‘You’re the sailor. Will. How would you go to work to enable an innocent man to escape from a convict ship?’ ‘How would I go to work?’ He paused with his mouth open and the hand which held his pipe arrested midway. ‘How would I go to work? I’d tell him to jump overboard, or I’d slip a knife into his hand that he might cut his throat. What other way? Escape! Escape from a convict ship on the high seas! With loaded muskets ready to make eyelets in a man’s head at any moment in the night or day, with look-outs for’ard and look-outs aft, and a sentry below with a bayonet fixed for the first. Now, see here,’ said he, growing pale and putting his pipe down, ‘if you talk like that, if you allow any fancy of helping Tom to escape to enter your head, then, to save you from God alone knows what consequences, I’ll go right aft to the skipper and make a clean breast of it.’ ‘I don’t say that it is to be done,’ said I, vexed that I should have so agitated him, ‘but is there any harm in talking, Will?’ ‘Yes, in talking of such things as that. You are madly in love with Butler, and your notions and your dreams of helping him are mad. Haven’t you made sacrifice enough for the man? Do you want to become a felon too? That won’t help him.’ ‘What could I do that you should talk to me like this?’ said I, reddening and staring at him in my old fiery way. ‘You could do nothing,’ he answered, ‘and that’s just it. But you can talk and you might attempt, and I’ll blow the gaff, so help me God, if you don’t give me your word.’ He was as red as I, and his face worked with consternation and anger. ‘I give you my word,’ I exclaimed, and took him in my arms and kissed him on either cheek. The boy was deeply moved and almost crying. Just then an apprentice came into the berth, on which, in a changed voice, I thanked Will for his kindness, picked up my bundle, and walked aft. My talk had so deeply scared my cousin that he took an opportunity before that evening was gone of again speaking to me. He implored me not to believe for an instant that Tom could escape out of this ship at sea. ‘You can’t help him,’ said he. ‘But what might happen to you? The punishment for helping a convict to escape is fearfully heavy. They’d try you at some Tasmanian court of justice and make a felon of you. You’d be a female convict, associating with the vilest of the vile of your own sex. Why, sooner than such a thing should happen, I’d go straight to the skipper and tell him who you are!’