Morgan’s Run (81 page)

“Some things,” said Ross, a trifle fearful of the omens himself, “cannot be resisted. I shall give everybody the day off. They will have to work tomorrow instead. Incidentally, I have forbidden all convicts to walk to Cascade today in search of likely women.” He grinned mirthlessly. “I also told them that if they defied me and did try, they would be bound to pick the wrong ones on Friday the thirteenth. However, the useless creatures will have to be helped ashore and up to the top of the climb, and as I have also ordered my marines to stay away, that leaves the field to Sirius’s sailors.” This put a little genuine amusement into his smile. “However, I want someone there to report back to me on the conduct of Sirius’s sailors, most of whom came into the world without benefit of father or mother. Ye can accompany Mr. Donovan and Mr. Wentworth, Morgan.”

The three men set off at eight in the morning, in the best of spirits despite the date. Stephen and D’arcy Wentworth got on together famously; like Richard, Wentworth was too sensible a man to condemn a man for being a Miss Molly. The pair also shared certain characteristics, particularly a zest for new places and adventures, and both were very well read. The sea had provided an outlet for Stephen’s desire for action, whereas Wentworth had experienced the call of the road and been apprehended and tried on several occasions for highway robbery. Only those important relatives had gotten him off, but even family patience can eventually erode; having dabbled in medicine when he was not holding up coaches, Wentworth was told to take himself off to New South Wales and never come back. The lure was a small income payable only in New South Wales.

Stephen still wore his black hair in long, luxuriant curls, but Wentworth had gone to what he said was starting to be the new fashion—cropped hair like Richard’s, though his was not as short. The three of them walking abreast down the road looked striking: handsome, tall, lithe, with Wentworth, the tallest and the only fair one, between the two dark-headed ones.

They scrambled down the steep cleft which emerged 100 yards from the landing place to find Surprize fairly close in shore and the sea calm. The tide was turning to the flood, and Captain Anstis had been instructed two days ago by Mr. Donovan as to how to manage the business of getting people safely onto dry land. Advice he, a merchant master, was sensible enough to heed.

“Anstis is an awful man,” said Stephen, sitting down on a rock. “I am told that in Port Jackson he sold paper for a penny a sheet, ink for a pound the small bottle, and cheap unbleached calico for ten shillings the ell.* Surgeon Murray says he had nowhere near as many customers as he had expected, so we shall see how he does when he sets up a stall here.”

*One ell equals 45 inches.

Remembering Lizzie Lock—Morgan, Richard,
Morgan!
—and what she had told him about Lady Penrhyn’s lack of rags for bleeding women, Richard decided that, much though he loathed enriching the likes of a man who starved other men to death for profit, he would be at that stall to buy some ells of unbleached calico for the woman he would be obliged to shelter under the Ross Plan. Perhaps Lady Juliana’s complement had been provided with rags, but he doubted it. If the behavior of Lady Penrhyn’s sexually satiated crew was anything to go on, the sailors would not have been sympathetic no matter how many women they plundered. He would certainly have to provide a bed for her, which meant a mattress, pillow, sheets and maybe a blanket, clothing. Johnny Livingstone had promised to make him the bed and some more chairs, but his unwelcome guest was going to prove expensive. He still had his gold coins in his box and in the heels of Ike Rogers’s boots. Interesting to see what Nicholas Anstis had for sale. Emery powder? He hoped so; his supply was almost exhausted. Sandpaper he made himself from Turtle Bay sand, fish-glue he made himself from fish scraps, but emery powder he could not duplicate.

Shortly after ten o’clock the first longboat struck for shore to a cheer from about fifty of Sirius’s seamen, waiting eagerly; other longboats in the water alongside Surprize were filling with more women. The conditions were nothing like as wet or as rough as when Major Ross had landed from Sirius, but when the first boat maneuvered itself near the landing rock, its oarsmen poised to shove off in a hurry if a wave larger than the rest came rushing in, the women shrieked, struggled, refused to make the leap. One Sirius sailor advanced to the edge of the rock and held out his hands; when the boat came in a second time the two sailors aboard it threw a screaming woman at him, followed her up with others. No one fell in, and the bundles of personal property landed safely in their wake. Another boat succeeded the first, the process was repeated; soon the whole of the very little negotiable ground in the vicinity of the landing place was milling with Sirius seamen and women. There were, however, no offensive liberties; most of the women were led off, each by the man who apparently fancied her, to make the climb to the crest 200 feet above.

“Wait,” said Stephen, “until the news reaches town that Sirius has made off with the best women. The marines will be fit to be tied, since Ross forbade them to come over.”

“Did he do that deliberately?” asked Wentworth curiously.

“Aye, but not for the reason ye might think,” said Richard. “Which is worse? To let those of his marines not on duty take first pick, or let Sirius take first pick? Since there is bound to be contention, the Major would rather it lay between marines and sailors than marines and other marines.”

“Anyway,” Stephen smiled, “there has been little picking. I imagine Medusa the Gorgon would look good to them after so long. I have counted a mere fifty-three women, which means, my friends, that we will have to get up off our arses and down to the rock. The helpers from Sirius have disappeared.”

Like Stephen Donovan and Richard Morgan—but for very different reasons—D’arcy Wentworth was not tempted to find himself a woman from among those who landed after the three men took over on the landing rock, encouraging the terrified creatures to leap ashore. His own convict mistress, a beautiful red-haired girl named Catherine Crowley, was pledged not to be landed at Cascade; she and their baby son, William Charles, would wait until Sydney Bay calmed down. Wentworth had fallen in love with her at first sight and defiantly moved her out of the filthy corridor on Neptune; in the cabin which had belonged to the MacArthurs, Catherine bore her baby shortly before Neptune reached Port Jackson. Both a sweet joy and a sore sadness. Little William Charles, with his mother’s copper curls and the promise of his father’s stature, had a badly crossed eye and would never see very well.

Having landed almost seventy of her female and all her male convicts, Surprize signaled as the tide reached half-ebb that she would not be sending more. The women were a sorry-looking lot; though Lady Juliana might have treated them well, they had made the voyage to Norfolk Island on a “wet” ship, damp and leaky, on a deck which had contained men on the long journey out and still contained filth, decay and excrement.

But the 47 men landed were in an appalling way. Were
these
the fittest who had been delivered to Port Jackson? Wentworth had to jump into each boat as it arrived—the Surprize seamen were not interested—and pick the poor wretches up, throw them bodily to Richard and Stephen, for they could not have jumped an inch. Of flesh they had none, eyes sunk into their sockets like shriveled gooseberries in paper rings, teeth gone, hair gone, nails rotted. Full of scurvy, lice and dysentery. Richard, the fleetest, ran to Sydney Town and demanded marine or convict helpers—the last of the women, unclaimed by Sirius, were straggling along the road hampered by the weight of their bundles as he returned at a run, Sergeant Tom Smyth urging the recruits in his wake. Few men were as strong as a top sawyer, even one about to turn forty-two. Neither he nor Smyth saw one of the convict volunteers, Tom Jones Two, sneak off before the group reached the cleft at Cascade; there were still women trying to walk to Sydney Town.

But by dusk the last of the work was done, all the landed convicts safe in Sydney Town, where fresh choices were made for the women and the emaciated, terribly ill men were put into the small hospital and a hastily converted store shed. Olivia Lucas, Eliza Anderson, John Bryant’s widow, and the Commandant’s housekeeper, Mrs. Richard Morgan, ministered to the sick and despaired of their ever getting well again. And these were the best from among 1,000 men? That was what everybody could not get over.

As Surprize was still at Cascade the next day, Stephen, D’arcy Wentworth and Richard returned to help again, having scrubbed themselves raw last night to remove the dirt and vermin handling those men and women had produced. Then the wind got up, Surprize signaled that she was finished, Stephen and D’arcy took charge of the last party of women and jollied them along, showing them how to carry their burdens easier, taking whatever they could carry themselves, assuring the terrified creatures that they were going to like life in Norfolk Island, which was a better place by far than Port Jackson.

Deputed to make sure that Surprize did not change her mind and suddenly launch another longboat, Richard was some minutes behind them in leaving Cascade. At the top of the crest he turned to look along that coast, a less familiar sight than Sydney Bay’s fabulous reef, lagoon, beaches and offshore islands. But no less hauntingly beautiful, Richard thought, between the waterfalls, the outcrops of rock in the water, a great blowhole to the north sending a jet of foam higher and higher as the sea rose.

What interesting trees were the Norfolk pines! Those felled to make the road had been cut off right at ground level with a cross saw and were already crumbling, sinking slowly beneath the surface. In two years, with a little rubble to fill the craters in, no one would ever know that pines had once occupied every inch. Aware that the sun was lower than he had counted on, he quickened his pace as he walked through the clearing around Phillipburgh, where Ross was heroically following in King’s footsteps by attempting to establish a canvas-from-flax industry, and set off into the forested section that led to the fairly flat crest to which the Lieutenant-Governor had banished the men off Sirius. Captain Hunter had declined to join them; he had elected to move in with Lieutenant William Bradley at what was beginning to be known as Phillimore’s Run, from the strength of the stream which ran through Dick Phillimore’s land.

Well, he was safe for yet another day. None of the women had taken a fancy to him, none had lacked eager takers acceptable to them—though all had fancied Stephen best, the devil. With any luck, Richard thought as he strode along, I will wriggle out of having to care for anybody save John Lawrell, even if that does mean I will not qualify for a sow.

Something mewed. Richard stopped, frowning. The settlers had a few cats brought on Sirius, but they were greatly prized as pets and ratters and did not need to wander this far in search of food. Sirius’s crew had cats too, but loved them, so it was hardly likely to belong to the sailors. Unless it had strayed, climbed a tree and could not get down.

“Here, kitty, kitty!” he called, ear tilted for a response.

Another mew, but less catlike. Skin prickling, he left the road and entered the realm of vine-choked pine buttresses. Once off the cleared ground the darkness increased dramatically; he paused long enough to allow his eyes to accustom themselves to the gloom, then started off again, suddenly sure that the sound was a human one. What a pity. He had hoped for a cat, longing to be able to gift Stephen with a replacement for his beloved Rodney, which, as ship’s cat, had remained behind on Alexander when Stephen moved to Sirius and Johnny Livingstone’s arms.

“Where are ye?” he asked in an ordinary but loud voice. “Sing out to me, then I can find ye.”

Silence save for the creaking of the pines, the sound of the wind high up in them, the flutters of birds.

“Come, it is all right, I want to help ye. Sing out!”

A faint mew, some distance farther in. Richard looked back to fix his landmarks, then ventured toward the sound.

“Sing out,” he said at normal volume. “Let me find you.”

“Help me!”

After that it was no trouble to find her, crouched inside the cavity time and perpetually gnawing beetles had carved out of an enormous pine; a refugee might have made a dwelling out of it, which lent credence to the stories of the occasional convict who absconded into the wilderness, only to reappear in Sydney Town weeks later, starving.

A little girl, or so at first she seemed. Then he saw that it was a woman’s breast showed amid a great tear in her dress. Crouched on his heels, he smiled and held out his hand.

“Come, it is all right. I will not hurt you. We must leave this place or it will be too dark to see the way back to the road. Come, take my hand.”

She put her fingers into his palm and let him draw her out, shivering with cold and terror.

“Where are your things?” he asked, careful to touch no more of her than those trembling fingers.

“The man took them,” she whispered.

Mouth compressed to a thin line, he led her to the road, there to look at her in the dying light. No taller than his shoulder, very thin, with what might have been fair hair, though it was too dirty to tell. Her eyes, however, were—were—his breath caught. No, sunshine would give the lie to them, had to! William Henry’s eyes had belonged to him alone, they had no like on the face of the globe.