A Far Distant Land: A saga of British survival in an unforgiving new world (The Australian Historical Saga Series Book 1)

by David Field

  ‘Yes indeed, as was Miss Mallett here,’ Daniel told him with a feeling of malicious satisfaction, in case Martha had tried to adopt another persona in order to charm her admirer. ‘What detail are you on out here?’

  ‘Commissary Store guard, sir,’ Perkin replied.

  ‘The job obviously has its advantages,’ Martha chipped in. ‘Edward was able to bring a huge jug of rum to keep the party going. Plus a pound of pouch tobacco for George’s pipe.’

  Edward blushed slightly and Daniel wondered if it was from embarrassment or guilt. As if being called upon to explain himself, Edward added, ‘I don’t drink or smoke myself, sir, so I’m able to save most of my pay and some of the other men are quite happy to part with their rations as well, so…’

  ‘Yes, quite,’ Daniel replied, making a mental note to enquire who else was selling illicit grog and tobacco around the colony. Just then a fiddler struck up a reel and a group of men and their ladies began to form a square on the grass.

  ‘Come on, Edward,’ Martha said, with a backward look at Daniel that was a mixture of triumph and challenge, ‘they need another couple to make up their eight.’

  They hurried off towards the dancers and Daniel made his way indoors, where Rachel was sitting proudly behind a box that contained a conglomeration of blankets and sheets, inside which was presumably the newborn whose arrival they were here to celebrate. She looked for all the world like a street trader selling vegetables at a Saturday market.

  Daniel walked over and placed a gold coin down on the table that was set up to one side for the presents. He hoped that Rachel would realise that the gift was traditional and not a simple admission that he had no imagination and no experience of gifting newborns. She smiled at him encouragingly and Daniel could see why George had fallen for her. She had a long, serious, face but there was a burning intelligence in her dark eyes.

  ‘So nice to renew our acquaintance again in happier circumstances, Daniel,’ she said. ‘George speaks very highly of you, as, of course, does Martha. Thank you again for finding her for us.’ Rachel looked through the open door towards the dancers. ‘Martha’s trying to make you jealous, dancing with Perkin.’

  ‘Why would she think I’d be jealous?’ Daniel asked in the most neutral tone of voice he could summon, although he could feel his pulse quickening even at the mere mention of Martha’s name.

  ‘Please don’t underestimate a woman’s instinct,’ Rachel replied. ‘You and she have been walking around each other like two prize-fighters in the ring ever since we landed. You’re obviously strongly attracted to each other, but from what Martha tells me you’re reluctant to commit to a relationship.’

  ‘She talks about me, does she?’ Daniel asked.

  ‘She talks about nothing else,’ Rachel chortled back. ‘There are times I feel I know you very well, the way she prattles on about you. Please don’t break her heart, Daniel — she’s too dear to me already.’

  ‘It’s my heart I’m concerned for,’ Daniel replied, unable to withstand the strong urge to unburden himself to someone who might have the life experience to understand. ‘I was cruelly deceived once before, you see.’

  ‘Did she deceive you, or did you deceive yourself?’ Rachel asked with a serious look in her eye.

  Daniel looked away in surprise — he’d never thought of it that way. ‘I allowed myself to believe that she loved me, certainly,’ he admitted. ‘Her name was Alice and she was my employer’s older daughter. She always smiled when we met and we used to joke happily between ourselves, so naturally I thought...’

  The rest of what he might have said was drowned by a snort from Rachel. ‘Typical male conceit! A few smiles, the odd joke here and there and she’s all yours for the asking? Women look for more than that in a man, let me tell you. A loving heart certainly. A sense of humour a bonus. But unless they feel in their inner being that this is the person they want for the father of their babies, it’s all just politeness and pretence. When I first laid eyes on George, even though he was strutting up and down the gangway between messes and I was one of the pieces of dirt lying to one side of him, I knew. He looked twice at me and I think he knew as well.’

  Two naval officers walked into the hut with their women on their arms. The women twitted and cooed over the baby and Rachel reverted to her proud mother role. As Daniel started to move away, she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him down until his ear was level with her mouth. ‘Please don’t fight it too hard, Daniel,’ she whispered. ‘You have to learn to trust again, otherwise you’ll both lose something very precious.’

  Daniel’s head was reeling as he walked outside, where the warm, slightly humid, air did nothing to clear his thoughts. The dance had now become a waltz and Daniel yearned to interrupt Martha and her escort as they swirled around, crush her in his arms and surrender. He’d been burned once, but he longed to get burned again.

  6

  A week later, Daniel was obliged to take a patrol of marines up to the brickworks in a show of military might, to deter any more attacks from natives that seemed to be aimed at stealing tools. They were marching past George’s hut when George himself walked from his front step into the broad sunlight and ordered a halt. He called Daniel over.

  ‘The governor doesn’t want to provoke any mass attacks while our powder reserves are so low, so don’t let anyone shoot the natives.’

  ‘What about Major Ross’s orders?’ Daniel asked, relieved at this new instruction.

  ‘Ignore them,’ George insisted. ‘The governor was very clear.’

  Daniel continued to march with his men up the long slope and through the dense bushland that marked the western fringe of the first forest that had been felled. The brickworks were still half a mile or so further on when Daniel raised his hand in a signal for the entire platoon to halt. Ahead of them was a native boy, perhaps no more than fifteen, sitting in an open space between two tall gum trees, playing with what looked like a hammer and chisel. It had presumably been stolen from the brickworks to which they were heading and Daniel whispered an order to his half dozen or so privates to fix bayonets, along with a stern instruction that there was to be no firing of muskets. He also ordered them to remain where they were.

  He walked slowly up to where the youth sat, seemingly unconcerned at the approach of soldiers and Daniel suspected a trap. He looked around cautiously, but there was no sign of any other native, so he walked up to the youth and bent down to enquire, in the most simple language he could summon up, where he had come across the tools he was playing with. Suddenly there was a warning shout from one of his men and he felt a massive blow to the side of his head as a tall man sprang out from behind a wide tree trunk and felled him.

  When he came round a few moments later, he was surrounded by natives, all pointing their spears at him. He looked back to where his own men stood, silent and uncertain and yelled an order: ‘No firing! Conserve your powder!’

  He looked back up at a ring of threatening faces and prepared himself for a painful death. Then there was a shout and a young warrior pushed his way to the front. He studied Daniel for a moment, then broke into a grin. He reached out his hand and pulled Daniel to his feet, murmuring, ‘Friend.’

  Daniel felt a rush of relief as he realised that this must be the boy whose life he had spared months before. There was an animated conversation between the man who had pulled Daniel to his feet — who was presumably the leader of this raiding party — and the rest of the group. The leader waved a hand towards where Daniel’s men were standing, awestricken, their muskets at their shoulders in the firing position and asked, ‘Friend?’

  Daniel nodded and held out an open hand as he gestured back to his men. ‘Friends. All friends.’

  ‘We could pot every one of them from here, sir,’ shouted one private. ‘They’ve only got spears and we’re all loaded and ready.’

  ‘Back away, Private,’ Daniel ordered him. ‘All of you, back away quietly. Anyone who fires will be on a charge.’

 
The marine contingent walked slowly backwards, their weapons loosely by their sides and the natives melted into the bush as if they were part of it. Daniel dusted off his uniform tunic and ordered the men to continue the march to the brickworks.

  Two days later, Daniel was in irons inside the brig hut that he had been guarding for some months. The charge was ‘cowardice in the face of the enemy’ and Major Ross was determined to make his point. The court martial had been set for a week’s time and Daniel was to be defended by none other than his own immediate senior officer, George Johnston. The ‘prosecution’ was in the hands of Second Lieutenant William Bray, who hoped to become a first lieutenant when the man who was standing in the way of his promotion was taken out onto the parade square and shot.

  George had gloomily told Daniel that none of the men who had been under his command during the incident was prepared to say anything other than that they were simply following orders when Daniel had bartered for his life when they could easily have killed half a dozen natives. Major Ross was apparently incandescent when he learned that an opportunity had been missed to show the natives that the settlers could wipe them out and was determined to make an example of a senior officer who had backed away from such a show of force in order to save his own life. And yet somehow George seemed quietly confident that he could get Daniel off the charge and assured him that ‘a truth of sorts’ would emerge.

  On the day of his court martial, Daniel was marched smartly into the room in the recently completed courthouse that the military had commandeered for the occasion. He groaned inwardly when he looked up and saw Major Ross himself seated at the centre of the judge’s table, a senior naval officer on either side of him.

  The charge was read out and Daniel indignantly denied cowardice. Then, one by one, the men who had been with him on that day testified.

  George then stood up to begin his opening speech for the defence. ‘Gentlemen, I have to begin by expressing a difficulty I have in this matter. Certain pertinent facts that will support the prisoner’s defence are known only to me and as you are aware, I cannot give evidence for myself whilst acting as “prisoner’s friend” in this matter. However, I hope that you will grant me a certain indulgence if on occasions I ask questions to which I obviously know the answer, because I am referring to conversations in which I took part. I call my first witness — the prisoner.’

  Daniel was not allowed to move from his seat into the witness box, so George adopted a position across the courtroom from which to ask his questions, far enough away to justify the loud voice in which he asked them, determined that the judges should not miss a word.

  He began by taking Daniel through the sequence of events once the platoon had come across the native boy with the apparently stolen tools. When Daniel recalled how the leader of the native group had hauled him to his feet and called him ‘Friend’, George asked him to explain how they knew each other and Daniel obligingly recalled the previous incident when he had prevented the man from being killed.

  ‘So this was the second time you’d saved the life of the same ignorant savage?’ Major Ross interrupted indignantly.

  Daniel stared him back defiantly as he responded. ‘On the first occasion, it would have been wanton slaughter. Added to which, we had no way of knowing how many other natives were hiding in the trees and we could have been risking our own lives, had we taken his.’

  ‘So once again, your primary concern was for your own neck?’ Ross observed triumphantly.

  ‘The lives of my own men as well, sir. It is surely an officer’s duty to preserve the lives of his own men.’

  ‘He has a point, Ross,’ one of the naval judges remarked. Ross let the matter drop and nodded grumpily for George to continue his examination-in-chief.

  ‘Before you recommenced the march, after you left my hut, had you been given any new order?’

  ‘I had been told that the governor wished to conserve our powder, certainly. Any deaths were to be by bayonet and only then if we were under attack.’

  ‘And from whom did you receive that order?’

  ‘You — sir,’ Daniel replied, a little discomforted.

  ‘And at the time when you were lifted from the ground by the native, would it have been possible for your men to rescue you?’

  ‘Only if they had opened fire with their muskets.’

  ‘No chance of attacking them with bayonets?’

  ‘Definitely not — they were some ten feet away at that time.’

  ‘And you were not, at that moment, under attack in any way?’

  ‘No — if anything, the entire situation had been defused.’

  George indicated that he had no further questions.

  Lieutenant Bray rose with the glint of triumph in his eyes. ‘This entire incident took place on the 23rd?’

  ‘Correct,’ Daniel replied.

  ‘And you say that you received the order concerning the conservation of powder earlier that morning, before the incident?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then how do you explain the fact that this order did not come into force until the following day, when Major Ross had it announced at General Parade?’

  ‘Obviously I can’t, but I was receiving an order from my superior officer and as you are no doubt aware, he’s the governor’s adjutant. I was told that the order came from the governor himself.’

  There was a snort of indignation from Major Ross, who waved his hand for Lieutenant Bray to remain silent for a moment, while he bellowed down the courtroom, ‘Who is your ultimate commanding officer, Lieutenant?’

  ‘You are, sir.’

  ‘But you claim to have obeyed an order from the governor. Is that not in itself an act of insubordination?’

  ‘With respect, sir,’ Daniel replied heatedly, ‘I obeyed an order from my immediate superior officer. If men were allowed to conduct their own enquiries before satisfying themselves that an order from a superior officer is an authorised one, it would be chaos. I have been trained to obey orders from a superior officer and it’s none of my business if the governor issues an order to his adjutant before he gets round to telling you.’

  There was a roar of laughter around the courtroom, led by the two naval officers on either side of Ross, who were well aware of the war being waged between the governor and his commanding officer. Ross glared at Daniel, but said nothing more and Lieutenant Bray sat down in confusion. George had been hastily scribbling a note on a piece of paper, which he handed to one of the privates guarding the courtroom door. The guard saluted and hurried outside and George turned to address the bench.

  ‘I call Miss Martha Mallett.’

  Daniel’s heart performed its usual somersault as he saw Martha being ushered into the courtroom and almost fainted with shock when she scuttled over to him on her way to the witness box and planted a big warm kiss on his mouth. ‘That’s fer you, darlin’,’ she said loudly as she stepped into the witness box and declined to take the oath on the ground that she was of the Jewish faith.

  Daniel swiftly forgot that he was on trial for his life as he listened in rapt fascination to the performance that Martha was giving, posing as a simple Cockney girl.

  ‘Miss Mallett,’ George asked her, ‘you seem very familiar with the defendant, judging by the kiss you just gave him.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s right. I’ve give ’im more than a kiss, many’s the time.’

  ‘At the risk of embarrassing you, Miss Mallett, could you explain precisely what you meant by that last answer?’ George asked, with a warning look towards Daniel.

  ‘Who’s embarrassed? I’m not, an’ that’s the honest truth. ’E’s ’ad me body more than once.’

  There was a warning cough from the bench and George did his best to look embarrassed. ‘Do you mean to say that you and Lieutenant Bradbury here are lovers?’

  ‘Well, I love it, darlin’, an’ ter judge be the way ’e goes at it, ’e loves it an’ all.’

  It was all Daniel could do to keep a straight face and
he was glad that he had been pre-warned by George to keep his mouth firmly shut. Instead, he just sat back and enjoyed the performance.

  ‘Miss Mallett, on the 23rd of last month, did you have any conversations with the lieutenant?’

  ‘Yeah — we arranged ter meet in the forest fer you know wot.’

  The two naval officers were almost drooling as they looked down the brazen cleavage of Martha’s dress, which she had spent two whole days stretching so that when she pulled it forward in pretended agitation, as if seeking to cool herself, it revealed the deliciously rounded tops of her more than ample breasts. Major Ross, for his part, looked somewhat nonplussed as to where all this was leading and kept his eyes firmly on Daniel.

  ‘As I understand it, Miss Mallett,’ George persevered, ‘you’re telling us that you and the lieutenant arranged a liaison in the forest?’

  ‘Yeah — we agreed as ’ow ’e were gonna take ’is men up the road ter the brickworks, then nip back an’ meet me in the trees.’

  ‘Did you follow the column of men into the forest?’

  ‘Yeah, but I kept myself well ’idden, which was p’raps as well, as it turned out.’

  ‘How exactly did it “turn out”, Miss Mallett?’

  ‘Well, it were like this,’ Martha replied, staring hard at the far wall with a fixed expression, as if reliving the event in her mind, ‘I were followin’ the soldiers, but stickin’ ter the trees. Me an’ Danny, we ’as our own special place, in a clearin’ near where the stream runs down ter the beach. I were sittin’ there, waitin’ fer Danny ter come back, when I sees all these blokes wanderin’ through the trees, carryin’ spears. I were proper scared, so I lay down an’ ’id meself. Then I ’eard Danny shout and the next thing I knows, there ’e is on the ground, wiv this bloke pullin’ ’im to ’is feet, an’ all these other blokes in the bushes, lookin’ on, like they was waitin’ ter see what ’appened next.’