I went about my work as usual, helped at the luncheon-table, exchanged sentences with Frank, cleaned and polished as was now my business; but all the while I was secretly raging with sorrow and temper. I was asking myself: Is it not in my power to release Tom from this horrible hell? Have I not the wit to devise a scheme for giving him his liberty? They may flog me, they may hang me if they will; let me but enable Tom to get away from that loathsome jail below, and they may do what they will. Twenty fancies occurred to me. I thought of my cousin Will assisting me to secrete my sweetheart in some part of the ship, as I had lain hidden, where I should be able to feed him and where he would lie until the ship’s arrival! Then I thought of his escaping in a quarter-boat which I would secretly provision for him! But why pursue the catalogue of these ridiculous dreams? They were a girl’s passionate, ignorant fancies, born of despair and wrath. In some of my fancies I was as wicked as the worst of the wretches below. I would have sacrificed every life on board, including my own, to procure Tom’s liberty, to free him from the horrors the unjust hand of the law had heaped upon him. I would have set fire to the ship, I would have gnawed a hole in her bottom as patiently as a rat’s tooth penetrates a plank, if by burning, if by sinking, the vessel I could have liberated my sweetheart. But I cooled down by degrees. Indeed, this morning the steward kept me running about, and I could only think in snatches; so that meditation was thin and brief, and its influence light and passing. During the afternoon, some considerable time before sunset, the wind shifted, the sky cleared, and we had fine weather. Sail was made on the ship. The sea ran in a strong, dark-blue swell, which shouldered the sunshine from brow to brow, and filled the ocean in the south-west with a roving splendour. Two or three white sails of ships showed upon the horizon. I supposed that by this time we had been blown some distance out of the Bay of Biscay. Certainly our course had been straight and our speed thunderous during the past dark days of storm. Shortly after the weather cleared the convicts were ordered on deck. I stood in the cuddy door to see them assemble. They came up one by one, and were massed in lines close to the barricade, with their faces turned toward the poop. I supposed they had been disciplined aboard the hulk. The convict ‘captains’ and felon overseers found no difficulty in marshalling them. The men fell in as though they had been soldiers, wheeling about and taking up their positions whilst the decks rang with short, sharp cries of command and the tramp of ironed feet. I took a step on to the quarter-deck and looked up at the break of the poop, and there saw the doctor, with Captain Sutherland by his side. The officers of the guard were at the rail, and behind stood a number of the guard under arms.