I craved to see my sweetheart. I waited for the hideous fiddle to cease squeaking, and for the gang to go below and a second gang to take its place, hoping that Tom might be one in this second gang. I say I waited. Rather, I stood hoping. Why they kept me waiting down to leeward on that poop I could not imagine. I guessed it would shock me horribly to see Tom with irons on, marching in convict’s attire, a mere machine at the will of warders, themselves convicts; yet did I passionately wish to see him that I might make sure he was on board, for though I never dreamt that Will had mistook, still I yearned to satisfy myself with my own eyesight. But the gang continued to march round and round to the strains of the fiddle. Oh, the mockery of the blithe Irish tune the fellow played, timed by the metallic tramp of felons on the echoing deck! CHAPTER XIX SHE IS QUESTIONED BY THE DOCTOR I was kept waiting, I knew not why, and used my leisure to gaze about me. I was without fear. I had scraped, with a stout heart, through the worst part, and cared little for what might follow. I had made up my mind to avow my sex if they should send me into the forecastle to live. I was very sure I should be unable to keep my secret amongst that body of rough, blaspheming, joking sailors. Nor should I be equal to the work of a seaman--I mean as an ordinary seaman or boy. It turned me dizzy to look aloft and think of climbing those towering heights. Whilst I thus thought, I used my eyes and examined the ship. Opposite the main-hatch, within the convicts’ inclosure, stood a tall box, something like a sentry-box; over it a bucket was hung by an iron bar, and there was a short length of rope attached to the bucket. I supposed the box was a sort of shower-bath for the prisoners. The main hatch was the only visible means of entering and leaving the prison quarters. It was extraordinarily protected, first, with heavy gratings with a manhole for the passage of one body, then by a strong railing of oak stanchions of a triangular shape, thickly studded with iron nails (the tops or heads of these stanchions I could just see as they sank like the vertical wires of a cage from the sides of the hatch down to the lower-deck), then by a strong bulkheaded passage or corridor with a door at the end, as I mentioned when I spoke of the sentry stationed there. I saw two galleys. The forward one I guessed was for the ship’s use, the after for the convicts; for in this galley I had observed a man in felon’s dress. A huge long-boat lay stowed in chocks athwartships just forward of the ship’s galley.