Our own ship was clothed with sail to the royal yards, with dark lines of damp where the reefs had been lately shaken out. I was too far aft to see the main-deck. Smoke from the chimneys of the two galleys blew black and brisk over the bow, showing that the wind nearly followed us. The sailors were washing down, the head pump was going, and buckets were being handed along from the forecastle, where stood the sentry in a grey coat with his bayonet gleaming like silver. The first person I saw on the poop was my cousin Will. He and several others were scrubbing the deck hard with brushes, whilst a broad-shouldered apprentice flung pailfuls of water along the planks. Will turned his head and saw me, but took no further notice. Mr. Bates, the chief mate, stood near the wheel, and I observed that he watched me whilst I filled my bucket at the little pump that was kept a-gushing by an active young seaman. It was a strange real picture of shipboard life on the high seas. The cold of the night was still in the wind, and not yet had the sun extinguished the melancholy of the gray dawn in the distant recesses of the west.
I saw no convict, but when I returned to the cuddy with my bucket full of water, on looking through the windows which commanded a view of the main-deck, I observed a number of the felons all hard at work brushing, swabbing and cleaning. For an hour I worked with Frank, scrubbing the cuddy deck, drying it, replacing the lengths of carpet and so on. The steward then told me to get a hook-pot from the pantry and go to the galley for some hot coffee for Frank and myself. I found a hook-pot and stepped on to the quarter-deck, meaning to walk forward by the narrow gangway; but a number of seamen on some job there blocked it, so I went past the sentry at the barricade gate.
I was trembling, and felt myself pale. There were many convicts about, and any one at a moment might turn and prove to be Tom. Some were coiling ropes away, some slapped the deck with swabs, some were cleaning the paintwork; they were all ironed. The decks, dark with brine, were greasy, the motions of the ship quick and uncomfortable, and the irons, robbing the limbs of all elasticity, caused many of the unhappy wretches to slide and stagger as they moved about, for which they would be sharply and sometimes brutally yelled at by the convicts who overseered them. The prize-fighter was savagely swabbing near the main-hatch. He struck the deck as though he would split it. I was obliged to pass him close. He saw me and nodded, and said in a low, thick, sarcastic voice, ‘Dice work to put a gentlebud to.’