Morgan’s Run (67 page)

“If ye do that your muscles will seize up and the pain will be worse,” he said. “Bill Blackall and Will Marriner in the mornings, Ned Westlake and Harry Humphreys in the afternoons. Five hours in any one day are enough in a sawpit. Each of the four of ye will take turns to sharpen with me. In time that will give us all a chance to saw and all a chance to sharpen. Whoever is not sharpening or sawing will take an axe and help Joey strip the bark off the logs. The better we get and the faster we get better, the more privileges we will enjoy. To have a craft or trade is far preferable to being at the beck and call of general labor. If I read Lieutenant King aright, on your days off ye’ll be allowed to saw timber to put up your own houses. Think of that pleasure! A roof and walls ye can call your own.”

By the end of the third day of sawing the pace began to build; by the end of the first week they were sawing 500 superficial feet in a single day, and by the end of the second week that figure had crept to 750. Joey Long was the permanent hand stripping the bark off the logs.

“Well done, everybody!” said Lieutenant King cheerfully to the sawyer teams after Golden Grove sailed on the 28th. “Now we get on and build more houses, as I am informed there will be a great many more people here soon. Sixty at the moment, two hundred by the end of next year—and many more the year after that. His Excellency wants Norfolk Island and Port Jackson to be of equal size.”

King paced from one end of the sawpit to the other, then back to the six assembled men. “I owe ye time off. On Norfolk Island we work Monday to Friday for the Government. Saturdays ye work for yourselves, Sundays ye rest—
after
divine service, which I take and is compulsory for every last soul here, is that understood? While Golden Grove was loading ye’ve worked for the Government on two Saturdays and two Sundays. Today being Tuesday, no one will work for the Government until next Monday. I advise ye to use some of this time to saw for your own houses—just continue the row eastward. The land behind each house down to the swamp the occupants of that house will use as private vegetable gardens. Cresses grow wonderful well in the swampier bits and the worms cannot eat it, so grow cress, no matter what else ye fancy growing and Stores can give ye.”

His eye lighted on Richard, his head sawyer who was not a free man. “Morgan, I need a report. Walk with me, an ye please.”

He really does have good manners, thought Richard as he strode alongside the Commandant down the pathway which led from the sawpit to Government House and the storage sheds, one of which, he noted, held the coble and an even smaller boat made from the pieces of the old coble which had foundered on the reef and drowned four men. Willy Dring, Joe Robinson, Neddy Smith and Tom Watson—the four young, strong, unattached, sea-mad men—were to man the coble to fish whenever possible.

“I discovered that my house is not situate in the deep soil that abounds here, so I was able to excavate a sort of soft bedrock and make a nice dry cellar. I did the same under Surgeon Jamison’s house, which is now a storehouse—I have shifted him into the vale. The nature of the shore accounts for the fact that all the houses straggle east on this rocky eminence between the straight beach and the swamp—we could fix the support posts in rock,” said Lieutenant King as they passed Government House. “D’ye like fish?” he asked, changing the subject with one of those tangential shifts of thought Richard fancied typical of him.

“Aye, sir.”

“Ye’d think the buggers would be right glad of fresh fish in lieu of salt meat, but most resent it when I issue fresh fish or turtle instead of salt meat. Baffles me, it really does.” He gave a shrug. “So if they are too obstreperous, I lash ’em. Sounds as if I’ll not be lashing you, Morgan.”

Richard grinned. “I would far rather fish than cat, sir. I have not so far been lashed since I was convicted.”

“Aye, that is true of many of ye, I have noted it. Ye did well with the division of labor. One team of sawyers was not enough. What size logs d’ye think the best, given what tools we have?”

“Six-foot diameter at the most, sir, until we are provided with longer pit saws. ’Twould be a help to have a cross cut saw big enough to need two men on it, so I am turning our only eight-foot rip saw into something that will cut across the grain better than the pit saws,” said Richard, very comfortable with this man.

He is as different from Major Ross as chalk is from cheese, yet I managed to get on well with Major Ross too. This man is very paternal and regards us as his family, and that is not in the Major’s nature. But coming to Norfolk Island has served to show me how much the marines in Port Jackson reduced our rations to supplement their own. For which I cannot blame them. The marines are hungry too. Neither Governor Phillip nor Major Ross ever witnessed what Furzer did in Stores, which only goes to show that the bigger Government is, the less Government knows what goes on at the bottom.

Lieutenant King is scrupulous, keeps the weights himself and checks their weight against his standard set. We have had a meal of fresh turtle and several meals of the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. After the first meal of fresh flesh we all felt a thousand times better. Not to mention that there are always greens to eat. No scurvy in Norfolk Island, despite the grubs and the rats. But I can understand the aversion of some men to marine meals—they did not grow up eating fish and deem meat the only acceptable diet. There is also the need in us for salt. According to Cousin James-the-druggist, the more a man sweats, the more he needs salt.

Yes, I am very content to be here. It is kinder than Port Jackson, and there are no natives to fear if one ventures into the wilds. Though the stories around the camp-fire say that the growth of trees and vines is so dense that even Lieutenant King has been hopelessly lost.

“What have ye to report, Morgan?” King asked as they set off across the swamp on a rickety bridge mounted on piers above felled pine logs sunk into the morass, evidently not a very deep morass.

“Only that the sawpit needs a shelter to keep the sawyers out of the sun as well as the rain, and that if ye want to build something needs longer beams than twelve feet without joining, ye’ll have to dig a second pit and make it longer, Mr. King.”

“There was a shelter over the sawpit, but it blew down in a winter gale—they are fierce, I can tell ye. I used its relics to shore up the cellar under my house, but I do realize that we will have to build a new shelter, and quickly. The strength in the sun grows every day.”

They had crossed the swamp to the far shore of a small stream which seemed to terminate in the swamp rather than run through it; King turned left and began to walk up a path through a meandering valley wider in its bottom than any of the clefts between the steep hills coming down to what King had named Sydney Town.

“What of the saws?” King asked.

“I came just in time,” said Richard simply.

“Hmmm. Better then that Major Ross sent you rather than a true sawyer. There was no one here knew more than the rudiments of sharpening. ’Tis cheering to know that ye can convert the eight-footer into a cross cut saw. That will further increase the supply of logs—I note ye’ve gone through the logs already hauled to the pit.”

He stopped just before the vale took a little turn around a bluff coming down from the north. “I call this Arthur’s Vale, for His Excellency’s Christian name. The big island to the south bears his surname—Phillip Island. Cultivation of plants is gradually being shifted from Sydney Town to here because here affords some protection from the south and west winds, and I hope from the east wind as well on the far side of this bluff. Yon hill to the south between Arthur’s Vale and the sea is Mount George, and we are slowly clearing it to plant grain, as also on the hills to the north. We have some wheat and Indian corn in already, and there is barley in the bottom. The new sawpit should go up hereabouts. The present one is too far away, but it can continue to handle twelve-foot logs taken from the hills behind and within Sydney Town itself.”

They had rounded the bluff and looked more or less westward; the ground of the vale descended about twenty feet abruptly, the stream tumbling in a thin cascade down the slope. The Commandant pointed to it. “I intend to dam the stream on that incline, Morgan. There is enough hollow ground above the slope to make a capacious pond of water which we can let out through a sluice to irrigate the Government gardens, which will lie not far below it. One day I hope to install a water-wheel on my dam. At the moment we are confined to hand querns for grinding our grain, but we do possess a proper millstone against the day when we have the power to turn it. Did we have oxen or mules we could turn it now. We could also use men to turn it, but of men we have not sufficient either. One day, one day!” He laughed, waved his arms about. “The granary, as ye saw, is just about finished, but I plan to build a big barn and a yard for the animals here on the south bank of the stream. The salt winds, Morgan, the salt winds! They stunt every sort of living thing save pines, flax and the local trees which grow in their lee. I did find the flax—those fools in Port Jackson did not describe the plant properly, was all. It makes excellent thatch, but we have not managed to make canvas out of it.”

He laughed again, went back to discussing Arthur’s Vale. “Yes, the salt winds. We have to find a better place for the vegetables than a mound looking straight at Phillip Island. I have tried fences to shelter the plants, but they don’t help a bit. Therefore the vegetables will be moved into the vale.”

Then off he went upon some urgent business apparently suddenly recollected, leaving Richard alone halfway up Arthur’s Vale.

The weather was thick and rain threatened; much though he yearned to walk farther up and explore, Richard decided that it was probably prudent to walk back to Sydney Town. In the nick of time: he had no sooner entered his house than it began to pour. Joey came in from their garden in a rush, MacGregor at his heels, and Richard wondered for the first time how he would pass the hours on rainy days until the sawpit received a new roof. Reading was all very well, yet he was getting enough food now to want to expend physical energy. But the rain was warm; he abandoned the hut to Joey, perfectly content to lie on his bed, cuddle the dog and hum tunelessly.

He walked along the hard strand, shoes on—he had been warned that the rock rubble was as sharp as a razor, and had lamed many. The half-circle of Turtle Bay looked as alluring in the rain as it did in the sun, its bottom pure sand, its water crystal, the pines pressing down as far as nurture permitted. He peeled off his drenched clothes and went in to swim, finding the water much warmer in the rain than it was in the sun. Finished, he donned his canvas trowsers together with his shoes, slung his shirt around his shoulders and turned to see if there was any place he might shelter to watch the sea, getting up.

Stephen Donovan had had the same idea; Richard found him in the lee of an outcrop on Point Hunter, where few pines grew, looking down the length of the reef toward the distant out-thrust of Point Ross in the west.

“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” Stephen asked.

Richard put his shirt on the rock as a cushion and sat with his arms linked about his knees. The rain had cleared for the moment and the wind had veered northward. A great surf thundered in upon the reef, its waves curling over like satin candy rolled around a stick before exploding into walls of white foam. And the wind, blowing briskly in the counter direction, caught the spume and sent it flying backward across the waves in trailing plumes and veils.

“Nay, I do not think I ever have,” he said.

“I keep watching to see Aphrodite born.”

The sky cleared in the south and west just enough to let the sinking sun turn those drifts of spume to gold, then the rain fell again, but gently.

“I am ravished by this place,” said Stephen, sighing.

“Whereas I have spent my time in the bottom of the sawpit with a saw across my knees,” said Richard wryly. “How goes it with you?”

“As superintendent of convict labor, ye mean?”

“Aye.”

“ ’Tis not a wonderful job, Richard. D’ye remember Len Dyer?”

“How could I forget that weasel?”

“He brought things to a head three days ago when he informed me that he was not about to take orders from a shirt-lifting Rome mort turd pusher, and that when he took over the island I would be the first man he would kill. Next to go would be my fancy blond doll, Miss Molly Livingstone. He likes the sound of ‘Rome mort’ best, it seems—he used it more often than he did ‘Miss Molly.’ ”

“He is a Londoner, ’tis the phrase they use most.” Richard turned to stare at him, but Donovan gazed straight ahead. “What happened next, Mr. Donovan?”

“Oh, I wish ye’d call me Stephen! The only one who does is Johnny.” The shoulders lifted, his head hunched into them. “I ordered forty-eight lashes and made Private Heritage lay it on. Luckily for me, Dyer had not endeared himself to Heritage either, so he laid it on hard with the meanest cat. There were mutters from Francis, Peck, Pickett and a few others, but after they saw Dyer’s back they shut up.” His eyes finally slewed to look at Richard, their expression hard. “Ye’d think they would realize a man’s preferring his own gender does not indicate that he is soft or timid, would ye not? But no! Well, I have survived over fifteen years at sea and gained respect, so I am not about to take cheek from the likes of a Len Dyer. As he now understands.”