‘Pass the word for Barney Abram,’ said the doctor to the sentry at the door of the main hatch.
The soldier did so, and after a minute or two the prize-fighter, with irons on his legs and a chain triced up to his waist, came through the door, attended by a convict warder, or ‘captain.’ He was a fierce and brutal-looking creature when you saw him close. His face was pitted with small-pox, and embellished besides with the scars of many bloody conflicts in the ring. He wore an extraordinary expression; it was not a grin; it was not a smirk; it was a fixed, crafty leer of knowingness.
‘Abram, look at this young man and tell me who he is,’ said the doctor.
The prize-fighter, resting his elbows in the palms of his immense hands, leaned his ugly face forward and stared at me; he contracted his brows whilst he looked as though he hunted through his memory. At last he exclaimed: ‘I devver saw the young gentlebud before.’
‘That’s dot ibprobable,’ said the prize-fighter, with a glance at the sentry and a complacent look-round, and holding up his head.
‘Look at this young man,’ said the doctor. ‘Where have you met him?’
‘Debber saw bib in all by life. S’elp be as true as by ’air’s growig,’ returned the prize-fighter.
‘I was there,’ answered the prize-fighter, pursing up his leathery under-lip.
‘Observe him well and try to recollect if he was a prisoner?’
‘Dot in by tibe,’ said the prize-fighter.
This insinuation, after what I had said, enraged me. ‘You know I never was a prisoner, sir,’ I cried. ‘You are acting inhumanly in trying to confirm your hopes, but not your suspicions, that I was one. I was on a visit to the jail for my entertainment. My companion and I were conducted to the prisoners’ visiting-room. There I saw Mr. Barney Abram in conversation with a stout, dark lady, gaily attired, and I looked at him with attention because he was pointed out to me as the greatest prize-fighter of the age, and that is why I mentioned his name when you asked me whether I knew any of the convicts on board.’
A savage glow of pleasure brightened the prize-fighter’s eye as he listened; my audacious address, my reference to the brute’s fame, acted upon his spirits like a can of drink. The sentry eyed me askant; the warder with a satisfaction which his flat, ruffianly face could not conceal.