South of Darkness

by John Marsden

  Dampier’s life on Ascension would have been lonely; it was a tiny island indeed, arid in appearance, but topped by a great peak which reminded me again, if somewhat more literally, of the Hill Difficulty which threatens to defeat Christian in Pilgrim’s Progress. Given that the island was named Ascension, I thought it apt that Mr Bunyan quoted Christian as saying of this hill:

  The Hill, though high, I covet to ascend,

  The difficulty will not me offend;

  For I perceive the way to life lies here:

  Come, pluck up, Heart, let’s neither faint nor fear . . .

  From then on, when difficulties in my life seemed to conspire against me, I pictured Green Mountain on Ascension and imagined myself scaling its heights in the same way that Christian achieved the summit of Hill Difficulty.

  We had a fair run, so far as I could judge, from Ascension to the Cape of Good Hope, which we sighted at the very moment I was rereading Pilgrim’s Progress and had come to the scene where Hopeful joins Christian on his journey. At first sight, the Cape of Good Hope seemed likely to meet the expectations raised by its name. The imposing mountain range in the background, reputedly above three thousand feet in height, was impressive indeed, though somewhat dark and threatening. The town looked clean and well tended, despite the frequent clouds of dust raised by the strong winds blowing from the tableland. We dropped anchor in Table Bay, where we saw a great range of ships; not as many as in Portsmouth Harbour, but a wider variety, and sailing under all manner of flags. We were close enough to read the signs on the shops, but also close enough to see a row of gallows, which should have been a familiar enough sight to me but which still struck terror and sickness into my heart. As well, however, I could see on the shore a row of wheels. My fellow felons were quick enough to tell me their use, delighting as they did in all matters pertaining to crime and punishment, the more grotesque the better. It seemed that the function of the wheels was to facilitate the execution of a condemned man by tying him in outstretched fashion to one of them and then smashing each of his limbs in turn with a heavy wooden bar or an iron hammer, followed by the smashing of his spine, after which the wheel was placed upright, against a vertical stake, and the man left to die a prolonged death. It was said, with relish by the more violent and vicious among us, that birds would sometimes feed from the man’s body as he waited helplessly for release from his earthly cares. In Cape Town I believe this pleasant practice was embellished by the cutting off of the right hand of the felon, which was then nailed to the side of the wheel.

  The sharper-eyed among us swore that they could see several bodies attached to the wheels, and indeed, when I could bring myself to look, I discerned shapes which may have been human, a sight which distressed me greatly. When I spoke to Carmichael Lance about it, he made no comment for a long time, but stood on the deck gazing at the top of the mountain. Eventually, without looking at me, he said: ‘I wonder why it is, my young friend, that men put so much time and thought into devising ever more horrible ways to torture and kill each other.’ When I did not answer, he added: ‘You would think that they might find other matters to contemplate.’

  We were not permitted to go ashore while the ship lay at anchor, but watched hungrily as the sailors and soldiers took their turns at shore leave. Judging from their condition as they returned, they made the most of their opportunities. A rumour spread that a number of sailors had to be bailed from the local prison for fighting, at a cost to the captain of five dollars per head.

  To make things worse for us, we were ironed again, as the captain feared that escape attempts might be made, with such a tempting vista spread before us. It was a terrible inconvenience to be reduced to the slow shuffle of the convict again, but also it weighed upon my spirits to be reminded so bitterly of my loss of freedom.

  We did at least benefit from a welcome improvement in our rations. Those who had money were able to purchase bread, grapes, fish, sausages, tobacco, pears and apples at very fair prices from bumboats that visited the ship. But all of us had the advantage of supplies of fresh mutton and beef, fruit and vegetables, and of course water, and a great relief this was, and a great boon to our health.

  Nonetheless it was galling to stay in our cramped and confined quarters and to see such a beautiful and spacious land within a stone’s throw, knowing all the while that we would not be permitted to set foot upon it. The greatest pleasures we were able to derive from Cape Town was the calmness of our anchorage, after the weeks of rocking and swaying, and the opportunity to scrub out our quarters and indeed the whole ship. After my years of living in an area of London where people swarmed like maggots in cheese, and where I had known nothing but squalor and filth, I had become somewhat enamoured of cleanliness. It may have been partly the influence of Carmichael Lance, who managed to stay scrupulously neat even in the debilitating circumstances in which we found ourselves. He was as precise in his arrangement of his possessions and the maintenance of his toilet as he was in his use of language.

  So we scrubbed and scrubbed, as other members of the ship’s company disported themselves ashore. From time to time, both at Cape Town and during the voyage, those convicts who helped the crew or performed other services adjudged worthy of merit were rewarded with an issue of a glass of rum. We were so rewarded at least a dozen times during our stay in Table Bay, so the master and the bo’sun must have thought we were doing a fair job. The rum was of some benefit to me, as although I did not drink it, not being enamoured of the taste, I was able to trade it with my fellows for grapes and bread and apples. Verily I think this diet suited me better than the rum suited my shipmates, for I was in particularly good health during this time and started to acquire more vigour than had recently been the case.

  Chapter 27

  We departed Cape Town after eight days, short four sailors and two soldiers who had deserted during our stay. I was saddened to note that Corporal Arnold was not among them. Master Marsh had, according to shipboard gossip, made strenuous efforts to recover the missing men, but without success.

  We also lost one of our own, an ex-soldier named Seamus O’Mahoney, who had been transported for life on a charge of mutiny. He had, by repute, received a thousand lashes as part of his sentence, though I do not understand how anyone could survive such a terrible punishment. The cause of his death was not known to me, but he was taken ashore by the soldiers and buried on land.

  Despite this sad passing, I would have to say that crew and convicts alike were in fairly good spirits. We had a journey of six thousand five hundred miles ahead of us, but the respite in Cape Town had refreshed all on board. A number of the more trusted convicts who had been to sea previously, or were strong and capable, were recruited to replace the deserters. A day out of Cape Town we had our irons removed again, and the bo’sun informed us that we would be permitted up on deck more frequently for the remainder of the voyage. This proved to be the case, although the motivation for it was not entirely philanthropic, as a good deal of old tarry ropes and cordage had been taken on board at Cape Town and we were put to work unravelling it into fibre. I was informed that this was the trade known as ‘picking oakum’, though I was the only one on board who appeared ignorant of its nature, it being a popular occupation assigned to prisoners in His Majesty’s gaols. The tarred fibre was apparently used for caulking the timber in ships.

  The men were expected to pick two pounds per day, but because of my age I was let off lightly, having to produce only one pound per day. I was reliably informed that when we got to New South Wales the oakum could be sold for at least five guineas a hundredweight, so a tidy profit appeared likely to be made by someone as a result of our efforts.

  Somehow, both above and below decks, we had arrived at the mutual understanding that is necessary if any society is to survive, and our unlikely company, ranging from a naive child such as myself, to the most desperate and brutish villains, was a society of sorts. At times we made accommodati
ons for each other, usually in simple ways, like lending a tin knife to a man who had lost his, or picking extra oakum for a man who was not going to reach his daily quota, or helping a fellow up if he fell on deck. On one occasion I saw a sailor who would have been washed overboard as he came down from reefing the topsail, save that a prisoner grabbed him by the trousers and pulled him back.

  I had never lived communally before, so everything was new to me. I observed how, as the trip went on, the quieter members of our company were generally left alone, the humourists drew people to them as a lantern attracts moths, the oafs were largely ignored and the men of integrity won respect. A man who could tell a good yarn was also highly regarded, and on many a night silence would settle through the cabin as one of the favourite storytellers regaled his neighbours with a new tale.

  Carmichael had said to me: ‘There’s nothing worse than a man who is talked out after a couple of days.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I had asked, a question I frequently found myself addressing to Carmichael.

  ‘I mean,’ he had said, ‘that some men run out of stories, of conversation, in no time at all. Either so little has happened to them or, more likely, they are incapable of understanding or retaining what has happened to them, and so they soon find themselves with nothing to say. Such a man makes a terrible companion.’

  Fearful of losing Carmichael’s friendship, I resolved to try to retain the stories of my life.

  There was plenty of singing, by both sailors and convicts, though we mostly heard the sailors’ songs whilst they were on deck and at work. They used songs in order to achieve the rhythm they needed for the job they were doing; for example, when they were at the topsail halliards and they needed to pull together, they sang:

  Hurrah, my boys, we’re homeward bound,

  Hurrah, my boys, hurrah . . .

  The convicts’ songs tended to be either bawdy or comical or maudlin. But the political prisoners had a leaning towards songs that were critical of conditions in Great Britain, or, as many of them were Irish, their own country:

  I’m a four loom weaver, as many a one knows.

  I’ve naught to eat and I’ve worn out my clothes.

  My clogs are both broken, and stockings I’ve none.

  They’d hardly give me tuppence for all I’m getting on

  Old Billy at Bent, he kept telling me long

  We might have better times if I’d not but hold my tongue.

  Well, I’ve held my tongue till I’ve near lost my breath

  And I feel in my heart that I’ll soon starve to death . . .

  My favourite, which never failed to draw a tear from my eye, was ‘Barbara Allen’:

  All in the merry month of May,

  When green buds they were swelling,

  Young Willie Grove on his death-bed lay,

  For love of Barbara Allen.

  He sent his servant to her door

  To the town where he was dwelling,

  ‘Haste ye come, to my master’s call,

  If your name be Barbara Allen.’

  So slowly, slowly got she up,

  And slowly she drew nigh him,

  And all she said when there she came:

  ‘Young man, I think you’re dying.’

  He turned his face unto the wall

  And death was drawing nigh him.

  ‘Goodbye, goodbye to dear friends all,

  Be kind to Barbara Allen.’

  When he was dead and laid in grave,

  She heard the death bell knelling.

  And every note, did seem to say

  ‘Oh, cruel Barbara Allen.’

  ‘Oh mother, mother, make my bed

  Make it soft and narrow

  Sweet William died, for love of me,

  And I shall die of sorrow.’

  They buried her in the old churchyard

  Sweet William’s grave was nigh hers,

  And from his grave grew a red, red rose

  From hers a cruel briar.

  I found it deeply affecting, but Carmichael pooh-poohed it as maudlin. He preferred the old hymns of his childhood, such as ‘When I Survey the Wondrous Cross’, ‘A Mighty Fortress Is Our God’, and ‘Amazing Grace’.

  Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,

  That saves a wretch like me.

  I once was lost, but now I’m found,

  Was blind, but now I see.

  There were occasions when a largish number of the convicts, moved by a rare fit of piety, sang hymns, but mostly they were the province of a sanctimonious group of older men who called themselves devout Christians, and who met every day at one end of our quarters for prayers and singing. Carmichael never joined them, and indeed seemed to despise them, but I often saw his lips moving in time with their songs, and occasionally heard the words emanating quietly from his mouth.

  It may seem from my account of the voyage that our lives were truly miserable, but in fact there were many moments of levity. I have observed elsewhere in my life that nothing can restore harmony in a group so quickly as laughter. At times the laughter on the Admiral Barrington would be at the expense of one of our own number, but truth to tell the derision was often well merited, being aimed at a man who for good reasons had failed to make a positive impression upon his fellows. Among these were the braggarts, especially those who had boasted of careers as wicked desperados, but who were later exposed as frauds. It seems odd that convicts would have such contempt for liars, when so many of them had made lying their lifetime occupation, but they were merciless towards those who exaggerated their misdeeds. A man named Marmaduke Wyatt had waxed grandiloquently on the tumbrel from London about his exploits. To hear him talk was to believe that you were in the company of the arch-fiend of the British Isles. He claimed to have robbed the Duke of Cumberland on the King’s highway somewhere near Canterbury, to have murdered a coachman who tried to disarm him, to have picked the pocket of a justice of the high court. As a credulous child I had listened spellbound to these stories and had thought Mr Wyatt a formidable fellow indeed. It was only after he had been on board a few days that the truth emerged: he had been sentenced to transportation for two crimes, one somewhat similar to that committed by the late Mr Ogwell, and the other, the theft of a lace shawl from a baby in a perambulator in Hyde Park.

  Once this information came to light Mr Wyatt was treated with derision by all and sundry and became the object of many a practical joke. He was proud enough to have his own night bottle in which to pass water, but as he used it one evening he was disconcerted to find that its bottom had been pierced in several places and he was wetting his boots with his stream. On another occasion the slops buckets were placed in a circle around his hammock, so that when he got up in the morning he stepped straight into one of them.

  Some of the jokes were undoubtedly cruel. Mr Wyatt constantly found items of clothing, especially his cap, missing. One night the men caught a live rat and hid it under his blanket, so that it jumped out at him when he climbed into his hammock. Particularly disgusting was the use of his boots one night for functions intended to be performed in a slops bucket. Corporal Arnold told him to throw them overboard, but knowing that he would never be issued another pair, Mr Wyatt somehow found a way to clean them out; after a fashion, at least. From then on he slept with his boots in his bed, clutched tightly to his chest.

  Not all jokes, however, were at anyone’s expense. A man named Angus Buchan made himself a great reputation by presenting occasional concerts, using the most unusual musical instrument I ever did hear or see. Mr Buchan had perfected the art of performing well-known popular songs by the manner in which he broke wind. His rendition of ‘Rule Britannia’ was always a great favourite, and men would laugh until tears ran down their faces at the spectacle of him peering around at his audience with a droll expression whilst emitting his pecu
liar tunes.

  I have written about King Neptune’s arrival on the boat for the ceremony of Crossing the Line, but some weeks before that, a month out from Portsmouth, we had been allowed on deck while the sailors ‘burned the dead horse’. This inexplicable ceremony, which I confess I found rather more enjoyable than Neptune’s visitation, was somehow related to the fact that the sailors were given a month’s pay in advance, before beginning any long voyage, but because they almost invariably spent the money whilst still in port, they were fond of saying that they had worked the first month ‘for nothing’.

  When this month expired, they made a horse out of the various materials they found to hand, such as sailcloth, and some tarry material which they stuffed into a barrel to make the body. A sailor dressed himself as a jockey, and he and the horse took their places upon a gun carriage and were hauled around the deck by the sailors as they sang various shanties. They pulled up on the poop deck, from which an auctioneer called for bids for the noble steed, after listing its various qualities. The officers, and the paying passengers, of whom there were but a few, pooled their funds to make a bid that the auctioneer found acceptable. This money was distributed among the sailors, and the horse was then dragged under the yardarm, whence he was hoisted. When he had reached the highest point possible, he was ignited, and we had the grand spectacle of blue flames burning in the moonlight until they went out, at which point the old horse leapt from the yardarm into the sea, with a little help from his attendants, and accompanied by the cheers of the spectators.

  The captain subsequently spliced the main brace and handed out rum to all, including the convicts, but the sailors continued to drink and celebrate long after we had been confined to our quarters once again. No one seemed to have the least idea of the origins of this peculiar ceremony, but it afforded amusement to all.

  In keeping with the natural instincts of men, many opportunities were found for races and competitions. One fine day the crew held a race from the lowest rat line to the top of the foremast; the winner was a big Irishman, in the remarkable time of two minutes and eleven seconds. The more active convicts held races around our cramped quarters from time to time, but these were more in the nature of obstacle events than true races, as some of the men did everything possible to obstruct the competitors, putting out a leg to trip them, throwing mugs and pillows, and even bodily tackling them from behind. The captains of the deck sometimes tried to put a halt to these raucous proceedings but were invariably howled down for their attempts.