Tregarthur's Prisoners: Book 3 (The Tregarthur's Series)

by Alex Mellanby

  ‘WELL,’ he bellowed as he peered at some scientific instrument in the corner.

  ‘We wanted to join this famous expedition,’ Sam spoke up.

  His words took me by surprise – me and the captain, who stopped pacing and stood with his face right up against Sam’s.

  ‘Which famous expedition?’ spluttered the captain.

  ‘Darwin and the Beagle.’ Sam had to wipe the spit away.

  ‘Have you been sent by the admiralty to spy on me?’ Now the captain’s face turned red and he looked as though he might explode. He almost stood to attention and started fastening the buttons on his uniform as though we might be about to inspect him.

  ‘No, of course not,’ I broke in. ‘Nothing to do with the … what was it … admirals.’ I had no idea who he had been talking about. ‘Sam’s right, this is a pretty important trip you’re making, we just had to come and see.’

  ‘Darwin!’ he screamed, and several of the buttons came undone.

  There was noise of someone stamping along between the cabins and in he came.

  ‘What is it Fitzroy?’

  ‘Darwin, these lads say they wanted to come on our voyage, jumped on board because they say it’s a famous trip. Guess they’ve escaped from a mental hospital, eh?’

  It was Mr Darwin’s turn to peer at us. He had a friendly face, huge forehead and a puzzled look. In his hand he held a beetle of some kind.

  ‘Surely have,’ he said and looked as though he would leave us.

  ‘Any use for them, Darwin?’ Captain Fitzroy asked.

  Darwin didn’t seem to notice. He waved the beetle. ‘Fascinating thing we found back on that island. Didn’t think much of it as a place but fascinating beetle, must draw it.’ And he left.

  The captain seemed to have lost interest in us and was poking about with his instruments, muttering something about a storm. Sam and I were just standing, watching and waiting.

  ‘Still here?’ the captain said after a while. ‘Foredyke,’ he shouted, and another man stepped into the cabin. ‘Put them back in the hold, don’t want to see them again. Decide what to do with them when we get into port. Escaped convicts I’ll be bound.’

  We were led off back to the hold, locked into the small space along with a pile of barrels. At least they hadn’t decided to throw us overboard. Along with the barrels were crates, some of them open and containing all sorts of specimens. A couple of live birds squawked from a cage in the corner. Some of the crates must have fallen over during the rough weather. From time to time one of the crew came down to fetch one of the barrels or feed the birds.

  They spoke to us occasionally, mostly grumbling about having to collect all the specimens. Although this might be the famous Darwin Beagle trip, as Sam called it, the crew thought they were on a simple survey expedition. It also seemed that Darwin and the captain often quarrelled.

  ‘Once they get on to God the shouting starts,’ one crewman said. ‘Captain’s got a terrible temper.’

  I asked whether they needed another crew member. Anything was better than being kept in this hold; dark, smelt of rotten fish and rotten specimens and had to be at the worst point in the ship for rolling with the waves.

  ‘Got too many as it is,’ the man called Foredyke told us. ‘Don’t know why we have all these men on board. Hard enough to feed them, especially with the cook gone sick. Cooks always go sick – it’s their food.’

  And that’s how we made it out of the hold and up to the galley. Sam as the cook and me assisting him. After that they let us use a small space above the crew cabin to sleep in. I suppose there wasn’t much point in keeping us locked up because there was nowhere to run to – only overboard and although we were sailing along the coast we could never have swum through the huge crashing waves. And even if we did make it to land we had nowhere to go. I just hoped that we would find a way to search for Jenna and Ivy, to see if they had reached this place. I set about trying to be as friendly as possible, but that didn’t work with the captain, who seemed convinced that we’d been sent to spy on him.

  We had plenty of time to watch Darwin. He spent hours looking at his specimens, making notes, drawing sketches of beetles. We had to share our space with much of Darwin’s collection.

  ‘He doesn’t look famous,’ I said to Sam.

  ‘That’s because he isn’t yet.’ Sam was slicing up fish the crew had caught. Sam had a real talent for the job of cook. ‘When he gets old he has this long white beard and he looks more famous.’

  ‘Who has a long white beard?’ Darwin’s head peered into the galley.

  ‘Thought you’d look good with one,’ I said with a laugh. I didn’t see how we could explain what we’d been talking about. If the captain was worried about us being spies I thought he would have even more difficulty if he heard we came from a different time.

  ‘Mm,’ Darwin muttered. ‘So how did you get to hear of this voyage? You said it was famous.’ Darwin looked as though he liked the idea of being famous.

  ‘It’s your book,’ Sam said, probably without thinking.

  ‘I’ve not written a book,’ Darwin frowned.

  I dropped a plate, something to distract the conversation away. Vegetables squidged across the floor. Darwin left. Another crew member shouted at me.

  Later Sam and I talked. I needed Sam to keep quiet about the things he knew. It was all too complicated. If we went on about Darwin’s book I thought there would be trouble. I had a nasty feeling that it wouldn’t take long before they started muttering about witchcraft. Maybe they had stopped burning witches but I wasn’t sure about chucking witches into the sea.

  They were a very superstitious crew, kept on about omens. If some bird flew over the boat they’d say it was good or sometimes bad and they’d all groan as though we would sink at any moment. Telling them about the future could be one of the bad omens. And they already had enough crew, except for Sam perhaps.

  Keeping quiet wasn’t easy. We couldn’t hide away from Darwin, who kept asking us about this book he was supposed to have written.

  ‘About evolution,’ Sam said in the end. Perhaps he thought that would shut him up. I doubted that Darwin was the sort of person that once he had an idea would ever let it go.

  ‘Ah, evolution,’ Darwin said, rubbing his chin. He’d taken to rubbing his chin quite a lot, I suppose he thought it made him look serious. ‘God has his ways.’

  ‘God?’ came the cry from the captain’s cabin and we heard him stamping down towards us.

  I dropped another plate. This was getting much too heavy. The crew had said that the captain went berserk with arguments about God and I didn’t want us to start this off.

  ‘Clumsy idiot,’ the captain shouted and aimed a blow at my head.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said as I ducked and he missed before he stamped back to his own cabin.

  We had to escape from Darwin’s questions for several more days. Talking to him about his specimens was the only way to stop him questioning us. I offered to help him catalogue them, write labels. He was surprised that I could write.

  ‘Don’t suppose you can draw as well?’ Darwin asked me.

  I had no idea about drawing, not a skill I needed back home.

  ‘I could try,’ I said, and it wasn’t only to distract Darwin. I was just as keen to get out of working in the galley. I’d never really got over the sea sickness and some of Sam’s cooking was enough to strain anyone’s stomach – although the crew seemed to like what he gave them.

  So Darwin taught me how to draw and I must say I was good at it. It wasn’t long before I could whip off a decent picture of a dung beetle. Darwin had lots of dung beetles. And he couldn’t get any information from me about evolution, because I didn’t know anything. But I was starting to get an idea, not a wonderful idea and only the beginning of an idea. It would
need Jenna’s help, if I was ever going to find her. An idea.

  And so we sailed on, with Sam cooking and me drawing. It must have been several weeks before we turned towards the shore, towards the inlet that the captain said was King George’s Sound.

  I stood by the ship’s rail and stared out. I could see other ships at anchor. The dots of houses built along the coast and up into the land behind. As we neared the coast I could make out farmland and animals. What would we find here? Who would we find here? I felt my heart race at the thought that I might see Jenna again. It had been so long since we’d escaped from hanging, months on those sailing boats and a weird journey across the world. More than a year.

  We hoped we had followed the girls across the world. What would we do if we found them? We’d followed them but had something followed us? Ahead I could see the flag flying, next to a building guarded by cannons, probably soldiers on parade. Had news of two escaped murderers reached this far? Had Miss Tregarthur’s awful plan followed us across the world?

  The Smallest Cry

  -16-

  The Beagle anchored up in the bay. It wasn’t long before two small boats came out from the small settlement. They wanted to see who had come to visit them and there was a lot of hand shaking. News of Darwin’s voyage had reached here before we arrived. Did they also know about us? The captain and Darwin and two other crew members went back with the settlers. The rest of the crew started to prepare the whaler and the other small boat attached to our ship. The talk was about the town and Foredyke was deciding who would go ashore first and who would stay to watch the ship.

  ‘Miserable looking place,’ said one crew member, who had climbed up the rigging to get a better view.

  ‘It can stay as miserable as it likes providing there’s an ale house,’ another called out and the rest joined in trying to guess what they might find. Mostly drink and women.

  Sam and I were hoping to slip on to one of the boats and disappear. It wasn’t going to happen.

  ‘You two stay here while the captain decides what to do with you,’ Foredyke pointed his finger at me. ‘Any trouble and we’ll put you back in the hold.’

  We had mostly got on well with the crew, Sam’s cooking had been an improvement for them. So Foredyke didn’t sound as though he wanted to be hard on us.

  ‘Do we swim for it?’ Sam said quietly.

  We looked towards the town. The sea looked calm enough. I looked round, wondering if we could get away with it. I saw Foredyke shake his head and mouth ‘no’ at me. He’d read our thoughts.

  I turned back to Sam. ‘Not much point. They’d see us and anyway where would we go even if we find the girls?’ Looking out at the small town backed by two large hills. Just as the crewman had said, it looked miserable, now starting to rain, miserable and uninviting. The crew were talking about the aborigines who lived here.

  ‘They’ll spear you to death just for looking at them,’ came one of the voices from the whaler.

  ‘Eat you I expect,’ said another.

  I wasn’t sure I believed them but maybe this wasn’t a safe place to go wandering around. If Jenna had come here had she survived? I thought Jenna could survive anything, did that apply to Ivy? I looked at Sam, not saying anything.

  Foredyke came up to us. ‘There’ll be a magistrate,’ he said, spreading his hands wide as though there was nothing he could do about it. ‘Magistrate will decide what happens to you.’

  Our experiences with magistrates had all been bad. I thought we’d just have to swim for it. Then I saw one of the boats coming back. Foredyke moved closer to us. I suppose if we did jump overboard the captain would blame him. I don’t know why I expected the returning boat to have anything to do with us. Darwin and this expedition were much more important. I thought that deciding our fate would be low on the list. I was wrong.

  ‘Captain says to bring them,’ the man in the boat shouted up to Foredyke.

  We were bundled down the ladder and into the small boat.

  Shouts came from the whaler, which had set off at the same time as us: ‘You’re for it now’; ‘maybe they’ll hand you over to the natives’; ‘maybe you’ll be on their menu tonight’; and, more friendly, ‘don’t let them eat our chef’.

  Nearing the town it looked even more miserable, as though it was a place that had been left behind. There were other fishing boats and men on the shore mending nets. The smell of fish grew stronger.

  ‘Whale,’ said Sam, pointing at the men surrounding something that seemed to be giving off most of the smell.

  We landed and felt more like prisoners again. We were marched up along the dirt road towards one of the houses. I looked up, the building reminded me of the houses we had seen on the moor – a wooden frame and a thatched roof. Smoke rising from the chimney.

  We were pushed through the door. Darwin and the captain were seated in front of an older man in a sort of uniform who was looking through a pile of papers.

  He glanced up and stared at us. ‘These the two?’

  The captain nodded.

  The uniformed man went back to his papers, stopped, peered at us again. ‘Show me your back.’ He pointed at me. I obviously took too long because strong hands soon grabbed me and pulled the shirt from my back.

  ‘Not him. No marks of the lash … yet.’

  This man had to be the magistrate. Eventually he got to the end of the papers. He pushed back from the desk. ‘There’s nothing here to suggest they’re escaped convicts.’ He puffed out his cheeks, which I think was to make him seem important. ‘Mind you we’ve stopped doing much about convicts now that the soldiers have all moved up the coast. All civilians here.’

  ‘What do we do with them?’ asked the captain.

  ‘You say they were stowaways,’ said the magistrate. ‘Well that’s down to you as captain. Do what you like with them.’

  The captain looked at Darwin and they both shrugged.

  ‘Can we leave them here?’ the captain said to the magistrate.

  ‘Depends if they’re any use.’

  I could see that Sam was going to say something about the girls. I poked him and shook my head. I thought that would raise too many more questions. If the girls were here they had come as convicts and if we knew them the magistrate would guess we had to be convicts as well.

  He soon seemed to get bored talking about us and went back to asking Darwin about his voyage, what he wanted to see, who was going to invite them to dinner. Sam and I shuffled to the door and slipped back out onto the street with no idea what might happen next.

  ‘Come on.’ I pulled Sam’s arm. ‘Let’s get out of here before they think of something else.’

  We walked back along the shore line, passing houses and people at work, dogs barking, someone carrying a basket of what looked like dead sea birds. No one seemed to take much interest in us. No sign of Jenna. She had to be here. I felt my pulse start to race. We just had to find her.

  ‘Have to ask,’ I said, making for a woman sitting outside one of the houses, scraping at vegetables. A cat curling round her legs as she worked.

  She looked up at me as we approached.

  ‘You’ve come the wrong way for the ale,’ she said. ‘Back down there.’ She pointed back towards the place where we had landed. Already the shouts of our crew made it clear where the drink was to be found.

  ‘We’re looking for Ivy and Jenna,’ Sam spluttered. I could see he was just as worried as I was, desperate to find out if they really were here.

  The woman looked blankly at us. It was too much. Here we were in some desperate outpost across the world, no money, no food, nowhere to go and no hope. I felt my legs go and slumped down to the ground. The cat came and peered at me.

  I sat with my head in my hands. I didn’t want to ask any questions. There just had to be bad news. Even i
f Jenna had ever reached this place, she probably hadn’t survived.

  Sam kept on. He told the woman about Ivy. I listened to his description and I could see he had really fallen in love. In his description Ivy sounded the most beautiful person in the whole world. The woman smiled and just shook her head.

  ‘She does herbs,’ I choked on my words and wiped my eyes with my dirty sleeve.

  ‘Oh the two misses? Those their real names?’ the woman said suddenly. ‘Why didn’t you say so before? I never understood who you meant. You must be sweet on her,’ she laughed.

  Sam might have gone red but he was too sunburnt and shaggy haired and dirty to be able to tell.

  ‘Down at Collie’s cottage.’ She pointed down the road. ‘White building, with a bell outside.’

  She was now shouting as we left at a run.

  ‘Mind out for the …’ Her last words were lost behind us.

  As we ran my mind churned over all the things that had happened to us, most of the churning was wondering about Jenna. How had she survived the boat trip? We hadn’t learned much from Ruth who had been with them on the convict ship but she had said how hard it had been, the things that they had to do to survive – what did that mean? And we hadn’t stopped to hear what the woman behind us was shouting, telling us to mind something, what could that be?

  Nearing the house I heard the noise of someone moving about. We both seemed to slow down, not quite certain who we might find. I saw the bell. We stopped.

  A face poked out of the door, looked at me. ‘Took your time,’ said Jenna, holding a bundle of washing and seeming so calm.

  We looked each other over. Jenna looked fine, a little older, weather beaten but more than fine enough for me. I was pretty wrecked by all that time at sea so I wasn’t sure what she made of me. I didn’t move, frozen with so much hope and longing in my mind while my heart thumped treble rhythms in my chest.