For him no wretches, born to work and weep,
Explore the mine, or tempt the dangerous deep.
A second sessions of the Supreme Court from that of Rashleigh’s condemnation was now proceeding, and by the time it had ceased, our adventurer was judged sufficiently recovered to be forwarded to the place of his destination. Accordingly, one day, shortly after the termination of the trials, about 130 miserable beings, among whom, of course, was our adventurer, were linked to a long chain and marched through the streets, heavily ironed and strongly guarded, until they reached the public wharf, where a small colonial coasting vessel called the Alligator was then lying in readiness to receive them.
They were duly marched on board and were stripped quite naked before they were permitted to descend into the hold, that appeared to have been prepared for their reception, a rough floor having been laid over the shingle ballast. As fast as each man got below he was secured by his fetters to a chain, which in its rum was strongly fastened to the planking beneath, so that it was absolutely impossible for him to walk, even if the height of their place of confinement had permitted such a motion. But this was by no means the case, as, from Rashleigh’s description of it, the distance from the floor to the upper deck could not have been more than three and a half feet at the furthest, and the vessel being very small, the number of men referred to were actually squeezed in so tight that it was perfectly impossible for them to be in any other position than upon their sides, while from their close proximity one to the other, they quickly began to perspire so profusely that reeks of vapour almost as dense as smoke could be perceived rolling up the hatchway, the closing of which, if it were but for half an hour, must have resulted in inevitable suffocation to the whole herd of hapless wretches.
Ralph had read a great deal respecting the horrors of the slave trade, but never until now had he any faint conception of the shocking reality; and the only thing from which he could draw consolation was that as they had got but about a hundred miles in all to sail, the voyage and consequent suffering would be but of brief duration.
In a short time the vessel unmoored and the wind being fair, soon cleared the harbour and got out to sea, where a fresh gale appeared to be blowing; for the Alligator pitched heavily and shipped many billows, which, of course, making their way through the open hatchway into the hold, were at first hailed with delight by the parched sufferers below, whose feverish bodies were cooled by this immersion in the briny fluid. But in a little while the water increased in their prison to such an extent that they were obliged to adopt very painful positions in order to keep their heads above it. For several hours did this continue, until the captain was obliged by a shift of wind to put into a haven under his lee called Broken Bay; and then the unhappy convicts thought themselves fortunate in having the water pumped off, leaving them the wet floor to repose upon.
In brief, their voyage lasted forty-eight hours, during which period they were parched with thirst, very few being so fortunate as to obtain a single drink of water. Half a rotten and mouldy biscuit to each man formed their sole sustenance; and to crown all, they were cramped into a noxious hole, rather than hold, where the mephitic vapour arising from the breath of 130 men was increased by ordure, urine and excrement of every kind, among which the sufferers lay perforce.
This scene of complicated horrors, the intensity of which was in no whit lessened by the ruthless character of the inmates of this floating hell, was at length brought to a close by their arrival at Newcastle, where they shortly afterwards landed, naked as they were, upon the beach, and were compelled to perform sundry very necessary ablutions before their clothing was returned to them.
Here they remained until they were inspected by the military commandant, a personage of stern and uncompromising severity, the absolute rigour of whose sway well merited the appellation bestowed upon him of “King of the Coal River.” Immediately on the close of this muster they were told off to various scenes of labour; and it fell to the lot of Rashleigh, with seventeen others, to be drafted for employment in the old coal mine, so called to distinguish it from another shaft, which had been recently commenced.
At the mouth of this work they were received by an overseer, the natural fierceness of whose grim physiognomy was not lessened by a plentiful griming of coal dust. He quickly called his clerk “to take the likenesses” of those whose ill fortune had newly subjected them to his oppression. The clerk, a miserable, half-starved, downcast-looking, ragged being, soon performed his avocation with fear and trembling at the oft-repeated rude threats of his stern superior, and the men were lowered consecutively into the darksome orifice that appeared to gape for them.
On their arrival at the bottom of the chasm, a scene that had at least novelty to recommend it to our adventurer met his wondering gaze. Seven low passages appeared, that opened into the space around the termination of the shaft. They were dimly illuminated by small lamps; but at the farther extremity of each avenue there was a perfect coruscation of blazing lights, in front of which various groups of men were plying different branches of their thrift in toilsome haste, their extra diligence being apparently occasioned by the presence of the superior who had received the new-comers, a specimen of whose brutality they had an early opportunity of witnessing; for no sooner had he landed ftom the skep (bucket) in which he descended than his vigilant eye rested on one of the waggons that a party of prisoners had dragged along one of the passages. This not being filled to his liking, he, without any ceremony, but with many distasteful terms of abuse and energetic oaths, began to lay about him with a stout cudgel he carried, and dispensed his forcible favours so heartily that in a few seconds not one of the luckless gang belonging to the waggon in question was standing erect. After having thus knocked them all down, he began next to beat them until they arose again, and fairly cudgelled them off out of sight with the waggon.
On his return after this agreeable exercise, rather out of breath, he turned his attention to the new-comers, and dividing them into parties of six, he gave each subdivision charge of a waggon; and these led the way through one of the long galleries, followed by the waggons, until they all arrived at the end, which was an open area of considerable extent, where two or three large fires of coal were burning, by whose light, aided by that of their lamps; the miners were delving out masses of coal, at an immense heap of which he finally paused, directing a man who appeared to be overseer of this part of the work, to “take the new chums in charge, and set them on”. This was quickly done. They were told to fill their waggons with coal, to draw them back to die opening, and there to upset the contents as the man at the shaft should direct them.
They continued to do this, stimulated by the blows and threats of their harsh taskmaster, until night, when each received a small portion of boiled grains of maize and much less rotten salt beef, which, with water, formed their whole food. The wretched miners soon after lay down in any part of the works they thought fit, bedding being here totally unknown except to the deputy overseers, and clothing of any kind whatever unworn by the workmen. In fact, the extreme heat of this subterranean place of abode, arising from want of air, and enhanced by the numerous fires maintained, would have rendered the lightest apparel an encumbrance. As for beds or blankets, there were various heaps of sand, which, being loose, were soft enough; and on these such of the convicts as were curious about lying luxuriously used to repose themselves.
The luckless wretches condemned to this kind of labour only left the mine once a week, on Saturday afternoons, when they were all drawn up and compelled to wash themselves and their clothing in the salt water; and after the latter articles wEre dry, all were marched to the convict barracks, where they abode until daylight on Monday morning, at which period they resumed their labour.
The first Saturday afternoon of our adventurer’s sojourn at this miserable spot, as they were all bathing together in the sea, he noticed that not one of those who had been there longer than himself was without certain highly significant marks upon the back or breech, most frequently, indeed, on both, that told of the recent and severe application of the cat. A man to whom he remarked that “punishment was plentiful enough here apparently”, replied with a grin, “Aye. There’s plenty of that, anyway; and so you will say soon, for to-morrow is pay day.”
Ralph did not choose to ask any further questions, and they were soon after, to the number of five hundred, shut up in a spacious room of the prisoners’ barracks, where they were left to pass the night on the floor as they thought fit.
Just at dawn the next day, being sunday, they were aroused by the hoarse voice of a convict barrack officer, who turned them out into the yard of that edifice, where they were all drawn up around some implements, which the increasing light soon showed Rashleigh were triangles for securing men about to be flogged. Beside these implements was placed a table, at which sat apparently a clerk; and four scourgers stood beside the triangles, having their instruments of torture laid in fell array upon a long bench near them.
Our exile had scarcely completed his survey of all these dread preparations when the clash of arms and the roll of a drum announced the approach of the haughty potentate who was to set all this machinery of suffering in motion. An opening was quickly made in the ranks of assembled convicts, and the “Captain” marche............