dge of men, and
what you've got to do is to sharpen up that faculty, as people call it.
I'm not bragging, but I've got it a little, and I've polished and
polished it for twenty years, till I'm not such a very bad judge of
convicts. You give me a gang, and in a week's time, if there's an
innocent man, or a man who wants to do the right thing, or one who's
been always wrong and could be worked up into the right, I'll pick him
out. Here you, Twenty-five, I've got my eye on you, and you'd better
make an end of those monkey faces, unless you want the cat."

"The cat?" said Nic.

"Yes, sir, with nine tails. That's the punishment for convicts who
won't behave themselves, assigned servants and all. You'll soon know
all about the lash when you get out to your father's station."

"I'm sure I shall not," said Nic indignantly. "My father is too humane
a man."

"That's right, sir. 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 di