Hell's Fire

by Brian Freemantle

  Edward snuffed out the candles and forced himself into contact with the vermin-ridden man, leading him down the narrow passageway and then out into Chancery Lane.

  ‘A proper bed, Edward?’ demanded Fletcher. ‘Will it be a proper bed?’

  The lawyer frowned in the darkness at the child-like question.

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ muttered Fletcher, keeping very close, as if he feared being parted from his brother. ‘So very tired.’

  Bligh stood subdued at the rail of the Porpoise, gazing down at Sydney and the land beyond. He’d expected a shanty town. But despite the warnings from Sir Joseph at their first and then subsequent meetings, he’d not been prepared for what he saw.

  There had been attempts to start a city, he recognised. But completion walls had sometimes not been added. Roofs had even been left off. Makeshift canvas fluttered and flapped everywhere from huddled lean-tos and tents. People and animals moved along dirt streets, scuffing dust clouds as they moved. In winter, Bligh knew, it would become a swamp. He smiled at the thought. Very apt, he decided. A human and natural swamp. And he had to drain it.

  Although little more than ten in the morning, there was already ample evidence of the trade he had to eradicate. Shouts and yells echoed from a dozen drinking sheds along the wharf. He could see at least three men already lying senseless in their own vomit and excreta and fifteen minutes before he had watched without amusement the bizarre pantomime of two men, insanely drunk, lashing wildly and ineffectually at each other in a fight in which they had made little contact and from which they’d finally collapsed from exhaustion, not injuries.

  And the whores were already out, plying for trade. One was even displaying herself, bare-breasted and skirts above her waist, in a window. Filth, disgusting degrading filth, he thought. Just like Tahiti, when the Bounty had arrived. He hadn’t been able to do anything about it then. But he could here. He’d stamp out the sexuality, closing the brothels and driving the whores off the streets, into decent, God-fearing occupations. Clean it up, he’d promised the King and Sir Joseph. And he would. By God he would.

  He turned at the movement at his side and nodded to Makins, the master. The man had approached for a reason, he guessed.

  ‘Not a pleasant sight,’ offered the officer.

  ‘But one that will improve, sir,’ assured Bligh, confidently. ‘A year from now and you won’t recognise Botany Bay.’

  He was very sure of his ability, thought Makins. Where, he wondered, was the man’s authority going to come from? It would be very different from a ship at sea.

  ‘What about the captain, sir?’ enquired Makins.

  Bligh smiled. So it hadn’t been a casual approach.

  ‘Under arrest, as I ordered.’

  ‘Sir,’ tried Makins. ‘His wife and family are very distressed. It’ll mean disaster for them …’

  ‘Are you challenging me?’ demanded Bligh, imperiously.

  ‘No, sir,’ collapsed Makins.

  ‘Captain Short should have realised the consequences when he ignored my authority as superior officer on this convoy.’

  And fired the shots across the Porpoise’s bows, when he’d made a necessary course correction, remembered Bligh. It was blatant, arrogant audacity. So Joseph Short would suffer for his insubordination. He didn’t give a damn if the man had a land grant and had brought his entire family to Australia to settle. He’d go back in chains, with the returning Governor, to face the court martial he deserved.

  From the rail he saw a larger dust cloud approaching and smiled at the approach of the carriages that were to take him from the ship to be received by the incumbent Governor. What a pity, he thought, that Elizabeth could not have been here. She so much liked pomp and ceremony.

  Bligh stumped from the vessel, anxious to perform his first function as Governor-elect. Almost immediately his smile faded. They were rabble, just as Sir Joseph had warned, he decided, parading along the guard of honour formed by the New South Wales regiment. Twice he thought he detected men smirking at him in open contempt and nearly all stood just slightly away from the rigidness of attention. It was an attitude that could not have been questioned but which a sharp-eyed commander could recognise. And he was a sharp-eyed commander, Bligh told himself. And this bunch of impudent buggers would discover it, before long.

  The reception in the streets surprised him, partly removing the irritation at the slovenly guard of honour. People were actually two deep in the centre of town and some had gone to the trouble of erecting bunting and giving their children flags to wave. That was important, decided Bligh. It showed the ordinary townsfolk were loyal and friendly. He’d need such support when he confronted the lawlessness he had come to put down.

  A worry flickered through his mind. His authority was that rag-taggle regiment that had greeted him on the quayside. He might have misconstrued their demeanour, he accepted, but his initial impression had been that they regarded him as a figure of amusement, not a commander-in-chief whose orders they should unquestioningly obey.

  He’d have to remain aware of that, he decided, as the landau swept in through the gates of the Governor’s residence and began to circumvent the convict-tended lawns. Not as large as he had expected: quite small, in fact. But imposing, nevertheless. He was a Governor-General, he mused contentedly, an important, powerful man for whom people waved flags and stood at kerb-sides, like they did at home for the King. And he would live in a house which in London would have befitted a lord. Well, a rich man, at least.

  Governor King was on the steps to meet him, with his wife and the servants in the background. Where were the aides? wondered Bligh, the subsiding anger pricking up again. King’s greeting was cordial, almost too effusive, gathering him into the study against any protest while his wife supervised the unloading of the luggage in the follow-up carriages.

  ‘Welcome, sir,’ said King, breathlessly. ‘At last, welcome.’

  Bligh stood in the centre of the room, frowning. It should have been a proper ceremony, he knew, a reception with all the civic heads in attendance and with a dinner to follow. He even had a speech prepared.

  ‘Why the hurry, sir?’ queried Bligh.

  King held his head to one side, curiously.

  ‘You snatch me off the steps like a man afraid of immediate attack,’ enlarged Bligh.

  ‘Glad to see you, sir,’ replied King, badly. ‘Native hospitality.’

  ‘Then where is everybody else?’ demanded Bligh.

  He stood, studying the outgoing Governor. King was a pale, faded man, like a garment washed too often and reduced from the colour it had once been. He had quick, nervous movements and the inability to meet directly the gaze of another man. Weakling, judged Bligh. Little wonder the lawlessness had proliferated.

  ‘Everybody else?’ echoed the Governor, inanely.

  ‘I’ve remained on board that damned ship for three days in harbour,’ reminded Bligh. ‘I did so to enable the proper recognition of my arrival. God’s teeth, sir! I even wrote you explicit letters of my intention, telling you I wanted every person of importance here today, to hear what I had to say.’

  King shuffled, uncomfortably, gesturing towards the waiting liquor tray. Irritably Bligh shook his head, refusing the man his momentary escape.

  ‘It was your letters that decided me against such a gathering,’ said King, uneasily.

  ‘But it was a specific request,’ asserted Bligh.

  ‘Made without proper awareness of the situation that existed,’ said the worn-out man. ‘You’re not entering an affair to issue direct challenges.’

  Bligh glared at the official, balefully. How the hell was he, a man who had failed so miserably in the duty entrusted to him, equipped to question the actions of a man ordered to clear up the mess? he wondered.

  ‘You knowingly ignored my request?’ demanded Bligh. It seemed pompous, he recognised. But commanding men were often pompous and that was what he intended to be, commanding. The
sooner everybody in the colony realised that, the sooner order would be restored.

  ‘Yes,’ agreed King. ‘I knowingly ignored your request because even though I think you are doomed to failure, I wish you success. And I know full well that if you disclosed your intentions to people who regard themselves as the civic leaders of this sewer, then you couldn’t stand a chance in hell.’

  Why was the other man regarding him so sadly? wondered Bligh. Immediately he corrected the impression. It wasn’t sadness, he decided. It was the resignation of weakness. And if he had so abandoned pride, then the damned man should cast aside also the patronising attitude with which he had spoken for the past fifteen minutes.

  King went to the drinks, pouring himself a full goblet while Bligh watched, critically. Told to stop the rum trade and the man soaked himself in the liquor, thought Bligh.

  ‘I wish you to succeed, Governor Bligh,’ repeated the outgoing official, sincerely. ‘I hope you have the success that has been denied me and the Governor-Generals of this confounded colony before me. But believe me, sir, you will fail more disastrously than any of us if you adopt the manner of a fairground pugilist, throwing the gauntlet to all comers.’

  ‘I’m a sea captain,’ rejected Bligh. ‘My life is governed by carefully ordered regulations and those that transgress get punished. Soft hand a criminal, sir, and he’ll spit in your face.’

  ‘To control this colony, Governor Bligh, you need a militia. And you haven’t got one. In the New South Wales Corps, you’ve got a collection of rum-runners, whore-keepers and price-fixers. What chance do you really think you have, when the men you have to use to enforce your orders are the very ones profiting most by the illegality of this place?’ returned King.

  Just like the Bounty. The thought came suddenly, surprising him. If he’d had marines aboard the vessel, then he could have maintained order. Once again the establishment had dispatched him on a mission and denied him the means properly to carry it out. Sir Joseph and the government had known the conditions, for God’s sake. Why hadn’t they provided him with what was necessary to put down this insurrection?

  He altered his stance, controlling the belligerency. King had acted quite properly, he decided. Had he delivered the speech he could still detect in his breeches pocket, he could have made a fool of himself. And he couldn’t do that, he recalled. There wouldn’t be another chance after this. Sir Joseph had made that clear enough.

  ‘I’ll take that drink, sir,’ he accepted, wanting to rebuild bridges.

  He sipped the rum, grimacing at its harshness.

  ‘And it seems, Governor King, that I owe you an apology. And thanks. I did not intend to be rude to you … unfortunately I am a naturally impatient man.’

  The Governor nodded, looking at the rotund figure moving about the room before him. So this was the legendary Bounty Bligh, he thought. After so many setbacks, he would not have expected the man to have been so arrogant.

  ‘To defeat them,’ he advised, recognising the change in Bligh’s attitude, ‘you will have to bend with the wind until you discover their weaknesses. Men like John Macarthur have more power in this colony than King George himself.’

  Bligh looked up sharply. That was treason, he thought. Governor King was either a very honest man, or very stupid.

  ‘I have been warned,’ said Bligh. ‘Particularly of Macarthur. My very good friend Sir Joseph Banks, a man of great influence in England, has been deeply distressed by the rudeness shown to him by Macarthur over the matter of sheep importation into this colony.’

  King refilled his glass, looking curiously as he did so at the newcomer. Bligh intended to settle his patron’s grievance, as well as reforming practices carefully built up for a decade, he realised, uneasily.

  There had for several months been rumours circulating in the colony about the new Governor, he recalled. They had appeared so informed yet at the same time so malicious that King had even considered them part of a campaign against the new man; some had even gone so far as to suggest they were the work of families damned by Bligh after the mutiny. He could find little exaggeration in what he’d heard, reflected the Governor.

  ‘You’re just one man against a well-ordered, well-organised society of corruption,’ cautioned King. ‘You’ll only succeed by cunning.’

  ‘Why haven’t you adopted your own advice?’ asked Bligh.

  King smiled at the rudeness. A Governor’s sash would sit uncomfortably about the shoulders of this irritable man of the quarter-deck, he thought.

  ‘Because I arrived here with preconceived ideas,’ rebutted King. ‘And had no one to advise me against a course in which I faced unavoidable defeat.’

  An honest man, thought Bligh. Weak and ineffectual. But honest.

  ‘What would your guidance be?’ he asked. He had meant the question to have the proper humility, but it had sounded condescending, he realised. So what? The man was an admitted failure and people who accepted defeat deserved contempt, thought Bligh. No matter what disaster had befallen him, he had never capitulated, recalled Bligh, warmly. Most men, ostracised like he had been in London, would have been beaten; closed up their London houses, even, and avoided the humiliation. Not William Bligh. Elizabeth had been in tears, sometimes, almost dragged from the house to appear at the theatre and the few supper parties to which they were still admitted, more often as objects of sniggering amusement than desired guests. But he’d seen them all away. Now he was Governor-General of a British colony and Elizabeth was on every guest list again, according to the letters he’d received when they’d docked at Cape Town on the outward voyage.

  ‘Don’t see them all at the same time,’ guided King. ‘They’re a close-knit, suspicious group of men. Receive them separately and play a cautious game, hinting that the others have been indiscreet.’

  Tea-party diplomacy, dismissed Bligh, like those scented courtiers he’d seen around the Prince Regent, feigning insult and flicking each other with their pastel-shaded gloves for imagined revenge. The men he’d watched on the dockside that morning, soaked in their own piss, were scum and he knew how to deal with scum. And it wasn’t done to the background music of the harpsichord.

  ‘I’m obliged for your suggestion,’ he said, sharply, bored with the conversation.

  King looked at the man, caught by the tone in his voice. A fool, he thought. A pig-headed fool. It was little wonder that men found such difficulty in serving under him. But he’d tried, the Governor contented himself. And it was time to move on to other things.

  ‘There is something else that would help you in your dealings with these people,’ he coaxed.

  Bligh waited.

  ‘You will be treated with more respect if you are a landowner here. Accordingly I’ve prepared the conveyancing of some property in your name. It’s free, of course. As Governors we are entrusted with such authority, when the occasion is deemed necessary.’

  Bligh frowned.

  King went to his desk, smiling at the sea captain in the manner of one man taking another into his confidence.

  ‘Read your letters of appointment,’ he advised. He offered his, indicating the paragraph. Bligh scanned it, quickly. The authority undoubtedly existed, he recognised. Australia was a developing country, he thought, immediately. To own land here would be to guarantee his family’s future. He’d wanted for a long time to be a landowner, like Sir Joseph and all the other men of importance with whom he came into constant contact.

  ‘Again, I’m obliged sir,’ he said, accepting the papers that King offered him.

  ‘There’s provision for 240 acres of land for a private residence sit Petersham Hill, on the Sydney to Parramatta road, adjoining Grose Farm,’ listed the Governor. ‘All that remains is for you to name it.’

  It would have to be something fitting, decided Bligh, fingering the document. He’d served with undoubted distinction at Camperdown, he recalled.

  ‘Camperdown,’ he instructed, watching King complete the document with the name.

>   ‘And,’ continued the outgoing official, ‘I’ve allocated you 105 acres of land on the north side of the river at Parramatta …’

  He looked up, expectantly.

  ‘Mount Betham,’ decided Bligh, instantly. It would carry Elizabeth’s maiden name and be bequeathed to her in his will, should he predecease her, he determined.

  ‘… and finally, 1,000 acres on the western side of the Hawkesbury road, near Rouse Hill.’

  Another naval engagement would be proper, reflected Bligh. Nelson had personally praised him after Copenhagen. So that would be it.

  He was a landowner, he thought happily, as King completed the third document. Just like his ancestors had been, in Cornwall. This was going to be a happy appointment, he decided.

  King was proffering another book, which Bligh recognised as a record of previous Governors.

  ‘It has become a custom,’ continued King, gesturing as if it were one to which he was indifferent, ‘for incoming Governors to initiate their land privilege by awarding a tract to the man they succeed.’

  ‘Of course,’ accepted Bligh, leafing through the book. Governors lived very well, he saw. Very well indeed. Sir Joseph had estimated he would be able to save at least £1,000 of his salary each year. There would now be a welcome addition to his income from the lands officially in his name. Never again, he thought, would he have to worry about money. It was a comfortable feeling. He would begin his letter to Betsy that night telling her of their unexpected good fortune.

  ‘No doubt you’ve selected an area,’ he anticipated. Perhaps King’s hurry was that he was to sail for England so shortly, thought Bligh.

  The Governor nodded. ‘In the district of Evans,’ he listed. ‘I have other land already, of course. So I thought it would be a pleasant farewell present if it were in my wife’s name.’