William Clark Russell

“ I am driven as though I were a mad and dangerous beast; I am herded with ruffians, and I am innocent! I swear by your pure heart, Marian, I am guiltless of the crime for which they have put me into this ship and for which they send me ashore by day to—to—— Why are you here, dear?’ he cried, still wildly, and now a little incoherently. ‘They have hellishly sworn me, innocent as I am, into this. They have made a felon of me. They are sending me from my country, and my heart must break—my heart must break!’ he said, sobbing convulsively. ‘And they will bury me in a convict’s grave. ”

“ A long, dreamless, death-like sleep it must have been in that black and silent place. The moment I sat up I was sensible that the ship was in motion. I seemed to feel that she was being strained as though dragged. Subdued noises broke from various parts of her, the creak of timber and of bulkhead; but the ship floated without the least motion; indeed, I was sure she could not long have left her berth alongside the hulk.
I lighted a candle, drank from a bottle of the water, and, having helped myself to some meat and a biscuit, I extinguished the candle and broke my fast in blackness. ”

“ He went to Tom’s miniature and stood looking at it; then began to talk again with eagerness and enthusiasm about my scheme of following my sweetheart.
‘And why shouldn’t you go?’ said he, pacing the room. ‘You’re alone in the world, and Tom’s first and everything to you. Father and mother won’t like your going, and you’ll be sorry to leave them, but they’re not your parents. Tom’s all in all. If I loved a girl as you love Tom she’d be all in all to me, and I’d follow her whilst a stick lasted, till the plank grew as thin as a sailor’s shirt. ”

“ I lay thinking all the time of Captain Butler. I had fallen in love with him, and I wondered at myself. No man that I had ever before met had made the least impression upon me. I knew my own heart well down to this moment—I had never given men nor their love a thought. In what, then, lay the magic of this man? I was so much in love with him that, had he stayed at my door after Will Johnstone had gone away and asked me to be his sweetheart and marry him, I should have consented. ”

“ I was just in that part of the ship where the pitching is most felt. I sank back and suffered—oh, how I suffered! Think of me, alone in that midnight blackness, without a sup of cordial to give me a little life, as incapable of stirring as though I were dying, feeling to the height of [307] its anguish the sickness that is the worst of all sickness, hearing nothing but the cataractal rushing of water against the bows, the sudden shock and thunder of a great sea smiting quick and hard as the blow of a rock, the crazy straining of timber and cargo and strong fastenings. ”

“ Now he got up and began to walk about, too, rolling to and fro as though the floor had been a ship’s quarter-deck, whilst he swore that I had too much spirit for a woman, that my scheme was too daring, that if I knew what a fore-peak was like in a heavy head sea, with the prospect of a fortnight of blackness along with the risk of dying of hunger and thirst, without possibility of escape unless I was liberated, I’d quit the scheme as hopeless. ”

“ At the age of seventeen I considered myself qualified to form a judgment of men, and I was amazed and indeed disgusted that my mother should see anything in Mr. Stanford to please her. He and my father were at the opposite ends of the sex, as far removed as the bows from the stern of a ship. He was a spare and narrow man, pale as veal, in complexion sandy, the expression of his countenance hard and acid, his eyes large and moist and the larger and moister for the magnifying spectacles he wore. ”

“ On entering I found my uncle sitting with a gentleman. The stranger was not Mr. Simmonds. My aunt stood at the window, looking out.
‘Why, here am I watching for you!’ said she. ‘Marian, my dear, Captain Butler.’
I dropped the stranger a curtsey of those times, and with a quick glance gathered him. Small need to call him captain to know he was a sailor. His weather-darkened face, the fashion of his clothes, the indescribable ocean-rolling ease of his manner of rising and bowing to me, were assurance enough of his calling. I took him to be a man of about thirty. ”

“ Whether Mr. Stanford saw me or not I am unable to say. He did not appear, nor did I catch a sight of him at his window.
No one knew that I had gone into lodgings at Woolwich, not even Will, though I had told him that I should be leaving my home on such and such a date, and that he was to keep a sharp look-out for me when his ship lay off the Warrior. I did not want to burden him with the obligation of telling lies. My uncle might hear that I had quitted Stepney. He’d ask his son where I was; and Will, with a clear conscience, would be able to answer on his honour he had no idea. ”

“ Never was my love for Tom so great as now in this lonely time of waiting in those Woolwich lodgings, when I reflected that all I had done, was doing, and yet hoped to do, was for him, that he might know me to be true as the faithfullest of women could be to the man of her heart; that he might be gladdened by presently discovering I was with him in the same ship ”

“ She sat deep in the water and was plainly fresh from a long voyage, rusty about the bows and weather-stained along the line of her painted ports; but she carried the smartness of a frigate aloft in the well-squared yards, from which all canvas had been unbent, and in the perfectly-stayed and lofty topgallant-masts, whose royal yards had been sent down. I seemed to recognise the large house-flag she flew at the main.
‘What ship is that?’ I asked, well aware that Thames watermen know every ship out of London. ”

“ Never was man more truly loved than was Tom. My aunt particularly noticed the change in me, and said that Tom’s courtship had done me a very great deal of good.
‘You no longer roll your eyes,’ said she, ‘when you argue, and redden and strut and heave up your breast when I venture to object to your views. You have become thoroughly genteel, my dear, in your tastes and habits. Your captain will have a treasure in you. ”

“ My mind was full of Tom. I wondered how he would greet me—how I should find him looking. We should be allowed but a quarter of an hour. What time would that give me, to whom a long summer day was all too brief in which to tell him how I loved him; how I meant to follow him; how our loyalty to one another should, if God permitted, triumph yet over the horrors and the sufferings which might lie between the now and the hour of victorious emergence!
[171] We were still about a mile from the hulk, when I observed a large ship in tow of a tug coming up the river. ”

“ The sailor said that when the convicts are removed they’re double cross ironed and chained down to the deck. Everybody’s afraid of them. Now what would you do there in a settlement of a few troops and scores of horrible villains?’
I smiled and said: ‘Where Tom is sent, I go;’ and then starting up, and flashing upon him in my old hot-tempered impulsive fashion, I cried: ‘I know all about Norfolk Island; I shall know what to do, Will.’ I sobered my voice and added, ‘I have been scheming for months all alone, dear. All the while that my darling has been in jail I have been planning and planning. ”

“ This may be true of prison blackness. Speaking for myself, I ceased to suffer, after a time, from privation of light; though under that ship’s forecastle, with the hatch on, the blackness was as intense whilst the silence had been as profound as ever human ingenuity could contrive with bricks and mortar ashore. But, then, I had a moral support which the prisoner would be without. I was animated by the strongest of human passions; it gladdened me, moreover, to feel that I was sharing in my sweetheart’s suffering and exile ”

“ I was as much at home in my uncle’s house as if I had been his child, and, passing the servants who opened the door, I went upstairs to my aunt’s bedroom to take off my bonnet and brush my hair. On the landing I heard voices in the drawing-room. I guessed my uncle had company, and hoped, unless there were others, that it was not old Mr. Simmonds, a ship-broker, a person to whom my uncle was always very civil and hospitable, as being useful in business, but who, to my mind, was the most wearisome, insipid, teasing old man that ever chair groaned under. ”

“ I came within view of the river, and looked along Woolwich Reach, but saw no signs of such a ship as the Childe Harold approaching. The hulks floated huge and motionless off the Dockyard and Arsenal. White clouds of fog were creeping over the flats of Plaistow, and the river streamed cold and yellow into the bleak gray haze of Bugsby’s Reach. A waterman approached and bade me good morning. ”

“ Stanford and his nephew, who were still at table, lingering over their wine.
‘Yes, she has the temper of a devil,’ said my stepfather. ‘I love her so exceedingly that I’d like nothing better than to have her for a patient. But the wench’s constitution is as sound as her fortune. Why don’t you go ahead with her?’
‘She’s plaguy hard to get at,’ said Mr. Potter, in his strange voice, as though his mouth was full of grease.
‘You don’t shove enough,’ said his uncle. ‘A woman of her sort isn’t to be won by staring and breathing hard. Go for her boldly. ”

“ Nothing but death can separate us. I have walked night after night beside the prison walls that I might be near you, and whilst you are here I shall be near you. They cannot separate us. Always believe, always know, that whilst you are in this ship—yes, whilst they are trying to break your heart ashore—I am present—oh, not in [184] sympathy, not in love, not in spirit only, Tom, but near you, but close as they will let me be to you in my own person. ”

“ We breakfasted very early, walked to the coach, and quitted Ramsgate at about eight o’clock. It was a dreadful journey to me; endless as the night to one who is shipwrecked and watches for the dawn. The weather had changed too; snow was falling at Canterbury and it was bitterly cold all the way to London. We reached my uncle’s house at ten o’clock that night. My aunt’s letter had been received, and a cheerful fire and a hot, comfortable supper awaited us. My uncle came downstairs to receive us and kissed us both in silence, as though some one dear to us all lay dead upstairs. ”

“ Tom will rank as a gentleman convict; he’s good with his pen and he’s a scholar, Will; they may make him a clerk. He is not a mechanic, and he’s too good to send to the roads.’
[195] ‘How do you know all this, old woman?’
‘I know very much more, Will,’ said I, smiling in my sadness. ‘Could I love Tom and not learn all that lies before him as though I was to share it? If they would put me to work in the dockyard by his side, how happy I should be! If they’d but lock me up in that horrible hulk with him—but they’ll not be able to separate us, Will. ”

“ I could not now but see things as he did, and, indeed, I hope I could never have been so unmaidenly as to give the smallest expression to my secret wishes; but in my heart of hearts I was more vexed than I can express by this delay, which I attributed largely to my uncle’s influence with Tom. When two people are in love, and are to be married, there will be impatience. Whether the man or the woman is or should be the more impatient, I don’t know. ”

“ Does the language of the deep sound strange in the mouth of a woman? The wives and daughters of military men may deliver themselves in the speech of the barracks and nobody thinks anything of it. Why should not the daughter of a sailor and the wife of a sailor possess the language of her father and of her husband’s profession, and talk it whenever the need arises without raising wonder? ”

“ I have a considerable share in the barque, and I intend that my proportion of the freight shall be safe. I am not of those who believe in keeping their money in a purse; I carry mine in my pockets. If the purse is lost, all is gone. Who’s to assure me of the solvency of an insurance office? I mean that this voyage shall enable me to stay at home with my wife,’ said he, looking fondly at me. ‘Let another take charge of the barque next time. I’ll make enough to own the half of her.’
‘You shall own all of her, if you will, Tom,’ said I.
‘That’s as your trustees shall decide,’ said my uncle. ”

“ I observed a crowd of people on the forecastle, and a number of men and women walked the poop, or after-deck. The red flag streamed brightly from the peak, the glass and brass about her sparkled, the little circular windows in her side flashed like gems as they took the sun, and the raiment of the ladies fluttered in many tints. Here and there a sailor was trotting aloft, and a man standing high and conspicuously on the forecastle was shouting, with one hand against his mouth, to the tug. ”