Barney and the Secret of the Whales

To Mark, who gives these books life, and beauty,

and insight, and his extraordinary generosity

to kids, to animals, and to the world

Sydney Town, October 1791

The snake raised its head three feet from where I stood, turning the roosters on the spit above the fire.

Brown snake. Deadly.

I froze.

A boy can run faster than a snake can slither. A brown snake can strike faster than a boy can move.

Birrung had taught me that snakes sleep in the winter. This one must have just woken up. Hungry. Ready to bite.

If Birrung had been there, I'd have yelled for her. Snakes sense movement on the ground, but can't hear much. She would have grabbed its tail. Lash! Snap! The snake would have been dead. ‘Meat,' Birrung had told me, when the colony was hungry and she caught snake for us.

But Birrung was gone. Back to her own people, the Indians. Somewhere in what was just bush to us from the colony, Birrung would be laughing, picking berries, hunting o'possum. Married, maybe, even though she was only a few years older than me and Elsie.

It hurt to think of Birrung. But not as much as it'd hurt if that snake struck me.

The snake stared at me. Such a tiny head to be so deadly, the sun glittering on its scales.

I stood like a statue, my hand still on the spit, the flames heating my face. I'd only ever seen a statue once, way back in England, before Ma was put in prison and me with her, and that was just a glimpse through London's yellow fog. The statue hadn't moved, and nor could I. If I even swayed, that snake would strike me. And I'd be dead.

Maybe if I stayed here long enough, the fire would die down and the snake get cold and go back to sleep. Or it would see a rat and go after it.

Could I stay still till then?

The snake poked out a thin tongue. It licked the air. Its neck was raised to strike . . .

‘Barney! Drat the boy! Barney, have you got them roosters roasted yet?' Sally peered out the kitchen door.

The snake vanished so fast I didn't have time to blink. I stared. Had it even been there? Yes, there was the wriggle in the soil between the corn plants, just like Birrung had shown me . . .

I took a deep breath, smelling roast rooster and fresh-dug dirt, as well as the stink from the graveyard behind the brickworks. The breeze sang of spring and wattle blossom.

There'd just been the snake and me. Now the rest of the world was back: the fireplace with its roasting spit, outdoors so the house didn't get hot from the cooking; the Johnsons' fine new house and gardens and orchard; the crumbling huts of the colony, below them the waves dancing on the harbour and the newly arrived eleven ships of the Third Fleet rocking on the waves. Behind me stretched Mr Johnson's cornfield and melon patch and the potatoes I'd planted a week back and then the bush: green trees as endless as the sea.

And Sally in front of me in her apron, her hands on her hips. ‘If you've let our Sunday dinner burn, boy . . .'

‘Of course I haven't.' I turned the young roosters to show her how golden brown they were. Sally had her own kitchen now. Mr and Mrs Johnson's new brick house had bedrooms for all of us — one for Mr and Mrs Johnson and one for baby Milbah, and the room Sally and Elsie shared, and my room too. Mr Johnson's convict workers had their own quarters down among the huts.

I turned the spit again. I should be thinking of the grand dinner to come, instead of longing for Birrung. I had it good here, after those years in Newgate Prison with Ma, starving among the straw and rats; then nine months in the dark and stink of the ship on the way here, and Ma dying just as we were starting to hope for a new life in the colony, maybe our own hut and all the oysters and greens we could eat . . .

For a while after that it had been me and Elsie on our own, hiding because just about everyone in the colony was a thief of some sort, and would steal my rations quick as spit, and give me a bashing into the bargain.

And then Birrung brought Mr Johnson to rescue us. We all lived with his family, learning how to read and even write, and all about countries like Spain and Far Peru and the Holy Land, and how to make a seed smaller than a grain of sand grow into a carrot.

But then the Indians returned to the harbour when the plague that had killed so many of them vanished again, as fast as it had come. And Birrung left us.

Everything I saw reminded me of her. The snake; the blue of the harbour where she'd shown me how to swim; the sweep of stars like a road from the horizon through the sky.

I wiped my eyes quickly, before Sally saw me cry. I wasn't crying anyway. Boys don't cry. It was just two tears because of the smoke, that was all . . .

‘You bring them roosters in. Meal's on the table. We've got a guest for dinner too.'

‘Birrung? Has she come back to see us again?'

But Sally had already vanished inside.

Birrung! What had she been doing all this time? Had she brought us a present? Honeycomb maybe, or woven baskets?

Maybe . . . maybe she'd decided she wanted to live with us now, not her own people.

I slipped the roosters off the spit and onto the platter. I ran as fast as I could without spilling them, through the kitchen, then skidded to a stop in the dining room.

Birrung wasn't there. Instead a big man sat opposite Elsie and Sally. The top half of his face was like old
leather, and the bottom half was white and shiny, like he had just shaved off a beard. Mr Johnson sat at one end of the table, and Mrs Johnson at the other, with baby Milbah sitting on her lap, chewing a spoon and dribbling.

The stranger didn't wear a uniform like the officers in the colony, but a good suit of broadcloth, not even darned at the elbows. I reckoned he was the best-dressed man in Sydney Town.

I tried not to stare at him as I put down the platter. Mrs Johnson had told me it was rude to stare. All sorts of things were rude that I'd never known about, like burping, or licking your fingers after eating plum cake, or using words like — well, words you're not supposed to write down . . .

‘Captain Melvill, this is another member of our household, Master Barney Bean. Barney, this is Captain Melvill of the
Britannia.
The captain asked me to say a special prayer of thanks at the service this morning for their safe deliverance across the oceans from England.'

‘How do you do, sir?'

Mrs Johnson had taught me that phrase. I glanced at her to see if I'd said it right. She smiled, and gave me a slight nod.

‘Very well, thank you, young man.' The captain's voice was hoarse, as though he were more used to bellowing orders on deck than talking in a dining room.

I took the seat next to him. It felt wrong — me sitting next to a sea captain, who'd brought one of the ships of the Third Fleet of convicts to the colony, and safely too, not like the captains of the Second Fleet, who had starved most of their charges to death. Only twenty-one of the hundred and fifty convicts had died on Captain Melvill's ship, and that was because many had been old or ill when they had been put aboard in England.

I placed my napkin on my lap and held my elbows in, just as Mrs Johnson had shown me, and tried to look as if I were used to having dinner with gentlemen.

Mr Johnson bent his head to say grace. ‘Dear Heavenly Father, bless these foods that you have provided for us. Make us truly grateful . . .'

A fly buzzed. I opened one eye and shooed it away from the roast roosters, and the big dishes of potatoes mashed with goat's milk, boiled carrots, boiled sprouts, boiled turnips and wild spinach, and bread rolls — real bread, not damper — from the oven in our new house. The only thing missing was butter, because goat's milk doesn't give it; there was cottage cheese to spread on the bread instead.

At last grace was over. Mr Johnson carved the meat, and Mrs Johnson served the vegetables. I waited for Mrs Johnson to take the first mouthful before I began to eat too. That's more good-manners stuff, to wait till the lady of the house takes the first bite, maybe so you can tell the food ain't poisoned.

Then we all tucked in.

Captain Melvill ate like the Johnsons and Elsie, with his knife and fork held properly. I was still working out how to use them the right way
and
shovel food in fast enough. Mrs Johnson spooned chopped food into Milbah's mouth and sometimes Milbah swallowed it and sometimes she spat it on the floor or rubbed it in her hair. Luckily she didn't have much of that yet.

Captain Melvill smiled at me and Elsie. ‘You're young to be convicts. What terrible crimes did you commit?'

I glared at him. One thing you didn't do in the colony was ask why anyone had been sent here. Not one convict in a hundred admitted they were guilty anyway. ‘I'm not a convict. Never was. I came out here with my ma. She died.'

‘I'm sorry,' said Captain Melvill. He didn't say if he was sorry for thinking I was a convict brat, or because
Ma was dead. But he said it nicely, so I decided to forgive him, just like Mr Johnson said we should do to everyone, even our enemies.

I hadn't made any enemies yet to forgive.

Captain Melvill smiled at Mr Johnson. ‘The boy and his sister are lucky to be in your household, sir.'

‘Elsie ain't my sister, sir.'

‘We don't know who Elsie is,' said Mr Johnson quietly. ‘She is unable to tell us. No one in the colony admits to knowing anything about her.'

I hadn't known that Mr Johnson had been trying to find out about Elsie. But of course he'd want to see if she had parents, family. Elsie was a mystery. She hadn't even been wearing the clothes given to us on the convict ships when I found her, just after Ma died. She couldn't speak, couldn't eat hardly; just curled into a ball, looking terrified.

‘The girl is dumb?'

‘Elsie ain't stupid!' I cried.

Elsie looked up from her plate and gave me a brief smile.

Captain Melvill raised an eyebrow at me. ‘My apologies again, Master Bean. I didn't mean that she was stupid, merely that she isn't able to speak.'

‘Surgeon White says there is no reason why Elsie can't talk. She reads well and understands all we say,' put in Mrs Johnson from the other end of the table, trying to stop Milbah eating the napkin. ‘She can write well, but she can't seem to remember where she came from either.'

I weren't so sure of that. When I first met Elsie, I had the feeling there were words I said she didn't understand, but she understood everything now. I suspected she knew where she came from too. But sure as eggs Elsie would never tell anyone anything she didn't want them to know. I looked at her again across the table. She gave me the special smile she kept just for me.

I always felt good after one of Elsie's smiles.

‘We are lucky in both our young friends,' said Mr Johnson. ‘Barney is worth six convict men. The best worker in the colony. And Elsie can make a pudding better than anyone in New South Wales. Saving my good wife and Sally, of course,' he added quickly.

‘I see.' Captain Melvill looked at me thoughtfully. I squirmed. Before Birrung and Mr Johnson rescued us, anyone who looked at me thoughtfully was probably going to steal my rations or blanket or pannikin. But a man like Captain Melvill wouldn't do that. Wouldn't
need to either. I glanced sideways at his polished boots, his trousers. Probably the only unpatched trousers in the colony.

‘This must be a long voyage for you, Captain,' said Mrs Johnson. ‘Your family must miss you.'

He swallowed his potato and laughed. ‘My family is used to it, ma'am. A whaling voyage takes a ship about three years, till she brings home her treasure.'

‘Yours is a whaling ship?' Mr Johnson looked surprised.

‘Ha, you are not a sailor, sir. A sailor would have seen at once that the
Britannia
's deck is reinforced for whaling. Five of the ships in our fleet are whalers. We carried human cargo to cover the cost of getting here, that's all.'

Human cargo. That had been me and Ma. I thought of the journey here, in the stinking water that slopped around below deck. No light, except when we was allowed up or when the slop buckets were let down with food, then the same buckets used as chamberpots being hauled up and spilling half the time. Cargo. Though we had been luckier than the wretches who came after us in the Second Fleet. Even now when you saw a man like a skeleton stagger up the road, half blind from scurvy still, you'd know who had done it to him, and why.

‘You must find Sydney Town a disappointment after the great ports of the world, sir.' Mr Johnson helped Elsie to more rooster. ‘I wonder what would bring you so far from civilisation?'

‘You won't find the riches we chase near civilisation, sir.'

‘Riches?' I asked. ‘Here at the end of the world?'

Captain Melvill grinned. ‘Aye, riches, right on your doorstep.'

‘Surely not, sir,' said Mr Johnson. ‘I know that Surgeon White hopes to sell the sap from the local trees as medicine. What else is of value here?'

Captain Melvill lowered his voice. ‘I heard a sailor's secret, back in England. The first ships to come to this colony in the Southern Ocean saw more whales than you'd find off the whole of the Greenland banks. And we saw them too: great pods of whales sailing as if they had never seen a ship — certainly not a whaler.'