The Convict Ship, Volume III by W. Clark Russell

The noise of many voices had been slowly growing in the cuddy. The swell and the volume of sound were assurance that the interior was full. I wondered the people did not drink and revel on the deck, where there was plenty of room and fresh air and dewy coolness. The cuddy, perhaps, was like being ashore, and put them in mind of their old haunts. There was no likeness, indeed, to a tavern in it, yet the convicts might find something to refresh their memory of the boozing-kens in the broken mirrors and the low pitch of the ceiling or upper deck and in the bulkheads, which would answer to their idea of walls, particularly should the atmosphere become dense with tobacco smoke and sickening with the fumes of rum and clamorous as a houseful of shrieking madmen with the songs, jokes, laughter, and the many humours of the stews and kennels.

The _Childe Harold_ was a very stoutly built ship. The cabin bulkheads were exceedingly thick and substantial. I could not hear individual voices plainly; the combined growl of the men's speech, often rising into a sort of roar like to the noise of a breaker sweeping back from a beach after it has burst into froth, overwhelmed the particular notes and accents which swelled it. Sometimes I thought I could hear Barney Abram shouting, then there'd happen a sinking in the tumult when I'd catch a loud, coarse laugh, solitary and startling, or the voice of a man beginning a song that was quickly drowned by the freshening of the hubbub.