I looked at him with a smile. He asked me if I slept comfortably, if his clothes fitted me, if I had seen the prisoner boxed up and washed down yesterday, and so on. ‘You’ll be up on the poop for prayers at four bells,’ said he. ‘Lord!’ he added, bursting into a nervous laugh. ‘To think of only two in this ship knowing what you are! To think of you, a young man as habit is bringing me to fancy you, being the real and original Marian of the milk and buttercup holiday times! What would mother say to see you as you stand here now, as complete a shell-back to the eye as that second mate there, with a big basket of dirty dishes alongside of you lugged all the way from the cuddy by your own little hands? And all for love--all for love! By glory! But the woman that could make me dress up as a girl and follow her to sea in a convict ship would have to sink down straight from heaven. This earth couldn’t manufacture her.’ He rounded on his heel and went off. Some time before ten o’clock the ship’s bell was rung; presently Mr. Balls’s silver pipe sang in shrill whistlings through the ship. Mr. Stiles had ordered me below to ‘clean myself,’ as he called it, and on my return I followed him and Frank on to the poop. The scene was one of extraordinary life and full of brilliant colour. I never can forget that picture of this first Sunday morning I passed on board a convict ship. When I gained the poop, the ship was crowded with people in motion. The whole of the crew, in such clean Sunday clothes as they could muster, were coming aft. The convicts, in a seemingly endless procession, were passing through the door of the hatch and massing themselves behind the quarter-deck barricade with their faces aft. The guard, saving the sentries on duty, were drawn up in a line on the poop, giving an amazing brightness to the scene with their red coats, shakos, and sparkling arms. Their officers were in full dress, and the doctor in the uniform of a surgeon of the Royal Navy. The commander of the ship stood near the doctor. Behind the soldiers were women and children. Aft, at the extremity of the poop, his figure rising and falling against the dim azure over the stern, stood the solitary figure of the helmsman grasping the wheel, whose brass-work flamed in the sun, and abreast of him paced the second officer, who had charge of the ship. The sailors came tumbling up the lee poop-ladder, and soon all the forward portion of this raised deck was crowded with people.