There one waited, pretending idle curiosity, till the warder's eyes were turned in the opposite direction, then out with the quid, and down with it at the nearest convict's foot. He made no sign; he never moved or looked up; he just covered the packet with his foot, and went on with his work. The donor retired a space, yet kept an eye upon him. Presently the man straightened himself out; he looked at his tool; he picked up a stone as if to knock off something; he hammered it, and looked at it again critically; the warder, who had watched his movement, turned his head, as satisfied that it was harmless; the convict put down the stone; then, if you had good eyes, you would see the quid transferred in a moment to the man's mouth. Oh! the rapture of that quid! He could not express his gratitude in words, but with a glance of his eye he could, and did. What would have been done to the boy had he been discovered is too terrible to be considered. However, that boy escaped. The sight of convicts working in a gang has always fascinated and terrified me. The submission and obedience, the awful silence, the evident determination to do as little as possible, the profound misery of the life, the cruel crushing down of manhood--these things I felt as a boy of twelve as much as I feel them now. And always with it that feeling of John Bunyan, "But for Grace, John, thou too hadst been here." A little up the harbor there rose a few inches out of the water an islet called Rat Island. This was the burying-ground of those poor wretches who died on the hulks. I have rowed round this island in the twilight of a summer evening, wondering whether the ghosts of the convicts still haunted this dreary spot and exchanged stories of crime and the cat-o'-nine-tails and irons with each other. I now understand that the ghost which could choose to remain on so desolate a spot must have been indeed a fool.