Guwara yelled and rushed from the cover, holding a spear horizontally in each hand, pushing the hoppers towards the stockade. Ben yelled too, following him.
The big male faltered, giving the does and youngsters a chance to get away. Two dashed around on opposite sides, but Guwara was there before them, driving them back together. As a group they leaped, terrified, into the stockade, then stopped, startled by what was obviously the first fence they had ever seen.
And that was the trick, Ben realised. The animals back home knew fences, knew they could push down a poor one. But these creatures thought this flimsy creation was solid.
Guwara stepped forward and stabbed his smallest spear into the throat of the big male. It made a clawing motion with its two front feet. It tried to leap over the sticks, then fell back. The does managed to leap out, but the young ones were too small. Guwara dealt with them swiftly.
Ben peered into the mist. The does had vanished, but the big male lay twitching on the ground.
Guwara pointed to the giant hopper and grinned. ‘Water barrels. Spear points. Rope.’ He gestured at the young ones. ‘Dinner.’
Guwara worked on the hopper carcasses that night and all the next day. First he carefully skinned the small ones, removed their insides through the smallest of holes at top and bottom, turned the skins inside out, scraped them hard with the teeth from the big male, then hung them high in a tree to dry, with a small roof of bark above them. Their meat became dinner. The brains and liver were kept for Higgins, as well as the marrow from the bones heated by the side of the fire. Soft food, thought Ben, watching Higgins suck at the cracked bones with enjoyment. He still looked feverish, but surely good food would help him recover.
The meat of the big male was roasted on a spit over the coals the next day. Hopper meat was strongly flavoured, a bit like roast ox at home. Strangely Ben found he was starting to think of Badger’s Hill without pain. Was it because the man who had betrayed it was gone? He suspected Mama would have liked Higgins and admired Guwara. She’d enjoyed dining with the tenant farmers and had chatted for hours with Foster, the gamekeeper. One could not ask such people to dine at the house, of course, but they were interesting, and more closely entwined in his and Mama’s lives than the socially acceptable neighbours were.
Ben wondered suddenly what Mama would think of Sally.
By evening the next day, the hopper tail had yielded long, tough sinews, which Guwara rubbed with sap, then tied onto the mussel-shell hooks. The sinews became fishing lines too, as well as string to tie up the top and bottom holes of the juveniles’ skins, suddenly turned into waterbags.
A line of fish fillets hung on string next to the fire, slowly smoking till they were hard-dried enough to preserve them. A line of strips of hopper meat hung next to them.
Ben sat with Higgins in the rough bark shelter, watching Guwara as he sat by the fire carving the nose bone of the male hopper’s skull into a new barb for one of his spears. Higgins’s leg seemed to be paining him even more, though he had made no complaint. But he didn’t move far or often from the shelter, and then only with a stick for a crutch.
‘You know what them waterbags mean, Sneezer?’ he said softly.
‘What?’ asked Ben.
‘Gettin’ back to Sydney Town ain’t just a dream, nor gettin’ our tavern neither. The Indian is goin’ to get us home, boy. Just look at him.’
Ben stared. ‘You . . . you didn’t think we’d really make it?’
Higgins laughed. ‘We had a chance is all. Apart from leavin’ you to go mad on some poxy little island till you was old and bent, or feedin’ the fishes down in Davy Jones’s locker.’
‘Then you’d have been safer staying on the ship,’ said Ben slowly.
‘It was a gamble, boy. If we won, it was life for you and riches for me, all respectable like. Worth a toss of the dice, I reckon.’
Ben watched as Guwara melted sap on one of the hot rocks by the fire to fix the new barb from the hopper skull bone to his spear.
‘It was worth it,’ he said.
CHAPTER 19
Days passed, then weeks. By the time Ben had thought to mark out the days of the week or month, he had lost track. But daylight lingered longer now. Spring would come soon, if this sandy land had a spring.
Higgins slept most of the day, still restless with pain. Ben brought him food and water, even a makeshift chamberpot that he emptied far from their camp so it didn’t attract the flies. He didn’t mind. For the first time he was finding the adventure he had dreamed of back in England.
It was fun to tether a duck to a tree so it called down other ducks and Guwara could swim underwater and grab their legs as they landed. So was hunting out the nesting places of the smaller hoppers and jumping on them while they slept instead of spearing them. Their skins became more waterbags.
The softest fur came from the creatures like overgrown squirrels that lived in hollow trees. Guwara stuffed their fur into their body cavity before roasting the meat on hot stones, then showed Ben and Higgins how to suck the meat juices from the fur, leaving the long strands to be skilfully woven into yet another kind of string. Finding the squirrels was easy — their claws left scratches on the trees they lived in. You only had to reach into the hollow and drag them out as they slept — as long as you were sure a snake didn’t live in the hole instead. Guwara showed Ben how to scatter sand or mud about the tree, and then look for telltale slither marks.
This land was rich in snakes. Ben suspected some were deadly, for Guwara wouldn’t let him try to catch them. Guwara trapped snakes behind the head with a forked stick, then quickly crushed the head so the snake couldn’t bite its own body and poison its flesh. Once skinned and gutted, they tasted a bit like eel, which Higgins relished.
‘Almost like what they sell in Spital Street back in Lunnon Town,’ he said, spitting out the tiny bones. ‘Me’n the lads would have jellied eel Friday nights for a treat, if the pickin’s had been good. And a hot potato each too,’ he added wistfully.
Ben was growing used to the birds’ hoarse cries and chattering when he woke, the high blue arc that was their ceiling, the whisper of the trees about them. How did I ever think this land was ungenerous? he wondered, scooping up yet another netful of fish to add to the growing lines of them that smoked about the fire, and dipping each one briefly in tussock ash before stringing them up, to keep the flies away.
There were so many birds to trap too, by scattering grass seed on the ground, then waiting up in a tree to cast the net that, it turned out, caught birds as well as fish. They wrapped the birds in mud so there was no need to pluck or gut them, and baked them in the fire. The feathers fell off with the hard-crusted mud and the innards shrank away to nothing.
There were giant lizards that slept in hollow logs, so soundly that they didn’t wake even when pulled out. Guwara gutted and roasted them too.
‘Tastes like chicken,’ said Higgins, smacking his lips. ‘Only ever tasted chicken once, but it were good. Any chance of another one o’ these?’
It became almost a game to find food that made Higgins grin, or furs to warm him. How long had it been since Ben had been able to make another person happy?
Ben lay back on his pillow of ‘squirrel’ skin filled with dried tussock. The night stretched above him, lit by a thousand tiny fires. Guwara had laughed at his need for a pillow, but had shown him how to punch holes in the skins with a bone, then poke the string through to sew the skins together. A year ago, Ben had been learning Greek and Latin at the rectory. Now he could skin a hopper, spear a fish sometimes, make a fish trap or a net, soak flowers in a rough bark bowl so they could drink the strange sweet nectar . . .
‘Gar-ooom!’ The sound echoed down the river. Ben sat up, startled.
Closer to the fire, Guwara jerked upright too, listening. Higgins kept on snoring, muttering restlessly.
‘Gar-ooom! Gar-oom!’
Was it cannon fire? Had the Golden Girl lingered to hunt down another Dutch ship? But sh
e’d have needed to restock with cannon balls and shot, and take on more crew to replace those lost in the previous battle. Surely she couldn’t have made it to port and back again by now?
‘Gar-oooom!’
‘What is it?’ he asked Guwara urgently.
But Guwara was grinning. ‘Murawang,’ he said.
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Tomorrow,’ said Guwara, lying back down. Within seconds he was asleep.
Ben lay down too. Whatever the sound was, it was evidently nothing to worry about. There it was again, but from another direction. An owl? But owls weren’t as loud as that. Or perhaps they were in this strange land. Except, he thought, it was no longer strange. He had grown used to seeing olive foliage instead of a hundred shades of bright green. A sky without clouds no longer looked bare and naked, nor did the wide horizon scare him.
What would they be doing back at Badger’s Hill? It would be nearly harvest time, he realised. Would Mr Nattisville give the Harvest Home feast, as Mama had done? Ben hoped so. He hadn’t seemed a hard man. Was Filkinghorn still the butler? A year ago Ben had hoped to buy back Badger’s Hill. Now?
He looked over at Higgins; his toothless mouth was open as he slept and he was drooling slightly. Higgins could stay free in the colony, but it would be another six years before he could legally return to England. Higgins could buy respectability in Sydney Town, Ben realised, just as Mrs Moore had done. He needed only money and the manners he already knew how to assume.
Higgins muttered something, moving his leg as if in pain, though he didn’t wake. Even if the money invested with Mr Moore was enough to buy back Badger’s Hill, Ben realised he couldn’t abandon the convict now. Nor would he risk hurting the man who had saved his life by suggesting that he might like to.
Higgins would have his second chance in the colony of New South Wales, just like Mr and Mrs Appleby had.
He wondered what Sally was doing now.
And what was a murawang?
Ben woke as Guwara threw more branches on the fire. The sun was still low behind the eastern hills, though a pale grey lit the sky.
Guwara picked up his spears, hesitated, then handed one to Ben. ‘Quiet,’ he said.
Ben walked the way Guwara had shown him: each footfall placed gently on the land, using the sides of his feet so the bark and twigs didn’t crackle below. Along the river bank they went . . .
‘Gar-oom!’
Guwara stopped, then made a slight change of direction. Inland now . . . And once more he stopped. Ben halted too, and peered through the twiggy bushes.
He saw a sandy clearing with thin ground covers that were able to wriggle their roots deep into the soil to survive. A giant bird sat in the middle of the clearing on what might be a vast, messy nest, its edges marked by large dead branches. Ben had never seen such a nest, or a bird as massive either.
If they stepped any closer, the bird would see them.
Guwara raised his spear. So did Ben, sighting in the way Guwara had shown him. The spears flew together . . . The bird’s head dropped.
Guwara ran forward, withdrew his spear from the bird’s neck and checked it was dead. Ben followed and saw that his own spear had hit the bird’s body. It had penetrated the feathers, but he doubted that it had been a killing blow.
He watched as Guwara dragged the carcass off the nest, which was mostly dried tussock and strips of bark laid on the sandy ground inside the larger outside branches, without even a depression for the eggs to sit in. There were fourteen of them, twice or three times the size of a goose egg, ranging in colour from pale green to a darker grey-green.
‘Murawang,’ said Guwara again, as if that was all the explanation needed.
They gutted the bird by the nest. Guwara stuffed the eggs into the cavity, handling each with care so as not to break the shell, then replaced some of the guts to cushion them. They took turns dragging the bird by its legs back to camp.
I couldn’t have done this a month ago, thought Ben. I wouldn’t have had the strength nor the skill to send a spear so deep. He laughed suddenly, for the sheer joy of striding across the sandy flats and carrying a spear too. For the first time Guwara hadn’t asked for it back.
Guwara glanced at him and began to laugh as well.
It was so deeply good to be alive.
Higgins was crouching by the fire as they dragged the bird into camp. ‘Wondered where you’d got to,’ he muttered. He looked even more flushed this morning, the shadows under his eyes deeper.
‘Hunting!’ said Ben.
‘Think I’m blind?’ Higgins blinked at the giant dead bird. ‘What do you call that, then?’
‘Murawang,’ said Guwara.
‘That an Indian word?’ asked Higgins suspiciously.
‘I don’t know. I suppose so,’ said Ben as Guwara sat with the bird spread on the ground between his legs and carefully hauled out the eggs.
He took a chip of hopper tooth and pierced each egg with a tiny hole, then motioned for Ben to put them carefully next to the fire. Then he began to wriggle his fingers under the bird’s skin, still with its feathers in place.
By the time the sun was at its midday height, the empty murawang skin hung from a tree. Guwara had placed wide seashells below it.
Hunks of the bird’s meat were roasting on sticks, while Guwara used a knife to carefully cut away the leg meat, pulling out the tough sinews. More string and fishing line, thought Ben.
Higgins cut off a hunk of roasted murawang meat, gummed the juice from it, then spat the rest out. ‘Tough,’ he muttered. He heaved himself to his feet again, limped back into the shelter and lay down. ‘Go get me some water, Sneezer.’
Ben looked at Guwara uncertainly. Higgins’s fever was worsening, but he had no idea what to do about it.
Guwara crossed over to the shelter and motioned to Higgins to lift up his trouser leg.
‘That’s private, that is,’ mumbled Higgins.
‘He needs to see your wound,’ said Ben quietly.
He remembered how Harry Trimble’s leg had festered after he’d cut it deeply three years before at Badger’s Hill. The surgeon had bled him, but the swelling grew worse, till Mama had fed Harry half a bottle of brandy, cut the leg open to let out the pus, and packed the wound with mouldy bread. She and Mrs Trimble had placed hot bran poultices on it every two hours. Harry had lived.
Higgins drew up his trouser leg. Ben bit his lip. The cut stretched from the top of his leg almost to his knee. The top part had healed over, but below the skin was shiny, red and puffed, and oozed yellow.
Ben looked helplessly at Guwara. They had no brandy. No mouldy bread. Even the pudding in its oilcloth covering in Higgins’s sack wouldn’t be mouldy. They didn’t have bran to make a hot poultice.
Guwara looked at the leg impassively, then crouched and took his knife from his belt.
‘No!’ said Higgins sharply. ‘I ain’t havin’ no ignorant heathen cuttin’ me up.’ He pulled down his trouser leg as if hiding the wound would make it vanish.
Guwara stood and vanished into the short tree shadows without a word.
Ben sat next to Higgins. ‘You need to let him help you.’
‘He’s just an Indian.’
‘And he knows how to sail and spear hoppers and catch murawang. He knows more than anyone on the ship. I don’t have anything here to help you, but Guwara might. You’ll die if we do nothing. I . . . I don’t want you to die.’
‘I don’t want me to die neither,’ said Higgins. He lay back without speaking for a while. At last he said, ‘I should’ve had Harry One-Eye put the iron on it soon as it was cut. But if they’d known it was this bad, old Danvers wouldn’t have let me take the boat.’
And I’d be dead, thought Ben. ‘Let Guwara help,’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t have much choice, do I, Sneezer? Don’t s’pose you know how to cut off a leg gone bad neither.’
‘No,’ said Ben.
‘You just keep a watch on him. I trusts you, Snee
zer. Don’t let me down.’
‘I won’t,’ said Ben.
The shadows had grown half as long as the trees when Guwara returned. He was carrying something in a length of bark.
He squatted down beside Higgins and looked at him questioningly. Higgins slowly pulled up the leg of his trousers. Guwara put down the bark container, then pulled out his knife.
Ben looked down and gasped, ‘No!’ Maggots wriggled in a hunk of putrid meat. Was Guwara going to put the rotten meat on the wound? It would be deadly!
Ben reached for it to throw it away, then found Higgins’s hand on his.
‘We agreed, Sneezer.’ Higgins looked up at Guwara. ‘You know what you’re doin’, don’t you, Billy-Boy?’
‘Perhaps,’ said Guwara, showing none of the certainty he had with a spear.
‘Old Gladys back in Lunnon Town put maggots on wounds,’ said Higgins. ‘She said the maggots eat dead meat an’ clean the wound right out. Saw her cure two coves like that.’
‘Were there some she didn’t cure?’ asked Ben.
Higgins shrugged. ‘Always are. Hold me hand, Sneezer.’ He shut his eyes.
An hour later Higgins, in agony, lay too exhausted to speak. Ben, too, was shaking.
Guwara had vanished, to swim, to fish or hunt, or whatever he needed to do to wipe away the memory of cutting open the leg, draining out the pus and carefully picking the maggots out of the chunk of rotten meat to place on the red flesh of Higgins’s wound. As soon as the maggots had burrowed in, Guwara had taken one of the shells from below the dead murawang. A small puddle of oil had dripped into it during the day. He applied the oil liberally to the wound, then dipped a small sheet of paperbark in the oil and placed that on top, sealing in both oil and maggots. And then he left.
Ben fed the fire. Time passed. Guwara did not return. Higgins still lay with his eyes closed, though Ben didn’t think he slept.
At last Ben walked down to the river with one of the hopper waterbags, squished through the mud, washed himself, then filled the bag and came back to Higgins.
Pirate Boy of Sydney Town Page 14
