the conveyance of convicts. But the surgeons remained, and sailed voyage after voyage to the penal colonies. Ere long, the power which had been at first contested rested altogether in their hands. All contemporary authorities give but a sorry account of the condition of the convicts during the passage. Even when everything possible had been done to reduce the death-rate, by insuring a sufficient supply of food and proper medical attendance, the plain fact remained that here were a couple of hundred felons (or more) boxed up together for months, with no other employment or object in life than that of contaminating one another. As a rule all of the convict passengers remained idle throughout the voyage. A few might assist in the navigation of the ship so far as was possible without going aloft. Others who were mechanics found it to their interest to make themselves useful in their particular trades, gaining in return greater freedom as to coming up on deck, and perhaps some additional articles of food. "But the greater proportion of the convicts," says Bigge, "are sunk in indolence, to which the ordinary duties of washing and cleansing the prisons, though highly salutary in themselves and performed with great regularity, afford but slight interruption." They spent their time in gambling, quarrelling, and thieving from one another. In these relaxations the crew generally joined, as it was impossible to prevent intercommunication between convicts and sailors. The latter were not always immaculate, and were not seldom charged with purloining the private property of the prisoners, which had been provided by friends when leaving England. The medium for gambling was chiefly the wine and lime juice issued as part of the daily rations. If the convicts had money--which was unusual, except in small quantities--then they played for cash, but this was prevented by taking all money from them, as far as possible, on embarkation, to be kept for them till the voyage was at an end. The other method of speculation was also checked to some extent by "strictly observing that the allowance of wine and lime juice is taken by every convict in the presence of an officer at the time of distribution." Another plan was to deprive the offenders of their allowance, but to compel them to attend at the "grog-tub," and administer that which they had thus forfeited to some other prisoner who had behaved well.