Sound (8 page)

“Yanks.” Jimmy appeared beside Billhook and he too reached for the fire. “They'll have some rum.”

Billhook didn't ask what the trade would be. Skins he hoped, but already he knew.

“We visit them, before they visit us,” said Jimmy.

The whalers looked tired as they lined the deck and waited for the small boat of sealers to come alongside. They smelled bad too. The whole ship reeked; even the stays were coated in whale oil.

“The boat ahoy!” shouted the second mate.

“Permission to board!” shouted Jimmy the Nail, and a black jack threw down the rope ladder. Sal, Dancer, Neddy and the little girl stayed in the boat, while the men climbed aboard the whaler.

Billhook tried to hide the assault on his nostrils but still, the whalers smirked at his attempt.

As he trod the boards, he realised that in all the filth and
stink, the deck was scrubbed clean.

Jimmy the Nail shook the captain's hand. “James Everett.”

“Jeremiah Gleeson, of the
Sally
. Who are you working for in these parts?”

“
Governor Brisbane
. We're meeting Boss Davidson at King George Sound in one month.” For a Kangaroo Islander, Jimmy the Nail sounded strangely formal addressing the American. Billhook realised that he had slipped back to his whaling way of speaking with the master.

Gleeson laughed. When the other men heard the name of the sealers' mother ship, they laughed too, their faces cracking around their beards, stumps of teeth and yellow tongues. The only man who didn't laugh was a mad man who paced, muttering into his scorched hands.

Jimmy looked to Bailey, at Billhook and then back to the captain, puzzled and angry. “Is there a lark here?”

Some of the men were still sniffing but they settled at the look on Jimmy's face. The captain disappeared into the hold and returned with a newspaper. “
Hobart Town Gazette
. We were there three weeks ago. Shipping news.”

He opened to page three and poked at a column. “ ‘The
Governor Brisbane
has been seen on the north-west coast of New Holland with only two men and the master on board,” he read aloud. “But then, further down, it writes, ‘The
Governor Brisbane
has arrived at Batavia' … ahh … ‘Some suspicions were entertained at Batavia that the
Governor Brisbane
… In consequence of this, and some circumstances of a doubtful nature, which appeared on examination of her papers, she was seized, and put under the charge of a guard ship lying in the roads.' ”

“What does all this guff mean?”

“My friend,” the captain addressed Jimmy the Nail with genial broad vowels, “it means your boss has shafted you. He's accused
of piracy, of trying to sell the
Governor Brisbane
in Batavia. He won't be back for you anytime soon, was never planning to.”

Billhook remembered the Blunt twins at the bay near the islands, the upside down tattoo on Jack's arm, and Tommy's pleas for Boss Davidson to return. The meagre pile of skins that Boss took to Batavia.

“That fucking dog,” said Smidmore.

“But he'll want the skins and oil,” said Jimmy, his jaw working as their predicament became clear. “If they let him go, he'll come back for the skins. There's money in them.”

“The market bellied out a few months back, mate, when the Brits took the tariff off foreign skins. He won't be wanting skins. He probably knew that.”

Silence then, as the gang realised that as well as being abandoned, they weren't to be paid their lay.

“Want some work?” asked the captain.

Billhook, Smidmore and Jimmy took in the oil-stained stays, the stinking ship, the sores about the mouths of the men and the dull looks to their eyes.

“What happened to him?” Jimmy pointed to the man muttering at his hands. “He don't look so good.”

“He's mad. Got swallowed by a whale and he's not been right since.”

While the captain launched into the story of the man who was swallowed by a whale, Billhook looked around at the crew. A tattooed man was watching him intently. North Islander, judging by the moko and the shape of his face, his squat, strong legs and curly hair knotted on top of his head. Billhook nodded to him and he nodded back. Good to get some news later, he thought.

Gleeson and Jimmy began negotiating the rum, tobacco and women. The captain peered over the side at Sal, Dancer, Neddy
and the child. “You can leave the kids out of the deal,” he said, frowning with distaste. “Get some trousers on her too.”

He went down into the hold again and returned with a small pair of canvas slops. “She can have these.”

“A kid's trousers?” Jimmy the Nail looked around at the crew. “Don't see any naked cabin boys aboard, Captain.”

Every man standing on deck bowed their heads. The mad man set up a howl. “The lad went over the side, the day Bartley got swallowed by the whale,” said the captain. “A sea burial off the coast of Otakau.”

“You took the clothes off his dead body?”

“He didn't need them where he was going,” the captain shrugged. He nodded towards the child. “And this one does.”

“They won't take long to blow,” Smidmore said to a furious Sal, as they rowed back to the island. “Dinna worry girl. They've not had a woman in an age.”

Jimmy the Nail whooped. “We gotta spree, lads! An evening of drink and song to ease our sorry situation.” He tweaked Dancer's ear as she helped the child into her new trousers. “Make the most of it won't you, Dancer. No crying now.”

“So long as those dirty bastards don't turn 'em into fireships. Don't want no pox on my house,” said Smidmore and Jimmy laughed.

Billhook wasn't listening to Smidmore and Jimmy's banter as he pulled at the oars. Otakau. Hearing the name of his home country spoken aloud sent a shock through his body. Gleeson had come from Otakau.

“We'll be wintering about these parts,” said Gleeson that evening, settling himself into a comfortable position by the fire. “Going after the humpbacks until October, then offshore after that, off
the shelf after some fin, then home to New Bedford.” He seemed relaxed and pleased with himself. “It's been a good season.”

The first mate, a burly white man with woolly hair, gave a small cheer. “That'll make it eighteen months,” he said.

Smidmore tuned his fiddle and the second mate took a harmonica from his pocket and grinned at him. Despite the disappointing treatment of them by Boss and the ripening scent of the whalers warming by the fire, the sealers were exhilarated by the strangers after so long in their own company. Sal and Dancer had snared some potoroos and the Americans brought tobacco, rum and fresh vegetables from their itinerant gardens along the coast.

“Wiremu Heke,” Billhook said to the North Islander. He grasped his hand.

“John te Marama.” The two men touched their noses together, staring into each other's eyes. Then they squatted on their haunches and began to converse in language.

“Where is your home?”

“Kiri Kiri … but now the missionaries have moved in, we have to go away to make any trouble or fun! The women and the old men, they like the singing in the church. Me, not so much and that Parson … they call him the Flogging Parson.”

“Ahh! I've heard of him! My country is Otakau.”

Marama nodded. “I thought so. I saw you when Gleeson said it. And now I know your name …”

“Did you go there, after …”

John te Marama nodded again. “After we cut Bartley out of the whale, his skin was burnt by the whale's stomach juices. His fingerprints are gone now but when he came out he looked like he'd been skinned all over. His body was all red. We took him to the village and the women healed his skin with special leaves and smoke. They couldn't fix his soul though. Fled from his body.”

“Who did you see there? Did you see my father? The old boat-builder. Did you see a woman called Nga Rua?”

Marama paused. “The woman who healed Bartley was Nga Rua. She's a good woman, Wiremu.” Marama smiled. “Still cheeky she is. But Wiremu – while we were there, your father died. He died suddenly, in his sleep. Your mother said it was the white man's fault. That he died in her arms, broken. Nga Rua will never forgive those men who destroyed her husband. She said this thing at the tangihanga
.
I am sorry, Wiremu.”

Billhook dropped his head into his chest and ran his hands along his scalp. Oh my father … gone.

“There is more news,” Marama said gently. “We went back to the North after we left Otakau. The Ngāti Toa, Te Rauparaha's men. They are coming.”

“Te Rauparaha?” Billhook snapped up his head. All he had ever heard of that man was the carnage he left behind, the heads on sticks, children impaled on pikes and left facing out to sea to warn off his foes. Te Rauparaha and his toa were the bogeymen, the angry ghouls that he had only ever heard hushed talk about. Bloodstained teeth and handfuls of women's hair. “He's coming?”

“He wants control of the South Island – and your pounamu. He's preparing to invade. I know this because he saw the Parson in Port Jackson when he went there to get guns. When he gets to Otakau he will walk the country claiming ownership. Anyone who resists will be slaughtered. His toa are too many.”

“My people have guns now, from the whalers. Maybe …”

“There are too many,” Marama said with simple fatalism and felt around in his kit bag. “I am very happy to find you, Wiremu.”

“I'm not so happy with your news, brother.” Billhook took a deep draught of rum and felt it burn down his gullet.

“It is terrible to have to say these things. Nga Rua thinks that you are working out of Hobart Town.”

When Marama said familiar names like “Hobart Town” or “Otakau” out loud, it warmed Billhook. It was an age since he had talked with his own people.

“When she heard that the
Sally
was going to Van Diemen's Land, she honoured me and invited me to your father's tangihanga. Later she asked me to find you and give you this. So you see, if I had not found you, then Nga Rua would be unhappy with me and she is the last woman I would want to offend.”

Oh Sally, she'n the gal that I love dearly
, the men sang.

Way oh, sing Sally oh

Sally she'n the gal that I love dearly,

Hilo Johnny Brown stand to your ground.

Just out of the firelight it was quite dark but Billhook knew what John te Marama placed in his palm without looking. The weight, the cool, glossy curves and stiff strands of ancient sinew against his fingertips told him that it was the orca tooth necklace.

Oh Sally, she'n my bright mulatta

Way oh, sing Sally oh

Sally gal she do what she ought to do

Hilo Johnny Brown stand to your ground.

Billhook climbed to the highest part of the island, away from the fires, past the sweet-scented flannel flowers and over sheets of cool granite. There was no moon, yet. He climbed until he could see the dark mountains crowding the long white bays in the east. He lit a small fire and sang his father's waiata.

Sal's lurcher followed him and slumped into the grasses eventually, twitching with hunting dreams while Billhook sang and sang, fed by grief and rum. Finally he quietened and the words, laughter and music travelled up the hill to him.

“What's he doing?”

“Blackfella stuff.”

“Leave him alone.”

“Heathen.”

“You're no man to talk … fucking heathen yerself.”

“Who's got that Sal?”

“Got a dud deal with that cut-up woman.”

“Cries all the time, she do.”

“And then we fastened on the bull.”

“Try some o' this.”

“And after a day we dragged him alongside and flensed him.”

“You never want to see a face like his in yer life, mark my words.”

“That bull's stomach was wrigglin'.”

“The lad Kim.”

“I don't want no fireship whore.”

“He came up out of the sea like an angel, Kim did.”

“Like an angel, he was.”

“This one here, she looks like an angel.”

“Where'd you get the kid from? She's real pretty.”

When Billhook heard that he galloped down the hill, stumbling over mounds of grasses and rocks, cursing as best as he'd learnt from the sealers. He'd forgotten all about her. He stopped again to listen.

Bailey.

“Well, don't I get a go at Sal, then?”

“Nah. You got a fucking useless prick, Bailey, and where's your rum?”

“I'll earn me some.”

Splinter woofed at Billhook's side.

And so Billhook ran again, until he was standing on the outside of the firelit party, panting and bloodied, breathing in the alcohol fuming from the men's bodies. He saw the captain unconscious, the little girl gathered onto the first mate's lap, him undoing the flap of his pants and Bailey looking on, smiling like he had in his mind the sweet memory of something good. Billhook had never seen Bailey smile before. He'd seen the look on that child's face though, that look the day she was stolen. Beyond the light of the fire and Smidmore's fiddling, he could hear the grunts and crying of Sal and Dancer and the men.