Текст книги "Beyond The Blue Mountains"

Автор книги: Jean Plaidy

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Текущая страница: 22 (всего у книги 36 страниц)

“You are jealous, my sweet child.”

“Jealous! I? I was about to say you may practise your acts on whom you will, but I will not have them practised on Esther! Do you not recognize innocence when you see it? Esther is a romantic little fool. She does not see you as you are, nor does she see me as I am. You are a sort of Robin Hood… the sort who robs the rich to help the poor. What poor did your thieving eve: help?”

“William Henry Jedborough, alias Marcus Markham of course! He was excessively poor.”

“You put on a different personality for different people, do you not? To Esther you are the philosopher. To me you are the charming rogue. At least you think you are charming.”

“And you do not?”

“I only know you for the rogue you are! Oh, Marcus… I did not mean that… not entirely. It was so good of you to buy us that room in Newgate.”

“Even though you would not enter into a bargain with me, eh?”

“To me you pretend to be very, very bad, and to Esther you try to appear a sinner struggling towards righteousness. I do not believe you are either one or the other. Why did you try to make that stupid bargain, and then show dearly that you did not mean it?”

“I hoped you would fall into temptation.”

“And what satisfaction would you have had from it?”

“Enormous satisfaction. I love you. Carolan.”

“And you thought that your miserable money…” ‘… would have brought your submission! Come, Carolan, you know you hesitated.”

“I did not!”

“You did. I saw it in your eyes. And how hope leaped in my savage breast!”

“I would rather you did not joke about the matter.”

“Often a joke will hide our most serious feelings.”

“Please do not be so sententious. I am not Esther!”

“No darling Carolan. The time is passing, and we are wasting precious moments in quarrelling. I love you, Carolan. I want… some hope that some day. on the other side… you and I…”

“What?”

“Convicts whose conduct is exemplary are allowed to marry.”

“You are suggesting that I should marry you!”

“Please do not look as though the idea is repugnant to you, Carolan.”

“I should be sorry for your wife. You would not be faithful to her for a week.”

“If she were you, Carolan, I should be faithful to her for the rest of my life.”

“Your conversational powers are truly miraculous, Marcus! I doubt whether you have ever been at a loss to say the right thing. Still, I fear long practice in the art of deceiving poor females who want to be deceived has made you such an expert.”

“The last months have made you cruel.”

“Did you expect them to make me soft? Children go into Newgate innocent; they come out criminals. I went in, soft and foolish, I emerged hard, perhaps cruel. It is what life has done to me.”

“Carolan, my sweetheart…”

She turned her face to him; tears were streaming down it. She burst out fiercely, because she could not bear the tenderness that leaped into his eyes: “You know I loved him. You know what his desertion has meant. You know it has cut deeper than those irons, than all the horrors of prison. And yet you…” He put his hand on her shoulder.

“Carolan, do not look back. Look forward. You are young; you are beautiful. You were never meant to spend your life grieving for an unworthy lover.” His hand slipped down to her breast.

“You are beautiful, Carolan … my Carolan. You are vital; you are trembling now because you need me as I need you. Make no mistake, we were meant for each other!” She tried to control her trembling limbs. She longed to lie against him, to lift her face to his. There was in his eyes that which she had tried to arouse in Everard; she had tried to make a man of Everard, the saint.

“Carolan.” he said.

“Carolan! Darling, what is prison, what is transportation, what are chains? We can overcome them all.

Promise, my darling. Promise to come to me …”

Her body urged her to lift her head, to let her brilliant eyes tell him of her response to the passion in him. But she could see Everard, his young face so different from that of Marcus, so beautiful, so saintly. What had prevented Everard from coming to her? How could she know what? Suppose he came? Suppose, when she landed on the other side, he was there waiting for her! Miracles could happen. In seven years’ time she would be a free woman. She would be twenty-four. Was that so very old? She fought against the almost overwhelming power of her senses. Because Marcus appealed to her body so strongly, she must guard against her body. What had Aunt Harriet slyly hinted? She was like her mother, like her grandmother … she had that in her, that immodesty, that sensuous desire which could, while it lasted, seem so important that it could lure one into ruining one’s life just for a momentary satisfaction. There he lay beside her, this man whom she knew to be a thief; he was unkempt; he was dirty; he was a convict sentenced to transportation for life! And because of that indefinable attraction he had for her, she had been ready to give herself up to the sensuous dream of living beside him for the rest of her life, loving him, hating him, finding pleasure in him.

She said: “I love Everard. Who knows, he may come to me! I do not believe he has deserted me; doubtless his mother prevented his coming to Newgate … We must go back to Esther; whatever will she think?”

She got up, and went back to Esther.

“Was it very bad?” Esther asked.

“What?” said Carolan.

“The chain gang. What a coward you must think me! But I cannot bear to hear of it.” She appealed to Marcus.

“Do you think I am a coward?”

“I think you are a very charming young lady!”

Carolan threw him a glance of distaste. She felt safe now. He could not put his hands on her, with Esther so near.

Esther said: There was a lady looking over the barricade. I think she must be a passenger. She wore a beautiful gown; but how she scowled!”

“Do you not know,” said Carolan, ‘that we convicts are performing animals? Our ways and habits are a source of amusement and ridicule to the free.”

“She did not seem amused. Her dark eyes flashed. She seemed to me to be looking straight at you and Marcus. Her petticoat was satin; she had black hair and black eyes. She was very beautiful! She paced up and down … in this heat too, but she did not seem to notice it!”

Carolan said: “An admirer of Marcus’s, doubtless!” She laughed at him.

“Odd how, in his convict’s rags, he can exercise that appeal of his!”

“Do not be jealous, darling,” said Marcus.

“I am not the man to be impressed by a satin petticoat.”

“Oh, but Esther says she is beautiful! Do you not admire black eyes, Marcus?”

“What does it matter?” put in Esther. This is the happiest hour we have spent since coming aboard. I could almost feel I was taking the trip for pleasure!”

“You must have strange ideas of pleasure.Esther,“said Carolan.

“Oh come,” put in Marcus.

“A great poet once said “There is some soul of goodness in things evil, would men observingly distil it out.” There is truth in that, do you not think so?”

“I do,” said Esther. Then: “Look, there is the dark lady again!”

Marcus looked up and looked away quickly.

“Fie!” cried Carolan.

“How coquettish he is! As coy as any maiden!”

“Carolan, please do not tease me.” The seriousness of his eyes made her look at him sharply.

She demanded: “Why is it that there is always mystery surrounding you, Marcus?”

“Is there? I did not know it.”

“You must know it. In Grape Street, one was never sure of you. And even here, on this miserable prison ship, there must be mystery concerning you.”

“My dear Carolan, what are you saying? What mystery do you refer to?”

She was unable to reply. She stammered: “It was just… that you looked… oh, I cannot say. Secretive perhaps.”

“Look!” said Esther.

“That woman. She is talking to the sentry about us.”

The woman’s voice floated towards them, indignant and angry.

“I declare … such lack of discipline. One does not feel safe! They … so close … just as though they were ordinary people!”

“Oh, you dark-eyed beauty!” murmured Carolan.

“If I had you here I would let you see whether or not we are ordinary people. I would have that satin petticoat off your back!”

“Yes, my dear,” said Marcus.

“Newgate is a good teacher; and found you an apt enough pupil, I’ll swear!”

“And doubtless you would protect her from my violence, and tell her how becoming was her satin garment, and how you had always adored black eyes!”

“What if I do adore black eyes! I worship green ones … particularly when they flash in fury … and jealousy perhaps? Oh, Carolan, can you not see that you are my woman and I am your man? Do not stamp your foot or I shall be unable to resist putting my arms round you here and now and kissing your angry mouth and your angry eyes…”

“Hush! Esther will hear.”

She turned from him.

The woman had walked away from the sentry; his face was red.

“You dogs!” he cried.

“What the hell do you think this is? A pleasure cruise? Down to your holes before you’re clamped into irons, every one of you!”

The black-eyed woman, for reasons best known to herself, had put an abrupt end to the hours of freedom.

Down in the women’s quarters the heat was only just bearable. The convicts lay gasping in their berths, some of them reduced to semi-consciousness by the poisoned air. Half an hour ago two of their number had been taken away; they had died the day before. They did not talk of them, but in the minds of every woman and child was the thought, “Shall I be carried out like that before the journey’s end?”

They were just out from Cape Town, and the weeks they had spent there had been a trying ordeal, hardened though they were. They had been kept down below for what seemed interminable days and nights. Fighting for air. listening to the creaking of the ship’s timbers, with that foul odour of her stinking bilges in their nostrils which sickened even the most insensitive, most of them had longed for death. But now the ship had taken in her stores; sheep and fowls, pigs, goats, all sorts of livestock and fresh fruit and vegetables had been put aboard her; and now she was ready to complete the voyage. This was a matter for rejoicing, but the death of those two had sobered them strangely, had temporarily drawn them closer to each other.

Flash Jane, a good deal thinner than she had been since they entered Cape Town, dark hollows under her eyes like saucers in her yellow-green face, no longer Flash just poor, sick, only half-alive Jane turned to Carolan and said with her habitual aggressiveness: “You never tell us nothing about yourself. How did a lady like you come to be here with a lot like us, eh?”

Was she spoiling for trouble? wondered Carolan. But as she looked at the poor shadow of that Flash Jane who had come aboard all those months ago, she felt an unexpected tenderness sweep over her, and for the moment it smothered that bitterness which had eaten into her. ringing all her thoughts and words.

“What do you care?” she said, but softly, gently.

Flash Jane spat neatly across the berth.

“Only wondered,” she muttered.

“Seemed a bit unnatural like … you and her…”

Carolan looked up into the blue-grey haze which always seemed to fill the crowded place; and she surprised herself by telling the woman what had led her here. She began with the visit to her father’s shop, and as she talked, silence fell all about her, and lack-lustre eyes were turned in her direction. She felt sympathy there in that sordid place. Nobody laughed, nobody jeered; many listened.

When she ended, a woman from an upper berth raised her emaciated arms and began to shriek.

“It was a nark what got me, lady! If I had him ‘ere I’d tear ‘im to pieces, that I would. Boiling in oil is too good for narks. Them’s my feelings.”

The silence was resumed. There was more in that silence than the languor produced by fetid heat, semi-starvation and sickness. Carolan realized that she was living through a strange experience. It was as though the women drew together, forgot beastliness, forgot cruelty, forgot everything but that they were fellow human beings.

“What about her?” said Flash Jane, jerking her head towards Esther.

“How’d she come?”

“Tell them, Esther,” said Carolan.

“Do you think they want to hear?”

“Go on!” growled Flash Jane, and Esther told them.

It was a simple little story, but they believed it. It made them angry and it made them sad. Some of them may have been present when Esther arrived at Newgate; they may have been among those who tore off her clothes. But if they had been, they would have forgotten. Then and now had no connection with each other.

“Life’s cruel, ain’t it!” said Flash Jane.

“I remember when I come to London. In service I was, where my Ma put me. Service! Not me, I says, and I come to London, and when I got there, there wasn’t nothing for me to do but pick pockets, and I wasn’t good at it. Then I met a girl who took me along to Mother Maybury.”

“Mother Maybury!” cried a shrill voice. It belonged to the woman whose chief amusement seemed to be to strip herself, expose her gross body and fling it about lewdly in grotesque movements meant to be a dance.

“You was at old Maybury’s, was you?”

“Twenty-five years back!” said Flash Jane with a touch of honesty.

“Twenty-five! Why, it must be twenty-eight since I last seen the old lady. How did you leave her, Flash? The old trollop! She ought to have been strung up long afore she met me!”

“Well, believe it or not, she died a rich woman. Died in a feather bed with servants to wait on her, so I heard.” said Flash Jane.

The other woman began to cry suddenly: not in the hysterical way in which Carolan had heard them sob during the last months.

but quietly and regretfully. There was something heart-rending about the shaking of that gross body.

Carolan said: “I’ve told my story: tell us yours.”

The words had an instant effect on the woman. She dried her eyes: she laughed hoarsely and pulled open the ragged garment she wore. Carolan thought she was going to start stripping for her dance, the dance which seemed to drive the others into a frenzy of sensuality, which would set them recounting their adventures in lust. If she did, these moments would be lost; harshness, cruelty, would return. Carolan fought for these moments, fought for a longer glimpse beneath the horrible veil which the cruelty of life had drawn tightly about these people.

She said: “I’m sure it’s interesting.”

The woman’s hands fell to her sides; her fingers plucked at her dress, miserably, not lewdly. She drew the dress tightly round her, and sat down heavily on her berth.

“Funny,” she said, ‘looking back.” Her voice was hushed; she was not speaking to them, but to herself.

“Funny to think that was me. But it was me. Gawd! What life does to you!” She turned to face Carolan, and she smiled.

“We all lived in the country. I loved the country. The trees … they was lovely. Never mind whether it was spring with the buds out and the birds up there -and what a row they used to make! or summer with the leaves all thick and green; in the autumn they was golden brown and we’d sweep up the leaves and burn ‘em. What a smell!” She began to cry softly.

“And in winter, all black with the mist on ‘em. I loved the country. My Gawd! I ain’t been there for nigh on thirty years. Do it still look the same? Trees don’t alter, do they? It’s people that changes, it ain’t trees.

“There was ten of us children! Me father worked in the fields. Me mother helped, but she was always having a fresh baby. I was the oldest. It was all right when we all got working. But Charley he was me little brother he was a cripple. No farmer wanted Charley. Him and me… well… I used to carry him everywhere on me back. But me father, he couldn’t bear Charley, because Charley was doing nothing for his keep; and he wanted Charley out of the way. He’d belt Charley. I was twelve and Charley was ten when we run away to London. We hadn’t never seen anything like London. It was wonderful. We thought there’d be work for us, but there wasn’t work. We slept in alleys and under arches, and we was colder and hungrier than we’d been in the country. But we was happier because there was no father to belt poor Charley. Then Charley stole a loaf of bread. We was together, and it was Charley who took it, and someone got hold of him and they took him, and I run behind, but they wouldn’t take me too. I never see Charley no more.”

Now everyone was listening, and the tears ran out of the woman’s eyes and she did not seem to know they were there.

“Well,” she went on, “I starved. I stole a bit, but no one caught me; and one day I talked to a girl a year older than me and she took me to Mother Maybury.” She began to laugh.

“Mother Maybury! She had a rosy face and a little white cap; spotless it was; And she’d sit by her big fire; and she would pat you on the head, and she would tell you not to be frightened any more you was one of her chicks. It would be “Eat this, ducky. Another helping, chicky? You’re with your old Mother Maybury, now, my poppet!” And you would eat; and you’d wonder if you’d died of cold by the river and gone to Heaven without knowing it. And then, when you had sat by her fire for a day or two with your belly as full as you could pack it, she would begin to explain to you all that you owed to Good Mother Maybury, and just how you would have to pay it back. She showed you how to tell fine ladies and gentlemen from the sort that aped them: she’d show you how to creep up behind them, swift as you like; she showed you how you went to bed with men. And if you didn’t like it, there was always the cold outside and the hunger waiting for you.

“Don’t be soft, my poppet!” Good Mother Maybury would say.

“My chickens have a rare time of it.” So I stayed, and I was with Mother Maybury nigh on three years, and if you looked after Mother Maybury she looked after you. And if you didn’t look after her, she looked after you too! It was queer how many who didn’t give up all their takings found themselves in jail. Good Mother Maybury! Kind Mother Maybury! It, was pease pudding she gave me first: I can taste it now. It smelt that good! I can see the log on her fire; it was all blue and pretty. So I thought I’d died and was in Heaven; but I was only at Good Mother Maybury’s.”

Silence fell, thick as the haze made by their breath. The misshapen girl who shared their berth sat up suddenly, her eyes brilliant.

“Keep still, you!” growled Flash Jane, but her voice held none of its old harshness. Do you want to tell us how you came to be here?” asked Carolan.

“It was the chimleys.” said the girl.

“What?”

The brother done ‘em. We was the eldest, him and me. The baby wasn’t old enough. I was five. Me brother was four; he done the chimleys. Me father made him.”

“What happened to your brother?” asked Carolan.

“He went down a chimley. He got burned to death. Me father came in and told us. He was wild … ‘cause, if me brother was burned to death, who was going to sweep the chimleys?”

There was a stark horror in the halting words which had been lacking in the woman’s more coherent story. Everyone was listening. The misshapen little girl was no longer a butt for their cruelty; she was a child who had suffered horrors such as even they had not experienced.

The child began to scream out: “They dressed me up in his clothes, so’s they’d think I was a boy. I’d got to go, they said. I couldn’t… I was frightened. I knew I’d be burned to death. Me brother was frightened of that, and he’d got burned to death. I knew I’d be burned to death… I couldn’t…!”

“Try not to think of it,” said Esther.

“It is past now.”

The child looked at her with wide eyes.

“He made me. I was too big. Me brother had done it when he was four. He wasn’t too big. But I was bigger. It used to hurt. Once I couldn’t get out, and I screamed and screamed. Then they got me out… and… I wouldn’t go in again. Me father beat me. Me mother beat me. I didn’t mind beatings. I couldn’t … I’ll never go up again. It’s black up there … it’s so dark you can’t see. Me father said he’d kill me if I didn’t go up. Then …” Her voice broke on a sob.

“I… run away…”

The dark chimneys would always haunt her dreams. When she screamed in the night it was because of those dark chimneys. If only they had known before, perhaps they could have comforted her.

Flash Jane put her face close to the child and said, not unkindly: “What was you took for?”

“For taking.”

“Nicking, you mean?”

“Taking. I didn’t mind. It’s better than the chimley.”

“Chimley sweeps has a terrible time of it,” said Flash Jane.

“I remember a man named Tom what was one. He was a rare one, Tom was. River thief and a regular swell. Done well for himself. Nice big man. He begun as a sweep though. He was smart. Said there wasn’t much you couldn’t hide in a bag of soot. He started on his own. Done well for himself. I wonder what become of Tom?”

The child said: “There ain’t nothing so bad as a black chimley with the fire down below. There ain’t nothing so bad as that.”

Esther stroked her hair, and she looked with wondering eyes up at the girl.

Esther thought: “I’ll teach her to pray.”

Carolan thought: “If anyone torments her again, they’ll wish they hadn’t.”

Change came as suddenly as before. There was something so hideous about the picture that child had conjured up that they could not look at it. Softness was folly. Flash Jane went on to talk of her friend Tom, the big man, the river thief. Her reminiscences were as highly coloured as she could make them, the details as intimate. They listened awhile. Someone began to sing a bawdy song. The woman who had gone to Mother Maybury’s wriggled off her berth and slowly began to take off her clothes.

It was January, and the summer evening was calm and warm. Esther and Carolan lay side by side looking across the sea, for it was the women’s hour of freedom. It seemed to Carolan that years had elapsed since they left England, and here they were, almost on the other side of the world.

“Esther,” she said, ‘how lucky we have been … so far!”

Esther said: “I cannot bear it if we are separated.”

“Esther, do you believe in will power?” I believe in prayer.”

“But I cannot leave our being together to prayers, Esther. Prayers are never answered. Do you know, when I was in prison I prayed. I prayed for Everard to come back to me. He never came. What good were my prayers?”

“Perhaps God did not mean him to come.”

“Perhaps He does not mean us to be together. It would be cruel to separate us now, Esther. We must do everything we can. Who knows, there may be some opportunity. Esther, Esther, what will become of us on the other side ?”

“That we cannot know until we get there, Carolan. But I would have you know, here and now, what your friendship has meant to me. I believe I should have died without it. You are different from the rest of us, Carolan. You are strong and brave. I think you were meant to be a leader.”

“A leader! I should have liked to be a leader, Esther, I should like to lead people against cruelty and wickedness. Oh … not what you call wickedness. Not Flash Jane and her kind, but those who made Flash Jane what she is. I would be a crusader against those who made our laws, against your church perhaps which allows these things to happen … and more, applauds them. There, I have hurt you, Esther, I blunder. I am always hurting you. Wasn’t there a parable about a man who was set upon by robbers. The passed by on the other side of the road, like our churchmen, Esther, our politicians; those people know what is happening, yet pass by on the other side of the road. I like to think that I am the Samaritan of a different faith … the Samaritan who did not pass by. But what can I do… a prisoner? Besides, I know myself. I am not good enough. I am wicked, more wicked than you could understand, Esther. But that is what I would like to be, were it possible … the good Samaritan.”

“You would be, Carolan. You would be!”

“No! I should be thinking of myself as I walked along. I should not see the poor man calling for help… Not until I myself was set upon should I see him. and then it would be too late.”

here was a short silence, then Carolan said: “How good it is to breathe fresh air! I never thought of that in the old days at home. Fancy being grateful because you can breathe fresh air for one hour each day. We must be very strong. Esther, to have survived.”

“We are not very old,” said Esther.

“You are but a child. I wonder how Marcus is. Is he in as good spirits as he was, I wonder?”

“I should like to see him. He is a good man.”

“He is a thief!” said Carolan roughly.

“We are here through no criminal acts, Esther; do not forget that such is not the case with Marcus.”

“Life was very cruel to him.”

“Very cruel. But it will never conquer Marcus.” Unconsciously she spoke his name softly, thinking of the glitter of his blue eyes, and the desire in them.

“Tell me.” said Esther, ‘of how you went to Vauxhall Gardens, and how he was there, dressed as a fine gentleman.”

“I have told you many times.”

“Nevertheless I like to hear it again. I love to hear the stories of your life.”

“I have told you so much, have I not? You must know it almost as well as I do myself.”

“I lie in the berth and think of it all. Sometimes it helps me to sleep, and I forget I am there. I can smell the horses in the stables, and the mutton cooking before your Aunt Harriet’s fire; and I can smell the perfume Therese is putting on your mother’s gown. When you came, you made me alive. Carolan. I wish there was something I could do for you.”

“What should I have done without your friendship?”

“You talk as though this is farewell,” said Esther with terror in her voice.

“Who knows, it may be! Look!”

Carolan stood up, excited. She pointed.

“I saw something. I am sure I saw something. It has gone now … but look, Esther, can you see?”

Their eyes were fixed on the horizon. For ten minutes they did not move, and then clearly and definitely they saw the dim outline of white cliffs.

There was bustle on board now. All convicts were ordered below; gratings were made fast over hatches. The air was more stifling than ever.

Carolan and Esther lay very close. They held hands in the darkness. Esther prayed: “Please God, having given her, do not take her from me.”

Carolan murmured: “I will not lose her. I must keep her with me. She does not know it, but I need her as much as she needs me.”

The ship lay at anchor, while the new land smiled under the morning summer sun. Forests of eucalyptus trees like an army of giants, had marched to the edge of the land and halted there. On the grassy hills stood out clearly the silver-barked gum trees freely mingled with cedar. The leaves of the great eucalyptus trees cast their shadows where in spring golden wattles and the white flowers of the dogwood bushes bloomed. It seemed a smiling, fertile country that welcomed the newcomers, but it aroused in them nothing but nostalgia for their native land. The warmth of the sun, the brilliance of the sea, the green foliage, the white-crested cockatoos and the gaudy parakeets which gave to the scene that picture quality, could only by their very contrast remind them of the crooked streets of St. Giles’s, grey-White buildings looming up in fog, the clop-clop of horses’ hooves on cobbles, the Thames enveloped in mysterious gloom London, which had been home to them, and which always would be home.

The women were lined up on one portion of the deck. Some way off were the men. Carolan looked for Marcus; she could not see him. Esther stood beside her, terrified. Looking along the lines of faces whose skin had acquired that peculiar quality of bad cheese, Carolan thought what a contrast they made to the sparkling sea and the colourful land. So beautiful, so straight, those trees; so ugly, so distorted, so stunted, this pitiful collection of human beings.

Flash Jane told the company that she had heard through a friend that there was a very comfortable brothel in Sydney, whose proprietress always came to look over cargoes in search of “servants”.

“He! He!” laughed Flash Jane in anticipation.

“If you play your cards right, they say the convict life ain’t so bad … for a woman.”

The little girl whose brother had been burned to death clutched at Carolan’s fingers.

“Do they have chimleys there? Do they have chimleys?”

“You have grown too big,” said Carolan.

“If they have chimneys they would not think of using you to clean them.”

The child’s smile appalled Carolan; it was like the smile of an idiot.

“I have growed. I have growed!” she said, and stood on tiptoe.

A Marine came walking past them.

“Quiet! In line there!” He dropped the butt end of his musket on a woman’s foot. She screamed. He passed on, laughing.

Indignation rose in Carolan. The humiliation of this! Lined up on show, like cattle. She could have wept with the indignity of it, but she dared not weep. She held her head high, and Esther came nearer; their fingers touched. She could feel Esther’s terror through her fingers. She knew Esther was praying silently all the time.

Boats had been rowing out to the ship ever since they had stood here, and that was quite an hour, Carolan thought. Her eyes ached with the unaccustomed brightness; she would have liked to have fallen down on the deck and slept. She looked at Esther’s face. It had that queer look which they all had that of cheese which is going bad, a little green and yellowish-white; the bones of Esther’s face were very prominent; but starvation and confinement had not been able to dull the splendour of her hair. It was unkempt; it was dirty; but the sun’s rays touched it and made it shine like a field of ripe English corn. People would notice that hair. She thought of Flash Jane’s words and her evil grin. A proprietress looking for servants … Oh, not that for Esther! Not that!

A man with an eyeglass and a very elegant coat had come aboard. He stood near them, exchanging a word with one of the Marines. He stuck his eyeglass into his eye, quizzed the rows of female convicts, said something to the Marine and they laughed coarsely.

“By gad!” His voice drifted over to Carolan.

“A lovely crew! What beauties, eh?”