The Convicts by Iain Lawrence

little boy beside me.
    “Do youtoean it?” He gazed up, then wriggled with happiness. His hand, below the table, gave me a small touch of thanks, and I saw that I had gained a friend, as well as an enemy.
    I heard the ship's bell ring, and the boy who had brought my breakfast in a bucket now came and fetched the bowls. The tenches cleared as a frenzy of work began. Boys tipped up the benches, tipped up the tables, and stowed them along the wall. A brush was put into my hand, a bucket of water sluiced across the floor.
    The little fellow who had eaten my breakfast appeared now at my side. “Tom!” he said. “Ta, very much,” He worked Mis brash back and forth. “I'm Midgely,” he said. “It's Williani Midgely, but they never say William.” He looked around very quickly. “Mostly I'm Midge.”
    The water from my sponge streamed across the wood. In my muddled mind it seemed to run uphill.
    “Is it true?” His voice was a whisper. His eyes always moved, watching every corner. “Did you really do that to Weedle?” He drew the scar with his finger, across his face. “Did you, Tom?”
    “No,” I said.
    “If he thinks you did, he'll kill you. He will.” Midgely nodded. “Sure as spit, he will.”
    “But—”
    “Shhh!” Midgley turned himself about and went scrubbing toward the wall.
    For hours, it seemed, I was left by myself to wash the same bit of wood over and over. When the bell tolled eight strokes in quick pairs, it brought an end to our chores. We put away our sponges and our mops, rags and brooms and buckets. Our bowls were brought back, now cleaned and damp, and Midgely appeared at my side. He showed me how to wrap the bowl in my handkerchief and where to stow it along the wall, then made sure I was with him as we marched to the deck above, to a vast workroom full of tables.
    We sat together at one, with Weedle and Carrots and Oten. The table was heaped with cloth, the same brown canvas that made our uniforms. A guard brought reels of thread, and for each of us a long needle as thick as a little spike.
    “Look, Tom,” said Midgely, touching my wrist. “Look here, I'll show you how it's done.”
    The cloth was in two shapes—the sleeves and the backs of shirts—and it was our task to stitch them together. Midgely stretched his arms apart to measure his thread. He broke it with his teeth and, squinting, poked it through the needle's eye. “Never tie a knot,” he said. “It only slows you down.” He talked as though his mouth were full of water, slurring all his sounds. “Only shlows you down,” he said. “Now look.” He took a sleeve from one pile and a back from another, and matched the edges. “Like this,” he said. “You see? Match ‘em right, and all'sh Bob, Tom. Now look” He sewed them together. That was all there was to it, but Midgely showed me every step and every stitch. “It's easy when you get the hang of it,” he said, “Now try it, Tom.”
    I threaded my needle and sewed my cloth together. Midgely smiled up at me with his baby cheeks. “That'sh good,” he said, in his watery voice. “Oh, that'sh grand, Tom.”
    There were small, square windows along the wall that let in shafts of light and cold breaths of air. But still the lamps were burning, and my sickness only grew worse. It came in bursts, with each shift of the light, or every time a reel of thread suddenly rolled itself along the table. I tried to put my mind on the work, but it was the most mindless business anyone could have dreamed of, and I soon saw that it would never end. When we got near the end of the piles, more cloth appeared.
    The bell tolled once.
    I recited Virgil to myself in Latin, and Pliny in Greek. I made myself dizzy with Euclidean elements, and I kept listening for the ring of the bell. When my pile of doubled pieces grew, Walter Weedle reached out and took a few to add to his own, so that it seemed he did twice the work of me. The guard, each ti&ie he passed, saw my little pile and bashed