The convicts vastly enjoyed their own singing. They shrieked, cheered, whistled, hammered and roared, and roared again with laughter and applause. Whilst I looked I saw a man fall dead-drunk from his chair right under the skylight and lie like a log on the deck. (This was the lean, grey man who had talked of the devils that swam in a rum-cask.) I thought of that day when Mr. Barney Abram sat with other prisoners under the skylight and lifted up his voice in a song of devotion, and the doctor’s stern face of approval came before me. Some men on the main-deck laughed loudly and talked uproariously. They were convicts going to the galley for hot water to mix fresh pails of rum with. The moonshine lay white on the planks, and you could see the buckets swaying in the fellows’ hands as they lurched, laughing and talking, toward the galley, about whose open door hovered the sheen of a lamp burning within. ‘I hope they’ll not end at this,’ said Tom, standing at my side and speaking to Mr. Bates. ‘If they don’t get more drunk, they’ll fall to fighting, and bethink them of the soldiers’ weapons under the poop, and turn the cabin into a shambles.’ ‘The drink takes effect quickly,’ said Mr. Bates. ‘Many of them haven’t tasted a drop for years!’ exclaimed Tom. The people below fell silent again; a loud, clear voice, that did not seem in liquor, began to sing. I guessed from the direction in which the convicts’ heads were turned that the singer was the hare-lipped man. We came away from the skylight and stood near the wheel, which Will held. ‘This wind is taking off,’ said Mr. Bates. Tom looked aloft and then round the sea. He started, peered a little eagerly and, pointing, exclaimed: ‘Is that a vessel yonder in the flow of the moonlight?’ Will, who had keen eyes, looked and said: ‘Yes, sir.’ The mate fetched the glass from the companion-way and gave it to Tom, who said: ‘It’s a little brig, I think.’ The mate pointed the telescope, and when he was done with it I asked leave to look. He steadied the glass, and I quite clearly saw the vessel. She lay exactly under the moon in the full stream of the silver light, where the first of it smote the dark edge and flowed across the ocean. ‘How is she heading?’ said Tom. ‘She seems to be standing south,’ answered the mate. ‘Would she not receive us?’ said I. ‘We can’t board anything in these clothes,’ exclaimed Tom. ‘She don’t seem to be travelling,’ exclaimed the mate. ‘She hangs steady under the moon. Perhaps the calm’s about her. The heat’s drying up the breeze.’ ‘Suppose she should have the doctor, soldiers, and the rest of them on board,’ said Will. ‘Butler,’ exclaimed Mr. Bates with energy, ‘I swear you have nothing to fear. You are innocent; you have saved life; you have witnesses----’ Tom stamped on the deck and turned his back with a gesture that was like saying he had settled that question in previous talks with the mate.