When the brig had been trimmed for the trade-wind, they went to work to chock and secure the _Childe Harold’s_ quarter-boat in the place where the brig’s long-boat had stood; afterward, Will mixed a pot of paint and painted out the name ‘_Childe Harold_, London,’ in the stern of the boat. Mr. Bates then carefully gauged the stock of fresh water and found a handsome supply, sweet and good. And now, till we made the island of Tristan d’Acunha, there befell nothing worthy to detain you. We found no difficulty in managing the brig. Larger ships than the _Old Stormy_ had been handled and safely worked across the wildest and widest breasts of ocean in the world by crews at least as small as ours. My share consisted in cooking, preparing the cabin table for meals, steering when my watch came round and when Tom was weary of standing at the wheel or wished to get upon the deck-house top to look about. Both Will and Bates fell very quiet. They read Tom’s resolution in his face and they heard it in his voice, and they came into his scheme of touching at Tristan as though they themselves had been escaped convicts eager to hide. Many a long talk did I have with Tom over his project, and I know that I never breathed a syllable in opposition to his wishes. Particularly do I recall a conversation we held one night in the first watch; he steered, and I, who was tired, sat on a chair close beside him. The trade-wind sang shrill betwixt our leaning masts; regularly as the beat of a clock the brig heeled to the slant of the windward surge and bowed her lee side till the froth spat and snored along the very line of her bulwark-rail. ‘No, Tom,’ said I, answering him; ‘don’t call it banishment. Banishment for me must be where you are not.’ ‘I’ve tried, for your sake,’ said he, ‘to think of another and a better plan, but Tristan in my mind for ever stands steadily best and first. Let Bates and Will believe we mean to settle there. Our imprisonment shall be just as short or long as we choose.’ ‘We can leave when we please?’ ‘Whalers are constantly calling at the island; they fish in many seas, and they’ll give us a wide choice of retreats.’ ‘Yet I wish Corporal Glass didn’t know you.’ ‘Why? By knowing me he’ll the more readily believe in my story. What have I to dread? Suppose news reaches the island of the seizure of the _Childe Harold_, would Glass and the few simple families of the place imagine me a convict? Not surely in the face of the story I must relate, Marian.’ ‘When the news gets home they may send men-of-war to search for the convict ship.’