When two bells were struck I went into the recess under the poop to take a look at the labouring ship and the dark night before going to bed. The canvas had been reefed at eight o’clock; at that hour, and for some time after, I had heard the wild hoarse notes of sailors singing out at the ropes, and the cannonading of heavy sails whose released halyards had abandoned the slack canvas to the thrashing gale. The ship was rushing along her course, climbing the high seas and whitening out the water till the seething waves gleamed like moonlight round about her. Captain Barrett and the doctor were playing at chess in the cuddy; the subaltern looked on with a paper cigar drooping at his mouth. All seemed dark and at rest down the hatch where the soldiers’ quarters were. I thought to myself if this ship were to strike another and founder, what chance for their lives would the two hundred and thirty men below have, lying, for all I knew, in their irons, so battened down that nothing short of an explosion could lift the hatch for them. A figure approached and peered in my face; the cabin lamp-light was upon him; it was Will. ‘Is that you?’ said he doubtfully. On my replying, he put his hand into his pocket and gave me a little parcel. ‘Here’s a pencil and paper for you, Marian,’ said he. ‘Be mighty careful in writing, and don’t mention my name. You can’t be too cautious. The sentries’ eyes are as keen as their bayonets. Have you a mattress?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Why don’t you go to bed?’ ‘I am off in a minute.’ ‘This is no place for you. I wish you were at home in Stepney.’ He went on to the poop, and I descended to my berth. CHAPTER XXII SHE SEES HER SWEETHEART The convict mattress was hard, and the pillow was hard, and the blankets as coarse as manufacture could contrive; yet I would not have exchanged them for my own soft bed and linen at home. I was now sleeping as Tom did: I was on board a convict ship as he was; and some of the company I should be forced to keep were scarcely less rough than the felons below. I should be doing work by day almost as hard, perhaps, as Tom would be put to; I was, therefore, not only hand in hand with my love in the sympathy of suffering, I was bearing almost as heavy a burden as weighed upon him; and even his degradation was as much mine as though I, too, were a convict, for he was my sweetheart, and one day, God willing, would be my husband, and whatever touched him touched me as though we had been one. These were my thoughts as I pulled the convict blankets over me and put my head upon the little, hard, convict pillow, and lay for a while listening to the torrent of foam that thundered past the porthole. I then fell asleep, and my sleep was deep and dreamless as death, so exhausted was I; and when I awoke, the cabin was glimmering out to the light of the newly-broken morning, and I beheld the young man Frank standing beside me.