I answered with a hot face and angry eyes that if I could help Tom to escape, they might do what they liked afterwards--mangle me, crucify me, bury me alive. ‘But what is the good of talking?’ I said. ‘I know there is nothing to be done. Don’t tell me I love Tom as if I were a mad woman. It maddens me to hear that said. I love him as sanely as your father loves your mother. I love him loyally and with all my heart. We were to have been married, and, before God, we are married, and who shall hinder me from fulfilling my unspoken marriage vow to abandon everybody and cleave only to my love?’ Here a great sob interrupted me, but I fought with my tears and after a little struggling pause I continued: ‘I will do nothing rash, Will. Be easy, dear heart. I would help Tom to escape this night if I could, but I cannot; I can do nothing: so rest your peace of mind on that.’ CHAPTER XXV SHE DELIVERS HER LETTER, AND SEES A CONVICT PUNISHED Next morning on coming into the cuddy from my berth and looking through the door, I saw a number of convicts washing the decks down. Some were on the forecastle, some in the barricaded inclosure, and three or four were scrubbing the quarter-deck close beside the cuddy front. Every morning small gangs of the felons helped the sailors to wash down, whilst numbers below scrubbed their own quarters out. The boatswain and his mates and the captains of the gangs superintended, hurled the water along the decks out of the buckets handed to them, and kept the men to their work. It was a very fine morning; the wind was on the quarter, and the second mate overhead was calling to some hands aloft who were rigging out booms for the setting of those wide overhanging wings of canvas called ‘studding-sails.’ I immediately observed that the convicts were without irons. What with the soldiers, the prisoners, the sailors scrubbing or preparing to run the studding-sails aloft; what with the flashing of the sun on the wet decks, the pendulum swing of the straight-lined shadows of the rigging, the blowing of smoke from the two galley chimneys, combined with the sense of life in the noises of people scrubbing the poop overhead, of the bleating of sheep forward, the crowing of cocks, the grunting of a sow, the clanking of the head and poop pumps, the ceaseless gushing of water--the scene was one of such life and motion as forbade me for a little while from distinguishing. I looked eagerly for Tom. The steward called to me sharply and angrily, after which I was for half an hour occupied with Frank in cleaning down the cuddy, without a single opportunity to turn my eyes toward the main deck. When this odious task was ended, Mr. Stiles gave me a piece of raw bacon to carry to the cook for the cuddy breakfast.