by Peter McAra
‘You do well to stay away from the men, child,’ Susannah said. ‘I use them when it suits me. It’s about time I had the boot on my foot. Men’s used me since I were twelve years old. I had a child when I was but thirteen, though the poor mite was too small and sickly to live.’ Eliza marvelled again at her friend’s resilience. ‘Men are simple creatures; leastwise the poor sailors are,’ Susannah said. ‘And at times like this, a woman uses them when she can.’ Sometimes she gave Eliza little gifts she had earned from her liaisons — a sweetmeat, an orange — but she was single-minded about building up a fund of money. ‘Money will talk in Botany Bay. You see if I’m right. And I mean to provide for this child. God knows I failed the others. This one will be mine. Mine to keep, mine to love, mine to care for me in my old age.’
The ship sailed through southern latitudes to catch the Roaring Forties, the reliable westerly winds which would speed the ship eastward across the Great Australian Bight. All on board were content to endure the cold, the howling winds and the heavy rolling of the old ship. They knew that every lurch of the creaking hull brought them nearer to Botany Bay and dry land.
When the sailors told the convicts that Botany Bay would be sighted within the week, excitement frothed like fermenting ale. Women who had neglected their looks for months began to scrub their faces, wash their bodies, clean their fingernails. Clothes were washed and mended, and hair cut and curled where the means came to hand — commonly the illicit loan of a pair of scissors by a sailor. The ship turned northwards after keeping an easterly heading for weeks, and took on a different personality. The weather grew sunny and warm, though not to the degree of the oppressive heat of the tropics, when several lives had been lost to fever. Land could be seen to the west — flat-topped hills with occasional peaks. Some said they saw the smoke of the savages’ fires, and at night, the pinpoints of firelight were there for all to see.
‘Roasting some poor Englishman, I’ll be bound,’ a warder said. Some believed him.
As if in spite, the weather suddenly turned foul. The wind bore down from the north-east in great gusts which heaved the ship onto its side. It was impossible to walk on deck. The captain bore out to the open sea to avoid being driven onshore. A day and a night passed, with the ship creaking in pain at every big sea. When a snap as loud as a gunshot was heard, followed by a grinding crash, it ignited panic below decks like a match laid to powder.
‘The mainmast is gone. We’re at the mercy of the wind. God help us!’ a sailor told Eliza’s mess. At dusk, the captain ordered all on deck. Leg-irons were removed. Land was frighteningly close — vertical cliffs could be seen not a mile away, white with the spray of huge breakers. The waves thundering against the cliffs injected a new, awful sound into the air, doubly frightening to passengers who had heard only the swash of the sea for weeks. Even at that distance from the shore, it was clear that the waves dwarfed the ship. They rolled onto the rocks and buried them in showers of spray that were swept up and over the cliffs by the tearing wind. Everyone on board weighed their chances of surviving the impact against those dreadful cliffs. Eliza had a word to Susannah in private.
‘If the ship crashes onto the cliffs, every soul will be smashed onto the rocks. Like rats thrown against a wall by the tail. But the two of us can save ourselves.’
‘What?’ Susannah had come to respect her young friend’s insights.
‘The punishment box.’ Every woman on board had seen the box and dreaded it. The structure was a yard square at the base, and a yard and a half high, built of stout slats spaced to allow warder to look in and prisoner to see out. It was used to tame recalcitrant prisoners when no other measure would serve. A prisoner would be locked in the box for a day or two, until the cramp and the cold subdued her.
‘It’s been built strong. It will be our best chance to withstand the crash,’ Eliza urged. ‘And it will float. At least we’ll be fastened to something that will buoy us up. ‘When it seems as if all is lost, we’ll go there and lock ourselves inside it.’
‘I don’t know, dear,’ Susannah said. ‘It could be a terrible death, trapped inside like a cat set for drowning.’
‘It’s the least of all evils,’ Eliza said. ‘I’ve thought about it carefully. The box will be smashed against the rocks, and it will break, but the breaking will take the force of the crash. Better the box breaks than our bones.’ Finally Susannah agreed. After dark, they struggled onto the deck and hid themselves in the cramped box.
Around midnight, the sound that everyone had been dreading broke. With a deafening grinding and snapping and groaning and creaking and crashing and cracking and shuddering and rending and heaving, the ship smashed into rocks. The utter darkness, the roar of the wind, the crash of huge waves over the vessel, the deck pitching almost vertical, threw everyone into frightful isolation. Pairs of women clutching each other were torn asunder, screaming as one disappeared into the sea and the other was dashed onto the deck. The punishment box holding the two women slid down the sloping deck and lodged against the rail. A moment later, a giant wave swept it into the sea. Another hurled it with unbelievable force against a huge rock. Its shattered timbers parted. Eliza felt Susannah’s hand slide from her grip as the white maelstrom surged over them.
CHAPTER 18
Lightning flashed. Eliza glimpsed the towering wave a terrifying second before it smashed down on her. It pounded her deep into the black water; drove her down, down, into swirling darkness. She would die in seconds if she could not catch a breath. From the depths she struggled upwards with all her strength. Despair swept through her wasted body as she fought for her life. She did not want to die. An answering instinct powered her arms and legs into a frenzy of thrashing. She pushed up, up, up through the surging water as it sucked her down into blackness. Just as she felt she could not push her flailing limbs through one more stroke, she felt the rush of cold air round her face. She gasped, choked on the foam breaking across her mouth in the darkness, coughed, gasped again. The new breath in her lungs flashed a reassurance that she might live, that she had cheated the hungry sea. She gulped more air in quick gasps, felt the flicker of animal joy in her gut.
Crash! A new, more powerful surge of water sucked her down, a huge force clawing her back to the depths, fit to tear her racked body in two. It pulled her down, down into its black bowels with a force that made the first wave seem puny. Her arms and legs thrashed unbidden. She knew she must struggle harder than before, hurl her last atom of effort into the struggle to live, to fight the force that pulled her down, down, down. Light-headed from lack of air, she sensed her body moving upward, held her breath for what must be the last possible second. Her face broke the surface again. She panted for air. A lightning flash, then the sting of driving rain thrilled her skin. She had returned to her element from the nightmare of the depths. But that same flash illuminated a moving wall of water so high she could not see its top. As it curved to break over her, slowly as from a great height, she decided that her end must come.
Crash! She felt the weight of water hit her, twist her spine as it corkscrewed her body into a downward vortex, drew her back into the depths from which she had just escaped. She knew she would faint in seconds. At the surface, her lungs had sucked but one breath — not near enough to make good the loss her last underwater struggle had cost. Now she drifted into a vision. She floated through a watery tunnel towards a kindly beckoning light. She felt warm, at peace, about to meet a God who, she knew, would smile down on her from a throne bathed in the golden light towards which she now floated...
Her foot dragged on sand. She straightened her legs instinctively. Yes! She could stand, head above water, pushed by the waves towards a shore she could not see. She staggered forward, choking, gasping, carried by the surge of the breakers. Now the water was but thigh deep. Joy surged from her very soul. In the pitch dark, a wave hit the back of her head like a club, throwing her face first into the water. Her feet found bottom. She thrust against the backward tug of the ebb, comm
anded her feet up the steepness of the beach, hurled herself clear of the reach of the waves, and fell onto soft sand as she tripped over her uncoordinated ankles.
It was then, as she lay face pressed into the sand, feeling warm raindrops hitting her skin, hearing the crash of waves behind her in the night’s blackness, that oblivion overcame her. From time to time, she half dreamt, half remembered her struggle in the maelstrom. Sometimes she was aware, as she lay high up on the beach, of the foamy jaws slavering after her. Each time, she fell back into sleep. Harry and she walked through the summer light to the lake. He peeled off his shirt, his trousers. Soon she stood naked before him, smiling, waiting…
It was as if light was trying to prise open her eyelids. She made a lazy effort to disentangle her thoughts. I am…Eliza Downing. Am I alive? Or in Heaven? My skin is warm. I feel light air brushing it. It’s pleasant; all is quiet about me. No. I can hear the sounds of moving water. I can smell the salt air. I may well be in Heaven. I remember wrestling to escape the arms of Death. I remember thinking He was about to claim me. In a moment, I may open my eyes — one eye perhaps. I want to see what lies about me. I must prepare my mind for this. Perhaps I will be looking into the face of God. Will He find me wanting?
Curiosity invaded her brain, seeped into her will, but she resisted it. Even the effort of thinking was fit to make her wince. Eyes still closed, she extended one leg. It hurt. She retracted it. That movement was even more painful. For minutes she lay still, eyes closed. The warmth of this heavenly space in which she floated permeated her being. Why should she act to end it? If it was a dream, she would be a fool to wake. Soon Harry might lie beside her. They would kiss, talk, touch.
The itch of curiosity she had elbowed from her consciousness would not be suppressed. Open your eyes, it begged. Why? Waking might hurl her back from this pleasant dream-cloud to a cold morning in Marley. Eliza knew, even through closed eyelids, that the day was already bright. She would not move for another minute or two. God! Her body ached. It begged for more rest; to rest for eternity. Perhaps she was in Heaven, her prayers for respite from her drudgery finally answered.
She opened one eye. Rather, it opened in spite of her willing it to stay shut. She lay on a beach of yellow sand made painfully bright by the glare of the sun. Behind her, a blue sea shimmered. Of course! The shipwreck. Botany Bay. She remembered the struggle for life she had almost lost against the storm-driven waves in the terrifying dark. The feeling of heavenly relief washed over her again as she remembered feeling sand under her feet. She relived the struggle to summon the last shards of her will, dragging herself up the beach, beyond the clutches of waves angry that they had been cheated of another life.
She rolled from stomach to back on the warm yellow sand. The movement sent shafts of pain through her bruised body. Some instinct warned her to throttle her moans. She lay still, not risking more movement. The sensation of hot sand against her skin made her look down. Her torn smock had ridden up to her navel. She pulled it down, then turned again, enjoying once more the sensation of skin moving on warm sand.
Now she saw sheer yellow cliffs, radiant in the morning sun, rising at the end of the beach. The coastline must therefore run approximately north and south. That would be of little help in identifying her whereabouts. From her recollections of maps of Australia, she knew its eastern shore ran for thousands of miles.
At the base of the cliffs lay a tumble of rocks, some as big as houses, stained dark with spray. Her eye followed the line of fallen rocks to where it ran inland. An indentation in the cliffs hid a waterfall.
A wave crashed behind her. She turned, saw arcs of foam scurry up the beach. She sprang to her feet and ran, flinging aside her body’s aches, fleeing from the sly intent she read in those outwardly innocent wavelets. Their stealth could be but a mask for their real intentions. As she reached the soft sand at the top of the beach, she rubbed her itching ankles, newly freed from the leg-irons. She panted and stood still, close to swooning. Her body was trembling, begging her to sit, to lie on the soft sand. She must sit before she fell upon it in a faint. She looked back at the retreating wave and knew she was safe.
It was then that she felt thirsty — felt her dry tongue lolling in her mouth like a chip of wood. She limped towards the waterfall she had seen as she opened her eyes. Still she trembled, aching with thirst. The vision of a column of crystal water pouring straight into her upturned open mouth spurred her on. She half staggered, half ran the last few steps and fell into the shallow pool at the waterfall’s base, gulping the water. She drank until the dry saltiness of her lips and tongue was gone. Taking the trouble to hide herself behind a clump of spindly bushes without considering why, she relieved herself. When she had voided the salt water swallowed in the maelstrom, she felt renewed.
She returned to the pool and drank more water. Throwing off her wet smock, she rinsed away the sand caked on it, then hung it on a bush. She sat naked in the sunlight and took stock of her body. Her face’s reflection looked back at her from a corner of the pool shielded from the ripples created by the falling water. She had not seen her image in a looking glass for months. Her face still looked the same, a white oval, draped with her golden hair. But her eyes were dark-ringed with exhaustion, her cheeks hollow, her mouth drooping, her forehead showing the first of the lines that reminded her of her foster-mother’s face.
The white skin of her arms and legs was blotched with bruises. The limbs themselves were wasted, wrinkle-skinned from months of cramped inactivity. Her long hair hung lank, caked with sand and salt. Her breasts still retained their mounded shape. She could see the outline of her ribs, but her belly stood out like a woman three months gone. The ship’s diet had bloated her without nourishing her. It was a mercy that Harry could not see her wasted body.
She waded across the sandy bottom of the pool to the waterfall’s base and let the water pound on her head. Then she teased out her hair and held it out to the water now cascading over her gaunt white body. Back on the pool’s bank, her mind cleared. I am Eliza Downing, she confirmed to herself. I am nineteen years old, I am from Marley in Dorset. It is the year 1835. I am alive. My body is whole, if a little battered. This trembling will ease when I rest and find some food. I am free. Thank God, I am free! Involuntarily she looked at her ankles, saw again the wounds sawn into her flesh by the leg-irons.
When the captain had ordered the convicts’ irons removed as night fell on the first day of the storm, he must have suspected that the ship would eventually crash onto the rocks. His order came moments after the frenzied sailors chopped the fallen masts free of the rigging and rolled them overboard. She remembered a guard mumbling as he unlocked the shackles of one of the women ahead of her in the line.
‘Better off ye’d be to drown quick with the weight of the iron, than live to feel your body smashed to pieces on the rocks, limb by limb.’ The convicts were unconvinced. To have their irons removed was to be granted a holiday. The warders could not know the convicts’ joy in walking a full step free of the pain of the irons scarifying their scarred flesh. For those few hours before the ship crashed into the rocks, it was heaven to walk free. She recalled her joy at her sudden freedom from the melancholy clanking as she took each hobbled, mincing, agonising step.
All prisoners knew that without their irons, the three hundred of them could have turned on their captors at a given signal and overthrown them. Surely, a hundred or more might be shot dead before they overwhelmed the soldiers. But for many of the convicts, a quick death was the end they most hoped for. The convicts were weak and ill, but a sniff of freedom, of retaliation against their gaolers’ brutality, would be miraculous medicine.
Now, as Eliza lay in the pleasant warmth of the sun, she reflected on her learnings from the voyage. Their masters had kept the convicts under the yoke with nothing more than fear. Their guards must have been ordered to taunt them.
‘Think ourselves lucky,’ one old convict woman had said. ‘Without the captain and the sailors,
we’d all be perished before the day was out. How many of us could steer her, or keep her upright in a gale? And if we wrecked her on some desert shore — if we lived through the shipwreck — we’d be eaten by beasts or cannibals in the twinkling of an eye. So haste we to Botany Bay, where there are His Majesty’s soldiers to protect us, and a stout brick barracks for us to sleep in.’
‘There’s wisdom in what they say,’ the more knowledgeable convicts had agreed. ‘It’s true there be fearsome beasts in desert lands. They do say as some of ‘em has three heads, and jaws big enough to swallow a man whole.’ For weeks, the ship had meandered down the coast of Africa, sometimes within a league of the shore. Convicts whose turn it was to take a spell on deck away from the fetid hold had told their friends that in the dark of the night they had heard the roaring of beasts.
Now Eliza could dismiss her recollections of the voyage for the moment. It was a horror she would visit again and again until the day she died. Susannah, the other women from Eliza’s mess — were they all dead? She choked on her sobs. This was no time to let her emotions compromise her own survival. Food. She must search for food. Somehow, she must still the awakening pangs in her belly. She turned her unsteady legs towards the beach. Had any other soul survived the shipwreck? Had any provisions from the ship been washed up? That would be the quickest and safest way to find something to ease the pangs, which got worse for every second she felt them. She must fight her fear of the waves. Common sense told her she must find food before the last vestiges of her strength seeped away. If some of the ship’s stores had been washed onto the beach, it would be prudent to salvage them before the sea reclaimed them.
