‘Seven or eight rogues stay,’ he answered. ‘Four or five of the convicts have been to sea. With near two hundred and fifty souls in the ship, I should be able to manage if I chose to keep by her. How many of the crew went to your complement?’ said he, turning to Will. ‘Thirty, sir,’ answered the lad. ‘All told?’ ‘Thirty ordinary and able seamen and idlers,’ said Will. ‘They looked a ruffianly lot!’ exclaimed Tom. ‘The people counted upon more help than they got. Abram asked all hands to remain; only seven or eight chums and acquaintances of the prisoners stick to the ship. Those were the scoundrels who flung themselves upon the sentries. Yes, they’ll need two quarter-boats besides the long-boat. A numerous family to send afloat, and under the line, too, with--how many women and children?’ Will gave him the number. Tom made a grimace of pity, folded his arms and stood, with a stern face, watching what was happening in the gangway. Mr. Bates was showing the convicts how to rig the accommodation-ladder over the side. I looked at Tom, and particularly noticed the change in his face, just as I had felt and witnessed the change in his nature and bearing. That change I had before observed, but not so clearly. The light was searching. He stood in repose, forgetting himself and viewing the proceedings on the main-deck. He was pale and thin and ill and haggard, yet his manly beauty lacked none of its old charms. Nay, there was a gain, I thought. He seemed the handsomer because of the severity of his expression. There was a fierceness that gave his lineaments a heroic cast. Suffering had deepened and accentuated all that was manly in his looks by an infusion of sternness that wanted not in scorn and haughtiness. When all was ready with the long-boat, the armed convicts formed themselves into a lane betwixt the open gangway and the hatchway. They fell in with the precision of soldiers to the cries which commanded them, and stood erect and orderly, every man letting the butt of his musket rest upon the deck. A crowd of men, many of them armed with the small-arms which they had found in the ship, gathered around the main-hatch and obstructed the view. A fellow, with a fiddle in his hand, climbed on the bulwark-rail close to the yawn of the gangway, and putting the fiddle into his neck, screwed out a tune. He was the convict who used to play the prisoners round the decks at exercise. When the mass of felons heard this music, they burst into a great shout of laughter. Such a wild, dreadful shout of merriment has seldom gone up out of human throats. The few remaining revellers in the cuddy tumbled drunkenly out on the quarter-deck on hearing the fiddle and the shouts, and rent the air with another hideous burst of laughter.