Morgan's Run

by Colleen McCullough

  “How lovely it is to be wanted!” sighed Bill Whiting, getting to his feet. “Why did they not simply hang us in England if they intend to hang us here?” He blew a derisive noise. “What piffle! We were not brought all this way to fornicate! What did they think would happen? I joke about sheep, but it is no joke to be shot at for going near my Mary.”

  “Mary?” Richard asked.

  “Mary Williams off Lady Penrhyn. Old as the hills and ugly as sin, but both halves are mine, all mine! Or at least they were until I learned that I am to be shot at for yielding to a natural impulse. In England the only one could shoot me is her husband.”

  “I am right glad to hear of Mary Williams, Bill. That was not the Governor speaking, that was the Reverend Johnson,” said Richard. “The fellow ought to have been a Methodist. I daresay that is why he took this job—he is too radical by far to have appealed to any Church of England bishop.”

  “Why did they bring any women convicts out here if we are forbidden to go near them?” Neddy Perrott demanded.

  “The Governor wants marriages, Neddy, to keep the Reverend Mr. Johnson happy. Also, I suspect,” Richard said, thinking out loud, “to make this whole expedition seem sanctified by God. The appearance of fornication in the flock looks like Satan’s work.”

  “Well, I ain’t marrying my Mary yet a while,” said Bill. “I ain’t long enough out of one set of chains to take on another.”

  Which may have been how Bill felt, but they were not feelings shared by all of his fellows. From the following Sunday on, more and more convict couples were married by a delighted chaplain.

  Rations were now issued weekly. How difficult that was! To stay resolute and not wolf down the lot within two days. So very little, especially now they were working. Thanks to Lieutenant Furzer’s abject gratitude they now had good kettles and pots, even if there was not much to put in them.

  The hut was finished down to a double layer of saplings for its walls, one lot vertical, the other horizontal, with enough slender slats in the roof to support densely interwoven palm fronds. They were fairly dry even in hard rain, though when the wind rose to a gale it penetrated the spaces between the lattice; to keep it out they covered the outside walls with palm fronds. It had no windows and but one door facing the sandstone boulder. Humble it might be, but it was still a great deal better than the Alexander prison. The smell was of a clean, pungent resin rather than a sickening mixture of oil of tar and decomposition, and the floor was a carpet of soft dead leaves. The group was, besides, unfettered and relatively free from supervision. The marines had their work cut out in keeping an eye on the known rogues, so those who never gave trouble were left to their own devices apart from regular checks to make sure they were at their places of work.

  Richard’s place of work was a small, open bark shelter near the series of sawpits being dug behind the marines’ tents, not an easy business with bedrock six inches down. The pits had to be excavated by stone-splitting wedges and picks.

  Though the saws had not yet come to light (unloading was a painfully slow business), the axes and hatchets were piling up faster than Richard could put edges on them.

  “I could use help, sir,” he said to Major Ross within a day of commencing work. “Give me two men now and by the time the saws need attention I will have one man ready to deal with the axes and hatchets.”

  “I see your reasons, dozens of ’em. But why two men?”

  “Because there have already been arguments over ownership and I have not the facilities to keep a list. Better than a list would be a lettered helper to gouge the owner’s name on the helve of every axe and hatchet. When the saws come to light, he could do the same to them. ’Twould end in saving marine time, sir.”

  The cold pale eyes crinkled up at their corners, though the mouth did not smile. “Aye, Morgan, ye do indeed have a head. I suppose ye know whom ye want?”

  “Aye, sir. Two of my own men. Connelly for the lettering and Edmunds to learn to sharpen.”

  “I have not yet located your tool box.”

  Richard’s grief was genuine. “A pity,” he sighed. “I had some grand tools.”

  “Do not despair, I will go on looking.”

  February wore on with thunderstorms, an occasional cool sea change and a great deal of stifling, humid weather which always ended in a pile of black clouds in southern or northwestern sky. The southern tempests brought those blessed cool snaps in their wake, whereas the northwestern ones produced hail the size of eggs and continued sultriness.

  Save for different kinds of rats and millions of ants, beetles, centipedes, spiders and other inimical insects, life forms anchored to the ground seemed rare. In contrast to the sky and trees, both full of thousands upon thousands of birds, most of them spectacularly beautiful. Of parrots there were more sorts than imagination dreamed existed—huge white ones with striking sulphur-yellow crests, grey ones with cyclamen breasts, black ones, rainbow-hued ones, tiny speckled chartreuse ones, red-and-blue ones, green ones, and dozens more besides. A big brown kingfisher bird killed snakes by breaking their backs on a tree branch, and laughed maniacally; one large ground bird had a tail like a Greek lyre and strutted in the manner of a peacock; there were reports from those who walked in the Governor’s train on his explorations of black swans; eagles had wing spans of up to nine feet, and competed with hawks and falcons for prey. Minute finches and wrens, cheeky and vivid, darted about fearlessly. The whole bird kingdom was gorgeously painted—and vocal to the point of distraction. Some birds sang more exquisitely than any nightingale, some screeched raucously, some chimed like silver bells—and one, a huge black raven, owned the most soul-chilling, desolate cry any Englishman had ever heard. Alas, the saddest fact about these myriads of birds was that none was worth eating.

  Though some animal animals had been seen, like a fat, thickly furred waddler which burrowed, the one animal everybody yearned to see was a kangaroo. To no avail, if camp bound. Kangaroos never appeared within the precincts; they were obviously shy and timid. Not so the enormous tree-climbing lizards. They stalked through the camp as if men were beneath contempt, and rivaled the hungriest convict or thirstiest marine when it came to ransacking an officer’s marquee. One of the things was fully fourteen feet long and justifiably inspired the same terror an alligator would have.

  “I wonder what to call it?” asked Richard of Taffy Edmunds when it strolled past their bark shelter, wicked head snaking.

  “I think I would call it ‘sir,’ ” said Taffy.

  The axes and hatchets kept coming to have new edges put on them, and by the end of February the saws started coming as well. The western sawpits had started working and a series of eastern ones was being dug under the same difficulty—bedrock. A new obstacle reared its head; the trees, felled and trimmed and put above the pit, were virtually impossible to saw into even the most mediocre of planks. The wood was not only sappy, it was as hard as iron. The sawyers, all convicts, labored so terribly that the Governor was obliged to give them extra rations and malt, else they collapsed. That irritated the marine privates, who forgot that they received butter, flour and rum in addition to the same rations of bread and salt meat as the convicts; they started to keep a ledger of grievances versus convict “privileges.” Only Major Ross and ruthless discipline kept them under control, but ruthless discipline meant more floggings—than the convicts, they whined.

  The worst aspect of Richard’s life was the saws themselves. Only 175 hand saws and 20 pit saws had been sent, and all 20 of the pit saws were rip saws designed to rip the wood down its grain. No pit saw could cut across the grain of wood like this. Which meant that every tree had to be felled by an axe and segmented by an axe. Both kinds of saw were supposed to be of the best steel, but they were not. Months and months at sea had rusted them and there was no butter of antimony on any list for any ship.

  25 hand saws and 5 pit saws had gone with Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to Norfolk Island when Supply sailed for that remote place halfway
through February to establish a separate settlement there, turn the native flax into canvas and the huge pine trees Captain Cook had reported into ship’s masts.

  “Sir, it is almost impossible,” said Richard to Major Ross. “I have made my own emery paper and removed the grosser rust, but the saws are not sleek enough. Whale oil is wondrous protective, but we have none. The oils we do have congeal to glue the moment heat builds up inside the cut. I need some substance like whale oil or butter of antimony. The saws are besides of such poor steel that, sawing timber as hard as this, I am terrified of break-ages. We have fifteen pit saws, which means no more than fourteen pits—I will always be working on one saw because this timber ruins the teeth. But most importantly, sir, I need a rust remover.”

  Ross looked grimmer than ever; he had heard the same story from the sawyers. “Then we will have to look for a local substance,” he said. “Surgeon Bowes Smyth is an inquisitive sort of fellow, always tapping trees and boiling roots or leaves for curatives, resins and probably the elixir of life. Give me one of the very rusty hand saws and I will ask him to experiment.”

  Off he stumped. Richard felt very sorry for him; he had great talent for organization and action, yet he had no sympathy for the frailties of others, especially if they were his own marines. Whom, when they transgressed, he was at liberty to flog. When he wanted to flog a convict, he had at least to mention the matter to the Governor. To crown the many woes this conflict within his breast generated, Ross had developed an affinity for lightning; his small stock of sheep had perished sheltering under a tree, then his marque had been struck and most of his papers and records were burned together with much else. What Richard thought as he watched the military figure disappear was that without Major Ross, chaos at Port Jackson would be infinite. The Governor is an idealist; the Lieutenant-Governor is a realist.

  Richard’s bark shelter had grown much larger and he had added two more men to his team, Neddy Perrott and Job Hollister. Billy Earl, Johnny Cross and Jimmy Price had gone to join Bill Whiting in Government Stores, which left only Joey Long without a delegated job. Richard scrounged a grubbing hoe to add to their spade and mattock and set him to making a garden outside their hut, praying that no one would commandeer him for other work, or question his activities; he was fairly well known to be simple in the head, which made him less desirable. If Joey stayed at the hut, their inedible belongings would be safe. The pillaging of food was so universal that every man and woman carried their rations with them to their place of work—and then had to be vigilant to make sure nothing was stolen. Most food thefts were internecine and therefore of no interest to the Governor or the marines; the strong convicts stole from the weak or sickening convicts with impunity.

  Dysentery had broken out within two weeks of landing. Richard’s instincts about the stream of water were right, though how it had become polluted at the place where water was drawn was a mystery the surgeons could not solve. Their theory was that the water of New South Wales was too alien for an English gut. Three convicts in the hospital tent died and a second hospital had to be erected out of whatever was to hand. Scurvy was rife too; the sallow skin and painful limping gave it away long before the gums started to swell and bleed. Richard still had malt and could stretch it further because Lieutenant Furzer in Government Stores prized his small band of convict helpers so much that he secretly dosed them with malt. This kind of favoritism, as with the sawyers, was inevitable in the face of growing privation.

  “But if it comes to it,” said Richard to his group in a tone brooking no argument, “we will eat sour crout. I do not care if I have to sit on your chests and force it down your throats. Remember your mothers—we were all brought up to believe that medicine did no good unless it tasted abominable. Sour crout is medicine.”

  Port Jackson had no natural remedies for the scurvy in anything like sufficient quantity to feed its new population; very few local plants and berries did not cause symptoms of poisoning. The germinating plants faithfully watered in the Government gardens poked up shoots to look at the sun and the sky, and died of sheer discouragement. Nothing would grow, nothing.

  It is late summer here, coming into autumn, thought Richard, considering the citrus seeds he had saved from Rio de Janeiro. So I will not sow my seeds until September or October, when it is spring. Who knows how chill the winter is here? In New York the summer is very hot, yet in winter the sea can freeze. From the look of our Indians, I doubt it ever gets that cold, but I cannot afford to take chances by planting anything now.

  Three convicts—Barrett, Lovell and Hall—were caught in the act of stealing bread and salt meat from the Government Stores, and another was caught in the act of stealing wine. The three food thieves were sentenced to death; the wine thief was appointed the Publick Executioner.

  On the western shore of the cove between the men’s and the women’s tents stood a tall, solid, handsome tree with one oddity: a strong, straight, aberrant branch projected from it ten feet off the ground. Thus did it become the Hanging Tree, for there was no timber to spare for erecting a gallows. On the 25th of February the three wretches were escorted to it under the gaze of every convict, ordered to attend on pain of 100 lashes. Governor Phillip was determined that this last-ditch lesson would have the desired effect—they had to be made to stop stealing food! His own belly, of course, like the belly belonging to every senior person, was at least full. So, as in the business of fornication, the desperate measures introduced to rectify the trouble could not succeed. The hope that they would arose from empty scrotums and full bellies.

  Many among the audience, free or felon, had seen a hanging; in England they were occasions of fete and celebration. But many had not, preferring, like Richard and his men, to leave that kind of macabre pleasure to others.

  The first condemned man, Barrett, was placed atop the stool and the Publick Executioner was directed to put the looped rope about his neck, tighten it. This he did white-faced and weeping, but he refused to kick the stool away until several marines put powder and ball in their muskets and aimed at him from point-blank distance. Very pale but composed, Barrett kept himself steady. A die-hard. Because the drop was not sufficient to break his neck, he lunged and writhed at the end of his rope for what seemed an eternity. When he did eventually die, it was from lack of air. A full hour later the body was removed and the stool positioned to receive Lovell.

  Lieutenant George Johnston, the Governor’s aide-de-camp now that Lieutenant King was gone to Norfolk Island, stepped forward and announced that Lovell and Hall had been granted a twenty-four-hour reprieve. The convicts were then dismissed. Phillip’s lesson was wasted; those of a mind to steal would continue to steal, and those of a mind not to steal would not. The most that hanging could do was to reduce the number of thieves by simple subtraction.

  While Richard was moving away he chanced to look at the ranks of the women convicts, and there he saw some scarlet ostrich feathers nodding over a glamorous black hat. Stunned, he stopped in his tracks. Lizzie Lock! It had to be Lizzie Lock. She had been transported along with her cherished hat. Which looked remarkably fine in light of its travels. But then, she had probably looked after it better than she had her own person. Now was not the time to try to approach her; a moment would arrive. Knowing she was here was sufficient comfort.

  On the morrow everybody was again compelled to assemble—in the midst of pouring rain—only to be informed that His Excellency the Governor had reprieved Lovell and Hall in favor of exile to some place as yet to be determined. However, said Lieutenant George Johnston in minatory tones, His Excellency was seriously considering shipping all recalcitrants to New Zealand and dumping them ashore to be eaten by the cannibals. Once Supply could be spared, that was where they were all going, and he meant every single word of it, make no mistake! In the meantime, exiles were to go in irons to a barren rock near the cove which had already earned the name “Pinchgut” and subsist there on quarter-rations of bread plus a little water. Yet Pinchgut, the noose
and the threat of cannibal feasts did not stop the desperate from stealing food.

  If the convicts concentrated upon edibles, the marines preferred to plunder rum and women; marine floggings went from 50 to 100 to 150 lashes, though the flogger never laid it on as hard as he did were his victim a convict—understandable. That the marines could concentrate upon booze and sex lay in the fact that they doled out the food; no matter how this operation was supervised, the portions for marines were always much larger than the portions for convicts. Again, understandable.

  The natives were becoming harder to control into the bargain, took to filching fish, spades, shovels and what few vegetables had managed to survive on a fertile isle to the east of the cove where the big Government Farm was under construction in the hope that the ground would be ready for wheat by September. If this ground could ever grow wheat. Men sent to cut rushes for thatch in a bay farther around than Garden Island were first attacked by some Indians, who wounded one; after that two men were killed in the same place. A search up the stream to its swampy source revealed the carcasses of several big lizards decomposing in it, a signal that the natives were neither stupid nor unaware of how to foul water.

  Guard duty for the marines grew more taxing as the settlement expanded on a needs-must basis. A tree Sir Joseph Banks had classified as casuarina was found to yield very good shingle timber, but was located some distance away around the stream swamp, and excellent brick clay was discovered a mile inland. The parties foraged into virgin territory and had to be guarded. To make matters worse, the natives were less gun-shy and bolder in their stealing forays, it seemed aware that the orders were not to harm them at any cost.