She wiped the tears from her eyes and was about to remove the brass talons from her right hand when she looked down again at Potbottom's unconscious form. All the anger and humiliation he had caused her suddenly coalesced within her breast as though it were a great fist which squeezed her heart. Mary took the remaining talons from her right hand and placed them on the deck beside the body where she'd left the others. Now she rolled Potbottom onto his back, quickly unbuttoned the front of his worn and greasy frock coat and opened it wide, whereupon she rolled him back onto his stomach. She then stripped the sleeves from his limp arms and pulled off the jacket. Mary was panting loudly, both from the effort of manhandling him and from her tremendous fury. She laid the coat aside and pulled the dirty blouse he wore from the top of his breeches and lifted it high over his back and the back of his head. This action completely exposed his back and with it the hump which now seemed larger than when it was concealed beneath his coat. Mary was whimpering as she replaced the talons onto her left hand, and with them she drew a long deep stroke across Potbottom's back, weeping afresh with a volatile mixture of anger, spite and despair. She was doing to someone else what had been so often done to her. Coldly, precisely, she carved twenty-five lines across the surgeon-assistant's hairy back, in a random criss-cross fashion, sparing not even the ugly hump.

'That be your twenty-five lashes back, Tiberias Potbottom! Gawd is not mocked, you 'ear?' Mary laughed, though somewhat hysterically, for she felt no humour in it. 'That be one stroke for every whore aboard and one for me, you cruel bastard! That be our Botany Bay dozen! Panting with the emotional effort, Mary began to weep softly as the anger left, completely spent by her revenge.

After a few moments Mary ceased crying, sensing her own imminent danger. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her smock. She now felt strangely calm and pulled Potbottom's blouse down over his back, tucking the ends neatly into his broad leather belt. Bright crimson designs of a random pattern seeped through the dirty cloth.

Mary could feel the ship moving as she lifted Potbottom to a seated position so that he was propped against a berth. She then calmly returned his jacket to his person, buttoning it up as before and adjusting his neckerchief, whereupon she laid him back with his broken little buckled boots placed within the door of the dispensary. The remainder of his body was lying within the main cabin of the hospital. Then she took the bottle in which she'd mixed the opium and the laudanum and emptied what remained of its contents in the slop bucket and, stepping over her victim, returned it to the shelf in the dispensary. Mary then quickly checked that Potbottom was still breathing and, gathering up the two remaining talons, left by climbing up through the open hatchway onto the deck, where she threw the vicious brass claws over the side.

The rising sun caught the small brass objects and for a moment the wicked claws winked and then fell into the trough of a wave. It was a small enough thing to do and some might say Mary was simply destroying the evidence of her perfidy, but this was not the case. With the dreaded hooks went the past, that hard dark passage' of time which was not of Mary's making. Ahead lay another life. And though Mary would enter her new land in captivity, she felt herself to be free at last.

The Destiny II had reached the entrance to the harbour between Fort San Juan and Fort Santa Cruz, so that the crew's attention was to the foredeck looking out to sea. With the prisoners still below decks, there was no one to observe her as she moved aft.

Mary moved rapidly to the stern of the vessel and up onto the poop deck where, as soon as the vessel was safely out to sea, morning muster would take place. She squeezed behind two barrels lashed to the deck and crouched there. High above her a flock of macaw parrots flew across from the headland, their brilliant plumage flashing in the early morning sun. Mary could see the high peak of the Sugar Loaf above the sweep of the bay and the dark green jungle which grew upon its slopes and almost to the pinnacle of the great mountain. She would always remember the immense height of the tropical sky and its infinite blueness so much sharper, brighter, fiercer than the English sky.

Potbottom was not missed at morning muster, for it was not unknown for him to be absent. But he would always surface later when sick call was made directly after muster, and those prisoners hoping to escape for a few days of improved rations remained behind on the poop deck endeavouring to persuade Mrs Barnett, or even the ship's surgeon, that they were right poorly disposed.

On the morning of sailing from Rio, Joshua Smiles had himself attended the sick call, and it had been assumed that Potbottom must have returned from ashore in the early hours of the morning and was still abed. But when the surgeon-superintendent asked for him a guard was sent to rouse him from his cabin.

However, before the guard could return one of the hospital assistants came up to the poop deck and from her demeanour she was seen to be most distressed. She went directly to Mrs Barnett, but because the surgeon was busy with his ear to the chest of one of the convict women the matron hushed her attempt to talk by placing a finger to her lips. When Joshua Smiles withdrew his ear the assistant, a rather fat young girl with an ugly pock-marked face, was wringing her hands and blurted out.

'Mr Smiles, excuse I, sir, Mr Potbottom be dead on 'ospital floor!'

It took several hours before Tiberias Potbottom regained consciousness. In truth he had been conscious a full hour before he allowed that this be known. By which time he was aware both from the pain and from the talk about him, of the mutilated condition of his back.

Joshua Smiles, more pale than usual and in a state of considerable distress, sat beside him praying, imploring the Lord Jesus to save his precious and diligent servant. By the time Potbottom was prepared to squeeze the hand of his mentor, to indicate his return to life, he had well grasped the nature of his own dilemma, and had concocted a story which explained his situation in the dispensary. This took several hours to emerge and came out in half-coherent snatches, whether due to his latent condition or a deliberate ploy is not known. By the end of that day he told a story of having been given some strange draught. 'In one o' them bodegas what they's got and where I stopped to partake o' a bowl o' the strong black coffee what they serves with the juice o' the cane plant.'

'Mescaline!' Joshua Smiles announced triumphantly. 'The juice from cacti, a most stupefying narcotic. They put mescaline in your coffee!'

'That be dead right, Mr Smiles, sir!' Potbottom exclaimed, delighted to have a name to add to his plot. 'Mescaleen eh? That be for sure as I were not aware o' what befell me after, save to know that me purse be stolen and a valuable gold chain and medal were taken from about me neck. Though how this came about I truly cannot say, I awoke in me own cabin in the early part o' the mornin' not knowing how I got to the ship and with me head poundin' something horrible and feelin' in every part a great discomfort.'

'And the lacerations to your back, can you perchance venture as to how they happened?' the surgeon asked.

'That I can't, sir. How it come about I haven't the slightest knowledge of,' Potbottom replied and then continued where he'd left off. 'But I looks at me watch what I had the good sense to leave aboard and sees it be time for me to attend dispensary.' Potbottom looked up beguilingly. 'As is o' course me daily duty and one which I takes most conscientiously.'

'Indeed, we are all most grateful for your diligence, Mr Potbottom,' Mrs Barnett said.