Barney and the Secret of the Whales (3 page)

I tossed in bed that night, for all it was the best bed I'd ever slept in. Me, Barney Bean, sleeping in a clean bed with sheets and a patchwork quilt!

Except I couldn't sleep. At last I lit the wick of the slush lamp. It stank of mutton fat, not like the expensive oil Captain Melvill and his sailors would bring back from whaling, that people said had no smell or smoke at all. I tiptoed down the stairs and out onto the hill above the house. I sat on the big wooden bench Mr Johnson
had made, with his own hands, just like he wasn't a gentleman.

It was cold enough that the snake would be asleep. Maybe it had caught a rat and would lie digesting it for weeks. Birrung said the best time to catch a snake was when it was sleeping in winter or lying satisfied, full of rat.

The moon rode high above me, like it was a sailing ship too, making its way across the stars. I could see the darker blobs of the two headlands that guarded our harbour. They were green and pretty in daytime, but now they looked like prison bars keeping us here in New South Wales.

Funny, I'd felt free ever since I'd been in the colony. But I was no more free than any convict working on the road gang. I might be legally allowed to leave, but how could I? There weren't no roads to take, no carriages to ride in. Birrung and the Indians knew how to live in the bush around us, but I didn't, just the things she'd taught me. The only way to be truly free was to sail out between those headlands into the ocean. And the only way Barney Bean was going to do that was on a whaling ship.

Go back to England? Not me.

But to see the world . . .

I'd been nine months at sea, but nearly all I'd seen was black ooze and water below. We were never allowed on deck when the ship was in port, in case we tried to escape. But those days when we were allowed up on deck at sea! You never knew what colour the ocean would be, nor the sky neither. If I went with Captain Melvill, I'd be able to see how the sea changed colour and the sky too. Watch land appear on the horizon all small, and grow closer and closer, just like the few times I'd glimpsed it coming here.

And whales!

The only animals I'd known back in England were rats, and the cats that caught them sometimes, and the ratter's dog that would eat your ankle for breakfast and spit out the bones. I felt a thrill shiver my spine every time I saw a new kind of animal here.

And Birrung wasn't coming back, or not to stay. I had to stop gazing down the track, hoping I'd see her, dark as a morning shadow. Had to stop gazing out at the canoes on the harbour and the women fishing, wondering if one of them was her.

Another slush lamp flickered in the kitchen then out the door. Elsie always knew when I was bothered. She settled herself on the seat beside me. Her little white face looked up at me, inquiringly.

‘I want to go whaling,' I said. I hadn't realised I'd made my mind up till then. But I had, right back when I'd first heard Captain Melvill talk about the hunt. What was I doing digging potatoes here when I could be chasing whales and making my fortune? And out at sea, said a whisper in my mind, I wouldn't keep watching the track, hoping Birrung might come down it, yet knowing in my heart she wouldn't.

Elsie made a little noise beside me.

‘Elsie! What are you crying for?'

She turned her head away.

Suddenly I understood. ‘I ain't leaving for good, you goose!'

She looked back at me, her dark eyes wide.

‘I'll come back with gold coins in my pocket. Don't you see? You can get rich whaling! Rich enough to stock a farm. Soon as I'm old enough I'll ask Governor Phillip to give me a land grant, and convicts and tools to work it. Don't need money to build a house, or for seeds for the garden. But sheep and cows cost money.' I grinned at her. ‘And saucepans for your kitchen too.'

I felt her sag a little beside me. I stared at her in the darkness. ‘It's you and me together, Elsie. Always has
been. But we need money if we're to get a proper place of our own, not just a hut of mud and sticks.'

And I'll get to see the world too, I thought. In a cabin of my own, not crammed in wooden bunks down in the hold. I could stand on deck as long as I wanted and see the sky and strange ports like Cape Town and those islands where the girls danced with no clothes on. I didn't tell Elsie that.

‘I'd always come back here,' I said.

Elsie's hand crept into mine. I squeezed it. We sat there, watching the moon sail across the starry ocean of the sky.

‘May I go, sir?'

Mr Johnson looked at me seriously over the table where he was writing his sermon. It was piled with books and more books, mostly faded and stained now after more than three years of lending them to convicts with dirty fingers in leaky huts. ‘You are free to go where you wish, Barney. But life at sea isn't just the grand adventure Captain Melvill described.'

‘I know all about the sea, sir!'

Mr Johnson shook his head. ‘You've made one voyage. And it was a lucky one. Only forty-eight people in the whole fleet died. Captain Phillip was the best leader our expedition could have had. Fresh food whenever it could be had, clean ships. Do you know that a quarter of the crew die on most voyages, Barney?'

‘Captain Melvill is a good 'un. He ain't been wrecked yet!'

‘Most sailors don't die in a shipwreck,' said Mr Johnson gently. ‘They die from scurvy or being washed overboard, from fever from bad food and water, or from falling from the rigging. The conditions on the
Britannia
are better than elsewhere, and Captain Melvill is said to feed his crew well. But whaling is even more dangerous than most sailing enterprises. Those brave men in tiny boats Captain Melvill talked about — how many of them survive the voyage?'

He seemed to expect an answer. ‘I don't know, sir.'

‘You're a good worker, Barney, and strong for your age. But have you wondered why Captain Melvill is so eager for a boy to join the crew?'

‘Why, sir?'

‘Because whaling ships lose so many men on every voyage they have to take on more crew at each port.'

And just about every man here is a convict or soldier who isn't allowed to leave the colony to crew a whaling ship, I thought. Which left me . . . ‘You're saying I shouldn't go, sir?'

Mr Johnson sighed. ‘No, lad. I just want you to know what you're taking on. Captain Melvill spoke the truth — a man can get good money whaling, better than he'd probably ever get on land. And if there are as many whales in these oceans as he thinks, then he might even be right about it being a chance to get rich. Barney, we need to think about your future. Mrs Johnson and Milbah and I will go home one day, back to England. As soon as I see the church built and a good man to replace me as chaplain, we will go home.'

I stared at him. ‘Ain't this your home now?'

‘No, Barney. We have friends back in England, family, other work to do. This has been a time of service for us, to lead the convicts, the cast-off and condemned, back to the Light. But when it is over . . .' he looked me in the eyes ‘. . . Mrs Johnson and I are not wealthy, Barney. We don't have enough money to pay for your and Elsie's passages to England. Don't worry,' he said quickly, ‘we won't leave for a few years yet. Elsie will be a fine strong girl by then, and an accomplished
cook. Any officer would be glad to employ her, even the governor.'

‘And me, sir?' I said in a small voice.

‘I will use all my influence to get a good land grant for you, and convicts to work it. But that is all, Barney.'

‘Yes, sir.' I didn't bother telling him that Elsie wasn't going to be no officer's servant. But if I was to make sure that didn't happen, I needed money.

And whale hunting was the only way I was going to get it.

I had a nightmare the night before I left. Maybe more a memory than a nightmare. Me and Ma on those thin planks on the ship bringing us to New South Wales, two to each bunk and so narrow we had to huddle together — at least it was warm. But it was the dark that got to you — month after month of it, allowed up on deck only when it was calm, which wasn't for weeks sometimes. The stink of the slop bucket. Dark upon dark and no one knew what was at the end of
it, just this bay called Botany at the end of the world that no one had even seen for nearly twenty years since Captain Cook and Mr Banks had been there, and Cook was dead so he couldn't tell no one what it was really like . . .

In my dream I was back there, the black water in the hold sloshing and slapping beneath our bunk. But it wasn't just the ship around me: the whole craft was being eaten by a whale, like in the Bible story that Mrs Johnson read us at Sunday school, the whale that swallowed Jonah and was swallowing us too . . .

The whole world was shivering and shaking, and shaking me.

Except it was a hand that was shaking me. I opened my eyes. Elsie looked down at me, holding a slush lamp. I tried to grin at her. ‘Thanks,' I whispered.

She always seemed to know when I was having nightmares. I don't think I usually cried out — I
hoped
I didn't — because no one else ever seemed to hear me. Elsie and me had both had nightmares, back in those months when we'd been hiding together.

I supposed Sally woke Elsie from her nightmares now. Sally had a tongue like a carving knife, but I'd seen her hug Elsie when she thought no one was
looking, and she gave her a drink of warm goat's milk every night to fatten her up too.

I stared at Elsie in the slush light. I wanted to say that I missed being the one to chase her nightmares away. Wanted to say that when I came back rich, she wouldn't have to be a servant when the Johnsons returned to England. Wanted to say that even if we were shipwrecked, or captured by pirates, or becalmed in the ocean, I'd still come back to her, that I'd look after her, always, like she looked after me.

But all I could say was, ‘Better go back to bed afore Sally finds you gone. And thanks again, Elsie.'

Elsie gave me one of her smiles. Then she was gone, a white ghost in her long nightdress.

And I tried to go back to sleep.

‘Nothing in that bag needs darning, does it?' asked Sally suspiciously.

I shook my head. ‘No.' My kit held a change of clothing, a blanket washed yesterday by Sally, six handkerchiefs with my initials embroidered on them by Elsie, a Bible from Mr and Mrs Johnson, and a fruitcake.

‘Good. 'Cause I don't want no sailor thinking I don't keep everyone in this house all darned and proper. Don't you be losing my good cake tin neither.'

‘No, Sally.'

She looked like she was trying to think of something else to be cross about. Suddenly she grabbed my shoulder. I was expecting a cuff on the ear, but instead she hugged me tight against her apron. It was a bit like being hugged by a big sack of flour. But nice. ‘You look after yourself, boy. You hear me?'