He placed a mug of red wine and a plate plentifully heaped up with cold boiled beef and ship-baked bread upon the wash-stand and again left me, turning the key. I ate heartily, and the wine did me good. I should have been mightily thankful for soap and water, but had not dared ask the steward for such luxuries. I walked about the cabin and looked through the portholes, and killed the time by thinking. I was used to being alone, and after the darkness forward, with the furious motion of the ship’s bows and the noises in the hold and the thunder of seas smitten by the thrust of the cutwater, this lighted cabin was heaven with its tranquillity and gentle motion of deck. I thought of Tom, and struggled to realise his prison quarters. Gloomy I knew they must be, heavily grated and shrouded by its sentinelled doorway as the main-hatch was; gloomy and evil-smelling, repulsive and inhuman, with spiked barricades and a prison and hospital. But I could not witness the picture in imagination. How and where did the prisoners sleep? How and where did they eat? And what was their fare? And what would my uncle and aunt think if they knew where I was? I imagined them opening that door there and looking in and seeing me dressed as a boy and leaning on the edge of the bunk. So far my love had marched to a conquering tune. And it was not only that I had overcome several wonderful difficulties for a young woman to encounter single-handed; it was not only that I was in the same ship with my sweetheart, bound to a land where we should be together, where in God’s good time and with patience we might come to dwell together as husband and wife, happy in our love, happy under new skies, happy in our eternal severance from the odious and inhuman associations of our native country; I, too, should have suffered with Tom, and taken my share of his misery, if not of his humiliation and degradation. This was a sweet and noble supporting thought. It was the one triumph of my love which gladdened me most to think of. After I had been locked up two or three hours, and whilst the sun was still strong over the west, filling all that part with a moist scarlet light, the key was violently turned and Doctor Ellice walked in. My blood was fired by his insolent entrance, as though he were a warder with a right to break in upon a prisoner at any instant; but I swiftly cooled when I recollected that he did not know I was a woman. In truth, for the moment I had forgotten my masquerade. And, indeed, there is nothing so hard to sham as the airs and behaviour of the other sex. A woman may look a young man to perfection, as, indeed, I did; but her female tricks and instincts will be breaking through if vigilance sleep an instant. You will find this so by observing even the most accomplished actress in male parts.