At the dinner-table that day most of the talk I caught concerned the convicts and the Australian settlements. Captain Barrett told the doctor that he considered his address to the prisoners deuced fine. The doctor bowed.
‘What makes criminals, sir?’ asked Captain Sutherland.
‘The dislike of honest labour,’ answered the doctor.
‘It’s the mothers who make the criminals,’ said the lieutenant.
The doctor viewed him sternly. I do not think he loved these discussions.
‘Don’t the magnetic character of an iron ship depend upon the direction of her head while building?’ said the lieutenant.
‘I have seen but one iron ship, sir,’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘Well,’ continued the lieutenant, ‘it’s so with the baby before birth: the mother may choose her own compass bearings for the child—virtue or vice, as may be. ’Tis the mother has the building of the bairn, look you, Ellice. If she don’t go right whilst the bairn’s putting together, be sorry for the little ’un. He’s booked in irons and a gray suit for a shiny land.’
‘Fudge,’ said the doctor.
The captain, however, seemed impressed by the lieutenant’s opinion, and continued to look at him.
‘Did you ever have charge of an uglier lot, Ellice?’ asked Captain Barrett.
‘I don’t recognise human ugliness,’ answered the doctor. ‘Is the egg bad? That’s it; never mind the look and colour of the shell.’
‘What becomes of a convict when he dies?’ said the lieutenant.
‘What becomes of the ripple when it breaks upon the shore?’ answered Captain Sutherland.
‘Do convicts really stand any chance out in the colonies, do you think?’ said the lieutenant.
‘An excellent chance,’ said the doctor.
‘Too good a chance!’ exclaimed Captain Sutherland.
I pricked my ears. I was then at the end of the cuddy waiting till the gentlemen should have done with certain dishes which it would be my business to carry forward.
‘How is a rogue to establish himself?’ asked Lieutenant Chimmo.
‘There’s plenty to be done,’ answered the doctor. ‘Labour is always in demand. When a man is on ticket-of-leave he may live where he pleases.’
‘They are much better used than our labourers at home,’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘What about the chain-gangs?’ exclaimed Captain Barrett.
‘The chain-gang is punishment,’ said the doctor. ‘It is hard work, but not harder than the toil of many an honest man at home for a famishing wage. Not harder than the labours of a French fishwife, for example.’
‘I would rather work in a chain-gang than dig in a coal mine,’ said Captain Sutherland.
‘A convict’s hired out as a servant by the Government to the applicant, isn’t he?’ said Captain Barrett.
‘Yes. You must be a landholder if you apply. I’m speaking of New South Wales,’ answered the doctor. ‘You must hold three hundred and twenty acres for every one convict you get. Seventy-five convicts are the limit. No man may have more.’
‘Should you feel happy, Barrett,’ said Lieutenant Chimmo, ‘to be waited on and generally done for by seventy-five of the gentry in our ’tweendecks? How would you like to be shaved by a cracksman, tucked up every night by an incendiary, cooked for by a chemist lagged for a trifling blunder in the shape of strychnia, waited on behind your chair, you know, by a gent who has been spun for digging up bodies?’
‘Are the convicts decently well fed out in the settlements?’ inquired Captain Barrett.
‘Yes. The hirer’s obliged to give his man plenty to eat. He’s made to sign a bond,’ responded the doctor. ‘The convicts feed on beef, mutton, and pork, and they get wheat and maize meal; their clothes are two jackets and two pairs of trousers a year, shoes and shirts, and a mattress and blankets besides.’
Just then the steward motioned to me, and I was sent out of the cuddy.
This talk made me very thoughtful. I went about my work as full of reflection as though I had been planning a poem. What was the cost of land by the acre in Tasmania? If I purchased three hundred and twenty acres in that country, would they give me Tom for a servant? Or, suppose Tom should be hired before I qualified for a landholder, for I was without a friend in Tasmania and months must pass before I could receive money from England, should I be able to bribe his employer into parting with him? My spirits mounted with my fancies. The doctor knew what he was talking about, and in imagination I beheld myself the owner of a little estate in Tasmania with Tom by my side, and our home as happy as love could make it.
In the first dog-watch that evening I had an hour to myself. The wind was mild and sweet, and the sea ran in soft folds. Frank had told me that the ship was many miles to the south of the Bay of Biscay, and that if our course was to be shaped east we should bring Gibraltar over the bow.
This young German joined me whilst I stood near the cuddy door, and asked me to smoke a pipe. I said that my pipes had been broken for me by the boatswain. He offered to lend me a pipe. I told him that the ship’s tobacco was too strong for my taste, that I was never much of a smoker, and then changed the subject, but watched him whilst he talked; conscience made me afraid; then again, I was much thrown with this young man who, though an insipid German, was not wholly a fool: it was impossible to say what little hints or tricks of my sex he might have observed.
I was made uneasier still later on, when Lieutenant Chimmo stepped through the cuddy door with a cigar in his mouth; he was passing, then paused and stood puffing and looking at me without taking the least notice of the German steward. I was nearly as tall as this subaltern.
‘Are you an only child?’ said he.
I stared at him, and in that instant meant not to answer; changed my mind, and answered: ‘Yes, sir.’
‘A pity!’ said he. ‘If you had a sister and she resembled you, she would be——’ He glanced at Frank, who was grinning, checked his speech with a face of contempt, and addressing me again, exclaimed: ‘I hear they are gradually making discoveries about you!’
This startled me, and I may have looked at him earnestly.
‘Oh,’ said he, smiling, ‘nothing’s been found out that’s going to bring you into trouble; on the contrary, you prove much more respectable than you seemed to wish us to believe, when you were dug up out of that hole forward. Your father was a sea-captain—the sea is a very honest calling. But why should you run away from your home to become a cuddy under-steward? There’s no ambition in that, my lad, is there?’ He cast another look of contempt at Frank. ‘Unless, indeed, you were for carrying out the old-established notions of the story-writers who are always sending their runaway heroes to sea as cabin-boys.’
At this moment, Captain Barrett, who was on the poop, overhearing the subaltern’s voice, called to him, and Lieutenant Chimmo went up the ladder.
‘I should like to be talked about as you are,’ said Frank. ‘Dot means dey know you vhas a shentleman. You vill find dot dey do not talk about me. I fonder dot they doan give you some verk your little handts vhas more fit for dan vashing plates.’
‘I wish they would not talk about me,’ said I. ‘I am comfortable and content. I wish to travel to Tasmania in my own way. I earn my food. I shan’t receive a shilling for my services. Why will they talk?’
‘Dere vhas something about you, Marlowe,’ said Frank, ‘dot oxcites and puzzles them. She oxcites and puzzles me too. What vhas it? Potsblitz! I likes to talk about you myself if I meets mit any one dot vill talk about you likewise.’
He was proceeding in this strain when my cousin Will came along the gangway alley. All the convicts were below at supper. Nobody was on the main-deck but the sentry at the hatch. A number of seamen were assembled on the forecastle, and amongst them were a few of the guard. At the break of that raised fore-deck stalked the sentinel, and his bayonet gleamed in the sun as though wet with blood.
‘Marlowe,’ said my cousin, halting at a distance, ‘come forward and I’ll give you the things I promised you.’
And having said this he walked away as though he had condescended enough. And he was wise to treat me so, for on stepping out of the recess and turning my head I saw the captain and the doctor and the two officers of the guard standing at the rail in conversation.
I followed my cousin to his cabin. He had entered before me, and when I arrived I found him alone.
‘I shan’t call you Marian any more,’ said he. ‘Suppose I should be overheard? And I’ll not call you Simon either. Why didn’t you ship as Jack or Bill? Take now what you want, and when you have shifted give me your soiled clothes and I’ll get them washed.’
He raised the lid of his chest, and I took a flannel shirt and such other apparel as I needed.
‘You’ll find that pilot coat melting wear a few degrees further south,’ said he. ‘Here’s a serge jacket. Will it fit you?’
I put it on, then rolled the clothes into a bundle and stayed to talk.
‘Will, does anyone on board suspect I’m a woman?’
‘I don’t know of any one,’ he answered; ‘what’s put that into your head?’
‘Nothing. I don’t want to be found out. Depend upon it, if the doctor and the others discovered that I was a girl, they’d suspect me of some desperate purpose and send me out of the ship at the first chance.’
‘That’s likely,’ said Will, cutting up a piece of tobacco to fill his pipe with; ‘but who’d imagine you’re a girl? You walk like a man and begin to roll about like a sailor. You lug your basket of foul dishes forward in true bottle-washer fashion.’
‘Not so loud,’ said I, looking toward the door.
‘I’ve heard nothing about you for’ard,’ he continued. ‘They occasionally talk of you aft. I catch scraps of speech as the skipper and the others stump the poop. I heard that fellow, Captain Barrett, say that he notices you take a great interest in all talk at table that concerns the convicts. I’d wear a deaf face in the cuddy, if I were you.’
‘I’ll do so. That Captain Barrett’s right. The hint won’t be lost, I assure you,’ said I, looking at myself in a square of glass and observing by the strong red light that my complexion had been something darkened already by my frequent exposure on deck, though it was still too soft and delicate a skin to please me. ‘But,’ said I, speaking low, ‘I shan’t greatly heed any suspicions that don’t touch my sex.’
‘Have you seen anything more of Butler?’ he asked, also speaking low.
I shook my head with a sigh, and, pulling the letter from my pocket, told him how long it had been written, and that I had found no chance of delivering it.
‘Now mind how you attempt to deliver it!’ he exclaimed. ‘If the sentry sees you giving it to him, say good-night to your projects, for they’ll find out you’re a woman, and lock you up for examination and punishment on your arrival. They’re hideously in earnest in these ships. And take care that you don’t get Tom flogged.’
This talk frightened and angered me too. I took several turns up and down the little berth, whilst he smoked and watched me, and then said: ‘I must risk it. Tom shall get this letter, and then I’ll be satisfied.’
‘If the third mate could be trusted,’ said he, ‘it might be contrived without risk. He serves out stores to the convicts, and Butler’s one of the gang who fetches the stuff. I heard the third mate tell Mr. Bates that. Bates takes a good deal of interest in Butler. It was only yesterday he was talking to the captain, and I heard him say he considered Butler an injured man.’
‘“Injured!”’ I cried, scornful of that meek word.
‘But the third mate mustn’t be trusted, so there’s an end.’
I looked at Will steadily, and said in a soft voice: ‘Isn’t Tom to be freed?’
‘“Freed?”’ he echoed.
‘Got out of the ship?’
‘How?’
‘You’re the sailor. Will. How would you go to work to enable an innocent man to escape from a convict ship?’
‘How would I go to work?’ He paused with his mouth open and the hand which held his pipe arrested midway. ‘How would I go to work? I’d tell him to jump overboard, or I’d slip a knife into his hand that he might cut his throat. What other way? Escape! Escape from a convict ship on the high seas! With loaded muskets ready to make eyelets in a man’s head at any moment in the night or day, with look-outs for’ard and look-outs aft, and a sentry below with a bayonet fixed for the first. Now, see here,’ said he, growing pale and putting his pipe down, ‘if you talk like that, if you allow any fancy of helping Tom to escape to enter your head, then, to save you from God alone knows what consequences, I’ll go right aft to the skipper and make a clean breast of it.’
‘I don’t say that it is to be done,’ said I, vexed that I should have so agitated him, ‘but is there any harm in talking, Will?’
‘Yes, in talking of such things as that. You are madly in love with Butler, and your notions and your dreams of helping him are mad. Haven’t you made sacrifice enough for the man? Do you want to become a felon too? That won’t help him.’
‘What could I do that you should talk to me like this?’ said I, reddening and staring at him in my old fiery way.
‘You could do nothing,’ he answered, ‘and that’s just it. But you can talk and you might attempt, and I’ll blow the gaff, so help me God, if you don’t give me your word.’
He was as red as I, and his face worked with consternation and anger.
‘I give you my word,’ I exclaimed, and took him in my arms and kissed him on either cheek.
The boy was deeply moved and almost crying. Just then an apprentice came into the berth, on which, in a changed voice, I thanked Will for his kindness, picked up my bundle, and walked aft.
My talk had so deeply scared my cousin that he took an opportunity before that evening was gone of again speaking to me. He implored me not to believe for an instant that Tom could escape out of this ship at sea. ‘You can’t help him,’ said he. ‘But what might happen to you? The punishment for helping a convict to escape is fearfully heavy. They’d try you at some Tasmanian court of justice and make a felon of you. You’d be a female convict, associating with the vilest of the vile of your own sex. Why, sooner than such a thing should happen, I’d go straight to the skipper and tell him who you are!’
I answered with a hot face and angry eyes that if I could help Tom to escape, they might do what they liked afterwards—mangle me, crucify me, bury me alive. ‘But what is the good of talking?’ I said. ‘I know there is nothing to be done. Don’t tell me I love Tom as if I were a mad woman. It maddens me to hear that said. I love him as sanely as your father loves your mother. I love him loyally and with all my heart. We were to have been married, and, before God, we are married, and who shall hinder me from fulfilling my unspoken marriage vow to abandon everybody and cleave only to my love?’ Here a great sob interrupted me, but I fought with my tears and after a little struggling pause I continued: ‘I will do nothing rash, Will. Be easy, dear heart. I would help Tom to escape this night if I could, but I cannot; I can do nothing: so rest your peace of mind on that.’