the hand, glided into her mistress's cabin with a scornful laugh, and
shut the door behind her.

CHAPTER II. SARAH PURFOY.

Convictism having been safely got under hatches, and put to bed in its
Government allowance of sixteen inches of space per man, cut a little
short by exigencies of shipboard, the cuddy was wont to pass some not
unpleasant evenings. Mrs. Vickers, who was poetical and owned a guitar,
was also musical and sang to it. Captain Blunt was a jovial, coarse
fellow; Surgeon Pine had a mania for story-telling; while if Vickers was
sometimes dull, Frere was always hearty. Moreover, the table was well
served, and what with dinner, tobacco, whist, music, and brandy and
water, the sultry evenings passed away with a rapidity of which the
wild beasts 'tween decks, cooped by sixes in berths of a mere five feet
square, had no conception.

On this particular evening, however, the cuddy was dull. Dinner fell
flat, and conversation languished.

"No signs of a breeze, Mr. Best?" asked Blunt, as the first officer came
in and took his seat.

"None, sir."

"These--he, he!--awful calms," says Mrs. Vickers. "A week, is it not,
Captain Blunt?"

"Thirteen days, mum," growled Blunt.

"I remember, off the Coromandel coast," put in cheerful Pine, "when we
had the plague in the Rattlesnake--"

"Captain Vickers, another glass of wine?" cried Blunt, hastening to cut
the anecdote short.

"Thank you, no more. I have the headache."

"Headache--um--don't wonder at it, going down among those fellows. It is
infamous the way they crowd these ships. Here we have over two hundred
souls on board, and not boat room for half of 'em."

"Two hundred souls! Surely not," says Vickers. "By the King's
Regulations--"

"One hundred and eighty convicts, fifty soldiers, thirty in ship's crew,
all told, and--how many?--one, two three--seven in the cuddy. How many
do you make that?"

"We are just a little crowded this time," says Best.

"It is very wrong," says Vickers, pompously. "Very wrong. By the King's
Regulations--"

But the subject of the King's Regulations was even more distasteful to
the cuddy than Pine's interminable anecdotes, and Mrs. Vickers hastened
to change the subject.

"Are you not heartily tired of this dreadful life, Mr. Frere?"

"Well, it is not exactly the life I had hoped to lead," said Frere,
rubbing a freckled hand over his stubborn red hair; "but I must make the
best of it."

"Yes, indeed," said