she seemed reconciled to her fate, and employed the intervals
between scolding her daughter and her maid, in fascinating
the boorish young Lieutenant, Maurice Frere.

Fascination was an integral portion of Julia Vickers's nature;
admiration was all she lived for: and even in a convict ship,
with her husband at her elbow, she must flirt, or perish of mental inanition.
There was no harm in the creature. She was simply a vain,
middle-aged woman, and Frere took her attentions for what they were worth.
Moreover, her good feeling towards him was useful, for reasons
which will shortly appear.

Running down the ladder, cap in hand, he offered her his assistance.

"Thank you, Mr. Frere. These horrid ladders. I really--he, he--quite tremble
at them. Hot! Yes, dear me, most oppressive. John, the camp-stool.
Pray, Mr. Frere--oh, thank you! Sylvia! Sylvia! John,
have you my smelling salts? Still a calm, I suppose? These dreadful calms!"

This semi-fashionable slip-slop, within twenty yards of the wild beasts' den,
on the other side of the barricade, sounded strange; but Mr. Frere
thought nothing of it. Familiarity destroys terror, and the incurable flirt,
fluttered her muslins, and played off her second-rate graces,
under the noses of the grinning convicts, with as much complacency
as if she had been in a Chatham ball-room. Indeed, if there had been
nobody else near, it is not unlikely that she would have disdainfully
fascinated the 'tween-decks, and made eyes at the most presentable
of the convicts there.

Vickers, with a bow to Frere, saw his wife up the ladder, and then