The Convict Ship, Volume 2 (of 3)

I was awakened from a deep slumber by the glare of a lantern upon my eyes, by the weight of a heavy hand upon my shoulder, and by a deep voice roaring out: ‘Here y’are, then! An...

‘“Arrive!”’ cried the captain. ‘How do you know I’ll allow you to arrive, as you call it? “Arrive,” you monkey! You’ve committed a felony; you’ve broken into private premises; f...

I was kept waiting, I knew not why, and used my leisure to gaze about me. I was without fear. I had scraped, with a stout heart, through the worst part, and cared little for wha...

Presently I stepped leisurely into the recess under the poop where the soldiers and the women were. One was the pretty young woman who had given me a smile when I came on board...

I did but little on this the first day of my entering upon my strange new duties. The steward distrusted my sea-legs, and he and his mate fetched the dishes from the galley. I h...

The convict mattress was hard, and the pillow was hard, and the blankets as coarse as manufacture could contrive; yet I would not have exchanged them for my own soft bed and lin...

I have said that this passage of wet, violent weather lasted about four days. On the morning of the fourth day of it the steward sent me to the galley on some errand I forget th...

At the dinner-table that day most of the talk I caught concerned the convicts and the Australian settlements. Captain Barrett told the doctor that he considered his address to t...

Next morning on coming into the cuddy from my berth and looking through the door, I saw a number of convicts washing the decks down. Some were on the forecastle, some in the bar...

At lunch that day the doctor congratulated himself warmly upon the success of the ducking punishment. ‘I never doubted,’ said he, ‘that it would fail in the case of female convi...

All the time I was in the cuddy that day, whilst the captain and officers lunched, I kept my ears open, supposing that the talk would wholly concern the dreadful, tragic inciden...

For many days we met with very beautiful weather, and every day the sun grew hotter and hotter. The moon enlarged and became a full moon, and the prospect of the dark blue night...

The convict ship _Childe Harold_ drove steadily down the North Atlantic with the trade-wind, and then, losing those prosperous gales something north of the Equator, crept stealt...

The utmost I dared hope was that my sex would remain concealed until we had rounded the Cape of Good Hope. When once our ship had entered the great Southern Ocean, there would b...

But now the storm was approaching, the moon’s light was growing weak and the stars over our mastheads dim and spare. The lightning was incessant; its flashes glanced into the re...

My head was full of Tom, of that change into fierceness which I had noticed in his whispers, and I dwelt upon his sad, wild saying that I did not know his heart, by which he mea...

On their going out, Tom shut the door and locked it, then, catching me in his arms, called me by twenty caressing words and kissed and blessed me for my love and devotion. I cri...