‘There’s some queer chaps downstairs,’ said one of the soldiers. ‘There’s a fellow they call the smasher--a little, gray-haired man with the kindest of faces, and speaks as soft as pouring out milk; he’s lagged for one of the most awful crimes. There’s a play-actor--dunno what right he’s got down there. They sails under false colours. Dessay if he’d got his right name ye’d find him some one as had been tiptop at Drury Lane and the best of theayters. There’s a quiet, pleasing-looking chap, lagged for scuttling.’ A woman asked what that was. ‘Sinking a ship by making a hole in her.’
‘The villain!’ cried the woman. ‘I hope they’ll not give him a chance with his tricks here.’
‘I’m sorry for that chap, somehow,’ said the soldier. ‘If I was a painter I’d like to draw his picture. I’ll point him out some time or other, and then you take notice, Jim, of his melancholy face. One picks up a lot on sentry.’
‘A bad lot,’ said another soldier, spitting.
I listened eagerly and longed passionately to ask questions, but durst not. Yet I might be sure that the soldier spoke of Tom, and I loved the fellow for speaking of him kindly; and it was another proof that my sweetheart was in the ship.
A child came and stood in front of me and looked up into my face. It was a pretty little girl. I stooped and patted her cheek and kissed her, took her by the hands and jumped her into a little dance, which kept her laughing. I knew which was the child’s father by the pleased look one of the soldiers regarded me with. It was the man who had spoken kindly of Tom. When I found this out I kissed the child again and talked to her of the ship and the sea. I observed that my manners and speech controlled the listeners. They all knew I was a runaway stowaway, and though they could know no more they might suspect a great deal more. And yet they viewed me respectfully and talked with a sort of civil reference to me as though I was a gentleman, listening.
The lights were burning very red but gradually dimming in the west, and the sides of the seas slipped away from under the ship in hard, dark-green slopes, laced with spray, and the froth of their heads was faintly coloured by the sunset. The heel of the ship was sharp, and she broke through the billows in thunder. There was a mighty noise of whistling and raving aloft, and the strange shrill shrieking of the foaming and dissolving salt alongside made me wonder what that sound in the wind was.