Sound (16 page)

A still dawn the next day and the muttonbirds rose into the sky to circle the island. A living chill seeped up through the ground. The islanders gathered on the western point and watched the
Astrolabe
weigh anchor and drift slowly out of the Sound. Frenchmen lined the decks or wriggled over the newly mended rigging. The yawl sailed ahead taking soundings. No thwack of wind hitting sails, just a gentle shooing out to sea, past the smoking breakfast fires on Breaksea Island.

All of the men stood watching the
Astrolabe
leave and Billhook knew that many of them were thinking they were abandoned again. He was. It had been a slim comfort seeing the ship anchored every day for a month. It was a sorry feeling, even if he did not like the Frenchmen. Randall and Jimmy would have to keep the crew in line now that they were alone and getting hungrier. Now the
Hunter
crew was here, everyone would be hungry.

“Godspeed to Hamilton and Black Simon,” said Hobson as the ship sailed by, as though the two men had just died. “They were good men.”

As they watched the white sails grow smaller, Jimmy the Nail said they were camping on the mainland that night. He picked out five men: Billhook, Randall, Pigeon, Bailey and Neddy. They readied the boat and sailed from the island towards the white stretch of the bay pushed up against the mountain. They beached on a gathering swell near the channel to Oyster Harbour, where the old whalers' vegetable garden lay behind the dunes.

“Right,” said Jimmy. “Neddy, find that blackfella always on at you about muttonbirding.” Jimmy knew the blacks' hunger for the oily, salty muttonbird and Neddy had fished with the locals and said they asked often to be taken to Green Island to hunt them. Neddy also said they liked to spear groper and kingfish from the high rocky ledges facing away from the sun, dark water they could see into. They berleyed up the sea with smashed periwinkles and crabs and, resting on their hams, watched the water. Neddy talked of the patience and good hand of the tall, quiet Twertayan. Billhook hadn't met Twertayan but it sounded like he had mana with his people.

When Billhook gave Albert his namesake – hooks made from she-oak and resin or carved from the bones of seals and whales and deep-sea fish – Albert hadn't appreciated their use but still he unwound yards of hair string from his waist, tied it around two mating possums and gave the bundle to Billhook. Albert preferred to fish his own way, waiting with a spear or days spent building arcs of stone for trapping fish washed like spawning flotsam out of the rivers.

Neddy returned a few hours later with Twertayan, Albert and three other men, their kangaroo cloaks slung open to the warming morning. Albert wore the whalebone fishhook as a clasp for his cloak. Their hair was worn clubbed at the back of their heads, like Billhook's countrymen. Red clay caked their straight bodies. They carried sticks to hang their quarry and spears, for fish.

“How many?” Jimmy asked Neddy.

“They all want to go.”

Twertayan gestured to his brothers: an older man with a long beard and intricate scar work over his chest, a small man with curled fingers, Albert and a young man about the same age as Neddy.

Jimmy pointed to the rowlocks. “Neddy and Billhook will row you,” he said to the men.

Neddy and Billhook climbed into the boat after the black men. Randall stood beside Neddy as the others started pushing her out. “Neddy, Billhook. Take these men to Green Island,” he lowered his voice, “and leave them there.”

The sea took the boat and the two sealers began rowing hard to get it past the breakers before the next set. The black men talked to each other, happy to be heading out to hunt and shrieking when they were hit by a wave. Neddy didn't talk to them. He didn't know their language. His face was different, his straight hair and canvas clothes made him different too. As a group, the black men treated him the same as they treated all the sealers: one eye on his cutlass and the other on the opportunity.

The oars were wrapped in spirals of kangaroo skin, fastened with copper nails, to snug the rowlocks, and they creaked as Neddy and Billhook laboured out to the island. With each creak and splash, Billhook wondered about Jimmy, whose mind was always on the game and the trap.

They beached on the north side of the island where it met the deeper water and the boat crunched gently into the rocks. Twertayan tumbled over the side and the four others followed him, their spears clattering against the gunwales. They waited for Neddy and Billhook to stow the boat. Neddy hefted his oar out of the rowlock. Billhook watched him.

“Push off!” Neddy hissed at him, his eyes wide.

Billhook knew what they were about to do. He looked back to the best of the black men in King George Sound – the five strongest, the five best hunters and protectors – grinning, rubbing their thorny feet on their slim shins in anticipation of the bird hunt. Those two girls, foraging for tubers in the forest. Billhook knew all about it then. He could have stopped it but he did not.

“They do not swim, Neddy.”

“Push off, Billhook. Randall tol' us so.” Randall had broken Neddy's little brother's arm over his knee on Kangaroo Island.

“They do not swim!”

Neddy shoved an oar against a stone scrawled with the white markings of strange creatures and the little boat heaved away from the island. The whaleboat, with its pointed bows ahead and astern, was perfect. No going about or shoving a clumsy transom against hard water, just turn the body and row the other way fast. A quick lurch away from a cranky humpback, from swell smashing against granite, from desperate people.

Billhook tried to ignore the lamentations of the marooned men but he watched them the whole way to shore. Checking over his shoulder for bearings was his only reprieve. Five dark figures, their arms waving, silhouetted against their green and pink meadowy prison. Billhook rowed with a deadening in his stomach, that same blackness, when the only reward for his ill deed was shame clawing deep into his body.

“There is no water for them, Neddy.” Billhook's concern, spoken aloud, did not unravel his guilt but made him a weaker man.

They slept on shore that night in the reeds, listening to the thumps and growls of the kangaroos in the bush at their backs. Billhook watched the little fire on the island, knowing that Albert and his countrymen would be picking at the dark flesh of muttonbirds. In the morning, the chill crept from the swamp. Dew soaked the carcass fireplace.

Randall sat, knapping dulled flint with a little hammer. It was a black art, he said, a job best left to a man with teetotaller hands and a lucky streak. He wrapped fine pieces of roo hide around the readied flints and clamped them into the cocks.

Purpose dogged the other men. Jimmy the Nail, Bailey and Pigeon stalked around the camp, their ears pricked like hungry dogs. They moved with short, urgent actions; stowing chunks of cooked roo meat, skins of water and cutlasses about their bodies. Randall sat, working on his flints and measuring out heavy shot.

“Need rope for a roo hunt,” said Samuel Bailey.

Jimmy looked at Bailey. Billhook saw a glint of new respect in his slatey eyes when he smiled.

“Keep the boat stowed but ready,” he said to Neddy and Billhook.

The day stretched away from Neddy and Billhook waiting on the beach. There was no easterly; strange, for the season was changing fast. Water glossed silver between the little beach and
the island. The sun reached midday when Billhook saw the plume of smoke pour into the sky from the island, bright orange from green fuel. He could not see Albert or the other men, only their message. He walked along the beach to the channel and looked out to Breaksea Island. Hunting muttonbirds sheared the water with their wingtips, looking for sardines.

He heard the women before he saw them, a strange crying of words in a rolling water lilt filtering through the marri trees. Neddy looked at Billhook, panicked. They heard Randall's laugh, someone grunted and the woman's voice stopped.

It was her: the woman in the clearing. Her body was not gleaming now but covered in grey dust. Grey streaks of dirt and tears marked her face. French rope bound her arms to those of her sister. They were both wracked with shivers. Billhook had seen that terrible tremor of shock before. A yellow dingo clung to their legs, his ears back, tail sagging.

Billhook met her eyes. This last year of nights when he'd thrashed awake in his bed, dreaming up the velvety skin, the breathing womb of Woman … he'd danced them into his greasy bedding, against the cool damp of harbour-side sandstone, tethered them to a tree. She saw them all. He bowed his head in hot shame.

Bailey came out of the trees with two more women, their arms also bound, their eyes flat with fear. He had a job holding the ropes and keeping a grip on his shooter. He yanked on the rope around their necks. He raised the butt of the gun to see their bodies flinch, and laughed. He dragged them over to the boat, where water eddied around the stringers. Bailey was proud, brought his catch home to gloat. It was only the second time Billhook had seen him laugh or smile.

“Billhook! One each!” Bailey nodded to the rest of the hunting party.

Billhook did not want to ship out to the island. Dread coursed through his body. He wanted to be back in that clearing, with dappled sunlight warming his face and the beautiful girl staring at him. A strange heat filled the air. He saw the sisters look at him again.

“Wiremu,” Billhook pointed to himself. “My name is Wiremu Heke.”

A mad thing to do. She stared. She was scared but angry too. She clutched her sister's free hand. “Moennan.”

“Don't fucking talk to the merchandise.” The muzzle of Bailey's gun pressed against Billhook's neck so hard he could feel it under his tongue. “I'll break your fucking neck you black bastard if you even cast an eye on my doxy.” His canvas shirt ran with fishy sweat. Billhook didn't know if Bailey's gun was packed when he pushed Billhook to the ground with the muzzle, so that he fell all wrong and was pinned to the ground like an underling dog.

Neddy cried, “He alright, Bailey!”

Billhook could not see the sisters but he felt something move through the air, an imperative, a silent order. He saw Pigeon holding the sisters now that Bailey had him held down. Jimmy was struggling to get the other two women into the boat. Pigeon, he could not see Pigeon anymore. Jimmy was cursing. The women started screaming and hurling themselves against Jimmy. A splash as Jimmy floundered in the warm shallows. Bailey let the pressure off Billhook's throat.

Then Jimmy's women hurtled past his head, their feet thudding dark against the white sand. He saw her toenail, pink. They ran with their arms tied together, touching. Jimmy patted for his powder flask. He packed and tamped the flintlock with dried bark before the girls reached the marris. The sisters screamed to their two running countrywomen. They kept yelling, urging
them on, despite Randall swinging the butt of his gun into one of their chins. Jimmy's hammer fell but the powder only fizzed and the marri trees folded around the escapees.

Billhook sniffed the salt sand. Jimmy the Nail walked around in a circle, swinging his rifle, head down. When Neddy had packed the boat with their sleeping skins, Pigeon and Bailey bundled the two women in and sat them atop the skins.

“Wait,” said Bailey, as Jimmy started to push out the boat. “I'm sure we're long established that this titter has been owed me since Doubtful Island.” He pointed to Moennan and looked meaningfully at Billhook and Jimmy the Nail. “But you should draw cuts for that one,” he pointed to her sister, “before you get to Breaksea. Fair's fair. A day's work.”

Jimmy and Randall nodded. “Neddy.”

Neddy broke three twigs in the gathering dark. One for Jimmy, one for Randall and one for Pigeon. One woman. He broke two shorter. The women whimpered, lashed tight to the mainstay. Neddy made the sticks flush against the wrinkled curve of his thumb. He held them out to the men.

On their return to Breaksea Island, Jimmy the Nail ripped down the sea eagle's nest and the skeleton tree it straddled on the highest point of the island, for firewood.

Tommy Tasman played treasurer, preparing measuring cups of American rum and French brandy and guarded the coin stash as trade for Bailey and Randall's women.

Tommy North and Hobson presented the dressed, stuffed carcasses of a mating pair of possums for dinner.

The Breaksea Islanders readied for a spree.

So. So this is where the serpents lived.

They hated her, they hated her to do this to her.

Dark faces beyond the fire watched her, orange light tracing the lines of their scowls. Is this the way of the Ghosts, Moennan wondered. The taste of their fingers in her mouth, crunchy hair and red skin, holes pocking their noses, and a blue-eyed bleakness deep behind their angry jubilance. She was forced to her knees over and over by stinking hands grabbing at her hair. Stones cut her skin, grit in her teeth. No softness in this world, only sharp, hard stuff and hate. Some men laughed the whole while they raped her, some were silent and angry. One Ghost took her away from the others, pinched her again and again trying to make her scream. When she stayed silent, he did worse things to her, enough to make her cry out in pain, enough so that their laughing echoed from the camp.