s Frere, coming to the quarter-railing.
"Touch your damned hat! Do you hear?"

Rufus Dawes touched his cap, saluting in half military fashion. "I'll
make some of you fellows smart, if you don't have a care," went on the
angry Frere, half to himself. "Insolent blackguards!"

And then the noise of the sentry, on the quarter-deck below him,
grounding arms, turned the current of his thoughts. A thin, tall,
soldier-like man, with a cold blue eye, and prim features, came out of
the cuddy below, handing out a fair-haired, affected, mincing lady,
of middle age. Captain Vickers, of Mr. Frere's regiment, ordered for
service in Van Diemen's Land, was bringing his lady on deck to get an
appetite for dinner.

Mrs. Vickers was forty-two (she owned to thirty-three), and had been
a garrison-belle for eleven weary years before she married prim John
Vickers. The marriage was not a happy one. Vickers found his wife
extravagant, vain, and snappish, and she found him harsh, disenchanted,
and commonplace. A daughter, born two years after their marriage, was
the only link that bound the ill-assorted pair. Vickers idolized little
Sylvia, and when the recommendation of a long sea-voyage for his failing
health induced him to exchange into the --th, he insisted upon bringing
the child with him, despite Mrs. Vickers's reiterated objections on the
score of educational difficulties. "He could educate her himself, if
need be," he said; "and she should not stay at home."

So Mrs. Vickers, after a hard struggle, gave up the point and her dreams
of Bath together, and followed her husband with the best grace she could
muster. When fairly out to sea she seemed reconciled to her fate, and
employed the intervals between scolding her daughter and her maid, in
fascinating the boorish young Lieutenant, Maurice Frere.

Fascination was an integral portion of Julia Vickers's nature;
admiration was all she lived for: and even in a convict ship, with her
husband at her elbow, she must flirt, or perish of mental inanition.
There was no harm in the creature. She was simply a vain, middle-aged
woman, and Frere took her attentions for what they were worth. Moreover,
her good feeling towards him was useful, for reasons which will shortly
appear.

Running down the ladder, cap in hand, he offered her his assistance.

"Thank you, Mr. Frere. These horrid ladders. I really--he, he--quite
tremble at them. Hot! Yes, dear me, most oppressive. John, the
camp-stool. Pray,