“Mr Renzi, I believe it t’ be time to make visit to y’r sealers.”
A tiny smile appeared. “Thank you, Mr Kydd.”
Kydd laid course for the islands. According to the hand-drawn chart, there was clear water all the way. With time fleeting by he would chance a night passage. However, it would be cloudy and dark and their first warning of danger would be the gleam of white breakers in the murk. Suffolk turned her bowsprit northeast and sheeted in for a long beat.
Morning dawned on a tumbling waste of grey-green water and the irregular rounded summits of what appeared to be a double island. “Cap’n Kent’s group,” Kydd said definitively. It was not hard to recognise from the description: as they drew nearer, a deep-cleft channel became evident that completely separated a steep, hummocky island to the east from a smaller to the west.
The islands had been explored only the previous year and Kydd had just the pencilled remarks by the explorer, Murray of the Lady Nelson, on an earlier rudimentary map. He approached cautiously. Granite pillars tinged with the yellows and reds of lichens soared out of the sea at the entrance—a bare few hundred yards across and leading into the cleft passage.
A landing place was marked not far inside. They entered—and in one dizzying motion were gyrated broadside to their track, then round and back again in the grip of a current so fierce that miniature whirlpools formed and re-formed as they were swept along.
About to roar orders to hand sail, Kydd felt the wind die. The sails hung limp, an extraordinary thing with the sea wind’s bluster only yards away out of the passage. Helpless, they whirled along as fast as a man could run. Kydd’s order changed hastily to an anchoring, but as the readied bower splashed down, a blast of wind from the other direction bullied and blustered at them for long minutes until the lee gunwale was awash. The williwaw eased, and Suffolk swung to her anchor into the current while she snugged down to bare masts.
“A tide rip,” Kydd said to Boyd. “I should have known it, th’ passage running at such a parallel t’ Bass Strait. Would’ve been helpful t’ make mention o’ this on the chart.”
The boat was prepared, a mast stepped for the run in to the little cove. “Nicholas?” Kydd was cheered at the first sign of animation he had seen in his friend. Renzi looked about with interest as they curved towards the sandy beach at the head of the cove. A dark-timbered boat lay upside down in the dune grass.
Avoiding rounded red-stained rocks they hissed to a stop at the water’s edge and clambered out. Immediately, the back of Kydd’s throat was caught by the thick reek of a waft of blubber-oil smoke. A track beaten through the tussocky grass led past the upturned boat. Renzi took the lead energetically and they hurried forward.
Over the rise the track threaded through more dramatic granite pinnacles and suddenly opened into a rough clearing with half a dozen crude huts, constructed of driftwood and bark. In front of one a short man in a leather apron stiff with gore was stuffing chunks of seal flesh into a vast tryworks over a fire.
“Wha’ do ye want?” he shrilled nervously. His appearance was the most squalid and dirty that Kydd had ever seen, his grey beard and whiskers sprouting unchecked, his eyes beady and suspicious. An Aboriginal woman emerged from the hut and stood goggling at the intruders.
Renzi seemed taken aback but stepped forward and offered a wicker bottle, which the man snatched greedily. “I’m here to enquire about the sealing trade, with a view to, er, investment,” he said doubtfully.
The man hefted the bottle and shook it next to his ear before he answered. “You gov’ment?” he squeaked.
“No,” Renzi said. “Nor Navy. I want to know directly about you sealers—what’s the cost, what’s the profit, what you have to do.”
The man cocked his head to one side and cackled harshly. “Has ye got any vittles? Man gets tired o’ seal an’ penguin meat b’times.”
“I’m sure I can find you something if my business is concluded satisfactorily,” Renzi offered.
The man nodded. “What d’ye want t’ know, then?” He took a long swig from the bottle, and then began. It was a brutally hard life: men were left alone with provisions on the impossibly remote islands of Bass Strait to hunt seals. A ship would return months or even years later to retrieve them, with their accumulated pelts and oil. Some were entirely on their own while others were joined by runaway convicts and drifters to become sealing gangs.
It was clearly extremely profitable: from nothing to hundreds of sealers, possibly more, in just the few years since discovery implied that an insatiable demand was driving a massive expansion of the industry.
Renzi lightened visibly at this but Kydd broke in impatiently: “M’ friend—we need t’ know—have ye b’ chance heard anything o’ the French? Two fair-size ships bound west’d? We think they want t’ claim an’ settle somewhere in Van Diemen’s Land. Have ye heard tell at all?”
The man screwed up his face in concentration and replied, “Did see ships, but three on ’em.”
“Three!”
“Two big an’ a pawky sloop a week ago. Could be y’ French, but me eyes ain’t as they was.”
It was doubtful but Kydd persevered: “Was they t’ the north or south o’ this island?” If they had taken the north side they were probably on their way through the strait—Robbins and Cumberland would find them. To the south would imply that they were somewhere along the northern coast where Suffolk had been. And if the wretched man was mistaken or lying . . . the French might even now be dropping down the east coast of Van Diemen’s Land to make their landings in the far south—in the Derwent.
“Ah, now, I can’t rightly remember. North, was it?”
“Thank ye,” Kydd said. The man could tell them little more. “Now, Nicholas, if you’ve hoisted aboard enough o’ the sealing profession . . .”
Renzi hesitated. “Dear fellow, if it were at all possible to remain an hour or two more, it would gratify my curiosity infinitely to observe the procedures to be followed in . . . acquiring the pelts.”
“Y’ wants t’ see?” The man’s gap-toothed smile widened as he looked pointedly at the bottle. At Renzi’s understanding nod, he chortled. “Come wi’ me.”
The trail led to a ridged summit overlooking a wide slab of rock, slimed with droppings and inclined down to the sea. The area was nearly covered with seals, pale fur seals and their darker-skinned pups lying in the weak sun, suckling, flopping up from the water’s edge or squabbling with each other. Seabirds wheeled above, their cries piercing the din of squealing and barking.
“We waits f’r low tide—more room ter move.” They watched as other sealers hefting clubs and lances appeared and crouched out of sight of the seals.
A sudden hoarse animal cry was quickly taken up by others. The gang of sealers had got to their feet and were racing in from both sides along the edge of the water, cutting off the seals from their escape. When the two lines of men met they turned in and set to the slaughter.
The ungainly animals had no chance: wildly swinging clubs smashed skulls in a gleeful orgy of killing. Terrified beasts squealed and tried to flounder away, but were overtaken and mercilessly dispatched. In a very short time the foreshore was aswim with blood from a hundred corpses.
The last of the seals herded far up from the sanctuary of the sea suffered a similar fate. In a pathetic gesture of defiance one male seal turned on his killers to defend the females but it only served to make his attacker miss his stroke and the creature screamed in the pain of splintered bones. In disgust the sealer moved on from a damaged pelt, leaving the animal to thrash about in its final agony.
It had taken just minutes. Now the frantic pace slowed as the butchery began. Each piteous body was deprived of its skin, leaving an unrecognisable bloody mass; blubber was peeled away and carried off to the tryworks while an occasional long-drawn-out shriek came from an animal incompletely killed, whose skin was torn from it while still alive.
A charnel house of blood, bones and viscera on the rock slab w
aited to be washed off by the next tide but of the life that was there before there was nothing left.
The silence on the summit above was broken by the sealer. “We takes th’ skins an’ salts ’em down. Wan’ t’ see ’em? We got more’n two thousan’ skins an’ three hunnerd barrels of oil ready,” he said proudly. “China market takes all we c’n get.”
Before nightfall Suffolk was stretching south past the bleak fastness of Furneaux Island with the intention of reaching Banks Strait by dawn; on board there was little conversation and Renzi slipped below, his face pale and stricken.
In the morning a backing north-easterly met the strong east-going tidal stream and an unpleasant toppling sea kept the decks wet, the motion uncomfortable. However, the same conditions meant that the many half-tide rocks and islets were betrayed by sullen breaking seas in flurries of white round a jagged dark menace.
Black Reef was laid well to starboard by noon and, easing away southward in accordance with orders, the little vessel began the run to the opposite end of Van Diemen’s Land. Now clear of the rock-strewn Bass Strait and into open water it was plain sailing with no fear of peril. All square sail was set with the favourable northerly and the schooner seethed along; Kydd sent the men to their meals and Boyd went below for a rest.
It was pleasurable sailing; the northerly still had the warmth of the continent and the seas were moderate, the ship well found and willing. Kydd missed the precision and bluff certainties of the Navy but that was now in the fast-receding past. In a short while he would be on his way back to England and his promised merchant ship—and who knew? His naval service in command might be attractive to the prestigious East India Company in the grand routes to India and beyond, and with his experience in the commercial sphere mounting, he might well be offered . . .
His thoughts turned to Renzi. He had changed, now so unlike his previous elegant self. Gone was the noble poise and sureness of touch, the quiet logic informing a character of calm self-possession. In its place was a brittle defensiveness, a pathetic pretence at what should have been a natural instinct—the station of well-born gentleman. Whatever had happened since he put down roots in New South Wales had affected him severely, and now this business with the sealers. Just what did it all mean?
Automatically Kydd glanced up at the rigging; the sails were all drawing well and trimmed to satisfaction, but his eyes were caught by the sight ahead of clouds in a peculiar regular formation. He had seen precursors to foul weather around the world— the Mediterranean tramontana, electrical storms off Africa and, indeed, howling gales in the North Atlantic; this seemed of no account, though, and he dismissed it from his mind.
He breathed deep of the clean sea air and found himself drawn to his family so far away, especially his sister Cecilia. Was there anything he could do for her? It would have been a sad blow to lose the position that had elevated her beyond expectation. Ironically, he mused, she had suffered from the same declaration of peace that had brought to an end his own treasured career.
Boyd came on deck, paused, sniffing the wind and reorienting to current conditions. He looked forward and stiffened in alarm, then hurried aft.
“Sir, we must get th’ sail off her.” The cloud had consolidated into a remarkable elongated roll that lay curiously suspended above the sea for miles across their track, not at all suggestive of danger.
“How so, Mr Boyd?” said Kydd, looking at the oddity. There had been nothing like this before the onset of any bad weather in his experience, but Boyd seemed disturbed by the sight.
“This is y’r Southerly Buster, Mr Kydd. ’Twill be a rare moil soon, sir. Wind c’n swing a whole sixteen points in a minute or so and catch ye flat aback.”
Kydd was learning more about this strange southern world with its different stars in the heavens, and seasons turned on their head, but it would not do to defy the elements. “Very well, Mr Boyd, do what ye will t’ get the barky in shape f’r it.”
All square sail vanished, followed by the foresail, leaving Suffolk languidly rolling to a jib and close-reefed main. The line of cloud advanced and distant hanging curtains of white on the grey told Kydd that this was a species of line squall—but it was closing at a disturbing rate.
“We’ll rig hand lines,” he ordered. These were secured along the deck for safety; Suffolk was not so big that she could withstand a sudden roll when the squall hit.
The quality of light altered as the cloud threw a dull pall over the seascape—and then it was upon them. The warm, reliable northerly transformed in an instant to a chill, streaming bluster and, as promised, it shifted around in bursts of spite until, in gusts of cold, driving rain, it stayed steady in the south.
Things had changed radically. No longer bowling along before a soldier’s wind Suffolk could no longer think of voyaging south; the savagery of the southerly blasts had rotated the vessel round and she scudded before the wind, headed for who knew where.
Over to larboard was the empty wilderness of Van Diemen’s Land, and to starboard, the open sea leading to New Zealand and the South Seas. Kydd had neither the charts nor provisions and water for such a protracted deviation.
If, on the other hand, he sheeted in and made for the coast to larboard there was all the danger to be met on a rock-bound seaboard. But if he could find shelter to ride it out the situation would be saved. “Down y’r helm an’ we’re running f’r the coast,” he yelled, and without waiting went to his cabin and pulled out his precious chart, bracing at the wild motion that had his tiny lamp swinging jerkily. It would be touch and go—there were but two possible havens: south of the Bay of Fires in the far north and the Freycinet Peninsula somewhere to his north-west.
The only alternative was being lost in the wastes of the South Pacific. But being at last reckoning only some twenty miles off the land there was still time and daylight to coast south until they found shelter.
On deck Kydd was grateful for the thick coat he had snatched before coming up: the temperature had plummeted since the squall hit. The rain came and went in miserable drifting curtains as they barrelled along through the seas rolling in abeam. In a short time they sighted the dark, uneven coastline of Van Diemen’s Land. Cautiously Kydd eased Suffolk round and began to search.
He knew what he was looking for and by mid-afternoon had sighted it. A spine of serrated uplands, light-grey and naked above dark green woodlands on the lower slopes, a single large island at its finality. Again they leaned to the winds and thrashed past the island, seeing its tip enveloped in explosions of white from the surging waves until they had reached the great bay beyond.
They were still not safe: from early maps Kydd knew that he would need to sail deep into the south-facing bay, perhaps to its end before he could be sure of shelter from the malevolent southerly.
Suffolk rounded the island and raced up the bay before the wind once more, passing craggy ridges and squat headlands until a long glimmer of sand ahead warned of the head of the bay— but, praise be, the final rearing of dappled pink granite peaks provided a lee of a good two miles of calmer waters and, with infinite relief, Kydd gave orders that saw Suffolk’s anchor plunge down and all motion come to a halt.
Renzi was sitting morosely in the cabin when Kydd went below to strip off his streaming oilskins. Worn and tired by the battering of the weather, Kydd threw his foul-weather gear outside and slumped on the edge of the bunk.
“Be obliged if ye’d shift out o’ there, Nicholas, an’ let me get t’ my charts,” he mumbled, against the rattle of rain on the little skylight. Renzi seemed not to have heard. “If ye would be s’ good—” Kydd began heavily.
“I heard you the first time,” Renzi snapped, rising and squeezing past Kydd, who bent under his chair, fumbling for the tied bundle of charts and sailing directions.
“Why, thank ’ee,” Kydd said sarcastically, slapping the folio on to the bunk and spreading out the contents.
“My pleasure,” retorted Renzi venomously.
“Be buggered
!” Kydd exploded. He saw the dark-circled eyes and sunken cheeks but he had no patience left for the strange petulance in Renzi. “What ails ye, for God’s sake, Nicholas? Have y’ not a civil tongue for y’ friends? What’s wrong with ye?”
“Nothing! Nothing that can possibly be of concern to you.”
“Nothing t’ concern me? What about Cecilia? Do y’ write t’ her the same as ye serve me?” Something about Renzi’s manner caught his suspicion. “Y’ haven’t written to her, have ye?” With rising anger he said, “She knows y’ here at th’ end o’ God’s earth setting up t’ be a—a gentleman o’ the land, an’ after all she’s done f’r you y’ won’t even tell her how ye’re faring?”
Suspicion sharpened at Renzi’s stubborn silence. “Ye never told her, did you?” he said in disgust. “You jus’ walked away leaving her t’ wonder what’s become o’ you. That old soldier’s yarn about needing t’ cut y’self off fr’m the past! Why, ye’re nothing better than—”
“Enough! Hold your tongue!” Renzi turned white. “You don’t know the half of it. This is my business and mine alone. You will not tax me with my faults and still less my decisions, which are answerable to me only.” He continued thickly, his chest heaving, “We are constrained to this vessel for the present time but I wish you to know that any conversation between us I consider to be unnecessary until we reach Port Jackson. Good day to you, sir!”
• • •
A cold dawn revealed a more settled sea state, the forceful wind still in the south. Time, however, was pressing: hard work at the diminutive windlass in flurries of rain brought in the anchor, and under fore and aft sail they left the steep and barren Freycinet peninsula astern, bucketing along uncomfortably in steep seas coming in on the bow.
There was little Kydd could do to plan for eventualities. It now seemed so obvious that any French settlement would be in the south: it would be easy to defend, furthest from the existing British colony and in a climate closest to Europe. But to dissuade them if this was the case . . . It was difficult to conceive of a more hopeless objective.
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