Skins (12 page)

The air was rich with the sizzling smell of meat roasting. The animal's heart and liver were baked in its chest. Sparks spat out from the fire. Owens stood up and Manning noticed the blood crusted on his face and his swollen eye. He waited for him to look towards him but he didn't. Someone put more wood on the fire and a shower of orange light shot up and lit the low bush and the thin pale trunks behind them. Smoke surged towards him and it felt as though his eyeballs would melt. But when he moved away, the cold air embraced him so he quickly shuffled back.

His eyes were drawn to the bright coals. He thought he could see a face or perhaps it was more like a skull. An eye socket glared red and then turned grey and disintegrated as a log collapsed above it. He felt warm and well fed. It was enough. He felt like a moth that had broken from its cocoon, emerging in a new skin, discarding the old that had been worn by the lad. Many hours at an oar had brought its reward. He straightened his arms, satisfied by the ache in his muscles. He breathed deeply and glanced around at the firelit faces. They wouldn't cross him now.

He was conscious of Jem's presence beside him. His head rested on his arms and he closed his eyes but he could still see the dull glow of the fire. Then he noticed voices behind him. For some reason they made him uneasy. But before he could turn around something flashed in front of him and then he felt it, cold under his chin. He sensed faces turned towards him. Movement behind him and pain in his back, dense and solid, which spread. Someone had kicked him. He grunted and fell into the knife. The blade burnt. He closed his eyes and swallowed the darkness. His head was wrenched back by a hand clasped to his hair. The blood on his neck cooled and he looked up into the eyes of Anderson.

‘No one steals, not on my island.'

Head wrenched further back until he thought his neck would snap. Finding it difficult to breathe. Suddenly he was let go. His head flopped forward and he shook his hair. He reached up to his neck and ran his hand over the scratch that was wet. Glancing on the ground behind him, he saw Anderson's broad feet.

‘I ain't done yet. You stole from him.'

‘Hey.' He turned towards Anderson and saw for the first time Owens beside him. ‘I didn't steal off him. He's lying!' He looked over at Jem. ‘That's the truth ain't it?'

Jem nodded, looking around nervously.

‘You'd be a lying little snake for as I reckon you got his money.' Anderson turned to Owens. ‘How much does he owe you?'

Owens cleared his throat and his good eye narrowed.

‘I ain't sure. About four quid, I reckon.'

Manning brought a hand up to his waist.

‘No it's mine! It's me savings.'

‘Give it up or I'll slice it off and it won't be all I'll be slicing.'

Manning looked back towards the fire, seeing briefly the way Owens had cringed before him that afternoon. He sighed bitterly. He stood up and glared with hatred at both of them. At least Owens glanced away but Anderson just stared back. He pulled the belt from under his shirt and handed it to Anderson. The fire crackled. Anderson entered the hut with Owens and Isaac. A few minutes later he returned and tossed the belt back to him.

Manning left the fire, the sound of men's laughter echoing in his head. He scuffed the damp sand with his feet and brought a cold hand up under his shirt and retied the belt around his waist. There was a slither of light from the moon glinting on the liquid surface. The foam on the edge of the wave looked like the white scalloped frill of a petticoat that was pulled back and forth over the sand. It swirled around his toes and felt warmer than his blood. He tore a strip from his trouser leg, dipped it in the sea and wiped his neck. It stung at first but he knew it was only a shallow cut. He tossed the piece of rag away then ripped another strip from his pants and tied it around his neck. He held his battered hands out in front of him. The skin had split between his knuckles. He turned them over and felt the hard lumps of scar tissue that had misshapen his palms. He rubbed them together for they were cold and then he buried his face in them. The hardest thing was he knew why Anderson didn't believe him. He told him he had lost his money when the
Defiance
was wrecked because if he hadn't someone would have found a way to take it off him.

He noticed on his way back that there were a pile of skins and two barrels hidden in a sand hollow. Instead of taking the track, he had come up through the bush to the clearing. Jem lifted his head briefly as Manning settled but he didn't say anything.

After he had unrolled his bedding Manning looked up at the clear night sky. White pinpricks of light were arranged in misty clusters. The stars more bright and sharply defined than ever. The Southern Cross winked above him and it reminded him of another time he had lain awake looking at the stars. He was in the bilge of a whaleboat, his head resting against the seat trying to sleep. The swell dropped off. Instead of being rolled around at the bottom of the boat, which rubbed raw the sores on his body, the sea gently rocked him. He knew then that they must be close to land.

It had been five months since they had left the wreckage of the
Defiance
on the beach near Cape Howe. They had sailed close to the coast, hauling up occasionally for water and game. Now it was close to the end. The two Negroes they had collected along the way, Bathurst and Brown, lay at the bottom of the boat and lifted their heads. They woke the Dutchman and Captain Merredith, asleep at the steering oar. Land-ho. The two black women also stirred. The sky lightened to reveal a metal-grey sea and a deep indented bay lined with red mud cliffs. They took to the oars and rowed alongside them until they reached a small rocky point on the northeastern side of Kangaroo Island.

They made camp in the gully away from the rust-coloured boulders that lined the water's edge. A few days later they built a hut. Brown had been a ship's carpenter on an American whaler. They cut through the thick scrub behind the camp to the tall timber that grew in a valley about a mile away. While they worked Brown told Manning how he and Bathurst had deserted their ship. They stole a whaleboat and along with three other hands headed for the coast only to be swamped by a wave. Brown and Bathurst swam ashore. They didn't know what had happened to the others.

The black women kept them fed on a diet of small emu and kangaroo. Merredith had taken them aboard his vessel to trade them for skins. But since they were shipwrecked before they reached any sealers he took one of them for his wife. After she lay too close to the fire and burnt her leg, he called her Bumblefoot. For a while Manning lost track of time. There was always plenty of food and most of the time he was left alone. But he never lost sight of his goal, which was to reach Swan River.

He had liked the old Dutchman. They used to sit away from the others under a thick gum, and over the noisy chatter of the pink and grey birds, the Dutchman would tell him stories of being on an English man-o'-war. The old man had fought in the French Revolutionary Wars. His ship mutinied when the captain gave them five-water grog instead of three-water. The weather was bitter he said, and no man could endure it on a spirit so thin.

Sometimes their neighbours would haul up on the beach in front of the camp. They would only ever come by sea for inland was a knotted mess of impenetrable scrub. Many had lived on Kangaroo Island for years. Clothed in skins of all sorts, with sealskin caps and matted manes of hair, they would come ashore on battered whaleboats with greasy canvas strung tight above the gunwales. Often they would have with them three or four black women and dogs. The first time they visited Manning noticed that the women had bits of their ears cut off. Then one day he saw one of the sealers crop the top of his woman's ear when he thought she was too slow getting his flask from the boat. When they left, Merredith would put away his musket. Then he would release Bumblefoot and the other one from the hut where they had been hidden with the precious pile of skins.

Manning remembered the day it all changed. It was late afternoon and the sea rippled red and silver like molten metal. He was looking east, where a thick strip of land stretched across the water, and behind it, lit by the sinking sun, was the mainland, when a whaleboat came into view as it rounded the point from American River. Its six oars dipped into the sea and orange light followed the ripples as they fanned out from the bow and sparkled. The man on the seventh oar, standing at the stern, steered the boat towards the camp. A dirty sail hung limply above their heads. Manning could see it was overburdened with men, women, dogs and supplies. As it scraped the rocky bottom, most of them jumped out into the shallows and waded towards the hut. Manning, who was higher up in the bush, watched uneasily. He saw the old Dutchman come out to greet them. Merredith and Brown followed. There was a shout from the black man in a red shirt with a black bandana around his neck. He and Brown slapped each other on the back and the stranger punched the air with his fist. Manning didn't know it then but it was Anderson.

He leant up against the rough bark of the eucalypt behind him and watched as they unloaded the whaleboat. Anderson waded back and forth through the water. His wet trousers clinging to the powerful shape of his legs. He hoisted a barrel from the boat and slung it across his shoulders. Suddenly Bathurst crashed through the undergrowth near Manning.

‘Hey, what's up?'

‘We got visitors.'

‘Well I'll be …' Bathurst caught sight of Anderson. ‘Hey brother!' Anderson looked up and his face slowly opened into a smile.

Manning was never sure whether Bathurst and Brown had known Anderson before then. They called each other brother but he never heard them talking about being on the same ship. That night, however, Manning realised he would have to be careful. No man was as well armed as Anderson, and his men didn't seem to be with him by choice. He listened carefully though when Anderson started to talk of his plans to head west. There were islands there, he said, with water and wallaby and thousands of fur seal. But first Anderson said he had to build another boat. And over the weeks that followed that was what he did, using the native pine, and she-oak and eucalypt that grew in the scrub behind them.

Manning watched Anderson. He took on the role of leader and nobody disputed it. At the time he had hair that was tightly curled against his skull. And unlike the others, he shaved occasionally. He never said much and he didn't need to. There were always people willing to do his work for him. Especially Bathurst and Brown who obeyed him like he had royal blood or something. Despite his size he was agile. If he sensed someone behind him he would spring quickly and quietly so that it was the other person who was taken by surprise. And he would face them then with either one or both his guns. He couldn't have been long off a ship for his clothes weren't worn. Manning overheard him talking about the Kent Group of islands, which he knew were in the Bass Strait, but that was all he gave away. And the old Dutchman didn't know anything about him either.

He decided to risk it. He offered to work for Anderson if he would take him when he went west. Anderson worked a chaw of tobacco around in his mouth, spitting to the side. He said he could work for rations, which had suited Manning at the time. Manning discovered he hated sealing and that he hated the men who were sealers. He was always cold and stinking and the others would force him to do things they wouldn't do themselves, like going over the side of a cliff to get to the seals below. One of the men lost a finger. It swelled up and went red and so his brother cut it off. Meanwhile Anderson showed no sign of leaving. They kept working the islands, Thistle and Boston. And then sometimes they would raid the mainland for women. When he asked, Anderson would say soon enough. And then one day when Manning refused to work any more, Anderson put a gun to his head.

They were back at Kangaroo Island when Captain Jansen sailed the
Mountaineer
into the bay. Merredith knew Jansen, for he was another seal trader. He brought with him plenty of grog, which Anderson's men took for payment for their share of the skins. Everyone was drunk for a few days and although Manning couldn't recall much later, he remembered Anderson's face when Dinah told him the new whaleboat had gone. Manning thought Anderson was going to skin her. His skin paled and the scar beneath his eye gleamed. His nostrils flared and he stood very still with his knife pointed at her gullet. Manning felt like curling into the ground like the strange spiky creatures they sometimes found on the island. But Anderson just flicked his knife into the trunk of a nearby tree and Dinah turned away. Then he called after her, who was gone? When he pulled the knife from the bark the look on his face was dreadful for he learnt that Bathurst and Brown were amongst them. They left behind three men and three women and a boy.

Manning discovered Jansen was leaving for King George Sound and he paid him three pounds for a passage. It wasn't until they were loading the boat with barrels of water that he learnt Anderson had done a deal with Jansen to get his men and his boat to Middle Island. On their voyage across the dark expanse of sea Jansen was drunk all the time and so Manning stayed with Anderson on Middle Island.