The Smuggler's Curse

by Norman Jorgensen

  ‘Give me a hand with this one too, boy,’ Mr Baxter commands. ‘It’s on rollers. This way.’

  Together, we haul the heavy door sideways. I am surprised to see it covers an enormous cavern carved into the cliff face. In the lantern light, I make out a space the size of a shearing shed, full of barrels, drums, trunks and boxes of all sizes. They fill the walls on all three sides.

  ‘My favourite location, this treasure trove,’ says the Captain, admiringly. ‘As safe as the Bank of England. You can’t get a boat into the cove unless you know it well. More than one skipper who tried has had his keel ripped out from under him on jagged rocks just beneath the surface out there. And the only track in is the one we just took along the cliffs, and only fools and suicides want to follow that.’

  He is not wrong there, especially about the fools.

  ‘Then how do we get the cargo out again, Captain?’ I ask.

  ‘There’s a hidden track through the rocks and inland. You reveal that at your life’s peril.’

  ‘That you do, boy, at your life’s certain peril,’ growls Baxter, sliding his finger across his throat, menacingly.

  ‘He’s one of us, Baxter. Most definitely. Aren’t you, Red?’ says the Captain.

  I nod enthusiastically.

  ‘He’s Mary Read’s boy, you remember? From the Smuggler’s Curse up in Broome,’ continues the Captain.

  Baxter peers closer at me for a second. ‘I’d hardly know you, looking like that,’ he says, his tone suddenly much friendlier. ‘You’re Mary Read’s son then? Well, I’ll be. Look at youse, grown. Almost a man. I remember you as a wee boy, not that long ago when I was last in Broome. The Captain, he’s been working youse hard then since I last saw you, eh? Making a seaman of you, eh?’

  ‘Should I live long enough,’ I reply.

  ‘Stick with Black Bowen and it’ll improve your chances of getting to manhood, to my way of thinking,’ continues Baxter.

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ replies the Captain. ‘We’ve had a few tense moments this journey, haven’t we Red? More than a few close shaves. Pirates out of Malaya trying to blow us to kingdom come, and then a whole army of Dutchmen trying to skewer our gizzards.’

  ‘At least God is an Englishman,’ laughs Baxter, ‘and spared you.’

  ‘He must indeed be. And a colonial Englishman at that. We’ve survived so far, and Red has shown plenty of backbone.’

  I feel myself blushing, which makes me blush even more, so I busy myself with the unloading.

  ‘Littlemill Distillery,’ says the Captain to Baxter. ‘Smoother than silk. Slips down a treat. Though it would want to. It took the Devil’s own sweat obtaining it, this cargo did.’

  ‘Littlemill?’ queries Baxter, suddenly impressed. ‘You haven’t? You haven’t found the fabled lost shipment? You have got to be pulling my tail. Is it as good as the legend says? Or do I need to use my imagination?’

  ‘I’ll exchange you a bottle for a decent fry up from your good lady wife,’ replies the Captain.

  ‘Mind that it is only breakfast she serves you up. She has always had a soft spot for you, young Bowen.’

  ‘It’s not good manners to stir the ashes of another man’s fireplace, even on such a cold morning as this,’ laughs the Captain. ‘Eggs and bacon will be sufficient. That’ll warm me amply.’

  ‘Youse’ll do well to remember that,’ says Baxter, smiling broadly but holding up a clenched fist.

  ‘We’ll rest here until nightfall, with your permission, of course,’ says the Captain, changing the subject. ‘Then it’s off to Kalgan Creek to unload most of …’

  ‘Kalgan Creek? You sold the Littlemills to Simon Turner?’

  ‘His sort gets as thirsty as the best of us,’ continues the Captain. ‘More so. And he has the contacts with the shipping companies heading east to Melbourne and Sydney. He’ll be able to on-sell the lot for the most handsome profit. Besides, Simon and I are old school chums. Thick as a lump of coal he was, back then at school, but he had enough sense to marry Caroline Fortescue. Lovely woman that she is.’

  ‘Wasn’t she one of your … er, conquests, Bowen? asks Baxter. ‘I seem to remember …’

  ‘Blow me down, a man’s reputation is a hard-won thing. And lost on a mere rumour. See you remember that, Red. Reputation is an idle and most false imposition; oft got without merit and lost without deserving.’

  ‘Is she pretty, Captain?’ I ask daringly, ignoring his Shakespearean quote.

  ‘Cheeky knave, isn’t he,’ says Baxter.

  ‘I let our Red have plenty of rope,’ says the Captain. ‘He’s saved our bacon on several occasions.’

  ‘And that is not the only reason,’ someone at the back of the store shed mutters, quietly.

  ‘Now, speaking of bacon …’ continues the Captain, ignoring the comment.

  FRENCHMAN BAY

  We wait, resting, until the afternoon, before reloading the donkeys and leading them out towards Kalgan Creek. ‘It’ll be getting dark by the time we reach Frenchman Bay Settlement, across the water from Albany,’ announces the Captain as we set off. ‘But keep your wits about you meanwhile. Frenchman Bay, then Kalgan Creek, and then home.’

  Home! After all these hair-raising weeks, I will soon be seeing Ma and everyone at the Curse again. I can feel my footsteps getting lighter and the weight of tiredness coming off my shoulders. Then I remember we still have to cross miles of countryside with a donkey train loaded with a king’s ransom in illegal cargo, and possibly a regiment of Customs officers after us.

  Luckily, the rain has stopped, but the track we trudge along as we leave the store shed and head inland continues as slippery as the path the night before. On both sides of the track, the breeze blows patterns in paddocks of green wheat stalks. They seem to spread out forever. I have never seen anything like this before. It is so completely different from home. In the distance, massive trees as high as windjammer masts point skywards. With the grey, cold rain, the mud and the green fields, this part of the world is more foreign to me than Sumatra and Singapore.

  Within a hundred yards, one of my boots sticks in the black, clinging mud and I topple forward, ending up flat on my face.

  ‘Red,’ laughs Mr Smith, ‘I remember when youse first come on board the Dragon youse couldn’t stay on your feet then neither.’

  We trudge through a forest of enormously high trees with bush on either side so thick that hardly any light penetrates. It is as if midnight has arrived hours early.

  ‘Not long now, lad,’ continues Mr Smith, leading the donkey behind me.

  The forest clears and the track opens into a wheat paddock surrounded by the tall Karri trees, with one mighty one near the centre that the loggers must have missed. They have cut down vast swathes of forest since settlement. I read at school that thousands of massive trees have been felled and turned into railway sleepers in foreign countries, making people like Mr Turner even richer, as if that is at all possible.

  At the edge of the paddock, a farmhouse stands derelict, the walls covered with moss and lichen. In the fading light and swirling evening mist, and with its roof missing, the old house reminds me of a dead man’s skull, with the vacant windows like eyeholes. Behind the house, half-a-dozen blackened gravestones stand like a row of rotting teeth. I shiver and pat my donkey’s neck, mostly to reassure myself I suspect.

  ‘You won’t want to be here later,’ says Briggs, teasing me. ‘A graveyard in the dark. Spooky noises. Ghosts and ghouls, eh, Red. Scared?’

  ‘No,’ I reply unconvincingly. ‘It’s just that …’ I cannot help wonder whose graves they actually are. No names have survived on the weathered stones.

  ‘It’s not ghosts that’ll be the death of us,’ interrupts the Captain, turning to look back, ‘but Customs officers. And other gangs. Let’s just hope word hasn’t got out.’

  ‘Mr Smith?’ continues the Captain. ‘The rest of us will wait here but can I ask you to skip ahead and scout about. Take Red with you, and keep your he
ads down. If you see anything, send him back to report.’

  The wheat crop stands high, thick and green. Bent double, Mr Smith and I make our way towards a small hill scattered with large, granite boulders.

  ‘If they is going to be anywhere, there is the spot,’ says Mr Smith quietly, pointing ahead to the outcrop.

  Mr Smith and I change direction, and head up the hill, giving the outcrop a wide berth and taking each step carefully so as not to make a noise just in case someone is waiting in ambush. I can feel the familiar dread rising as, once again, my heart starts beating more loudly. I remind myself I am about to become a very wealthy young smuggler and I feel a bit ashamed for being such a coward and not willing to take a few chances for all the riches. But who wants to be the richest person in the graveyard?

  We smell them before we see them, the smoke from their pipes and stale sweat drifting up towards us. They are down the slope from us gathered by the outcrop just as Mr Smith predicted.

  ‘It’s them Frenchman Bay mongrels. The Dickson mob,’ whispers Mr Smith. ‘That big one at the back, near the over’angin’ rock? Couldn’t miss ’im nowhere. Jed Dickson ’e is. A pox on ’im.’

  Mr Smith and I can see seven men behind the boulders. Jed Dickson has a pistol at the ready and leans forward, balancing his weight on his elbows. At least three of the others have slumped forward, across the boulders, obviously asleep. One is even lying on the ground snoring.

  ‘Shall I go for the Captain?’ I whisper.

  ‘Hmmm,’ says Mr Smith. ‘No, no need to bother ’im. We can ’andle this.’

  ‘We can?’ I ask, incredulously. ‘There’re only two of us.’

  ‘And only seven useless fools. Look at ’em. ’opeless. Just watch me back, Red, like the Cap’n learned you.’

  I pull my Colt from my belt and ease back the hammer, covering it with my left palm to muffle the click.

  Mr Smith looks back to make sure I am ready, and then charges towards the granite boulders, stops and rams the end of his rifle right into Jed Dickson’s bum. Dickson jerks upright, his eyes nearly bulging from his face.

  ‘What in the name of…’ he roars.

  ‘Tell ya brothers to lay down their guns,’ hisses Mr Smith. ‘Right now, or so ’elp me, I’ll blow ya gizzards all over this ’ere rock.’

  One of the Dickson brothers lifts his pistol.

  Mr Smith swings down the loading lever on his Martini-Henry and shakes his head. ‘I’m not jestin’,’ he snarls. ‘It’s loaded with buckshot. Three-and-a-half inches of cartridge jammed full of eleven big lead balls. Imagine the mess. Down, now! Put them guns down. All of youse.’

  Dickson twists, trying to look back. ‘Smith. I’d recognise youse anywhere. I’ll get you for this.’

  ‘Youse talk tough for a man seconds away from meeting ’is just reward,’ replies Mr Smith. ‘Youse’ll be supping with the Devil by midnight at this rate. Or sooner if me finger slips. Just like it’s doing’ now. Slippin’.’

  Dickson swears under his breath, seeing how hopeless his situation is. His brothers can kill the two of us easily, outnumbered as we are, but he will be the first one through the gates of Hell. If anyone tries anything, Mr Smith will fire as he falls. Nothing is more certain. And he can’t miss. There is only one worse place to be shot full of buckshot than fair square in the middle of your fat bum.

  ‘Put your guns down,’ calls Dickson in a surly voice.

  I realise it isn’t just Mr Smith and me he is worried about. He has no idea of knowing how many other armed men might be hidden in the tall crop, ready to cut the gang down like wheat stalks.

  ‘There be no telling what this lunatic will do,’ he adds.

  I go forward and collect up their pistols. They have only three, plus two long knives and two cudgels.

  ‘Are they serious?’ I ask Mr Smith. ‘They were going to attack us with this lot? We have more guns down there with the donkeys than half the British Army. It would have been a total massacre.’

  ‘It still will be a bloody massacre if the Cap’n catches this bunch of dunder’eads.’ says Mr Smith.

  ‘Captain? What captain?’ asks Dickson.

  ‘Captain James Bowen.’

  ‘Sweet Jesus, no!’ Dickson nearly chokes and his face goes completely white. ‘They didn’t tell me it was Black Bowen’s cargo. Baxter’s man — he just said whisky. Good whisky. That’s all.’

  ‘Well, it is Black Bowen’s,’ replies Mr Smith. ‘And if the Cap’n gets ’old of youse, ’e’ll string youse up and gut ya like a fish while youse are still alive. ’avin’ your gizzards blowed out by me would be a blessin’. You’d thank me.’

  Mr Smith lets them stew for a few long minutes. ‘Dickson, I’m givin’ youse and ya miserable gang a chance ’ere. Take off ya boots and all ya clothes and I’ll let youse skid-addle out’a ’ere for free, up the ’ill away from the road.’

  ‘You won’t go and shoot us in the back as we go?’ asks Dickson.

  ‘I damn well should, but no, not this time. Unless youse come back before tomorrow. Then I’ll let Black Bowen know what youse’ve been playin’ at. And that youse’ll regret for the rest of ya very short life.’

  A couple of Dickson’s brothers are already half -undressed. They can smell a way out of this fix.

  I try not to laugh a few minutes later but cannot help myself. Seven completely naked men run away, like the Devil himself is after them, their wobbly white bums bobbing up and down like rabbit tails. I start giggling, then a few seconds later Mr Smith laughs.

  ‘Why did you take their clothes, Mr Smith?’ I ask, genuinely curious after we have gathered our wits.

  ‘Well, until they is dressed they ain’t goin’ to squeal to no one. And it’ll be a slow and painful walk all the way back to Frenchman Bay in bare feet, I’m thinkin’. We’ll be well gone afore they get even ’alfway.’

  ‘What will we tell the Captain?’ I ask.

  ‘What do you suggest, Red?’

  I think for a moment. ‘I suggest we saw nothing, and we saw no one, and nothing happened.’

  ‘I’m thinkin’ the same,’ he says, putting his hand on my shoulder.

  ‘Do you really think the Captain would have gutted them? Like fish?’ I ask as we make our way back.

  ‘No, not likely, but ’e has a need to keep ’is, what do youse call it? ’is …’

  ‘Reputation?’ I ask.

  ‘Yep, that’s it. ’e wants folk to think ’e is ferocious to scare off ’is enemies.’

  ‘It seems to work,’ I say. ‘One mention of his name and I thought Dickson was going to wet himself in terror.’

  ‘Now all we ’ave to be wise to is them damn revenuers,’ Mr Smith continues, ‘God rot their pitiless souls. I ’ate Customs Johnnies.’

  ‘Do you think they are about?’ I ask nervously.

  ‘Could be,’ he replies. ‘How did them Frenchman Bay fools knows about the cargo? From one of Baxter’s men. If they do, then maybe word got out. There might be others.’

  I spin the chamber on my gun. It’s funny how much things have changed. Here I am handling the Colt, confident I can shoot and hit what I aim at, whereas, when I first joined the Dragon, I had never even held a pistol before. I also notice my hands no longer shake at the thought of something violent or dangerous happening. I think I have finally worked out that my life is in fate’s hands, and there is not much I can do about that. So far, fate has been kind enough, up to a limit. I wonder if it will continue.

  KALGAN CREEK

  Several hours later, we reach the southern edge of Frenchman Bay. Not long after that we stand at the shallow western edge of Princess Royal Harbour and stare out across the water at the smoking chimneys of the port of Albany. We can see the substantial brick warehouses and government buildings that line the waterfront below the main street of Albany. It makes Broome look like a shantytown. Towering masts are visible, their vessels docked at the jetty, alongside half-a-dozen modern smelly steamers, their funnels leaking
smoke.

  I am home in my own country, but so far from Broome it seems impossibly foreign. I can’t get used to the scale of this enormous harbour, the size of the surrounding hills or the bitter wind that blows all the time.

  ‘Can I ask, Captain, where are we headed?’ I ask. ‘That sign over there says Kalgan Creek is the other way, inland. North of Albany. Are we are still headed there?’

  ‘Just a short detour into town, Red. Housekeeping. Greasing the wheels. A bottle or two for the mayor, the priest, the magistrate, the lighthouse keeper and Dianne Watson, who runs the ship supply company. All the influential folk in Albany town. The ones who know what is going on. You never know when you might need a quick favour from someone of influence, or a timely warning.’

  ‘Isn’t there anyone who doesn’t, who isn’t …’

  ‘No, not many,’ replies the Captain. ‘Even some Customs johnnies themselves can be persuaded, sometimes, providing the price is high enough. Somehow, it usually is. Remember Commander Blude from Broome? As crooked as the day is long.’

  I understand at once and am not as surprised as I would have been only a few months ago.

  ‘Then it’s on to Kalgan Creek,’ he continues, ‘to deliver a good percentage of the haul to Simon Turner. What did we work out Red? Eighty-five percent? The rest we take back to Broome to the Curse for your mother to sell over the bar and make us both an extra tidy sum. Not a bad night’s work, if we pull it off.’

  Kalgan Creek lies at the bottom of a wide-open valley of grassland. A magnificent farmhouse, almost as big as the Esplanade Hotel in Fremantle, is located right on the edge of a massive dam. Surprisingly white sheep dot the paddocks, and, in the half-light, behind the huge house, I can see the shapes of stable buildings forming a courtyard on three sides. It looks big enough to hold twenty or thirty horses. Several large barns, numerous sheds and stockyards stand further away.

  We halt at the top of the hill, where the trees thin out and the track we have been following through the bush seems to stop. We wait by the gate at the paddock’s edge for the tail end of the donkey caravan to catch up.