Prison Ship (25 page)

‘Follow,' Thomas said.

They walked ahead. I was mesmerised by the sight of Tirrike's swaying hips. The few native women we had seen around Sydney were naked or half-clothed too, but they were usually older and more stout and hefty. And they stank of rancid fish oil. I was told the oil kept away the flies which plagued everyone in high summer. This girl didn't smell of fish oil. Maybe it wasn't so necessary in the winter?

After an hour we came to a small clearing by a sandstone cave. The entrance was partly hidden by a cluster of large rocks. It was a fine hideaway.

Tirrike set about lighting a fire and Thomas bade us sit
down in the sunshine outside the cave. He pointed at my injured foot and said, ‘Bad tune.' It took several attempts, with him becoming increasingly irritated, before I understood he meant ‘Bad wound'.

When the fire caught Thomas brought two dead lizards from the cave and sat down to skin and gut them. He gave us a stick apiece to cook them on the fire. The meat was leathery and tasted a little of both chicken and fish. Then Tirrike brought us a handful of seeds. She told us a word, which I took to be the name of the plant they came from. The seeds tasted bitter, but not so you would want to spit them out.

Thomas spoke brusquely. ‘We trade? Food for you. Tin for me.'

Richard and I carried a mess tin apiece. It seemed a fair exchange that we should give them one of ours. I nodded and handed mine over. At once Thomas set off into the bush, returning minutes later with a small handful of white roots. ‘Good haste. Haste like arsenit.'

My father once told me the best way to talk to children who were learning how to speak was not to correct their words, but to simply repeat what they had said in the correct way, as part of a normal conversation. ‘You'll make them anxious about speaking if you're constantly correcting them,' he had said.

‘Tastes like parsnips?' I said. ‘Wonderful. I've not had parsnips since I joined the Navy.'

Thomas went to the stream again, came back with the tin full of water and proceeded to boil up the roots. We ate them and they were good. I asked him if he could show me which plant he had picked. We were fed a succession of small portions and the more we ate the hungrier I became.

‘Wait. Give you more later,' said Thomas. ‘Too much now, and …' he made the actions of a man holding his stomach and being sick.

Tirrike came and sat next to Thomas. She seemed unconcerned by her nakedness. I tried not to stare but I blushed hotly. Perhaps Thomas noticed my reaction, for he put a protective arm around her and they had an animated conversation in a strange tongue. She pointed at my ankle. Thomas nodded and she disappeared into the bush.

I had never heard a white man speak in the natives' own language. I wondered how long he had lived out here, and asked him.

‘Tell me first,' he said. ‘Tell me again why you're here, and talk slow, so I understand.'

We told our story again, from transportation to our escape with Barrie and Bell, and how we were hoping to reach the white colony four hundred miles to the north. The more we spoke the more confident Thomas became in his own conversation. Several times he asked us the meaning of a particular word, but hearing us speak his
own tongue brought his language flooding back.

‘I came here on the
Royal Admiral
in October 1792. Didn't like it in Port Jackson. When they had me down for a whipping, I took to the bush. Me and three others. We were heading for China. More fool us. And while I'm about it, there's no colony in the north. That's just a story.'

I stopped listening at that point.
There was no colony in the north?
Then what were we going to do? Go back and face a flogging? We'd be due for a hundred lashes each, at least, and an iron gang for seven years. Maybe we'd be hanged. Going back was not a possibility, but then what else was there to do, other than live out here in the wilderness?

Thomas picked up a small pebble and threw it at me. ‘You're not listening.'

I mumbled an apology, then sought to explain myself. ‘But what can we do if there's no point going north?'

‘Stay a few days, and we'll think about it,' he said. ‘There's room in the cave for you to sleep. Now, listen to my story.'

Thomas enjoyed talking in his own language. Only occasionally would he stop and grope for a word. He had an extraordinary tale to tell. When they escaped, two of his companions quickly gave up and returned to face punishment. He and his friend James pressed on for a month. Then James fell ill.

‘I stayed with him and did the best I could,' said Thomas, ‘but you have to keep moving through the forest if you're going to eat. One night we noticed some natives had lit a fire nearby and I went to look. There were only two, and I ran into their little camp screaming and waving my arms. They fled like a couple of frightened sheep. There was a carcass on the fire, so I brought it back to share with James. Next morning we woke up surrounded by 'em. Long spears they all had. I thought they were going to kill us on the spot, but instead they came up to us and started to feel us all over, like they couldn't believe we were real. Everything we had, our blankets, our knives, our tinder box, our mess cans, our clothes, they took off us. James was so terrified he threw up and soiled himself, and they recoiled from him like he was some sort of evil spirit.

‘They marched me off, and left him there to die. At least I thought they did. They took me to a cove where a whole lot of them had gathered, and they lit a big fire and began chanting and dancing. I thought they were going to kill and eat me. Then a woman came up and started to shriek and tear at her hair and her skin. She took me off and gave me food to eat and all these other people kept coming to see me, and poke at me and shriek and tear at their hair. I was terrified.

‘But they didn't kill me, they just kept on bringing me food. And that night the woman who had picked me out
lay with me as though we were man and wife. So I stayed with them. I learned how to hunt and find food and I picked up their customs and their language. I fathered two children with my new “wife” – Illoura was her name – both tall and handsome girls they are. They treated me well, and when I could talk their tongue I discovered why. Illoura was certain I was the ghost of her warrior husband. She recognised me at once, she said. They believe their dead warriors come back as white people. So that's what saved me.'

‘So why didn't you stay?'

He let out a heart-rending sigh. ‘I ask myself that question every day. But they're strange people, these natives. They can be very kind. They share everything, and they're very clever when it comes to knowing how to live out here. My friend James, I found out, they visited him every day with food and water until he died. I wish I'd known at the time, because I spent months feeling sick with guilt, leaving him there.

‘But they've got another side to them too. Now and then they like to fight with other tribes. Make a big song and dance about it. I didn't want to have anything to do with that, but they expected me to go with them. I was one of their great warriors after all. I've been a bad man in my time, but I was brought up a Christian and I'm not one to kill another man I've got no quarrel with –' He had been waiting years to tell this tale and all
his fears and frustrations came tumbling out. ‘And their tongue is only spoken by a few of them. I spent years learning how to talk to them but if you walk twenty miles in any direction, they speak a different language. Not even the same words for the sun and the moon. They're not simple these people, they've even got a word for the Milky Way. Don't ever go thinking they're simple. If you want to get on with them you just have to start thinking like they think. There's a poetry in their language. Their word for island, “booroowang” – it's the same word for boat. That makes sense to me.

‘But their life – day to day, it just brought me to despair. You know, they have no words for yesterday and tomorrow. Hunt, fish, sleep, drink. Hunt, fish, sleep, drink. They have their ceremonies, but their significance is lost to me, so I didn't get any pleasure out of them. I just had to get away from it, even if it meant cutting myself off completely.'

‘So you ran away from them too?' said Richard.

‘I did.' Here he paused. ‘I did, and I still don't know if I've done right or wrong. Me and Tirrike, we've been living out here three years now. You're the first white people we've spoken to. I've met them before – small groups of bolters, but they run off terrified as soon as they see me. The natives here, we keep out of their way unless there are only one or two. And I'd never bring
them back here. Sometimes, they speak with us, sometimes we can't understand each other.'

‘And Tirrike, is she one of that tribe too?'

‘She was the wife of one of the warriors. Banjura his name was. She's a beauty, isn't she? They never had children, and he was forever beating her because of that. Made him look less of a man, he said. So when I went she came with me. We ran until we dropped. I'd be dead without her. She could find food in a desert. As far as she's concerned this forest is one big larder.'

‘So what are you going to do next?' I asked.

‘I don't know.' He shook his head in despair. ‘Banjura and Illoura would kill me if we returned to the tribe. I suppose I could go back to the settlement. It's been ten years or more since I ran away. They might have forgotten who I am? Maybe I could tell them I was shipwrecked, maybe I could say I walked all the way from China …' He trailed off. He would be in for a flogging too, just like us.

I said, ‘You'd be taking a risk going back, but you might find they'd be pleased to see you. Someone who knows the natives as well as you do. Someone who can interpret their language.'

His face lit up. ‘Aye, they might well. But then they might put me away again. And Tirrike, what would happen to her? It doesn't bear thinking about.'

I could see why he found it a difficult choice. Out
here, he and Tirrike were Adam and Eve in their own little Eden.

‘Why can't you stay here?' I asked.

‘It's a bonny life in some ways,' he replied. ‘But I want to get back to a world where there's something beyond finding the next meal. I want to talk about politics and find out what's happening to the King and Queen of France.'

‘They had their heads chopped off,' said Richard.

‘Did they now.' His face lit up. ‘Just like King Charlie. And have we done the same to King George yet? I'd wager not.'

He took up again. ‘I want to get back to Edinburgh and smell the smoke and see my mother if she's still alive and catch up with my brothers and take to the hills in the autumn and walk in the wild mountain thyme and blooming purple heather.'

I thought he might burst into song, but he didn't.

‘And Tirrike, will she come too?' I said.

At once he became frustrated and started to shout. ‘Will she? If she comes, will she die from one of our diseases, like the natives do? Will she be taken away from me as soon as I go back to the settlement? Will she be looked on as some sort of freak if we go to Edinburgh? She never showed an interest in learning my language. Will she take up with another man? Ahhh, she's half my age at least. But then I can't leave her here on her own,
can I?' He let out a long, desperate sigh. It wasn't a good question to ask.

He got up, impatient and agitated. ‘You stay here. I'm away to find some supper.'

When we were alone, I turned to Richard and shook my head. ‘So much for this colony. I always knew it was a forlorn hope. What are we going to do?' Our future appeared to be a choice of years of danger and isolation in the bush, a flogging followed by seven years in an iron gang, or death on the gallows.

I must have sounded more tearful than I thought. ‘Don't give up,' said Richard, trying to be cheerful. ‘We could still carry on to the coast, then head on north and see what we can find. Maybe we'll meet some natives who like us and we'll both find a Tirrike of our own?' It was an appealing fantasy.

‘Never say die,' I said. ‘Let's think about it for a day or two, and see what Thomas has to say about it.'

I brightened up. ‘We could always go back to Sydney.' I was feeling bolder. ‘See if we can steal aboard a ship. Now we're free of Bell and Barrie we have that choice at least.'

Tirrike returned, carrying something that looked like a caterpillar nest. She stood in front of me with it, and pointed to my injured ankle. I started to blush again and felt very foolish. Then she knelt down in front of me and pulled my foot forward. She shook her head, patted my
leg and said a few words. Then she pointed to herself and said, ‘Tirrike.' She pointed at me with a look of expectation.

‘Sam,' I stammered. Then I pointed to my friend. ‘Richard.' I had never been this close to a naked woman before in my life. It was terribly embarrassing, but strangely exciting too. She smiled, said, ‘San' and ‘Reed', then picked up the mess tin we had given them and went off to the stream.

Richard tittered mercilessly. ‘Your face was a picture,' he said.

‘I don't know where to look,' I said, half in wonder.

‘I wouldn't worry,' said Richard, ‘and what the hell is that?' He pointed to the silky nest at my feet.

I shrugged. ‘Blowed if I know.'

Tirrike returned with water and a fistful of vegetation. She knelt down and poured water from the tin over my wound. Then she stroked it gently with one of the large leaves she had brought. When the wound was dry she took the nest and carefully prised it open. There were no caterpillars inside it. They had come and gone over the summer.

She placed the nest either side of the wound, then pressed down, moulding it gently round my leg. Then she tied three strands of creeper around it to keep it in place. I watched spellbound, so hot with embarrassment you could have boiled a kettle on my head. When she
finished she stroked the side of my face with a single finger, gave me a smile and went back into the cave.