The Gallant (27 page)

Broome, Aye, look-was He pointed along the track behind them. “There’s a car coming after us, with one of our officers in it, and he’s waving. Hold hard, lads,” he bade the two convicts, who had just thankfully hauled themselves onto the rear of their own car, ready to glide down the slight slope to Eaglehawk Neck.

The men obediently applied the brakes, and they waited for the second vehicle to catch up with them.

When it did so, its occupant came hurrying to join them.

“Message from the commandant, sir,” he told Johnny. “Sent by semaphore to us at Long Bay. You’re to return at once-the

Opossum’s

ready to sail.” He added, lowering his voice and addressing Staveley, “I reckon she’s being’

sent to search for them absconders that stole the Hastings,

don’t you, Mr. Staveley?”

“I reckon she is, Martin,” old Staveley agreed. “Well, we’d best get you back to her, Mr. Broome, unless you want to stay here for the next three weeks.” He gestured to the foot of the slope, still half a mile distant. “I fear that’s all you’ll see of Eaglehawk Neck, but it’s enough, maybe, to prove that stealing a ship is easier than getting across the Neck, the way it’s 178

William Stuart Long

guarded. That’s the guardhouse, sir-the white stone building comwiththe soldiers’ quarters behind. Thirty men are always stationed there, with one officer. And then there’re the dogs-you can just see them, chained right across the rocks in a line, with their kennels behind them, and on that wooden platform that floats in the bay. It takes a brave man-or a foolish one-to try and get past that lot, sir. But still some of them try. One fellow wrapped himself in a “roo skin and tried to hop across, but the sentry yelled he was going to bag a ‘roo for supper and opened fire!”

On the way back to Long Bay, the old man regaled him with droll and sometimes tragic stories of escape attempts that had failed, ending with an account of the only successful one, made by Martin Cash, and Johnny listened with what patience he could muster.

Returning at last aboard the

Opossum,

he found a note of apology from the commandant, which very briefly described the circumstances of the escape: I am sorry to cut short your stay, but as no doubt you will have learned from Mr. Staveley, four of our prisoners have made a very daring escape, as a result of which we fear that at least two men have lost their lives and the government steamer Hastings

has been seized by the miscreants and has not returned to port.

As Captain Jones of the

Opossum

has expressed his willingness to join in the search for the missing vessel and believes he can hazard an accurate guess as to her present whereabouts, I decided to delay him here no longer. He will sail as soon as you board. I have taken the liberty of sending your bag to the ship.

The letter ended with cordial good wishes and the hope that Johnny had seen enough of the Port Arthur penal settlement to enable him to complete the writing of his article for the newspaper that had commissioned it.

The escapers had not been named in the commandant’s note, but Captain Jones had been informed of them and supplied with descriptions, and over dinner that evening, with the

Opossum

steaming south through Carnarvon Bay and heading for Cape Raoul, he talked at length of his intentions.

“I’ve known Benjamin Tarr a good few years, Mr. Broome,” he said. “He’s a good man, and I pray that no ill has befallen him. The swine who escaped on board his ship are lifers, all four of ‘em, and seemingly men of bad character, especially the bastard named Haines. And they’ll be armed-Hastings

carried an arms chest, like we do-so poor Captain Tarr won’t have stood a chance against them. I just hope we can find the ship before those devils wreck her.”

“Mr. Boyd told me that you had an idea where they might have taken her,” Johnny said.

“Well, I can make a shrewd guess,” the master answered. He pushed his empty plate away and spread a chart across the table in front of them.

“They don’t have much choice, really. They sailed from Cascades Bay into Norfolk Bay-on the north of the peninsula, see?” He jabbed a finger on the chart. “And we sailed from here, by the longer route, where it’s liable to cut up rough between Cape Raoul and Adventure Bay. The

Hastings

doesn’t carry more coal than she needs for the shorter passage, between Hobart and Norfolk Bay. She carries sail, of course, but she’s a poor sailer at the best of times, and I doubt if any of the escapers could handle her under sail. They can’t go to Hobart, that’s for sure, and they can’t replenish the coal she’ll have used. So they can’t go very far, can they?”

“No,” Johnny conceded, studying the chart with frowning brows as the master pointed out the places to which the missing steamer was unlikely to have gone. But would Michael Wexford, with his naval training-for all it was a long time ago-could he or would he have been able to handle the

Hastings

under sail? It was possible, he supposed, but unlikely-Michael had been only a

midshipman, not a watchkeeping officer.

“Right, then,” the

Opossum’s

master went on. “My guess is that they’ll run in between Bruny Island and the mainland-here, d’you see, Mr. Broome? The Huon Valley’s fairly sparsely settled. I fancy they’ll beach the ship or run her ashore round about this area and leg it inland. What happens to the swine after that is not my affair. They’ll post rewards on them and send troops and police to hunt for them. What concerns me is

William Stuart Long

the ship and her people, more particularly Captain Tarr, because it’s anybody’s guess what state they’ll have left her in or what they’ll have done to the ship’s company. So-was He sighed and folded the chart. “The glass is falling. But I’m going on, whatever the bloody weather’s like. I’d go below, if I were you, Mr. Broome, and get your head down.

We’ll sight Cape Raoul before dark, and we’ll probably be in for a rough night.”

His forecast proved to be correct. Johnny took his advice and, having no duties on board, slept fitfully until well after dawn, as the stout little

Opossum

buffeted her way through heavy seas and a rising wind.

His thoughts troubled him more than the storm itself, and when sleep eluded him, he was tormented by doubts concerning what he must tell Kitty Cadogan of her elder brother’s escape attempt and of the fate that would await him, were he to be caught by the forces of the Crown.

He mulled over a hundred and one brief speeches and explanations, conscious that, whatever he said or however he might try to soften the blow, the news he had to give her would come close to breaking her heart.

Toward noon of the following day, the wind lessened and the weather began to moderate; by late afternoon, when the ship was under the lee of North Bruny Island, rain set in and visibility was so greatly impaired that, although Captain Jones was in a fever of impatience, he announced that he would have to lie-to until light next day.

But the next day, soon after the

Opossum

had again got under way, the lookout on her masthead hailed the deck, a note of excitement in his voice as he claimed to have sighted the missing vessel in an inlet ahead and to starboard.

“Baker’s Inlet,” Jones announced, after a hurried search of his chart. “Sandy beach, rocks at the entrance, but no cliffs. That’s the sort of place Ben Tarr would’ve chosen, if he knew he had to run his ship ashore. Maybe he’s still alive.”

He shouted a string of questions to the lookout, and the man did his best to answer them.

“It’s her all right, Cap’n-it’s the Hastings.

She’s aground in shallow water, with her larb’d side awash. I can’t see no one on deck. No one on the shore, neither.”

Captain Jones rang for full speed ahead, and as the

Opossum

neared the entrance to the inlet, he joined the lookout aloft, his glass sweeping the shore.

“No sign of life, Mr. Broome,” he

told Johnny grimly, when he regained the deck. “We’ll just have to hope the crew are below-locked up, probably, when those villains abandoned ship. Well, we’ll soon find out.”

He brought-to at the entrance to the inlet, and as the Opossum’s

paddle wheels were stilled, he ordered the quarterboat lowered, nodding his acquiescence to Johnny’s request that he be permitted to accompany the search party.

The sound of voices, coming from the stranded ship, raised their spirits as the boat came alongside the Hastings”

listing stern and the bowman steadied her with his boat hook.

“Well, some of “em are alive,” Captain Jones observed, with relief. “Alive and kicking, judging by the hullabaloo they’re making! Must have heard us.” He gave an encouraging hail, which was answered with wild cheering and a chorus of excited shouts. He smiled. “Thank God for that! Right, lads,” he bade his boat’s crew. “Make fast, and let’s have those axes aboard. I don’t doubt we’ll have to hack our way through to them-they’d have been out otherwise.”

Once again, his forecast proved to be correct.

Nine of the

Hastings”

crew were battened down in the forward hold, with planks nailed across the hatch, and the mate was locked in his cabin, the porthole boarded over. The cook, the ship’s engineer, and the two stokers were confined in the after hold, with the boys from the Juvenile Establishment. All of the latter were cold, hungry, and soaked to the skin, for the hold was partly flooded, and the stench emanating from it caused the rescuers to retch uncontrollably.

“There’s two bodies down “ere,” the elderly cook stated plaintively. “Wouldn’t let us move ‘em, the miserable blackguards! And they wouldn’t give us no food nor water, neither-we’d ‘ave bin dead if you hadn’t found us when you did, Cap’n, an” that’s the God’s truth! As it was, they done poor Cap’n Tarr in. Smashed “is skull, one of ‘em did, ‘an threw ‘im over the side.”

“Which one?” Johnny demanded hoarsely. “Which one of them killed your captain?”

to

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“A big fellow, sir,” the cook answered.

“Haines called ‘im Toby.” He shivered.

“I’d ‘idden in one o” the boats, hopin’ they’d forget about me, see? But they didn’t-that bastard Haines remembered, “fore they battened us down an” left the ship. An’ they was firin’ their muskets at the other big fellow-a convict, sir, who absconded with “em. ‘Every jumped overboard, but I didn’t see if they ‘x ‘im.”

Michael, Johnny thought, his heart sinking.

Big Michael, he could only suppose, must have fallen out with his fellow escapers, or they with him.

“I don’t reckon they did, though,” the cook added. “Last I seen of ‘im, ‘e was svvimmin”

pretty strong, for all they must’ve fired a dozen times at “im when ‘e was in the water.” He spat disgustedly on tiie deck. “But they killed the cap’n, no doubt o” thai.”

Captain Jones said bitterly, “What a way to die!” He waved the shivering cook into the boat.

“All right, lad, I’ll take a report from you after you’ve had a meal and got yourself into dry clothes.

Cut along.”

It required three trips to convey the imprisoned men by boat from the wrecked vessel to the anchored

Opossum.

Several of them were in a bad way-the stokers had been beaten severely, the mate had what looked like a gunshot wound in the leg, and the ship’s engineer’s face was a mass of bruises, his left eye closed.

“I’m making for Hobart, Mr. Broome,” the Opossum’s

master said when he returned on board with the last boatload. “Some of the men are in urgent need of a surgeon, and there’s nothing more I can do here.

I don’t think the

Hastings

is too badly damaged-she can probably be salvaged, but I don’t have the equipment to haul her off. I’ll notify her position, of course, and they’ll send a salvage tug. And-was He made a grimace. “We gave the bodies Christian burial before we left. It was a ghastly job.”

“What about the escapers, Captain?” Johnny nerved himself to ask.

Captain Jones shrugged. “They’re not my concern. It’ll be up to the poiice and the military to hunt for them. In any case,

they’ve had too much of a start-they’ll be miles from here by now.”

“May I question the

Hastings’

men, sir? I’d like to hear their full story.”

“For your newspaper?” Jones suggested.

“I … yes, for my paper, Captain.”

Johnny kept his voice level.

“I’ve no objection, Mr. Broome,” the captain assured him. “Ask all the questions you want to, and …” His face darkened. “Write a decent obituary for old Bengy Tarr, will you?

I’ll give you all the information you need for it.”

“I will indeed,” Johnny promised. “Thank you, Captain.”

But all his questioning elicited little more than he had learned already. The cook told him that the big convict who had jumped overboard had, from the outset, appeared to be regarded with hostility by the other three.

They had exchanged their yellow convict uniforms for clothes stolen from the

Hastings’

people, but the big man had not been allowed to discard his.

“They made “im stay on deck with Cap’n Tarr, sir, all the time, and-aye, ‘e wasn’t armed, like they was. Tm an” the cap’n, I reckon they was plannin’ somethin’, the two of “em, an” Haines must’ve got wind of it. “E’s a real bastard, Will Haines, sir … I knew ‘im from way back, when ‘e was a deck’and aboard this ship. Used to be in the army once, I believe, but ‘e got thrown out. Served a year or two on Norfolk Island, got ‘is

ticket-o”-leave, an’ then made more trouble an’

they give “im life at Port Arthur.” The cook’s voice shook. “There’s nothin”

I wouldn’t give to get me “ands on the blasted swine, after what ‘e done to us. An” the poor old cap’n. “E was a real good bloke, Cap’n Tarr, sir. I ‘ope you’ll write that in your newspaper.”

He would, Johnny resolved. If he did nothing else, he would write Captain Benjamin Tarr’s obituary. But … the problem of Michael Wexford was unsolved. The chances were that he had survived, if the cook’s story was true-and there was no reason to disbelieve it. But survival meant that he was on the run, somewhere in the Huon Valley, probably, if he had managed to make his way there. On the run, hunted for by military search parties and … dear God, by Haines and his villainous