Morgan's Run

by Colleen McCullough

  “The Commandant is very fair,” Eddy Garth explained, “so we get the full ration. In Port Jackson the marines short cut the convicts to give themselves more to eat. As on Scarborough.”

  “And Alexander.” Richard heaved a sigh of happiness. “I had heard, however, that there were no vegetables here—that the grubs had eaten every last leaf and shoot.”

  Garth put an arm around his wife, who leaned against him with obvious content. “ ’Tis true that the grubs eat a great deal, but not everything. The Commandant keeps the women in the patches all day picking the grubs off, and poisons the rats with his port bottles ground to powder in oatmeal—handy for the parrots too.” He put a finger to the side of his nose and grinned. “A great port bibber, Mr. King. Gets through several bottles in a day, so we are never short of ground glass. And the grubs come and go. Here a month or six weeks, gone a month or six weeks. There are two sorts. One likes wet conditions, one likes dry conditions. So whatever the weather does, we have grubs. Malign creatures.” He cleared his throat. “I do not suppose ye have any books?” he asked casually.

  “I do indeed, and ye’re welcome to borrow them provided that ye look after them and return them,” said Richard. “I wonder how my belly will take greens after so long? Where are the privies?”

  “Quite a distance away, so do not leave your run too late. Mr. King is fussy, insisted they be dug where they cannot contaminate the ground water. Our drinking water comes from up the vale, and it is perfect. No one is allowed to wash in it above the spot from which the water is taken, and the penalty for urinating in the stream is a dozen lashes.”

  “Why should one need to urinate in it? There are trees.”

  Joey Long, who had eaten earlier because he had to introduce MacGregor to Delphinia, came to show Richard to the privies and then lead him to their house, all by the light of a short piece of pine which ended in a thick knot: the ideal torch.

  Richard stared at the interior of the house in amazement.

  “It is all ours, yours and mine,” said Joey contentedly. “See? It has a window at either end that can be closed by a shutter. See? The wood is pegged into place. But we only put these shutters up if there is a blow—Nat says it is rare for rain to beat in from east or west. Most rain comes from the north.”

  The floor was a carpet of peculiar—twigs? leaves? They looked for all the world like scaly tails about twelve or fifteen inches long, and felt firm yet yielding underfoot. Beneath them was a thin layer of sand, beneath that was bedrock. Against the windowless wall facing the lagoon stood two low wooden double beds furnished with fat mattresses and fat pillows.

  “A double bed all to myself, Joey?” Richard lifted the fat mattress to discover that the bed had a lattice of rope supporting it, then realized that both mattress and pillows were stuffed with feathers. “Feathers!” he exclaimed, laughing. “I have died and gone to heaven.”

  “This is the sawyer’s house,” Joey explained, delighted to be the fount of knowledge. “The sawyer was a seaman off Sirius and he shared this house with another seaman off Sirius. They were both drowned in the same accident on the reef almost three months ago, so Nat said. As free men they had the time to go out to the little island and kill some sort of bird to stuff their bedding—it takes a thousand birds to fill one mattress and two pillows, so Nat said. We have inherited the house and the beds.” Suddenly he looked downcast. “Though Nat did say that we would have to give them up to Mr. Donovan and Mr. Livingstone as soon as a house is built for Mr. Donovan and Mr. Livingstone. That will happen after Golden Grove sails. For the time being they are staying with Mr. King in Government House. This one is only ten by eight, but Mr. Donovan’s house is to be ten by fifteen. Nat has been the head carpenter, but he is a convict, so Mr. Livingstone will be the head carpenter from now on.”

  “I care not if I have this mattress and pillows for one night,” said Richard, “I intend to enjoy them. But first I am going down to the beach to bathe the sweat away. Come on, Joey, you too.”

  But Joey dug his heels in and refused to budge, terrified at the idea of venturing even knee-deep into water full of invisible monsters waiting to devour him and MacGregor. Richard went alone.

  The sky was cloudless, the stars fantastic. Clothes left on the sand, Richard walked into surprisingly cold water and stood enchanted; every ripple he made created shimmers and tremors of light, so that it seemed he bathed in liquid silver. Oh, what a sea! How many wonders did it hold? On fire from within, for what reason he had no idea. All he could do was enjoy it, watch the water slide off his arms in luminous runnels, shake his hair free of glittering droplets. Beautiful! So beautiful. He felt filled with strength, as if this living sea transmitted its energies into his body through a natural magic.

  When he turned to emerge he saw that the island was deceptively low from out in the roads; now that he was on it, its hills reared steeply behind this flat saucer of seashore, and everywhere against the starry sky their contours were outlined in spiky pines. Thousands upon thousands of them.

  Once dried off and the sticking sand brushed away, he returned to his house and that big feather bed. Where he lay sybaritically, so comfortable that he could not sleep for many hours. Such still air, so few sounds—a sighing rustle, the occasional squealing cry of a sea bird, the soft whoosh of waves advancing and retreating on the reef. Joey did not snore, nor did MacGregor; at this time just over four years ago he had entered the Bristol Newgate, and not a night since had passed without a symphony of snores, even when he had lain alone with Lizzie Lock, for the snores of the men next door penetrated the sapling wall as if through paper. Until tonight. And he could not sleep for the sheer pleasure of it.

  One of King’s original party, Ned Westlake, had sawn with the drowned Westbrook, so there were two teams to spell each other: Blackall and Marriner, Westlake and Humphreys. The record to date, said Westlake, was 898 superficial feet* of timber in five days, but there had been only the one team to saw. Though he was not a free man like the drowned Westbrook, Richard had—mostly by residence in the sawyer’s house, saved for Westbrook’s replacement (whom King had assumed would be another free man)—become the head sawyer. His first decision was not popular, but was obeyed; he refused to allow the two teams their elected preference, which was that each team should saw on alternate days.

  *In square, not linear or cubic measure. Thus it represented 30 x 30 feet of cut timber.

  “If ye do that your muscles will seize up and the pain will be worse,” he said. “Bill Blackall and Will Marriner in the mornings, Ned Westlake and Harry Humphreys in the afternoons. Five hours in any one day are enough in a sawpit. Each of the four of ye will take turns to sharpen with me. In time that will give us all a chance to saw and all a chance to sharpen. Whoever is not sharpening or sawing will take an axe and help Joey strip the bark off the logs. The better we get and the faster we get better, the more privileges we will enjoy. To have a craft or trade is far preferable to being at the beck and call of general labor. If I read Lieutenant King aright, on your days off ye’ll be allowed to saw timber to put up your own houses. Think of that pleasure! A roof and walls ye can call your own.”

  By the end of the third day of sawing the pace began to build; by the end of the first week they were sawing 500 superficial feet in a single day, and by the end of the second week that figure had crept to 750. Joey Long was the permanent hand stripping the bark off the logs.

  “Well done, everybody!” said Lieutenant King cheerfully to the sawyer teams after Golden Grove sailed on the 28th. “Now we get on and build more houses, as I am informed there will be a great many more people here soon. Sixty at the moment, two hundred by the end of next year—and many more the year after that. His Excellency wants Norfolk Island and Port Jackson to be of equal size.”

  King paced from one end of the sawpit to the other, then back to the six assembled men. “I owe ye time off. On Norfolk Island we work Monday to Friday for the Government. Saturdays ye work for yourselve
s, Sundays ye rest—after divine service, which I take and is compulsory for every last soul here, is that understood? While Golden Grove was loading ye’ve worked for the Government on two Saturdays and two Sundays. Today being Tuesday, no one will work for the Government until next Monday. I advise ye to use some of this time to saw for your own houses—just continue the row eastward. The land behind each house down to the swamp the occupants of that house will use as private vegetable gardens. Cresses grow wonderful well in the swampier bits and the worms cannot eat it, so grow cress, no matter what else ye fancy growing and Stores can give ye.”

  His eye lighted on Richard, his head sawyer who was not a free man. “Morgan, I need a report. Walk with me, an ye please.”

  He really does have good manners, thought Richard as he strode alongside the Commandant down the pathway which led from the sawpit to Government House and the storage sheds, one of which, he noted, held the coble and an even smaller boat made from the pieces of the old coble which had foundered on the reef and drowned four men. Willy Dring, Joe Robinson, Neddy Smith and Tom Watson—the four young, strong, unattached, sea-mad men—were to man the coble to fish whenever possible.

  “I discovered that my house is not situate in the deep soil that abounds here, so I was able to excavate a sort of soft bedrock and make a nice dry cellar. I did the same under Surgeon Jamison’s house, which is now a storehouse—I have shifted him into the vale. The nature of the shore accounts for the fact that all the houses straggle east on this rocky eminence between the straight beach and the swamp—we could fix the support posts in rock,” said Lieutenant King as they passed Government House. “D’ye like fish?” he asked, changing the subject with one of those tangential shifts of thought Richard fancied typical of him.

  “Aye, sir.”

  “Ye’d think the buggers would be right glad of fresh fish in lieu of salt meat, but most resent it when I issue fresh fish or turtle instead of salt meat. Baffles me, it really does.” He gave a shrug. “So if they are too obstreperous, I lash ’em. Sounds as if I’ll not be lashing you, Morgan.”

  Richard grinned. “I would far rather fish than cat, sir. I have not so far been lashed since I was convicted.”

  “Aye, that is true of many of ye, I have noted it. Ye did well with the division of labor. One team of sawyers was not enough. What size logs d’ye think the best, given what tools we have?”

  “Six-foot diameter at the most, sir, until we are provided with longer pit saws. ’Twould be a help to have a cross cut saw big enough to need two men on it, so I am turning our only eight-foot rip saw into something that will cut across the grain better than the pit saws,” said Richard, very comfortable with this man.

  He is as different from Major Ross as chalk is from cheese, yet I managed to get on well with Major Ross too. This man is very paternal and regards us as his family, and that is not in the Major’s nature. But coming to Norfolk Island has served to show me how much the marines in Port Jackson reduced our rations to supplement their own. For which I cannot blame them. The marines are hungry too. Neither Governor Phillip nor Major Ross ever witnessed what Furzer did in Stores, which only goes to show that the bigger Government is, the less Government knows what goes on at the bottom.

  Lieutenant King is scrupulous, keeps the weights himself and checks their weight against his standard set. We have had a meal of fresh turtle and several meals of the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. After the first meal of fresh flesh we all felt a thousand times better. Not to mention that there are always greens to eat. No scurvy in Norfolk Island, despite the grubs and the rats. But I can understand the aversion of some men to marine meals—they did not grow up eating fish and deem meat the only acceptable diet. There is also the need in us for salt. According to Cousin James-the-druggist, the more a man sweats, the more he needs salt.

  Yes, I am very content to be here. It is kinder than Port Jackson, and there are no natives to fear if one ventures into the wilds. Though the stories around the camp-fire say that the growth of trees and vines is so dense that even Lieutenant King has been hopelessly lost.

  “What have ye to report, Morgan?” King asked as they set off across the swamp on a rickety bridge mounted on piers above felled pine logs sunk into the morass, evidently not a very deep morass.

  “Only that the sawpit needs a shelter to keep the sawyers out of the sun as well as the rain, and that if ye want to build something needs longer beams than twelve feet without joining, ye’ll have to dig a second pit and make it longer, Mr. King.”

  “There was a shelter over the sawpit, but it blew down in a winter gale—they are fierce, I can tell ye. I used its relics to shore up the cellar under my house, but I do realize that we will have to build a new shelter, and quickly. The strength in the sun grows every day.”

  They had crossed the swamp to the far shore of a small stream which seemed to terminate in the swamp rather than run through it; King turned left and began to walk up a path through a meandering valley wider in its bottom than any of the clefts between the steep hills coming down to what King had named Sydney Town.

  “What of the saws?” King asked.

  “I came just in time,” said Richard simply.

  “Hmmm. Better then that Major Ross sent you rather than a true sawyer. There was no one here knew more than the rudiments of sharpening. ’Tis cheering to know that ye can convert the eight-footer into a cross cut saw. That will further increase the supply of logs—I note ye’ve gone through the logs already hauled to the pit.”

  He stopped just before the vale took a little turn around a bluff coming down from the north. “I call this Arthur’s Vale, for His Excellency’s Christian name. The big island to the south bears his surname—Phillip Island. Cultivation of plants is gradually being shifted from Sydney Town to here because here affords some protection from the south and west winds, and I hope from the east wind as well on the far side of this bluff. Yon hill to the south between Arthur’s Vale and the sea is Mount George, and we are slowly clearing it to plant grain, as also on the hills to the north. We have some wheat and Indian corn in already, and there is barley in the bottom. The new sawpit should go up hereabouts. The present one is too far away, but it can continue to handle twelve-foot logs taken from the hills behind and within Sydney Town itself.”

  They had rounded the bluff and looked more or less westward; the ground of the vale descended about twenty feet abruptly, the stream tumbling in a thin cascade down the slope. The Commandant pointed to it. “I intend to dam the stream on that incline, Morgan. There is enough hollow ground above the slope to make a capacious pond of water which we can let out through a sluice to irrigate the Government gardens, which will lie not far below it. One day I hope to install a water-wheel on my dam. At the moment we are confined to hand querns for grinding our grain, but we do possess a proper millstone against the day when we have the power to turn it. Did we have oxen or mules we could turn it now. We could also use men to turn it, but of men we have not sufficient either. One day, one day!” He laughed, waved his arms about. “The granary, as ye saw, is just about finished, but I plan to build a big barn and a yard for the animals here on the south bank of the stream. The salt winds, Morgan, the salt winds! They stunt every sort of living thing save pines, flax and the local trees which grow in their lee. I did find the flax—those fools in Port Jackson did not describe the plant properly, was all. It makes excellent thatch, but we have not managed to make canvas out of it.”

  He laughed again, went back to discussing Arthur’s Vale. “Yes, the salt winds. We have to find a better place for the vegetables than a mound looking straight at Phillip Island. I have tried fences to shelter the plants, but they don’t help a bit. Therefore the vegetables will be moved into the vale.”

  Then off he went upon some urgent business apparently suddenly recollected, leaving Richard alone halfway up Arthur’s Vale.

  The weather was thick and rain threatened; much though he yearned to walk farther up and explore
, Richard decided that it was probably prudent to walk back to Sydney Town. In the nick of time: he had no sooner entered his house than it began to pour. Joey came in from their garden in a rush, MacGregor at his heels, and Richard wondered for the first time how he would pass the hours on rainy days until the sawpit received a new roof. Reading was all very well, yet he was getting enough food now to want to expend physical energy. But the rain was warm; he abandoned the hut to Joey, perfectly content to lie on his bed, cuddle the dog and hum tunelessly.

  He walked along the hard strand, shoes on—he had been warned that the rock rubble was as sharp as a razor, and had lamed many. The half-circle of Turtle Bay looked as alluring in the rain as it did in the sun, its bottom pure sand, its water crystal, the pines pressing down as far as nurture permitted. He peeled off his drenched clothes and went in to swim, finding the water much warmer in the rain than it was in the sun. Finished, he donned his canvas trowsers together with his shoes, slung his shirt around his shoulders and turned to see if there was any place he might shelter to watch the sea, getting up.

  Stephen Donovan had had the same idea; Richard found him in the lee of an outcrop on Point Hunter, where few pines grew, looking down the length of the reef toward the distant out-thrust of Point Ross in the west.

  “Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” Stephen asked.

  Richard put his shirt on the rock as a cushion and sat with his arms linked about his knees. The rain had cleared for the moment and the wind had veered northward. A great surf thundered in upon the reef, its waves curling over like satin candy rolled around a stick before exploding into walls of white foam. And the wind, blowing briskly in the counter direction, caught the spume and sent it flying backward across the waves in trailing plumes and veils.