Morgan’s Run (57 page)

Lieutenant Furzer could produce no lists worth mentioning, had little idea of whereabouts anything landed had been stored; the only storehouses up were temporary canvas ones.

“I had thought to list things when they went into permanent storage, sir,” he faltered.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Furzer, ye’re a cretin!”

The quartermaster swallowed and stuck his chin out. “I cannot do it all with the men I have, Major Ross, and that is honest!”

“Then I suggest ye conscript more convicts. Morgan, have ye any ideas as to suitable men? Ye’re a convict, ye must know some.”

“I do, sir. Any amount. Commencing with Thomas Crowder and Aaron Davis. Bristol men and fond of clerking. Villains, but too clever to bite the hand gives them clerical work, so they’ll not steal. Threaten to put them to chopping down trees at the rate of a dozen a day and they will behave perfectly.”

“What about yourself?”

“I can be of more benefit elsewhere, sir,” Richard said.

“Doing what?”

“Sharpening saws, axes, hatchets and anything else in need of a keen edge. I can also set a saw’s teeth, which is a craft. I have some tools with me now and if my tool box was put on a ship, I will have everything I need.” He cleared his throat. “I do not mean to cast aspersions on those who are in command, sir, but the axes and hatchets are sadly inferior. So too the spades, shovels and mattocks.”

“I have noticed that for myself,” said Major Ross grimly. “We have been diddled by experts, Morgan, from the penny-pinching Admiralty officials to the contractor and the transport captains, some of whom are busy selling slops and better clothing already—including, I have reason to believe, personal possessions of the convicts.” He prepared to leave. “But I will make it my business to see if there is a tool box for one Richard Morgan. In the meantime, get what ye need from Furzer here, be it awls, nails, hammers or wire.” He nodded and marched out, clapping his cocked hat on his head. Always neat as a bandbox, Major Ross, no matter what the weather.

“Get me Crowder and Davis and ye can have whatever ye want,” said Lieutenant Furzer, beyond mortification.

Richard got him Crowder and Davis, and collected sufficient tools and materials to finish their own shelters and start on more for the women convicts.

Women convicts
had suddenly become the focus of all attention as male convicts and single marines attempted to rid themselves of passions and urges largely unfulfilled for a year and more. The comings and goings after dark were so many that not ten times the number of marines on duty could have prevented them, even if the marines on duty had not been equally determined upon sexual relief. Complicated by the fact that there were not nearly enough women to go around, and further complicated by the fact that not all the women were interested in providing sexual relief for starved men. Luckily some women accepted their lot and cheerfully obliged all comers, while others would do so for a mug of rum or a man’s shirt. The rarity of rape lay somewhere between some women’s willingness to serve multiples of men and most men’s scruples about forcing themselves on unwilling women.

From the Governor to the Reverend Richard Johnson, however, those in command were horrified at the comings and goings in the women’s camp, viewing them as depraved, licentious, utterly immoral. Naturally this stemmed from their own access to women, be she Mrs. Deborah Brooks or Mrs. Mary Johnson. Something
had
to be done!

Richard’s group sneaked off after dark, of course. Except for himself, Taffy Edmunds and Joey Long. For Joey, having MacGregor was apparently enough. Taffy was a different breed, a loner with misogynistic tendencies that the sudden proximity of women actually reinforced. He was odd, that was all. Singing did it for Taffy. Of his own reasons for eschewing the women’s camp Richard was not sure, except that there was some Taffy in him, it seemed; the prospect of succeeding in having a woman after two years away from their company and more than three years since Annemarie Latour was not one he could face. Since Annemarie Latour his penis had not stirred, and why that was he did not know. Not extinction of the life force. More perhaps a terrible shame and guilt, coming as it had in the midst of William Henry and on the heels of so many other losses. But he did not know and did not want to know. Only that a part of him had died and another part of him had passed into a dreamless sleep. Whatever had happened inside his mind had banished sex. Whether that was confinement or liberation he did not know. He did not know. More importantly, it was not a grief to him.

On the
7th of February there was to be a big ceremony, the first the convicts were commanded to attend. At eleven in the morning they were marshaled, male separated from female, on the southeastern point of the cove amid ground cleared for the vegetable garden; carrying muskets and properly dressed for parade, every marine marched in to the music of fifes and drums, colors and pendants flying. His Excellency Governor Phillip arrived shortly thereafter, accompanied by the blond giant Captain David Collins, his Judge Advocate; Lieutenant-Governor Major Robert Ross; the Surveyor-General, Augustus Alt; the Surgeon-General, John White; and the chaplain, the Reverend Richard Johnson.

The marines dipped their colors, the Governor doffed his hat and complimented them, and the marines marched past with their band. After which the convicts were bidden sit upon the ground. A camp table was set in front of the Governor and two red leather cases were solemnly laid upon it. They were unsealed and opened in sight of all, after which the Judge Advocate read Phillip’s commission aloud, then followed it with the commission for the Court of Judicature.

Richard and his men heard mere snatches: His Excellency the Governor was authorized in the name of His Britannic Majesty George the Third, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, to have full power and authority in New South Wales, to build castles, fortresses, and towns, erect batteries, as seemed to him necessary. . . . The sun was hot and the Governor’s duties apparently endless. By the time the legal commission was read out, some of the listeners were half-asleep and the ship’s captains, who had all come ashore to listen, were straggling off because no one had provided them with nice shady seats. Captain Duncan Sinclair was the first to go.

Thankful for his straw sailor’s hat, Richard strove to pay attention. Especially when Governor Phillip mounted a little dais and directed an address to the convicts. He had tried! he shouted—yes he had tried! But after these ten days ashore he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that few among them were worthwhile, that most were incorrigible, lazy and not worth feeding, that out of the 600 at work no more than 200 labored at all, and that those who would not work would not be fed.

Most of what he said was audible; out of that spare small frame there issued quite a voice. In future they would be treated with the utmost severity because evidently nothing else was going to have any effect. Theft of a chicken was not punishable by death in England, but here, where every chicken was more precious than a chest of rubies, theft of a chicken would be punishable by death.
Every
animal was reserved for breeding. The most trifling attempt to pilfer any item belonging to the Government would be a hanging matter—and he meant what he said, every word of it! Any man who tried to get into the women’s tents at night would be fired upon because they had not been brought all this way to fornicate. The only acceptable congress between men and women was through the agency of marriage, else why had they been provided with a chaplain? Justice would be fair but remorseless. Nor should any convict value his labor as equal to an English husbandman’s, for he did not have any wife and family to support on his wages—he was the property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government in New South Wales. Nobody would be worked beyond his ability, but everybody had to contribute to the general well-being. Their first duty would be to erect permanent buildings for the officers, then for the marines, and lastly for themselves. Now go away and think about all of that, because he truly did mean every word he said. . . .

“How lovely it is to be wanted!” sighed Bill Whiting, getting to his feet. “Why did they not simply hang us in England if they intend to hang us here?” He blew a derisive noise. “What piffle! We were not brought all this way to fornicate! What did they think would happen? I joke about sheep, but it is no joke to be shot at for going near my Mary.”

“Mary?” Richard asked.

“Mary Williams off Lady Penrhyn. Old as the hills and ugly as sin, but both halves are mine, all mine! Or at least they were until I learned that I am to be shot at for yielding to a natural impulse. In England the only one could shoot me is her husband.”

“I am right glad to hear of Mary Williams, Bill. That was not the Governor speaking, that was the Reverend Johnson,” said Richard. “The fellow ought to have been a Methodist. I daresay that is why he took this job—he is too radical by far to have appealed to any Church of England bishop.”

“Why did they bring any women convicts out here if we are forbidden to go near them?” Neddy Perrott demanded.

“The Governor wants marriages, Neddy, to keep the Reverend Mr. Johnson happy. Also, I suspect,” Richard said, thinking out loud, “to make this whole expedition seem sanctified by God. The appearance of fornication in the flock looks like Satan’s work.”

“Well, I ain’t marrying my Mary yet a while,” said Bill. “I ain’t long enough out of one set of chains to take on another.”

Which may have been how Bill felt, but they were not feelings shared by all of his fellows. From the following Sunday on, more and more convict couples were married by a delighted chaplain.

Rations were
now issued weekly. How difficult that was! To stay resolute and not wolf down the lot within two days. So very little, especially now they were working. Thanks to Lieutenant Furzer’s abject gratitude they now had good kettles and pots, even if there was not much to put in them.

The hut was finished down to a double layer of saplings for its walls, one lot vertical, the other horizontal, with enough slender slats in the roof to support densely interwoven palm fronds. They were fairly dry even in hard rain, though when the wind rose to a gale it penetrated the spaces between the lattice; to keep it out they covered the outside walls with palm fronds. It had no windows and but one door facing the sandstone boulder. Humble it might be, but it was still a great deal better than the Alexander prison. The smell was of a clean, pungent resin rather than a sickening mixture of oil of tar and decomposition, and the floor was a carpet of soft dead leaves. The group was, besides, unfettered and relatively free from supervision. The marines had their work cut out in keeping an eye on the known rogues, so those who never gave trouble were left to their own devices apart from regular checks to make sure they were at their places of work.

Richard’s place of work was a small, open bark shelter near the series of sawpits being dug behind the marines’ tents, not an easy business with bedrock six inches down. The pits had to be excavated by stone-splitting wedges and picks.

Though the saws had not yet come to light (unloading was a painfully slow business), the axes and hatchets were piling up faster than Richard could put edges on them.

“I could use help, sir,” he said to Major Ross within a day of commencing work. “Give me two men now and by the time the saws need attention I will have one man ready to deal with the axes and hatchets.”

“I see your reasons, dozens of ’em. But why two men?”

“Because there have already been arguments over ownership and I have not the facilities to keep a list. Better than a list would be a lettered helper to gouge the owner’s name on the helve of every axe and hatchet. When the saws come to light, he could do the same to them. ’Twould end in saving marine time, sir.”

The cold pale eyes crinkled up at their corners, though the mouth did not smile. “Aye, Morgan, ye do indeed have a head. I suppose ye know whom ye want?”

“Aye, sir. Two of my own men. Connelly for the lettering and Edmunds to learn to sharpen.”

“I have not yet located your tool box.”

Richard’s grief was genuine. “A pity,” he sighed. “I had some grand tools.”

“Do not despair, I will go on looking.”

February wore
on with thunderstorms, an occasional cool sea change and a great deal of stifling, humid weather which always ended in a pile of black clouds in southern or northwestern sky. The southern tempests brought those blessed cool snaps in their wake, whereas the northwestern ones produced hail the size of eggs and continued sultriness.

Save for different kinds of rats and millions of ants, beetles, centipedes, spiders and other inimical insects, life forms anchored to the ground seemed rare. In contrast to the sky and trees, both full of thousands upon thousands of birds, most of them spectacularly beautiful. Of parrots there were more sorts than imagination dreamed existed—huge white ones with striking sulphur-yellow crests, grey ones with cyclamen breasts, black ones, rainbow-hued ones, tiny speckled chartreuse ones, red-and-blue ones, green ones, and dozens more besides. A big brown kingfisher bird killed snakes by breaking their backs on a tree branch, and laughed maniacally; one large ground bird had a tail like a Greek lyre and strutted in the manner of a peacock; there were reports from those who walked in the Governor’s train on his explorations of
black
swans; eagles had wing spans of up to nine feet, and competed with hawks and falcons for prey. Minute finches and wrens, cheeky and vivid, darted about fearlessly. The whole bird kingdom was gorgeously painted—and vocal to the point of distraction. Some birds sang more exquisitely than any nightingale, some screeched raucously, some chimed like silver bells—and one, a huge black raven, owned the most soul-chilling, desolate cry any Englishman had ever heard. Alas, the saddest fact about these myriads of birds was that none was worth eating.