You always believe in and stick up for your father; only recollect you're going to a new country, where there are thousands of convicts, the scum of our own land, and the lash is part of the law, and the law is very strict.

It's obliged to be, for the protection of the settlers.

See how stern we are here where we have them all under our eye.

You're obliged to be harder where they're free like and scattered all over the country." "Yes, you're stern enough," said Nic indignantly, "threatening to give a man the cat-o'-nine-tails for making faces." The warder smiled, his hard, stern face lighting up as he gazed admiringly at Nic.
"Bah! that was only talk, sir, just as one would threaten a boy.
Twenty-five's a man of five-and-thirty, but he's only got brains like a boy.

I could make anything of him." The warder nodded good-humouredly, and then his face grew hard-looking as an iron mask, as he shouted out orders to first one and then another of the men under his charge; while the soldiers, standing here and there, rested on their muskets, and looked grimly on at the evil-looking prisoners pacing the deck.
Nic walked aft with his forehead puckered up and his mind hard at work thinking of the home that he was going to, and feeling somewhat damped by the warder's words; and as he reached the quarter-deck he went to the side, after noticing that Lady O'Hara was talking to the officers, and resting his arms upon the bulwark he leaned there gazing away at the sunlit sea, flecked by the flying-fish which flashed out, skimmed along for some distance, and then dropped back into the water.
"Convicts--convicts," he thought.