On the fore part of her deck an iron roof protected the galley and water-tank, giving her an expression of being settled in life. In front of and around her bows was a planked and railed gangway, along which a warder with a loaded rifle marched to and fro. The heat of the summer suns reflected from the cloudless sky, the shimmering water plain, had blistered the paint--a staring dreadful yellow it was--upon her weather-worn hull. Armed figures walked on either side of this terrible vessel. Except the solitary boat in which Lance was a passenger, nothing seemed to come near. To his excited fancy she seemed a plague ship. He could imagine the dead in their heavily-weighted shrouds being cast in scores from her gloomy port-holes. He stared at her in sullen silence. He had lost the habit of ejaculation. What did it matter--what did anything matter? He was in hell. In hell! What difference did the depth of the pit, more or less, make, once within the Inferno? There was a swell, consequent on a gale which had been blowing on the previous night. The boat rocked and pitched as she came alongside of the grim ungainly hulk. His fetters made it difficult for him to step from the boat to the ladder. He tripped, and one of the warders was constrained to hold him up. 'Look out! you mustn't drop overboard and cheat Her Majesty's Government like Dickson did last month. Blest if you wouldn't go down like a stone with them clinks on.' A quick regret passed through Lance's heart that he had not dropped quietly overboard, and so exchanged this torture-ship for eternal rest and peace. But he clambered up with one warder in front and one immediately behind. At the deck he was met by the first and second officers, to whom an important-looking document was presented by the senior warder who had come down in charge. 'H--m, ha!' remarked the dignitary, opening it with deliberation and then glancing searchingly at Lance. 'Refractory, determined, and--put him into number fifty-six. If lower deck don't suit him, we must move him aft. Show the way, Mr. Grastow.'