‘It’s the spunky young devil as jawed the doctor,’ said a voice.
‘This is my cabin,’ said I. ‘There’s nothing to take in it. But what’s your friend’s, he keeps, don’t he? Look here! I’ve been with you, if not of you, and tasted every joy of yours but your irons, curse them!’ and with a swaggering, bouncing, rollicking manner I sprang to my bunk and pulled out the convict mattress and pillow and flung them on the deck. ‘No. 240,’ I cried, pointing, and forcing a shout of laughter.
Some of the convicts echoed that insane burst of merriment. Their laughter was hideous with its note of raw hoarseness.
‘What’s that bundle there?’ cried one of them, a heavy-jawed, low-browed ruffian.
‘Skins and yacks and dummies is it, my bulger? Where’s your pal?’ cried another man.
‘Show out! Show out!’ roared a third voice.
‘It’s woman’s clothes. Look and then let them be,’ I cried, still preserving my bouncing, dare-devil air.
They were elbowing in; the atmosphere was sickening with the fellows’ warm, hard breathing. Many of them, I judged, had got at the cuddy stock of liquor. Will and the mate stood side by side in a corner. Never shall I forget the show of faces that confronted me; men with broken noses; one with a hare-lip; one with a diabolical squint. Some were gray, two or three a flaming red. But the features and colour counted for nothing; their looks were devilish and horrible, and the prevailing expression an infuriate triumph of the basest spirits, inflamed by drink and animated yet by the brutal and maddening lust of plunder.
At this instant I heard Tom’s voice at the back of the crowd. He cried out: ‘Is this fair? Is this how their promises are to be kept? What have they done? Abram, help me to clear this cabin.’
The rearmost of the convicts were violently twisted out of the doorway; as Tom forced his way in, the fellows reeled to the thrust of his elbows. Abram was shouting: ‘Out, you cub! A bargid’s a bargid. You’ve no right here!’ And whilst he shouted he lay about him, and some of the men absolutely flew before the prodigious thrust of his arm, tumbling others down as they bounded, until perhaps a dozen of the felons lay sprawling in the passage outside the cabin door, cursing, roaring, laughing and filling the place with the infernal din of a madhouse.