I have said that this passage of wet, violent weather lasted about four days. On the morning of the fourth day of it the steward sent me to the galley on some errand I forget the nature of. The cook was wild with temper. Everything seemed to have gone wrong with him. The baker had offered to fight him for his day’s allowance of rum. He had scalded himself, besides, during an unusually heavy lurch. When I looked in on him he swore and told me to wait. It was all the same to me. It had ceased to rain, and I stood under the lee of the galley for shelter from the wind.
It was a grey, dark, dismal, roaring day. The seas rolled in hills of green, and the foam of them, as their heads broke, was blown high up in white smoke. The ship looked strained aloft. Her lee rigging and gear were arched out by the gale; the bands of topsails were dusky with wet, and the wind screamed like children flying in terror. The barricades gave the ship a most miserable appearance. The decks sobbed with the ceaseless soaking, and the white water flashed inboards through the scupper-holes wherever the vessel buried her lee side. At the far end of the poop was the helmsman, sharply rising and falling against the whirling soot of the sky. The officer of the watch, clothed in oilskins, stood grasping a stay near a quarter-boat. A single sentry stood at the head of the poop-ladder. The poor fellow was sodden, and seemed withered by the ceaseless pouring of the blast. One cannot but feel sorry for soldiers at sea. The forecastle sentry looked equally wretched. Those on the main-deck were in some degree sheltered by the weather bulwarks. A strange smell of cattle, hay, poultry, and pigs, came from the long-boat, within and under which the live-stock were stowed. A dismal, wet, roaring, frost-cold picture. The melancholy horror of it is upon my spirits as I talk to you, and yet this was but the first week of what might prove a passage of months.
I heard the boatswain’s voice of thunder giving orders to some seamen on the other side of the galley. Presently he came round to my side of the deck, and on seeing me called out, ‘I’ve got some o’ your property. The chief mate says I’m to hand it over to you. Here’s the handkerchief,’ said he. ‘There was two pipes. Well, I can’t return ’em because they’re broke. Here’s yer tinder-box and arrangement, and a pretty contrivance it is. When I get ashore I shall ask my young woman to make me a present of such another.’
‘You are very welcome to it, Mr. Balls.’
‘Say you so? Smite me if I haven’t been swearing you was a gentleman born and bred ever since I first lugged you out of the t’garns’l. Well, I’m truly obliged. As pretty a little——’ and he walked off, talking aloud as he looked at the tinder-box.
I heard the cook speaking with great excitement to his mate, and guessed that I should do well to keep quiet until he told me that he was ready. A few minutes later a soldier’s wife rose through the hatch near the cuddy-front—they called it the booby-hatch—and came forward. She had a shawl over her head, and was bringing a pudding to the cook to be baked. A sudden heave of the ship drove her against the lee bulwarks. I went to her help, took the dish from her, and put it into her hands again when we had reached the galley. She was the pretty young wife who had before taken notice of me with smiles. The cook spoke insolently to her—asked her if she thought he’d shipped to do nothing but look after such small mucking jobs of barracks pastry as that there. He wasn’t ‘no blushen’ soldiers’ cook.’ If it depended upon him there’d be no army. ‘What! Keep a scaldin’ lot o’ gutterpeckers in money, good wittles, and fine clothes at the expense of the nation, whose sailors has to do all the real fighting when it comes to it?’ He said much in this way, shouting loudly, and sticking and thrusting and gesticulating with a long, dangerous-looking fork used for bringing up the meat out of the coppers. The woman threatened to fetch the sergeant. The cook, with a horrid laugh, begged her to lose no time. His coppers were ready, he said, and he’d warrant the sergeant boiled to a turn before four bells. After more of this Mr. Cook took the dish from the woman, eyed and smelled it, with a sarcastic leer, and requested the woman to clear out.
She stood at my side, breathing short, and very angry and flushed, and said if she told her husband of the cook’s behaviour he would kill him. I advised her to take no notice of the fellow. All sea cooks in a gale of wind were bad-tempered to a proverb. They had much to put up with. Only think of being forced to cook in a kitchen that was continually rolling about, saucepans sliding, sea-water bursting in, hungry sailors, with knives in their hands, full of threats and oaths if time was not punctually kept. I put the case humorously, and she began to laugh and to peep at me with her bright eyes.
She asked me what I waited for, and, one thing leading to another, she seemed in no hurry to quit me. And, indeed, we stood very snug, warm, and sheltered under the lee of the galley. We got upon the subject of the quarters below.
‘What sort of barracks have you?’ said I.
‘Come down and see them when you can,’ said she.
‘Whom must I apply to for permission?’ said I.
‘You’ll want no permission, I believe,’ she answered. ‘You belong to the ship. But I’ll speak to my husband, and the sergeant’ll make no difficulty.’
‘I should like to see the convicts’ quarters,’ said I.
‘You’ll be able to get a peep at them through the door in the steerage bulkhead. I may be able to manage that for you, too,’ said she. ‘Dick has sentry there for some time to-day. If you’ll stop here, I’ll find out at once, and come back and tell you the hour.’
I thanked her, earnestly hoping that the hour would fit in with my duties. Before she returned the cook was ready for me. I went toward the cuddy, and as I passed the booby-hatch the soldier’s wife came up.
‘You’re welcome to step below whenever you please,’ said she. ‘The sergeant’s got an eye upon you and wants to ’list you,’ she added, laughing. ‘And a sweet young soldier you’d make—a heart-breaker, indeed,’ said she, looking at me with a shake of the head. ‘Dick’s on sentry at twelve. If that’ll suit, come then. He’ll take no notice whilst you look.’
Twelve was the very hour I would have named. It was my dinner-hour, and I had a clear half-hour at the very least before helping to prepare the cuddy luncheon. When eight bells struck I came to the hatch, but warily. The doctor was talking to the captain at the after-end of the cuddy, and I did not mean that either of them should see where I was going. It still blew hard, and was very thick, and the officers were unable to get an observation of the sun. I stooped, that the two men in the cuddy might lose sight of me. By the looks of the sentry at the quarter-deck barricade I guessed he knew that I was going to pay his quarters a visit, and that it was all right. But I cared not who saw me descend unless it were the officers of the ship and guard.
I put my foot over and easily went down an almost perpendicular ladder. I found myself in a somewhat strange interior. On the right, or starboard, hand was a long cabin, which Will afterwards told me had been designed for a midshipman’s berth. This cabin was occupied by the unmarried soldiers. On the left-hand side were a number of rough whitewood cabins, rudely erected—such cabins as are put together for the use of poor emigrants. The married couples and children slept in them. Light descended through the booby-hatch, but the day was very scowling, as you know, and it needed some use to see well. A couple of tables were cleated athwartships, and two or three of the women were preparing them for dinner. A few soldiers were sitting about reading or talking. In one of the berths a baby was crying loudly, and several children sat in a group in a corner playing.
The good-looking young wife came from some part of these quarters, or barracks, as I descended. She showed me a married couple’s sleeping-berth, and bade me, as I was a young man, put my head boldly into the single men’s cabin and not mind them. I seemed to look, but in truth I had no eyes but for the strong, gloomy, prison-like bulkhead which served as the afterwall of the convicts’ prison. This bulkhead stretched from side to side. It was studded with iron knobs, mushroom-shaped. A number of holes were bored in it—perhaps twenty. I knew the object of those holes. They were intended to receive the muzzles of muskets, so that a volley of twenty muskets could be fired at once into the throng of convicts confined below in case of an uprising or other tragic trouble. I also observed what resembled a disk in the centre of this barricade, somewhat low down. I asked the woman what it meant. She inquired of a soldier, who answered that it had been a hole to receive the muzzle of a cannon, but that the orifice had been stopped.
‘It’s handy to command with grape and canister in case of a difficulty,’ said the soldier, speaking with an Irish accent. ‘A great gun, loaded to the muzzle, is the right way to keep an oye upon such lads as thim yonder. ’Tis wan of them oyes that never winks nor slapes.’
On the right of the barricade was the door, where stood the sentry—the ‘Dick’ of my pretty companion. I had supposed that the main-hatch was the only means of entering the ’tweendecks; but this afterdoor, it seems, was always used by the doctor for going his rounds.
‘Tell him to look and be quick, Jane,’ said the sentry.
‘Clap your eye to a hole,’ said the young woman. ‘Dick dursn’t open the door for you.’
I did so, and saw almost as much as if the sentry had opened the door. The light was faint and dim; such daylight as there was hung round about the main-hatch where the stanchions came down from the sides of the hatch in the form of a gigantic square bird-cage. There were no scuttles or portholes, no skylights for the admission of light or air overhead. The place seemed full of men, shadowy heaps of them, with a number of dim shapes in motion, giving a look of wild, unnatural vitality to such of the ghostly mob as sat and were at rest.
The soldier’s wife put her eye to a loophole beside mine. I asked her what those restless figures were about, and she answered they were messmen and mess helpers preparing for the convicts’ dinner by half-past twelve. A double tier of sleeping shelves divided into compartments, each wide enough to accommodate several men sleeping side by side, ran the whole length on either hand of these ’tweendecks. I heard a subdued growl of voices and the frequent clank of irons, but high above all sounded the ceaseless straining and crazy complaining of the numerous bulkheads which went to the equipment of the ship in this part.
Far forward on the left was a sort of cabin; I knew it was the prison by Will’s description. The hospital lay in this end, and I could not see it. The air was fairly sweet and fresh where I stood, owing to the booby-hatch lying wide open, protected as it was by the cuddy recess; but I seemed to fancy a dreadful oppression and closeness of atmosphere in those ’tweendecks where the many shadowy shapes were herded. Which of all those spectral figures was Tom? Oh, my heart! To think of him in his innocence, ironed, entombed in that close and dimly-lighted prison, forced to lie of a night, side by side with felons, obliged to listen to their hideous talk, to their boasts of past crimes, to their threats of darker villainies yet, when the moment should come to free their hand.
‘Now, Jane, your friend must be off,’ said the sentry, ‘or the doctor’ll be coming along.’
I nodded civilly to him, thanked his pretty wife, and went on deck. I was half mad with grief and passion. The reality had far exceeded my imagination of the wretchedness and horror of the prisoners’ quarters. I believe I should have been less shocked had I passed into the ’tweendecks by way of the main-hatch; but it was like taking a view of some nightmare imagination of human misery to peer through the loophole into that tossing, straining, and groaning interior, dimly touched with daylight in the centre, faintly irradiated by lantern-light in other parts, the whole strange shadow of it thickened and jumbled by the scarcely determinable shapes of men sitting, standing, moving, the clank of irons coming from them, and the low growl of speech.
I went about my work as usual, helped at the luncheon-table, exchanged sentences with Frank, cleaned and polished as was now my business; but all the while I was secretly raging with sorrow and temper. I was asking myself: Is it not in my power to release Tom from this horrible hell? Have I not the wit to devise a scheme for giving him his liberty? They may flog me, they may hang me if they will; let me but enable Tom to get away from that loathsome jail below, and they may do what they will. Twenty fancies occurred to me. I thought of my cousin Will assisting me to secrete my sweetheart in some part of the ship, as I had lain hidden, where I should be able to feed him and where he would lie until the ship’s arrival! Then I thought of his escaping in a quarter-boat which I would secretly provision for him! But why pursue the catalogue of these ridiculous dreams? They were a girl’s passionate, ignorant fancies, born of despair and wrath. In some of my fancies I was as wicked as the worst of the wretches below. I would have sacrificed every life on board, including my own, to procure Tom’s liberty, to free him from the horrors the unjust hand of the law had heaped upon him. I would have set fire to the ship, I would have gnawed a hole in her bottom as patiently as a rat’s tooth penetrates a plank, if by burning, if by sinking, the vessel I could have liberated my sweetheart.
But I cooled down by degrees. Indeed, this morning the steward kept me running about, and I could only think in snatches; so that meditation was thin and brief, and its influence light and passing.
During the afternoon, some considerable time before sunset, the wind shifted, the sky cleared, and we had fine weather. Sail was made on the ship. The sea ran in a strong, dark-blue swell, which shouldered the sunshine from brow to brow, and filled the ocean in the south-west with a roving splendour. Two or three white sails of ships showed upon the horizon. I supposed that by this time we had been blown some distance out of the Bay of Biscay. Certainly our course had been straight and our speed thunderous during the past dark days of storm.
Shortly after the weather cleared the convicts were ordered on deck. I stood in the cuddy door to see them assemble. They came up one by one, and were massed in lines close to the barricade, with their faces turned toward the poop. I supposed they had been disciplined aboard the hulk. The convict ‘captains’ and felon overseers found no difficulty in marshalling them. The men fell in as though they had been soldiers, wheeling about and taking up their positions whilst the decks rang with short, sharp cries of command and the tramp of ironed feet. I took a step on to the quarter-deck and looked up at the break of the poop, and there saw the doctor, with Captain Sutherland by his side. The officers of the guard were at the rail, and behind stood a number of the guard under arms.
As the barricade obstructed my sight, and as I was determined to see what was going on, I picked up a tray and went down the port gangway alley, as though I had business at the galley. The yards were braced somewhat forward, and I stood close to the great maintack, which sheltered me from the sight of the poop. Here I could observe without being seen. Unhappily, my position brought the backs of the convicts upon me. Tom was not to be distinguished among that throng of closely packed felons. A few were in the hospital; two or three in the prison. There might be two hundred and twenty men gathered together behind the barricade—all facing aft—their faces upturned to the doctor.
His purpose in assembling them was to deliver a lecture. He spoke loudly and with earnestness, but seemed to have no sense whatever of irony. It was strange that a person of his experience should not guess that the greater part of his discourse would be listened to with the tongue in the cheek. He talked to the convicts as though they had been a congregation of respectable worshippers, people who led an honest life in their trades and houses six days, and on the seventh attended church, instead of a body of men of whom two-thirds were hardened scoundrels—seasoned, stewed, salted down in crime; miscreants who would return to their old villainies, and to viler villainies yet, the instant they were at large, if the country they found themselves in provided them with the chances they wanted.
I remember he told them they were one large family, and that the opportunities during the voyage of exercising the best and kindliest feelings would be ample. Every one was to prefer his brother to himself. They were not only to be careful of each other’s comforts, but to be kindly watchful over each other’s speech and behaviour. ‘I forbid,’ said he, ‘the use of all irritating or provoking speech or gestures in your intercourse with each other, the employment of all vulgar epithets and unmanly nicknames, the use of which always indicates a low and undisciplined mind.’ I listened for a general laugh when he pointed out the necessity for convicts cultivating a humble, meek, and gentle spirit—submissive, contented, and thankful; of their ever remembering the injury they had inflicted on their country, and particularly the expense to which they had put the Government!
The prisoners swayed with the movements of the deck. They all seemed to listen with attention to the doctor’s discourse, but then any man will appear to listen with attention to the speech of another who has it in his power to flog him for not doing so. It was a strange scene, familiar enough in those days, never more by any possibility to be beheld again. On high spread the canvas in cloud upon cloud, swelling to the western brightness; soft masses of vapour rolled stately under a sky of deep, liquid blue; the swaying mass of convicts in the sickly hue of their prison dress, their irons like a chain cable stretching the length of the planks, half filled the barricade inclosure; at the brass rail above stood the doctor, flourishing his hand whilst he addressed them, and the listeners beside him were thrown out strong upon the eye by the red line of soldiers standing close behind. A pause seemed to fall upon the ship; the sailors dropped their work to stare and hearken; the second mate and the apprentices strained their gaze from the lee side of the poop at the rows of faces; far aft was the helmsman, stretching his neck and turning his head on one side and then on the other, as though to hear what the doctor said.
‘The youngest amongst you now,’ continued the doctor, ‘in some measure understand that it is in the strictest sense a moral discipline which I desire to see in operation on board this transport. In further proof of which I shall give orders that those irons—the badges of your disgrace—with which you are at present fettered, be removed from the whole of you; and I do most ardently hope that when I have once caused them to be struck off, you will not by your conduct demand of their being again replaced; for what can be more disgraceful to you and painful to me than the clanking of those irons as you walk along the decks?’
The address lasted about three-quarters of an hour. Captain Barrett replaced and let fall his eye-glass with impatience. A number of the convicts were now sent below, to return presently, as I supposed, when the others should have taken their allowance of exercise. I dared not linger, and walked slowly aft, sending searching looks at the prisoners, though I did not see Tom. How was I to deliver my letter? But it chanced that I had sight of many strange faces. A gang of prisoners passed close as I went toward the cuddy; a few were grey-haired men, bowed and wrinkled; some were young, and I marked that all these had defiant looks. One countenance, quickly as it passed, impressed me strongly; the man had fine, large, black, flashing eyes, and was a handsome, dark person, half a head taller than those who trudged near him; he held himself erect, and I seemed to notice a sort of theatrical air in his strides spite of the irons. I had heard someone say there was an actor among the felons, and I guessed that man was he.