Such details to me entered like the very spirit of prison life into the gleaming fabric of the ship, soiling, debasing, so flavouring her that there was no magic in the pure freshness of the ocean wind to purge her into sweetness. Marvellous that human sin should subtly enter and find expression in timber and hemp and canvas, in bricks and mortar, in old hulks, in prison piles--it matters not what--subduing all suggestions to its own inspirations. I had noticed how the sordid influence and degrading quality of human wickedness had worked in dismantled hulks, making more hideous that which was already hideous with felon-carpentry; and now here was all beauty in this buoyant and bounding picture of a ship in full sail, leaning from the shining breeze, pouring into her wake the snow of the crested and dissolving surge, dimmed and defiled and saddened by her errand and cargo, by the aspect of her decks, and by the noise of men marching in irons. All this while the doctor stood at the break of the poop with his hands upon the rail, watching the convicts exercising, and sometimes nodding in time when the fiddler changed his tune; the captain likewise watched the convicts from the head of the weather poop ladder; the two officers patrolled the weather deck, and both of them constantly looked at me when their walk brought them with their faces forward; the second mate was near the wheel, and the two sentries, with shouldered muskets with shining bayonets, crossed and recrossed each other at a little distance from where I stood. By-and-by the boatswain and a soldier with stripes upon his arms came along the narrow gangway from the forecastle. They arrived on the quarter-deck, and the soldier, looking up, saluted. ‘Step up, sergeant, and you, Mr. Bo’sun, if you please,’ said the doctor. ‘Well,’ said he, when they had mounted the ladder, ‘what have you found where the lad’s been hiding?’ I was prepared to hear that they had discovered my stock of provisions and the bottles of water, and possibly the parcel of wax candles. But I was not uneasy; I was ready with a story. The sergeant, speaking with an Irish accent, answered: ‘We have found nothing, sirr.’ ‘Did you thoroughly overhaul the place, Mr. Balls?’ said the captain. ‘Ay, sir. We’ve likewise been down into the fore-peak. All’s right for’ards.’ I was astonished, for I had never doubted that they would light upon my tins of meat and the bottles. Whether they had honestly overlooked the nook in which the things were stowed or whether, having met with them, they had resolved to keep the stuff to secretly eat and enjoy, is a question I cannot answer. Suppose this, they’d say nothing about the bottles of water, lest one discovery should force them into owning the other. ‘Captain,’ exclaimed the doctor, ‘I shall want that lad locked up until I have satisfied myself as to his motive in hiding!’