“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, sir,” 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.