I never could have imagined such a scene as this interior presented. Most of the tall, thin sheets of looking-glass had been shivered. The doors of the cabins lay open, and the decks were covered with the tossed and tumbled contents of rifled drawers, lockers, and boxes. The convicts had found good booty in these cabins. Here had slept the captain, the two mates, the military officers, and the surgeon-superintendent, and one or two spare berths aft had been filled with certain valuable consignments to Sydney, to which port the ship was to have proceeded after discharging her cargo of criminals at Hobart Town. The place was crowded with the felons. They stood two and three deep at the table, which, as you will remember, I and my associate had prepared for breakfast. One of the aftermost berths had been used as a cabin larder; here the prisoners had found plenty to eat and drink. The table was strewn with tins of meat, pots of preserves, bottles of beer, biscuits, bones of ham, and so forth. The fellows bawled to one another to pass this and that; to hand the ale along; to sling that bottle of sherry across. They knocked the heads off the bottles and, after emptying them, threw them on the deck. The drink had mounted into the heads of many, and the din of their shouts, songs, and laughter, their filthy language and hideous raillery, would have drowned the noise of a thunderstorm. Here and there lay portions of convicts’ clothes torn into shreds. Many of the felons were dressed in plundered apparel. A man at the foot of the table wore the doctor’s naval coat; others the clothes which had belonged to Lieutenant Chimmo and Captain Barrett. A few had attired themselves in the uniforms of these officers, one in a tunic, another in the trousers, a third in a military cloak. One fellow who ran past us had the subaltern’s sword strapped to his hip. ‘Which was the captain’s cabin?’ said Tom. We looked into it; it had been sacked like the rest; the lockers opened and the contents looted; the lid of a large sea-chest was smashed as though by a chopper; but they had left the nautical instruments alone, perhaps guessing their importance. The chronometers were safe; there were sextants in their cases on a shelf; the nautical books of reference were untouched; but the charts had been emptied out of their bags, as though the convicts supposed more was to be found inside them than rolls of paper.