‘It’s a wild, mad scheme,’ said he. ‘Father and mother will think me a fiend for helping you instead of reporting you. But I see this, you mean to follow Tom, anyhow. No man living deserves such a magnificent love as yours. You’re one mass of loyalty and devotion from head to foot.’ ‘Will, you are here to say you will help me!’ I exclaimed, bending toward him and lifting my hands and clasping them in a posture of prayer to him in the passion of anxiety that was upon me. ‘I am more willing to help you,’ said he, ‘than I was when you talked to me the day before yesterday--for this reason: I’ve been on board the _Childe Harold_. She don’t tow over to Deptford till Wednesday next. I met our carpenter on the quayside, and asked him if he knew how they meant to fit out the vessel for’ard. He said he’d heard they meant to bulkhead a space off in a line with the forecastle entrance above, to serve as a prison, the hospital to be aft. “Will they leave the store-room bulkhead standing?” said I. “Yes,” said he; “otherwise the prisoners ’ud be climbing into the forecastle through the hatch.” I went aboard and had a look. When I talked to you about the black fore-peak, I had forgotten the line of main-deck that runs right for’ard. The space betwixt that line and the deck overhead is used as a store-room. Why had I forgotten this? Because, to tell you honestly the truth, Marian, I was never once down in that part of the vessel so as to remember it. The store-room would make a different hiding-place from the fore-peak I described. The fore-peak’s under it. There they keep the coals. You never could have hidden in it. But the store-room should be middling clean; black as a dog’s throat, mind you, but not deep like the fore-peak. The forecastle, where the men sleep, is immediately over. If a person wanted to get out, he could knock on the closed hatch, and there’ll be men in the forecastle to hear him. The horizon has cleared a trifle since I looked into that store-room.’ ‘How big is this store-room?’ ‘A good size,’ he answered. ‘Seven feet high; the beam I don’t know.’ ‘And the forecastle hatch is within reach of my hand to thump at if I want to get out?’ I exclaimed. ‘It will be the one place in the whole ship for me, Will!’ ‘There’s no other place, and that’s a fact.’ ‘The stores’ll be clean and sweet enough, I dare say--bolts of canvas, casks of stuff, spare lines and such things. I’ll be able to put myself out of sight if your bo’sun or any other man should come down with a light. I shall need water to drink. How about that?’ ‘You’re talking as if the job was settled.’ ‘It is settled,’ I cried, taking him by the shoulders and playfully pushing him backward in a sudden transport of mingled emotion. ‘Is not fresh water to be sneaked below whilst the ship’s fitting? I’ll think it over and tell you how it may be done.’