“Well, miss,” he said, “I am here, yer see, waiting for yer.”
“You are a good boy, Miles; but don’t you think I’m worth waiting for?”
Miles grinned from ear to ear.
“Indeed you be,” said he.
Sarah Purfoy frowned, and then smiled.
“Come here, Miles; I’ve got something for you.”
Miles came forward, grinning harder.
The girl produced a small object from the pocket of her dress. If Mrs. Vickers had seen it she would probably have been angry, for it was nothing less than the captain’s brandy-flask.
“Drink,” said she. “It’s the same as they have upstairs, so it won’t hurt you.”
The fellow needed no pressing. He took off half the contents of the bottle at a gulp, and then, fetching a long breath, stood staring at her.
“That’s prime!”
“Is it? I dare say it is.” She had been looking at him with unaffected disgust as he drank. “Brandy is all you men understand.” Miles—still sucking in his breath—came a pace closer.
“Not it,” said he, with a twinkle in his little pig’s eyes. “I understand something else, miss, I can tell yer.”
The tone of the sentence seemed to awaken and remind her of her errand in that place. She laughed as loudly and as merrily as she dared, and laid her hand on the speaker’s arm. The boy—for he was but a boy, one of those many ill-reared country louts who leave the plough-tail for the musket, and, for a shilling a day, experience all the “pomp and circumstance of glorious war”—reddened to the roots of his closely-cropped hair.
“There, that’s quite close enough. You’re only a common soldier, Miles, and you mustn’t make love to me.”
“Not make love to yer!” says Miles. “What did yer tell me to meet yer here for then?”
She laughed again.
“What a practical animal you are! Suppose I had something to say to you?”
Miles devoured her with his eyes.
“It’s hard to marry a soldier,” he said, with a recruit’s proud intonation of the word; “but yer might do worse, miss, and I’ll work for yer like a slave, I will.”
She looked at him with curiosity and pleasure. Though her time was evidently precious, she could not resist the temptation of listening to praises of herself.
“I know you’re above me, Miss Sarah. You’re a lady, but I love yer, I do, and you drives me wild with yer tricks.”
“Do I?”
“Do yer? Yes, yer do. What did yer come an’ make up to me for, and then go sweetheartin’ with them others?”
“What others?”
“Why, the cuddy folk—the skipper, and the parson, and that Frere. I see yer walkin’ the deck wi’ un o’ nights. Dom ’um, I’d put a bullet through his red head as soon as look at un.”
“Hush! Miles dear—they’ll hear you.”
Her face was all aglow, and her expanded nostrils throbbed. Beautiful as the face was, it had a tigerish look about it at that moment.
Encouraged by the epithet, Miles put his arm round her slim waist, just as Blunt had done, but she did not resent it so abruptly. Miles had promised more.
“Hush!” she whispered, with admirably-acted surprise—“I heard a noise!” and as the soldier started back, she smoothed her dress complacently.
“There is no one!” cried he.
“Isn’t there? My mistake, then. Now come here, Miles.”
Miles obeyed.
“Who is in the hospital?”
“I dunno.”
“Well, I want to go in.”
Miles scratched his head, and grinned.
“Yer carn’t.”
“Why not? You’ve let me in before.”
“Against the doctor’s orders. He told me special to let no one in but himself.”
“Nonsense.”
“It ain’t nonsense. There was a convict brought in to-night, and nobody’s to go near him.”
“A convict!” She grew more interested. “What’s the matter with him?”
“Dunno. But he’s to be kep’ quiet until old Pine comes down.”
She became authoritative.
“Come, Miles, let me go in.”
“Don’t ask me, miss. It’s against orders, and—”
“Against orders? Why, you were blustering about shooting people just now.”
The badgered Miles grew angry. “Was I? Bluster or no bluster, you don’t go in.” She turned away. “Oh, very well. If this is all the thanks I get for wasting my time down here, I shall go on deck again.”
Miles became uneasy.
“There are plenty of agreeable people there.”
Miles took a step after her.
“Mr. Frere will let me go in, I dare say, if I ask him.”
Miles swore under his breath.
“Dom Mr. Frere! Go in if yer like,” he said. “I won’t stop yer, but remember what I’m doin’ of.”
She turned again at the foot of the ladder, and came quickly back. “That’s a good lad. I knew you would not refuse me”; and smiling at the poor lad she was befooling, she passed into the cabin.
There was no lantern, and from the partially-blocked stern windows came only a dim, vaporous light. The dull ripple of the water as the ship rocked on the slow swell of the sea made a melancholy sound, and the sick man’s heavy breathing seemed to fill the air. The slight noise made by the opening door roused him; he rose on his elbow and began to mutter. Sarah Purfoy paused in the doorway to listen, but she could make nothing of the low, uneasy murmuring. Raising her arm, conspicuous by its white sleeve in the gloom, she beckoned Miles.
“The lantern,” she whispered, “bring me the lantern!”
He unhooked it from the rope where it swung, and brought it towards her. At that moment the man in the bunk sat up erect, and twisted himself towards the light. “Sarah!” he cried, in shrill sharp tones. “Sarah!” and swooped with a lean arm through the dusk, as though to seize her.
The girl leapt out of the cabin like a panther, struck the lantern out of her lover’s hand, and was back at the bunk-head in a moment. The convict was a young man of about four-and-twenty. His hands—clutched convulsively now on the blankets—were small and well-shaped, and the unshaven chin bristled with promise of a strong beard. His wild black eyes glared with all the fire of delirium, and as he gasped for breath, the sweat stood in beads on his sallow forehead.
The aspect of the man was sufficiently ghastly, and Miles, drawing back with an oath, did not wonder at the terror which had seized Mrs. Vickers’s maid. With open mouth and agonized face, she stood in the centre of the cabin, lantern in hand, like one turned to stone, gazing at the man on the bed.
“Ecod, he be a sight!” says Miles, at length. “Come away, miss, and shut the door. He’s raving, I tell yer.”
The sound of his voice recalled her.
She dropped the lantern, and rushed to the bed.
“You fool; he’s choking, can’t you see? Water! give me water!”
And wreathing her arms around the man’s head, she pulled it down on her bosom, rocking it there, half savagely, to and fro.
Awed into obedience by her voice, Miles dipped a pannikin into a small puncheon, cleated in the corner of the cabin, and gave it her; and, without thanking him, she placed it to the sick prisoner’s lips. He drank greedily, and closed his eyes with a grateful sigh.
Just then the quick ears of Miles heard the jingle of arms. “Here’s the doctor coming, miss!” he cried. “I hear the sentry saluting. Come away! Quick!”
She seized the lantern, and, opening the horn slide, extinguished it.
“Say it went out,” she said in a fierce whisper, “and hold your tongue. Leave me to manage.”
She bent over the convict as if to arrange his pillow, and then glided out of the cabin, just as Pine descended the hatchway.
“Hallo!” cried he, stumbling, as he missed his footing; “where’s the light?”
“Here, s
ir,” says Miles, fumbling with the lantern. “It’s all right, sir. It went out, sir.”
“Went out! What did you let it go out for, you blockhead!” growled the unsuspecting Pine. “Just like you boobies! What is the use of a light if it ‘goes out’, eh?” As he groped his way, with outstretched arms, in the darkness, Sarah Purfoy slipped past him unnoticed, and gained the upper deck.
CHAPTER V
THE BARRACOON
IN the prison of the ’tween decks reigned a darkness pregnant with murmurs. The sentry at the entrance to the hatchway was supposed to “prevent the prisoners from making a noise,” but he put a very liberal interpretation upon the clause, and so long as the prisoners refrained from shouting, yelling, and fighting—eccentricities in which they sometimes indulged—he did not disturb them. This course of conduct was dictated by prudence, no less than by convenience, for one sentry was but little over so many; and the convicts, if pressed too hard, would raise a sort of bestial boo-hoo, in which all voices were confounded, and which, while it made noise enough and to spare, utterly precluded individual punishment. One could not flog a hundred and eighty men, and it was impossible to distinguish any particular offender. So, in virtue of this last appeal, convictism had established a tacit right to converse in whispers, and to move about inside its oaken cage.
To one coming in from the upper air, the place would have seemed in pitchy darkness, but the convict eye, accustomed to the sinister twilight, was enabled to discern surrounding objects with tolerable distinctness. The prison was about fifty feet long and fifty feet wide, and ran the full height of the ’tween decks, viz., about five feet ten inches high. The barricade was loop-holed here and there, and the planks were in some places wide enough to admit a musket barrel. On the aft side, next the soldiers’ berths, was a trap door, like the stoke-hole of a furnace. At first sight this appeared to be contrived for the humane purpose of ventilation, but a second glance dispelled this weak conclusion. The opening was just large enough to admit the muzzle of a small howitzer, secured on the deck below. In case of a mutiny, the soldiers could sweep the prison from end to end with grape shot. Such fresh air as there was, filtered through the loopholes, and came, in somewhat larger quantity, through a wind-sail passed into the prison from the hatchway. But the wind-sail, being necessarily at one end only of the place, the air it brought was pretty well absorbed by the twenty or thirty lucky fellows near it, and the other hundred and fifty did not come so well off. The scuttles were open, certainly, but as the row of bunks had been built against them, the air they brought was the peculiar property of such men as occupied the berths into which they penetrated. These berths were twenty-eight in number, each containing six men. They ran in a double tier round three sides of the prison, twenty at each side, and eight affixed to that portion of the forward barricade opposite the door. Each berth was presumed to be five feet six inches square, but the necessities of stowage had deprived them of six inches, and even under that pressure twelve men were compelled to sleep on the deck. Pine did not exaggerate when he spoke of the custom of overcrowding convict ships; and as he was entitled to half a guinea for every man he delivered alive at Hobart Town, he had some reason to complain.
When Frere had come down, an hour before, the prisoners were all snugly between their blankets. They were not so now; though, at the first clink of the bolts, they would be back again in their old positions, to all appearances sound asleep. As the eye became accustomed to the foetid duskiness of the prison, a strange picture presented itself. Groups of men, in all imaginable attitudes, were lying, standing, sitting, or pacing up and down. It was the scene on the poop-deck over again; only, here being no fear of restraining keepers, the wild beasts were a little more free in their movements. It is impossible to convey, in words, any idea of the hideous phantasmagoria of shifting limbs and faces which moved through the evil-smelling twilight of this terrible prison-house. Callot might have drawn it, Dante might have suggested it, but a minute attempt to describe its horrors would but disgust. There are depths in humanity which one cannot explore, as there are mephitic caverns into which one dare not penetrate.
Old men, young men, and boys, stalwart burglars and highway robbers, slept side by side with wizened pickpockets or cunning-featured area-sneaks. The forger occupied the same berth with the body-snatcher. The man of education learned strange secrets of house-breakers’ craft, and the vulgar ruffian of St. Giles took lessons of self-control from the keener intellect of the professional swindler. The fraudulent clerk and the flash “cracksman” interchanged experiences. The smuggler’s stories of lucky ventures and successful runs were capped by the footpad’s reminiscences of foggy nights and stolen watches. The poacher, grimly thinking of his sick wife and orphaned children, would start as the night-house ruffian clapped him on the shoulder and bade him, with a curse, to take good heart and “be a man.” The fast shopboy whose love of fine company and high living had brought him to this pass, had shaken off the first shame that was on him, and listened eagerly to the narratives of successful vice that fell so glibly from the lips of his older companions. To be transported seemed no such uncommon fate. The old fellows laughed, and wagged their grey heads with all the glee of past experience, and listening youth longed for the time when it might do likewise. Society was the common foe, and magistrates, gaolers, and parsons were the natural prey of all noteworthy mankind. Only fools were honest, only cowards kissed the rod, and failed to meditate revenge on that world of respectability which had wronged them. Each new-comer was one more recruit to the ranks of ruffianism, and not a man penned in that reeking den of infamy but became a sworn hater of law, order, and “freemen.” What he might have been before mattered not. He was now a prisoner, and—thrust into a suffocating barracoon, herded with the foulest of mankind, with all imaginable depths of blasphemy and indecency sounded hourly in his sight and hearing—he lost his self-respect, and became what his gaolers took him to be—a wild beast to be locked under bolts and bars, lest he should break out and tear them.
The conversation ran upon the sudden departure of the four. What could they want with them at that hour?
“I tell you there’s something up on deck,” says one to the group nearest him. “Don’t you hear all that rumbling and rolling?”
“What did they lower boats for? I heard the dip o’ the oars.”
“Don’t know, mate. P’r’aps a burial job,” hazarded a short, stout fellow, as a sort of happy suggestion.
“One of those coves in the parlour!” said another; and a laugh followed the speech.
“No such luck. You won’t hang your jib for them yet awhile. More like the skipper agone fishin’.”
“The skipper don’t go fishin’, yer fool. What would he do fishin’?—special in the middle o’ the night.”
“That ’ud be like old Dovery, eh?” says a fifth, alluding to an old grey-headed fellow, who—a returned convict—was again under sentence for body-snatching.
“Ay,” put in a young man, who had the reputation of being the smartest “crow” in London—“‘fishers of men,’ as the parson says.”
The snuffling imitation of a Methodist preacher was good, and there was another laugh.
Just then a miserable little cockney pickpocket, feeling his way to the door, fell into the party.
A volley of oaths and kicks received him.
“I beg your pardon, gen’l’men,” cries the miserable wretch, “but I want h’air.”
“Go to the barber’s and buy a wig, then!” says the “Crow”, elated at the success of his last sally.
“Oh, sir, my back!”
“Get up!” groaned someone in the darkness. “Oh, Lord, I’m smothering! Here, sentry!”
“Vater!” cried the little cockney. “Give us a drop o’ vater, for mercy’s sake. I haven’t moist’ned my chaffer this blessed day.”
“Half a gallon a day, bo’, and no more,” says a sailor next him.
“Yes, what have yer done with yer half-ga
llon, eh?” asked the Crow derisively. “Someone stole it,” said the sufferer.
“He’s been an’ blued it,” squealed someone. “Been an’ blued it to buy a Sunday veskit with! Oh, ain’t he a vicked young man?” And the speaker hid his head under the blankets, in humorous affectation of modesty.
All this time the miserable little cockney—he was a tailor by trade—had been grovelling under the feet of the Crow and his companions.
“Let me h’up, gents” he implored—“let me h’up. I feel as if I should die—I do.”
“Let the gentleman up,” says the humorist in the bunk. “Don’t yer see his kerridge is avaitin’ to take him to the Hopera?”
The conversation had got a little loud, and, from the topmost bunk on the near side, a bullet head protruded.
“Ain’t a cove to get no sleep?” cried a gruff voice. “My blood, if I have to turn out, I’ll knock some of your empty heads together.”
It seemed that the speaker was a man of mark, for the noise ceased instantly; and, in the lull which ensued, a shrill scream broke from the wretched tailor.
“Help! they’re killing me! Ah-h-h-!”
“Wot’s the matter,” roared the silencer of the riot, jumping from his berth, and scattering the Crow and his companions right and left. “Let him be, can’t yer?”
“H’air!” cried the poor devil—“h’air; I’m fainting!”
Just then there came another groan from the man in the opposite bunk. “Well, I’m blessed!” said the giant, as he held the gasping tailor by the collar and glared round him. “Here’s a pretty go! All the blessed chickens ha’ got the croup!”
The groaning of the man in the bunk redoubled.
“Pass the word to the sentry,” says someone more humane than the rest. “Ah,” says the humorist, “pass him out; it’ll be one the less. We’d rather have his room than his company.”
“Sentry, here’s a man sick.”
But the sentry knew his duty better than to reply. He was a young soldier, but he had been well informed of the artfulness of convict stratagems; and, moreover, Captain Vickers had carefully apprised him “that by the King’s Regulations, he was forbidden to reply to any question or communication addressed to him by a convict, but, in the event of being addressed, was to call the non-commissioned officer on duty.” Now, though he was within easy hailing distance of the guard on the quarter-deck, he felt a natural disinclination to disturb those gentlemen merely for the sake of a sick convict, and knowing that, in a few minutes, the third relief would come on duty, he decided to wait until then.
For the Term of His Natural Life Page 5
