Such a sight as it was! But I beheld a horror in the beauty of it. Oh, the very spirit of horror itself entered the beauty of that spectacle of shining ship and radiant uniforms and glowing sea out of the mass of human misery and sin down on that main-deck there. I had a clear view of the convicts. I ran my eye over the line of faces whilst I sought for Tom, and my very heart shrank within me at sight of the countenances my gaze briefly settled on. Prejudice, grief and rage may have made me find the villainous looks of numbers more villainous than they were. I viewed them as my sweetheart’s associates, as ruffians and crime-laden scoundrels, into whose vile company my honest, pure-minded sailor, my innocent, injured Tom, had been thrust to toil in irons with them, to lie at night with them, listening to their talk. The solitary occupant of the forecastle was the sentry. He walked the deck from one rail to the other, sometimes halting to survey the scene. The doctor stood amidships of the break of the poop and began to read in a loud, firm, but slightly nasal voice from the Book of Common Prayer. Every head was bared. The convicts gazed intently up at the reader. There was a pathos in the wondering, staring looks of many of them--a something of childishness that sat strangely on their faces, as if their gross, unlettered ignorance was to be astonished and pleased by the cleverness of a man who read without difficulty, as though he perfectly understood the meaning of what he delivered. Barney Abram was in the front rank of the mass of men. His gaze was fixed on the doctor; his posture was one of humility. I observed that he occasionally nodded as though in appreciation when the doctor paused upon a passage and looked at the convicts. Tom was behind. I saw him with difficulty. The least movement of my head blotted him out by bringing the heads of men in front between us. The picture was memorably impressive. I have it now bright in my mind’s eye, all the hues as gay as the shining colours in the silver plate of a daguerreotype. Nothing disturbed the stillness upon the ship but the voice of the doctor. Yes, you heard a soft, creaming noise of running waters, and at intervals a gentle flap from aloft, and sometimes there would break in a homely sound from the live-stock forward. Never had the sea looked so wide nor our ship so lovely. The feathering billows ran chasing in flashes and gleams into the south-west, where the ocean trembled in a dark blue, with a horizon firm as though ruled upon the delicate azure of the heavens. Southeast, under the sun, it was all blinding splendour--sheer dazzle that streamed to the tall, leaning weather side of the ship and broke from the bow in sudden light like molten silver.