‘Should you feel happy, Barrett,’ said Lieutenant Chimmo, ‘to be waited on and generally done for by seventy-five of the gentry in our ’tweendecks? How would you like to be shaved by a cracksman, tucked up every night by an incendiary, cooked for by a chemist lagged for a trifling blunder in the shape of strychnia, waited on behind your chair, you know, by a gent who has been spun for digging up bodies?’ ‘Are the convicts decently well fed out in the settlements?’ inquired Captain Barrett. ‘Yes. The hirer’s obliged to give his man plenty to eat. He’s made to sign a bond,’ responded the doctor. ‘The convicts feed on beef, mutton, and pork, and they get wheat and maize meal; their clothes are two jackets and two pairs of trousers a year, shoes and shirts, and a mattress and blankets besides.’ Just then the steward motioned to me, and I was sent out of the cuddy. This talk made me very thoughtful. I went about my work as full of reflection as though I had been planning a poem. What was the cost of land by the acre in Tasmania? If I purchased three hundred and twenty acres in that country, would they give me Tom for a servant? Or, suppose Tom should be hired before I qualified for a landholder, for I was without a friend in Tasmania and months must pass before I could receive money from England, should I be able to bribe his employer into parting with him? My spirits mounted with my fancies. The doctor knew what he was talking about, and in imagination I beheld myself the owner of a little estate in Tasmania with Tom by my side, and our home as happy as love could make it. In the first dog-watch that evening I had an hour to myself. The wind was mild and sweet, and the sea ran in soft folds. Frank had told me that the ship was many miles to the south of the Bay of Biscay, and that if our course was to be shaped east we should bring Gibraltar over the bow. This young German joined me whilst I stood near the cuddy door, and asked me to smoke a pipe. I said that my pipes had been broken for me by the boatswain. He offered to lend me a pipe. I told him that the ship’s tobacco was too strong for my taste, that I was never much of a smoker, and then changed the subject, but watched him whilst he talked; conscience made me afraid; then again, I was much thrown with this young man who, though an insipid German, was not wholly a fool: it was impossible to say what little hints or tricks of my sex he might have observed. I was made uneasier still later on, when Lieutenant Chimmo stepped through the cuddy door with a cigar in his mouth; he was passing, then paused and stood puffing and looking at me without taking the least notice of the German steward. I was nearly as tall as this subaltern. ‘Are you an only child?’ said he. I stared at him, and in that instant meant not to answer; changed my mind, and answered: ‘Yes, sir.’