I pushed on. A convict stood at the ship’s side, coiling a rope over a pin. His face was averted, but as I neared him he moved his head to look in the direction of the poop. It was Tom. Our eyes met. He did not know me and turned his gaze away, then looked again, then stared as if paralysed. His hands were arrested as though he had been struck dead; his face whitened to the complexion of death. I brushed past him close, saying in a low voice, but distinctly, ‘Tom, dearest, it is Marian. We are together and shall yet be happy,’ and so saying I went on without again looking and entered the ship’s galley. But the sudden encounter, seeing him in irons, so affected me that I could scarcely draw my breath. I noticed with a pang of exquisite distress that he looked ill; his complexion an unhealthy white, his cheeks sunk, his eyes hollow and leaden. When I was in the galley I stood struggling to get my breath before attempting to speak; then I heard a commotion outside. The stout cook pushed past me, and, putting his head through the galley-door, cried, after staring a few moments: ‘Blowed if it don’t look as if the poor chap was dying!’ I sprang through the door and saw Tom supported by two or three convicts. He lay in their arms in the posture of a man lifted on to his feet but unable to stand. In a minute or two he struggled and stood erect, and I heard him say: ‘There, lads, I thank you. Just a passing faintness. Take no more heed of me;’ and, picking up the rope, he continued in his task of coiling it over the pin. I watched him coil a second rope away and then re-entered the galley. ‘I wonder them coves ain’t a-fainting every hour,’ said the cook, as he filled my hook-pot with hot coffee. ‘No grog and no baccy! Think of that; and a vindier diet than fo’c’sle allowance. Burgoo may be good eating for them as thinks the bagpipes good music; but you may take it from me, my lad, that it ain’t the sort of stuff for a growed-up man to go to bed on. There’s too much sop a-going in prison fare. A gent who’s brought himself up for years on champagne, salmon, and the best of eating, signs the wrong name to a bit of paper and’s put aboard a ship like this, where he gets nothen to eat but cocoa and ship’s beef and burgoo. Can the likes of such men help fainting? Ask yourself. I dessey the covey as swounded just now was a nob in his way before he was took. There’s no telling who’s who down below. Out of the road now, my lively! Here’s the sailors a-coming for their tea.’