Both at your service, sir, and our company too." "Thank you," said Nic, laughing; "but I'm not likely to need it." "Unless the birds want to take _flight_," said the ensign.
Nic looked at him inquiringly.
"He means the gaol birds, youngster," said the elder officer, laughing, "if they rise against us.

Not a very nice arrangement for your lady coming out in a ship like this." "Is there any danger ?" said Nic anxiously.
"No," said the ensign, rather importantly; "we shall see that there's not." "Then you are here to guard them ?" asked Nic.
"Bah, no! We are going to join our regiment.

There is a warder guard.
Of course, if there was any necessity--" Nic looked rather startled, and the lieutenant said, smiling: "There'll be nothing to mind, my lad.

The winds and waves will trouble you more than the convicts; but they're not pleasant fellow-passengers to have, on board." Nic did not think so the next morning, when, after guard had been mounted under the lieutenant's charge, just as they were getting well out of the mouth of the river, with the soldiers stationed at intervals with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, orders were given, and the stern-looking warders ushered up the convict gang of fifty men from below to take their allotted amount of air and exercise in the forward part of the deck; for almost without exception they were a villainous-looking lot, their closely cropped hair and ugly prison garb adding to the bad effect.
Talking was strictly forbidden, every movement being carefully watched, and not least by Nic, at whom the prisoners looked curiously as they passed, one man putting on a pleading, piteous aspect, as if asking for the boy's compassion, and twice over his lips moved as if he were saying something.
But somehow, though the man was not bad-looking, and formed one of the exceptions to the brutally fierce faces around, his pleading look did not excite Nic's pity, but caused a feeling of irritation that he could not explain.
This happened again and again, when, attracted by the daily coming up of the men on deck, Nic found himself watching them, unconscious of the fact that he was watched the while.
Every now and then the chief warder, a stern, fierce-looking man with a cutlass in his belt, shouted out some order; and as it was obeyed by this or that man the boy soon began to know them as Number Forty-nine or Hundred and eighty, or some other number.

One particularly scoundrelly-looking fellow, who made a point of catching his eye whenever he could, for the purpose of winking, thrusting his tongue in his cheek, or making some hideous grimace, and following it up with a grin of satisfaction if he saw it caused annoyance, was known as Twenty-five; a singularly brutal-visaged man with a savage scowl, who never once looked any one full in the face, was Forty-four; and the mild, pleading-looking man, who annoyed Dominic by his pitiful, fawning air, was Thirty-three.
"Well, sir, what do you think of them ?" said a familiar voice one day; and turning sharply, Nic found himself face to face with the chief warder.
"Think?
I hardly know," said Nic.