms, and the bayonets glanced as the lightning leapt in the south.
A division of convicts was in the inclosure, standing in dusky groups, and at every man’s feet stretched his shadow, with scarcely a move of the clean black line of it, so reposefully did the ship sleep. I saw a crowd of seamen on the forecastle and heard women’s voices, and guessed that the wives had gone forward to view the eclipse.
The moon was now bright. You could distinguish faces by her beam. I went slowly along the gangway alley, looking hard at the prisoners, and when about midway I saw a man standing alone, with his arms folded and his eyes fixed on the moon. It was Tom. I stopped. I must tell you that this fore-and-aft barricade, which was designed as a convenience more than as a prison barrier, was not above five feet high, and formed of strong wooden rails, sufficiently wide apart to disclose the figure. I coughed, and then Tom saw me.
I advanced very slowly in the direction of the forecastle and then came to a stand and seemed to look at the moon; and when I warily turned my eyes upon the inclosure I observed that Tom had advanced as I had and was abreast of me, though he had drawn nearer to the fore-and-aft barricade. My heart beat quickly, for if I could speak to him now it would be the first time since that day when I had whispered as I passed and when he had discovered that I was on board.
I walked a little way farther. This carried me out of sight of the poop, unless any one should come to the head of the port poop-ladder and stare along the alley. The yards were braced forward, and the corner of the foresail lay between me and the moon, and plunged in shadow that part of the deck where I again halted. I saw that Tom had walked with me on the other side of the barricade, and when I stopped he stopped, too, so close that had he sighed I should have heard him. The shadow that was upon me was upon him and stretched athwart the deck, darkening the two galleys and the great mass of long-boat; but under the yawn of the foresail the forecastle whitened out in the light, with the silvered figures of many persons upon it, and beyond hung the jibs, falling like streaks of snow to the bowsprit and jibbooms. Outside the shadow in the inclosure the moonshine lay like frost upon the planks, and the shapes of the convicts, in their pale apparel, showed like figures in yellow wood. They moved or stood in groups; here and there was a lonely shape. The nearest group to where I had come to a stand was at a distance of about twenty paces, close against the fore-and-aft barricade. The yet distant lightning flashed upon the canvas, and high as the royals which crowned the towering fabric of cloths the sails flashed and faded in the electric play as though to the revolution of some gigantic violet-tinted lantern.
I kept my back upon Tom and seemed to be looking up at the sky; he stood with his right side toward me gazing aft as though he heeded me not. We spoke swiftly under our breath.
‘How is it with you, Tom?’
‘This coolness and freshness and moonlight—it is heaven after the hell below. My brave heart, my beloved girl, how is it with you?’
‘Well; I am happy. I am with you. Our time is coming. In our new home all this will be no more than a horrid dream.’
‘A dream!’ said he, with fierceness in his whisper. ‘It is no dream to be ruined and have one’s heart broken. They have made a devil of me. I am no longer fit for you. You don’t know my heart.’
‘Whatever you are, I am. If they have made you a devil I will be a devil too. I am yours and one with you, and live for nothing but for you. Ask me to set this ship on fire to-night and I’ll do it.’
‘Ay, yours is the true woman’s spirit. I have no right to such a love. It is too noble for a wretch. Don’t let them ruin two lives. Curse them! See what they have made of me! I would to God you were not here.’
‘Oh, Tom!’
‘Ay, but to see you dragging the dirty burthen of the cuddy along the deck—to think of my proud and beautiful girl masquerading as a boy—ordered about by wretches who would be glad to clean her doorsteps and windows at home—and for a convict! But you know I am innocent.’
‘Whisper softly,’ said I, marking a note of bitter temper, a tone as of ferocity in his speech. It hissed in his feverishly rapid whispers and seemed as a revelation to me of a change of nature. ‘Do not gesticulate; the sentry at the head of the poop-ladder seems to be watching us. I have settled it thus: On our arrival I will take steps to qualify as a landholder, and you shall come to me. Leave me to act and keep up your heart, and do not say you wish I was not here.’
‘This ship will never arrive!’ said he.
‘Why do you say that?’ I whispered, turning to look at him and then giving him my back again.
‘That’s what I mean by wishing to God you were not here,’ he answered, whispering passionately, as though he could not contain himself. ‘This ship will never arrive! I could save her and I could save life by a word. If I thought you were in danger—but not with me! Not with me! Abram and others have taken their oaths upon it, and they cannot do without me. They don’t know that you are a girl. They must not know it! You are my dear friend and that is enough; and they believe you to be friendly toward them and would help them if you could. They’ll not harm you. I’d strangle myself sooner than utter a word that should save this ship! I’m here for a crime I never committed. They have made a devil of me! I’ll take no active part. I’ll have no blood upon my head, but I’ll help them in the way they want when they call upon me.’
‘What can I do?’
‘Nothing but wait.’
‘I’d give my life to free you!’
‘Oh, your devotion breaks my heart! I was worthy of it once.’
‘When is this thing to happen?’
‘The ship will be in the hands of the convicts to-morrow.’
I fetched a deep breath and turned cold.
‘And Will—and Will, Tom?’ I said in a whisper that shuddered with the icy fit.
‘I have stipulated for Will. They’ll not hurt him.’
‘How will they be able to do it?’
‘Some of the crew are with them. For three weeks this has been secretly working out. I’m the only navigator among the convicts, and they depend on me.’ He added, after a pause, during which my breath came and went hysterically: ‘If you fear for yourself or for Will; if you think this thing should not be done—for it will be attempted, and if it is attempted it will be done—go to the captain of the ship, tell him that the convicts, backed by a portion of his crew, have planned to seize the vessel, and that to save her the sentries must be doubled throughout, no convicts allowed on deck, no messmen to pass the main-hatch sentry, the prison victuals to be passed through the door of the steerage bulkhead by the soldiers, mates, and trustworthy petty officers of the ship.’
‘Why should I tell him this?’
He was silent.
‘Sooner than speak, I would fling myself into the sea.’
‘It will be a bloody business.’
‘But if it gives you your liberty!’
‘They have driven me to it!’ he cried, raising his voice; and he stamped on the deck in the passion of the minute.
‘Gangway there!’ shouted the forecastle sentry. ‘What are you doing at that barricade? Come out of it!’
I instantly walked forward, and whilst I walked I heard the voice of the doctor on the poop.
‘Let the people fall in. Let the captains rank them on the starboard side, where they’ll get a good view.’
I went up the forecastle ladder, at the head of which stood the sentry. He was the husband of the pretty young woman—the Dick who had been on duty when I visited the barracks.
‘Is it you?’ said he. ‘You mustn’t get yarning with the convicts. It’s against the orders.’
‘Yarning!’ said I. ‘If a prisoner wishes me good-night and asks me questions about the moon, I may stop to be civil, I hope?’
‘It’s against the orders,’ said he, and with a swing of his figure he resumed his walk.
The greater part of the crowd on the forecastle stood in the bows or head of the ship. The whole of the crew was assembled; the soldiers’ wives, some of them holding children by the hands, swelled the crowd. I stepped to a part of the forecastle rail where the deck was vacant and looked out to sea. The hush on the ocean this side the storm was unutterably deep, and the distant tempest did not vex it, though the great masses of vapour had risen considerably and the lightning was running all over the breast of it in rills of fire, and the thunder boomed along the level plain of sea as though some leviathan mermen or Titans of the brine were playing at bowls upon the horizon.
I looked up at the moon and beheld the shadow of the earth touching the crystal edge of the satellite like a ring of smoke. The reflection flowed gloriously under the luminary in a spreading wake of greenish silver, whose hither extremity trembled to the vessel’s side. The convict ship, sleeping upon the dark and breathless surface of water, her white sails gently fanning at long intervals to a delicate motion of the hull; the dark figures of the convicts grouped in a mass on one side of the main-deck, their faces pale in the night-beam as they gazed at the moon; the crowd of seamen and women talking in subdued voices in the bows of the ship, where beyond them soared the jibs floating like gossamer in the moonlight; the dark ocean stretching, stirless and silent, into the north, star-studded, whilst southward it was lighted up by the distant, sunbright and violet flames of the electric clouds; the face of the patient, silver moon, with a shadow of the earth painted in a corner of her—this was a scene so rich in poetry, so vital, besides, with a strange, bitter human significance, that at any other time I would have abandoned my whole spirit to it and lost myself in contemplation.
But I could think of nothing but my conversation with Tom, the change my quick ear had detected in his nature, his assurance to me that I did not know his heart—above all, his statement that before to-morrow night the ship would be in possession of the convicts. I believed him, but I could not realise his meaning. Yet I remember very well that conversation I had overheard between two sailors who talked of the convicts, knowing that Tom—I guessed they meant Tom—was the only navigator among the prisoners.
I tried to settle my spirits, but my heart flung a fever into my blood and I longed to laugh out, to cry out, to run about. As the shadow deepened upon the moon, the crowd upon the forecastle fell silent. I looked over the side into the dark water and beheld a fish-shaped phantom of phosphorus sliding slowly along close under the surface; there was a little bubbling of fire about the centre of this strange shape where the fin of it projected. I knew what it was, yet glanced once or twice only without curiosity and went on thinking.
Would they spare my cousin Will? Would they spare me? How could Tom be sure? The liberation of the convicts would be like the disgorging of hell. How could Tom foretell what would follow the demons’ seizure of the ship? But I cared not. Let Tom but gain his liberty and it mattered nothing to me what followed, though my own life should be forfeited. By the magic of sympathy the change that I had noticed in him was working in me. I felt as though a devil had entered into me, even as Tom had whispered that they had driven him to it: that injustice and labour and punishment, maddening to an innocent heart, had made a devil of him.
I was in the way of the walk of the forecastle sentry; that is to say, at the extremity of it, and twice he halted at my side to look at the moon, but never spoke. I heard the doctor talking to the prisoners. He addressed them from over the rail of the poop, and no doubt made the most of this solemn occasion of eclipse and the terror of the gathering storm and the mighty scene of loneliness in whose heart the ship slumbered.
I was forced to the quarter-deck presently by a ridiculous argument between the boatswain and the cook. The cook declared that it had long ago been proved that the earth was flat; therefore, as that corner of shadow upon the moon was round, it could not be cast by the earth. Mr. Balls, with a loud, hoarse laugh, exclaimed that those who believed the earth to be flat were misled by the shape of their own heads.
‘Not that I’m a-going to argue,’ said he, ‘that that there shadder’s the earth’s. For the matter of that, who’s going to say it’s a shadder at all? The moon has a hatmosphere, I suppose, and why shouldn’t its hatmosphere be shaped as our’n is with mucky thicknesses like to what’s blazing away yonder? Who’s a-going to prove to me that that there shadder, instead of an eclipse, as they calls it, ain’t a storrum?’
I walked aft and sat upon the coamings of the booby-hatch where I was alone. A fresh division of convicts had been brought up, and the doctor stood over my head haranguing them. He spoke of the enormity of the crimes they had committed, and begged them to consider the moon as a likeness of their soul and the shadow overcreeping it as the darkness of sin and death. ‘But presently,’ said he, ‘that shadow will pass, and the brightness of the moon will look forth in splendour, and the sea beneath it will smile and rejoice in her light. Be it even so with you, my brother sinners; pray that the shadow that is upon you may pass away, that the light which is within you may purely shine again.’