I was kept waiting, I knew not why, and used my leisure to gaze about me. I was without fear. I had scraped, with a stout heart, through the worst part, and cared little for what might follow. I had made up my mind to avow my sex if they should send me into the forecastle to live. I was very sure I should be unable to keep my secret amongst that body of rough, blaspheming, joking sailors. Nor should I be equal to the work of a seaman—I mean as an ordinary seaman or boy. It turned me dizzy to look aloft and think of climbing those towering heights.
Whilst I thus thought, I used my eyes and examined the ship. Opposite the main-hatch, within the convicts’ inclosure, stood a tall box, something like a sentry-box; over it a bucket was hung by an iron bar, and there was a short length of rope attached to the bucket. I supposed the box was a sort of shower-bath for the prisoners. The main hatch was the only visible means of entering and leaving the prison quarters. It was extraordinarily protected, first, with heavy gratings with a manhole for the passage of one body, then by a strong railing of oak stanchions of a triangular shape, thickly studded with iron nails (the tops or heads of these stanchions I could just see as they sank like the vertical wires of a cage from the sides of the hatch down to the lower-deck), then by a strong bulkheaded passage or corridor with a door at the end, as I mentioned when I spoke of the sentry stationed there. I saw two galleys. The forward one I guessed was for the ship’s use, the after for the convicts; for in this galley I had observed a man in felon’s dress. A huge long-boat lay stowed in chocks athwartships just forward of the ship’s galley.
Such details to me entered like the very spirit of prison life into the gleaming fabric of the ship, soiling, debasing, so flavouring her that there was no magic in the pure freshness of the ocean wind to purge her into sweetness. Marvellous that human sin should subtly enter and find expression in timber and hemp and canvas, in bricks and mortar, in old hulks, in prison piles—it matters not what—subduing all suggestions to its own inspirations. I had noticed how the sordid influence and degrading quality of human wickedness had worked in dismantled hulks, making more hideous that which was already hideous with felon-carpentry; and now here was all beauty in this buoyant and bounding picture of a ship in full sail, leaning from the shining breeze, pouring into her wake the snow of the crested and dissolving surge, dimmed and defiled and saddened by her errand and cargo, by the aspect of her decks, and by the noise of men marching in irons.
All this while the doctor stood at the break of the poop with his hands upon the rail, watching the convicts exercising, and sometimes nodding in time when the fiddler changed his tune; the captain likewise watched the convicts from the head of the weather poop ladder; the two officers patrolled the weather deck, and both of them constantly looked at me when their walk brought them with their faces forward; the second mate was near the wheel, and the two sentries, with shouldered muskets with shining bayonets, crossed and recrossed each other at a little distance from where I stood.
By-and-by the boatswain and a soldier with stripes upon his arms came along the narrow gangway from the forecastle. They arrived on the quarter-deck, and the soldier, looking up, saluted.
‘Step up, sergeant, and you, Mr. Bo’sun, if you please,’ said the doctor. ‘Well,’ said he, when they had mounted the ladder, ‘what have you found where the lad’s been hiding?’
I was prepared to hear that they had discovered my stock of provisions and the bottles of water, and possibly the parcel of wax candles. But I was not uneasy; I was ready with a story. The sergeant, speaking with an Irish accent, answered: ‘We have found nothing, sirr.’
‘Did you thoroughly overhaul the place, Mr. Balls?’ said the captain.
‘Ay, sir. We’ve likewise been down into the fore-peak. All’s right for’ards.’
I was astonished, for I had never doubted that they would light upon my tins of meat and the bottles. Whether they had honestly overlooked the nook in which the things were stowed or whether, having met with them, they had resolved to keep the stuff to secretly eat and enjoy, is a question I cannot answer. Suppose this, they’d say nothing about the bottles of water, lest one discovery should force them into owning the other.
‘Captain,’ exclaimed the doctor, ‘I shall want that lad locked up until I have satisfied myself as to his motive in hiding!’
‘I’m quite willing to lock him up,’ answered the captain, ‘but I’m an old hand, and I may tell you that there’s never much need to scratch deep to find out your stowaway’s reason.’
‘I’m not satisfied,’ said the doctor, turning his head and staring at me very sternly; ‘you’ll lock him up, if you please.’
‘Clap him in your jail; there’s a proper prison below,’ said the captain.
‘Certainly not!’ cried the doctor, with a toss of his head, seemingly insensible of the sarcasm of the captain’s suggestion. ‘He’s no convict, sir, he’s the ship’s prisoner.’
The sergeant eyed me very steadfastly. He suddenly saluted the doctor, and exclaimed: ‘May I list him, sir?’
‘Try him,’ said the captain, dryly. ‘It’s a sure sign a young chap wants to ’list when he hides in the fore-peak of an outward-bounder.’
‘Leave that matter, sergeant. Captain, you will be so good as to lock up that boy,’ said the doctor.
On this the captain told the boatswain to send the steward to him. A man with prominent, purple-tipped cheek-bones and blue eyes, very narrow shoulders and legs arching out to a degree I had never before beheld, wearing a blue jacket decorated with rows of buttons, came out of the cuddy. The captain called him on to the poop.
‘That lad’s a stowaway,’ said the captain, pointing to me. The man looked. ‘By order of the surgeon-superintendent he’s to be locked up. Where? In the forecastle? In the soldiers’ quarters? You have spare cabins in the steerage?’
The man answered: ‘Three.’
‘Very well,’ the captain said. ‘Take him below and lock him up.’
‘You’re his jailor,’ said the doctor, ‘and I hold you responsible for his safe keeping.’ The steward looked uneasy and astonished, and cast a glance at the marching file of convicts.
‘Here,’ said the captain. The steward approached him close. Something was said. The steward then came to me and exclaimed: ‘Come along, young man!’ I followed him down the steps on to the quarter-deck. At this instant the fiddle ceased, the echoing tramp of the felons was hushed, the convict warders as before cried out sharply and fiercely.
‘This way,’ said the steward; and I walked after him through the cuddy door. Here was a bright, cheerful interior. The Childe Harold was a passenger ship, and her accommodation aft was rich and fine. She was a convict ship now, but they had made no change. The bulkheads, ceiling, and trunk of the mizzen-mast were beautiful with gilt carving and paintings; narrow lengths of brilliant mirrors flashed back the light that streamed through the skylights; the chairs and lounges were choicely upholstered. Whilst I gazed, my imagination figured the grimy, barricaded, sentinelled, ’tweendecks prison in which Tom was to live. I caught sight of myself in a looking-glass. I had omitted to pull off my cap when I entered the cuddy—an oversight that might have convicted me to a keen eye. I scarcely knew myself in the glass. Spite of the rub I had given my face in the forecastle, I was still dark with the dirt of the store-room. It was as good as a mask. No one would have suspected the delicate skin of a woman under the grime on my cheek.
‘This way!’ said the steward.
He led me down some steps that fell from a small square of hatch close against the inside of the cuddy front. It was gloomy down here. A corridor ran fore and aft, and on either hand were two or three cabins. The steward put his hand upon the door of the first of these cabins.
‘Step in,’ said he. ‘Is this your first appearance in quod, youngster?’
I did not understand him. He leaned against a bunk, thrust his hand into his trousers’ pockets, and looked me over. ‘What’s brought you into this day’s mess?’ said he. ‘Wasn’t you ’appy at home?’
I resolved to answer the man civilly, trusting he would befriend me.
‘I have friends in Tasmania, and wish to join them. I’m willing to work for nothing if you’ll give me work I can do. I’m not strong, sir.’
He asked me where I had come aboard, if I had known before hiding that this was a convict ship, where I had hidden, and how I had managed for food. ‘You’re a young gent,’ said he; ‘that’s clear. Them ’ands have never done dirtier work than quill-driving in some office, I’ll swear. Hope for your soul’s sake you haven’t run away for wrong-doing, and that there’s no kind ’arts at home a-haching for you.’
I declared in the most solemn and impassioned tones that I had not run away for wrong-doing, and that I had hidden in this ship for no other motive than to reach Tasmania. He inquired my name, and said: ‘Well, I don’t mind saying I like your looks. I believe you’re honest and there’s no ’arm in you. What does that there doctor mean by turning me into a jailor? I’m head-steward. That’s what I shipped for. He gets his living by looking after criminals at sea; and them as ain’t criminals, according to him, must be tarned into tarnkeys, is it? He be blowed! Ye’ve had a tidy spell down for’ards. Since Woolwich, hey? Well, the capt’n told me to give ye a mouthful of grub, and that looks well. I’ll turn the key upon ye, because it’s the capt’n’s orders. But as for that there doctor—he be blowed!’
He went out, leaving me easy, I may say almost happy, so different had been the usage I had received from what I had expected; though, to be sure, the doctor had yet to settle accounts with me. But what could he do? If he kept me locked up, I was still in the ship that was carrying Tom across the seas. If he threatened me with the gangway, there was my sex. I might know—nay, I would swear, myself a sailor’s daughter—that there was never a seaman on board that ship who would allow a hand to be lifted against a girl.
I took a view of the little cabin I was in. It was a steerage-berth, designed for the use of second-class passengers. Two mahogany bunks were affixed to the ship’s wall under the circular porthole. In a corner near the door was a convenient arrangement of drawers and wash-stand and a flap, which, on lifting, I found to be a looking-glass. I went to the bunks to look through the porthole at the sea, and beheld in the upper bunk, on the bare boards, a large parcel. I could scarcely credit my sight. It was, in truth, the parcel of wearing apparel I had made up when I put on my boy’s clothes and addressed to the care of the captain of this ship and left in my Woolwich lodging, on the bare chances of my landlady sending it to the vessel! I say it was truly extraordinary that those clothes should be lying in the very cabin in which I was now lodged.
Whilst I stood looking at the parcel and musing upon the associations it recalled, and speculating upon the ideas the landlady had formed of me, the key was turned and the steward entered.
‘Here’s some lush and a mouthful of grub for you,’ said he. ‘It isn’t every stowaway who’s waited on by a head-steward, I can tell you. But it’s the cap’n’s orders, and luck comes with looks in this blushen universe.’
He placed a mug of red wine and a plate plentifully heaped up with cold boiled beef and ship-baked bread upon the wash-stand and again left me, turning the key. I ate heartily, and the wine did me good. I should have been mightily thankful for soap and water, but had not dared ask the steward for such luxuries. I walked about the cabin and looked through the portholes, and killed the time by thinking. I was used to being alone, and after the darkness forward, with the furious motion of the ship’s bows and the noises in the hold and the thunder of seas smitten by the thrust of the cutwater, this lighted cabin was heaven with its tranquillity and gentle motion of deck. I thought of Tom, and struggled to realise his prison quarters. Gloomy I knew they must be, heavily grated and shrouded by its sentinelled doorway as the main-hatch was; gloomy and evil-smelling, repulsive and inhuman, with spiked barricades and a prison and hospital. But I could not witness the picture in imagination. How and where did the prisoners sleep? How and where did they eat? And what was their fare?
And what would my uncle and aunt think if they knew where I was? I imagined them opening that door there and looking in and seeing me dressed as a boy and leaning on the edge of the bunk. So far my love had marched to a conquering tune. And it was not only that I had overcome several wonderful difficulties for a young woman to encounter single-handed; it was not only that I was in the same ship with my sweetheart, bound to a land where we should be together, where in God’s good time and with patience we might come to dwell together as husband and wife, happy in our love, happy under new skies, happy in our eternal severance from the odious and inhuman associations of our native country; I, too, should have suffered with Tom, and taken my share of his misery, if not of his humiliation and degradation. This was a sweet and noble supporting thought. It was the one triumph of my love which gladdened me most to think of.
After I had been locked up two or three hours, and whilst the sun was still strong over the west, filling all that part with a moist scarlet light, the key was violently turned and Doctor Ellice walked in. My blood was fired by his insolent entrance, as though he were a warder with a right to break in upon a prisoner at any instant; but I swiftly cooled when I recollected that he did not know I was a woman. In truth, for the moment I had forgotten my masquerade. And, indeed, there is nothing so hard to sham as the airs and behaviour of the other sex. A woman may look a young man to perfection, as, indeed, I did; but her female tricks and instincts will be breaking through if vigilance sleep an instant. You will find this so by observing even the most accomplished actress in male parts.
‘I have come to talk to you,’ said the doctor, very sternly. ‘I don’t understand your presence in this ship. Your explanations to the captain and to myself are not sufficient, and are unsatisfactory so far as they go.’ And then he began to question me. Who was I? What was my age? Would I swear that I was going to Tasmania to seek some relations? Would I swear that my name was Simon Marlowe? By this time my blood was on fire again, and, weakened as I was by what I had passed through, I might guess the old flashing lights were in my eyes as I looked at him.
‘I’ll tell you this much about myself,’ said I, stepping up to him and swelling my breast and tossing my head after my fashion when I was in a rage: ‘my father was a sailor, and I know enough of the sea to inform you that the master is the only head and authority which the people on board need recognise. You are not the master of this vessel. What right have you to come here and talk to me as you do, and to insult me as you lately did in the hearing of others, with your doubts as to my honesty and my motives for leaving home and the rest of it?’
He gazed at me in silence with the utmost astonishment. Indeed, he looked crestfallen. His lips lay apart in a sort of yawn of wonder, but he quickly recollected himself, as you will suppose of a man who, as I afterward learned, had made several voyages in charge of convicts, and was used to felons. His face darkened with temper, but his self-mastery was fine, and there was no passion in his tones.
‘You do not understand. You are insolent and ignorant, though you are educated and refined, and altogether superior to the situation in which you have placed yourself. On this I base my suspicion and I must have the truth. I am supreme in this ship. The captain obeys my orders. This is a Government ship, and you are subject to my discipline.’
He then began to question me afresh very deliberately. But I observed that he no longer insisted upon my swearing that my name was Simon Marlowe and so on; and indeed it was wonderful that so sensible a man should ask questions which only a fool would put; for, let me have answered him as I might, would he have believed me? I struggled with my temper and replied to him; now and again I would not answer, and he passed on. Once he threatened to bring me to the gangway, by which he meant that he would order me to be flogged; I folded my arms when he said that and looked him in the eyes.
He continued to question me very sternly nevertheless; demanded full particulars of my coming on board; asking whether I had travelled directly from my home wherever it might be, or loitered at Woolwich before hiding in the vessel. I told him I had stayed a short time at Woolwich.
‘Are you acquainted with any one of the convicts on board this ship?’ he exclaimed, bursting out with this question abruptly, as though to catch me unawares.
My eyes sought the deck. I went to the bunk and looked through the porthole, turning my back to him.
‘Answer me,’ he cried.
I slowly confronted him and said: ‘Yes, I know one of the convicts.’
‘Which is the man?’
‘Barney Abram.’
He stared in good earnest, made a step the better to see me, my back being to the porthole, and said: ‘You know Barney Abram? Probably one of the worst characters in this ship. You are a friend of his?’
‘I did not use the word friend, sir. I know Barney Abram by sight. I recognised him as he paced the deck this afternoon.’
‘Where have you met him on shore?’
‘He was pointed out to me.’
‘Where—where?’
I paused to let him know I was not to be frightened by his imperious manner, and answered: ‘In Newgate Prison.’
‘Were you a prisoner?’ he asked quickly.
‘Whom visiting?’
‘The jail.’
‘Who pointed the man out to you?’
‘My companion.’
‘Who was your companion?’
‘I’ll not answer that question,’ I replied, ‘because if I tell you who that companion was, I shall be acquainting you with more than I intend you shall know. But neither will I tell you any lies.’
He looked hard at my hands. I held them up close to his face and exclaimed: ‘Judge for yourself, sir. I have been no prisoner!’ and laughed.
‘You are the most impudent young dog I ever met,’ said he, with a sort of admiration in the anger of his looks. ‘Where were you educated?’
‘I never went to school; I was educated at home,’ I answered, feigning an air of shyness and swinging my leg.
‘Is your mother living?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Father?’
‘I have a stepfather,’ I answered.
‘And his is the home you have run away from, I suppose.’ He mused for a few moments and then said: ‘Put on your cap, and follow me.’
He led me through the saloon on to the main-deck, and so through the gate in the after barricade where the sentry stood. I followed him without alarm, though I wondered with all my might why he should bring me into this convicts’ inclosure. Did he mean to send me below to live among the felons, or to be locked up in their bulkheaded prison? Not very likely. But what did he mean to do?
There was not a convict to be seen within the barricades. The sunset was rich and thunderous, and the air full of red light; the wind had freshened and blew very cold. The watch on deck were shortening sail, and the three royals and the mizzen top-gallantsail and some fore and aft canvas were slatting and jumping overhead, with a few seamen hoarsely bawling at the clew-lines, and some hands sprawling aloft. The first mate was now in charge, and he stood on the poop looking up, watching the fellows climbing. This man I had seen aboard the ship in the East India Docks. Tom knew him and had shaken hands with him. The captain was walking with the two military officers, the sentries crossed and recrossed the poop-break, and round about the little booby-hatch, close against the cuddy front, were two or three soldiers and a few women and children.
‘Pass the word for Barney Abram,’ said the doctor to the sentry at the door of the main hatch.
The soldier did so, and after a minute or two the prize-fighter, with irons on his legs and a chain triced up to his waist, came through the door, attended by a convict warder, or ‘captain.’ He was a fierce and brutal-looking creature when you saw him close. His face was pitted with small-pox, and embellished besides with the scars of many bloody conflicts in the ring. He wore an extraordinary expression; it was not a grin; it was not a smirk; it was a fixed, crafty leer of knowingness.
‘Abram, look at this young man and tell me who he is,’ said the doctor.
The prize-fighter, resting his elbows in the palms of his immense hands, leaned his ugly face forward and stared at me; he contracted his brows whilst he looked as though he hunted through his memory. At last he exclaimed: ‘I devver saw the young gentlebud before.’
‘He says he knows you,’ says the doctor.
‘By sight,’ I exclaimed.
‘That’s dot ibprobable,’ said the prize-fighter, with a glance at the sentry and a complacent look-round, and holding up his head.
‘Look at this young man,’ said the doctor. ‘Where have you met him?’
‘Debber saw bib in all by life. S’elp be as true as by ’air’s growig,’ returned the prize-fighter.
‘He says he saw you at Newgate.’
‘I was there,’ answered the prize-fighter, pursing up his leathery under-lip.
‘Observe him well and try to recollect if he was a prisoner?’
‘Dot in by tibe,’ said the prize-fighter.
This insinuation, after what I had said, enraged me. ‘You know I never was a prisoner, sir,’ I cried. ‘You are acting inhumanly in trying to confirm your hopes, but not your suspicions, that I was one. I was on a visit to the jail for my entertainment. My companion and I were conducted to the prisoners’ visiting-room. There I saw Mr. Barney Abram in conversation with a stout, dark lady, gaily attired, and I looked at him with attention because he was pointed out to me as the greatest prize-fighter of the age, and that is why I mentioned his name when you asked me whether I knew any of the convicts on board.’
A savage glow of pleasure brightened the prize-fighter’s eye as he listened; my audacious address, my reference to the brute’s fame, acted upon his spirits like a can of drink. The sentry eyed me askant; the warder with a satisfaction which his flat, ruffianly face could not conceal.
‘You saw be talking to by wife,’ said Barney Abram!—‘a stout, splendid woban, ’adsobly dressed as you put it, sir. The circumstance is all correct.’
‘You can go below,’ said the doctor.
I received a fierce, exulting, congratulatory glance from the bruiser as he turned about in his shackles to re-enter the door. He might have meant to applaud me for my fearless speech, or, which is more likely, he might have meant to wish me luck in the scheme which had brought me into conflict with the surgeon, and which he would naturally hope and believe was criminal.
The doctor now told me to pass on to the quarter-deck, and I thought he meant to take me below and lock me up again. Instead of which he left me standing outside the barricade and went on to the poop, where he joined Captain Sutherland and his military companions, all of whom had been gazing at us from over the brass rail whilst we talked with Mr. Barney Abram. I could not understand the meaning of this doctor’s purposeless questions and behaviour, but I dare say I was right when I supposed he intended to let everybody see and understand he was first in the ship.
Always, in the days of the convict ship, the unhappy criminals were dispatched across the sea in charge of a naval medical officer appointed by the admiralty, and called the surgeon-superintendent. The ship was virtually placed in his hands to do what he pleased with, and, though I don’t suppose he was empowered to interfere in the navigation of the vessel, he was undoubtedly privileged to order the master to call into such ports on the way as he (the surgeon) might choose to name; thereby retarding the voyage of the ship, and perhaps imperilling her, as was the case with a certain convict ship which was nearly lost through the surgeon ordering that she should make Simon’s Bay under conditions of season and weather which the captain declared dangerous. Hence there was usually a strong feeling between the surgeon-superintendent and the captain and mates. I suspected something of the sort here, and believed Doctor Russell-Ellice had given himself a great deal of unnecessary trouble to prove me a rogue, merely that the captain and the mates should see what a very clever fellow he was, and how very much in earnest also in his resolution to strut to the very topmost inches of his little dignity and his brief authority.