by John Marsden
Johnny and I ran together to the bank of the river. We found ourselves on a small cliff about ten feet above the water. As a spear whistled past my ear and disappeared into the darkness, we threw ourselves without hesitation into the black water below. Thanks be to God, we did not land on a rock or log but in a deep pool. Agitating our limbs like dogs, we swam forward with all the vigour we could muster. Within moments we were swept over a small waterfall. Still alive, but coughing and choking from our immersion, we resurfaced in a whirlpool and continued our perilous journey downstream, at the mercy of the current. When we believed we had put a considerable distance between our pursuers and ourselves we found large pieces of wood and thrust these under our stomachs to aid our progress.
Much later, shivering violently with cold and barely able to move, we dragged ourselves out of the river onto a sandbank, where we dug holes into which we could crawl and await the morning.
Chapter 43
Despite the cold, we re-entered the river early the next day and continued to use it as a thoroughfare until we were satisfied that we were a long way from the territory occupied by the tribe. Only later did it occur to me that I never knew the name of the group to which we had been attached for so long. To Johnny and me they were just ‘the tribe’, and perhaps that is all they ever called themselves, like a couple of convicts who had been on the Admiral Barrington and who, never having previously left their birthplaces in the whole of their lives, knew only that they lived in ‘the village’, without learning the name other men gave it. Only gradually, as they made the long journey to New South Wales, did awareness dawn on them that, should they ever return to their native shores, they might be unable to locate their homes again.
The river gradually broadened and slowed, as is the nature of such beasts, and we left it at some time in the afternoon, at a place we deemed suitable for a camp. It was an unseasonably cold day, and we had been warmer in the river than out of it. Upon quitting the water, we felt the bite of the wind so keenly that we decided a fire should be our first priority. Using the method employed by the Indians when they did not have their firesticks, we plucked a reed, shaved the top flat, nicked into it to find the pith, then rotated a blunt stick in the incision as quickly as possible to create a flame. We had done this often enough with our previous hosts to become quite dextrous at the process, but even the natives could take a long time to succeed at it, and we, with our shaking hands, found it almost interminable on this occasion. We took turn about, and I will say that at least the effort required helped to warm me a little.
At last, however, we had our fire, in a discreet corner among the rocks near the river, and this, combined with the weak rays from the sun, enabled us to at last still our chattering teeth. The quest for food was of course our next priority. Johnny went wandering along the bank of the river, peering into its depths. After twenty or so minutes he called me to him. I found him crouched beside a pool in a side eddy. ‘Look at this, Barnaby boy,’ he said with some evidence of glee. I peered into the water and could faintly discern a dark shape about as long as my arm.
‘Is it a fish?’ I asked.
‘It is indeed,’ he answered.
‘It’s a very big one. But can we catch it?’
‘We can that.’
‘But how?’
‘In much the same way as our friends caught the kangaroos,’ he said. He led me to the point where the water emptied from the pool, ‘Fetch me some rocks,’ he said. ‘The bigger the better.’
I saw his intention at once. It was a clever scheme. Through the artful construction of a dam wall we made our trap in remarkably quick time. I was glad that Johnny took the initiative after that, for I felt somewhat nervous at the idea of wrestling with a big, slippery fish. Johnny had no such fears, however. He jumped in. The water barely reached his waist. He waded to the fish and lunged at it. It eluded him, once, twice, three times, but on the fourth attempt he grabbed it and threw it out onto the bank, where I found the courage to pounce on it and drag it well away from the water.
We ate well that afternoon, and had more of the same for our evening repast. The flesh of the fish was white and delightfully juicy; it was as fine a meal as ever I have had. Lounging by the coals of the fire I congratulated Johnny on his resourcefulness.
‘Have you done much fishing before?’ I asked him. I had been impressed, not just with his plan to catch the creature, but with the way he had cleaned and gutted it, using improvised tools we fashioned from stones and sticks from along the riverbank. He was an entirely different man these days from the incoherent, haunted figure who had first confronted me in the forest when I was taking water to the timber getters.
‘Oh yes, quite some,’ he said. ‘I was brought up on the river. My folk have always been fishermen.’ He threw another stick in, and it drifted idly away. ‘This is my kind of river,’ Johnny said. ‘Not like the wild torrents we have experienced hitherto, young Barnaby. I feel more at home here.’
I realised, somewhat belatedly, that I knew nothing about Johnny. We had never talked about our past, only what was happening at the time.
‘Where did you grow up?’ I asked him. ‘Which river was it?’
‘Why, the Thames,’ he said. ‘I know that river like the back of my hand. I spent more time on it than I did on land.’
‘How did you come to leave it?’ I asked. ‘Is that when you got arrested?’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘No, that came later. I left the Thames because I was a fool. All young men are fools, I suppose. All we can think of is love and adventure. By the time we reach a better understanding . . . well, sometimes it’s too late.’
‘What form did your foolishness take?’
‘Drink was my first folly,’ he said. ‘I became a slave to Madame Geneva. She is not a good mistress, indeed she is not.’
He shook his head. ‘I had a good home, as good a family as any man could ask for. But I became infatuated with Madame Geneva, and as if that were not enough, before long I fancied I was in love with a bar girl as well. Drunk or sober, I wanted to be in her arms. One night I didn’t go home. I stayed with her the next day, and the day after that, and so on. I knew my family was looking for me, but the girl told them I had been shanghaied by a press-gang and was gone to sea. I laughed when she told me what she had said to them. I felt that I was a free man at last.’
A terrible recognition of Johnny’s story was growing on me. I waited in agonised suspense for what might come. But he was silent for so long that I finally had to ask him. ‘Please . . . what happened next?’
He looked at me in surprise. ‘Why are you so interested?’
I shrugged nervously. ‘I don’t know. We’ve been together a long time and I know so little about you.’
‘Aye, that’s so. Well, I’ll tell you my story and then you can tell me yours. So . . .’ He looked embarrassed. ‘I’m afraid I wasn’t faithful to Becky for too long. She caught me cheating on her and threw me out. Smartest thing she could have done. But there I was, no home I could go to, no money, not a true friend in the world. So what do you think I did?’
Trying to keep my voice steady I said: ‘Joined the Navy?’
He looked startled. ‘Aye. Did I tell you I was in the Navy? It’s what I did, all right. I thought, well, Becky had me signed up in the Navy when she met my father, so I might as well make her lie come true. So off I went and found a recruiting sergeant. They were pleased to take me, but I soon decided it wasn’t much to my liking. I’ve never taken kindly to being told what to do, and in the Navy there was nothing but being told what to do, every waking minute. And then one night, off the coast of Scotland . . . me and the Navy got separated you might say.’
‘What happened?’
‘Quite a storm was blowing. I was on deck, on watch. I got sent amidships, to take in some sail. But a huge wave came over the rails and washed me clean overboard.’ He glanced
up from under his eyebrows. ‘It may be that I wasn’t entirely sober at the time, so I mightn’t have been steering the straightest course. To tell you the truth, I don’t think the wave was quite as big as all that. Anyway, there I was in the water, doing my best to stay afloat, knowing I had no chance, knowing that this was the end of a misspent life.’
He mused for a moment. ‘I don’t know why a man keeps struggling when he has no hope. I don’t know why I worked so hard to keep my head above the water, to prolong my miserable existence for another few minutes. But just as I was starting to gulp more water than air, just as I felt myself slipping under the waves, something came along and bumped into the back of my neck. Bumped! It hit me so hard I felt dizzy. I turned around and found myself staring at a broken spar that the Lord God decided to throw me at the last minute. It seemed that He wasn’t ready to take me yet.’
He laughed. I could not laugh, for I was sure now I knew who my Johnny was. ‘What happened next?’ I asked.
‘I drifted right onto the rocks of Bonnie Scotland. I got fearfully bruised and cut, but some skivvies found me and took me to their hut. They were kindly folk, and looked after me better than I deserved. When I got better I did some work for them and then lit out for Glasgow. I’d decided that the time had come for the Royal Navy and me to part company. No doubt they thought I was drowned, and there didn’t seem much sense in telling them otherwise. I got a job building fishing boats, and worked at that for a couple of years, then drifted down south. By the time I got to Liverpool I had no money left. Just to make a bad job worse I’d fallen in with a pretty gang of cutthroats and thieves, and one day we banged an old fellow on the head and relieved him of his purse. I was in drink at the time, but the next day, when I recollected what I’d done, I repented it and went back to find him and give him my share of the booty. As soon as he saw me, though, he started shouting, “Thief! Thief!” and before I could explain my intentions his friends had jumped on me and trussed me up and off they took me, to the magistrates.’
‘So you got transported?’
‘Yes indeed. And a hard voyage we had of it, on that hell-ship the Hillsborough, may her name be forever cursed. By the time we got off the ship at Sydney Cove only two men in three were still alive, and most of those had to be carried off. Even the worst of the turnkeys were appalled at our condition, and our losses. At least I walked down the gangplank on my own two pins. I wanted to show those murdering bastards that they couldn’t kill me that easily.’
‘What did they do with you?’
‘I got sent up the river and assigned to a lime kiln, which is work not fit for a man in my opinion . . .’
‘What’s a lime kiln?’ I asked.
‘You know they use lime to make mortar? And whitewash? Well, you get the lime from burning oyster shells or limestone. Either one. You run out of oyster shells pretty quickly, so mostly it was limestone we used. We spent our time cutting out blocks of the stuff, fetching it down to the kiln, dropping it in the oven, then scraping the lime out the front of the thing, through an opening. Bloody hard work it was, and hot, and dangerous. You’d forever be getting burned.’ He grinned. ‘It’d be typical of the Government, wouldn’t it? You take a man who’s been in boats most of his life and send him inland to work in a lime kiln. If I’d been a coalminer they would have sent me out to sea to go fishing.’
‘Is that why you ran away?’ I asked. ‘Because you didn’t like the job?’
‘No, no, I stuck it pretty well. But a new foreman came along and started throwing his weight around, and like I said, I’ve never taken to that too kindly. So one day I gave him a tap on the head with my shovel, and I thought, that’s it for me, I’d best take myself off.’
‘Did you kill the man?’ I asked naively.
‘No, no, I’m not a murderer, lad. Just laid him out for a little sleep. It was the wrong thing to do, I know that, but I’ve been that way since I was a young ’un. My father was a strict man – a good man, mind you – but he didn’t take kindly to contradiction, and I never could stand to have him tell me what to do, so we had some terrible disagreements. I regret it now. I let my parents down, aye, I let them down badly. They deserved better.’
‘Would that be Silas?’ I whispered. ‘And Abigail?’
The effect on him was something terrible. He had been picking at his teeth with a fishbone while he talked, but now he jumped up and backed away from me, shrieking like a madman. I ran to him, though I was half-afraid he would strike me down. I gripped him around the upper arms and fortunately he did not hit out at me. ‘What kind of devil are you?’ he gasped. His eyes were staring, almost out of their sockets. I let him go, and he groaned and shook himself and beat himself in the chest with his fists. Then he fell to his knees on the sand. I had never seen such a dreadful desperation in a man before.
‘How do you know their names?’ he howled at me. ‘How do you know them?’ Over and over.
‘Johnny,’ I said to him, pleading for his attention. ‘Johnny! I have slept in your bed. Your father plucked me out of the Thames when I was as close to drowning as you were off the coast of Scotland. Your father, and Thomas too. Your mother nursed me back to health, like the skivvies who looked after you. I awoke in your bed one day and saw a new moon on the wall above me, a moon with a nose and lips and a face that looked down upon me every night for weeks thereafter.’
Still kneeling on the sand, he pulled at his hair and swayed to and fro. ‘Yes, yes,’ he groaned, ‘I made that carving. Ah, cruel, too cruel. One life to live, and see what I have done with it.’
He was inconsolable. I went to the river and fetched him water in my cupped hands, then sat with him murmuring words of comfort as one might to a baby. When he seemed calmer, I told him everything I could remember, including the information that his parents believed him drowned. He nodded fiercely when I said that. ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘I thought the Admiralty would give them that news. At the time I believed it would be for the best. I didn’t want more grief heaped on their heads from my wanton behaviour. I thought they had suffered enough, that they were better off believing me dead. But all I’ve done is add to their woes.’ He rocked backwards and forwards again. ‘Ah, to see them one more time, to be able to tell them how bitterly I repent my wrongdoing. And Thomas too. He was a sweet and gentle lad. He deserved a better example from his older brother.’
I made a bed for us both and led him to it. He sobbed quietly for a little while, but I was relieved when eventually the deep and heavy breathing of sleep overtook him. I could not sleep. I lay awake, looking up at the bright stars of heaven and wishing I could somehow bring about the reunion of the Piggott family, as Johnny so devoutly desired.
Chapter 44
Without planning it, we seemed to drift slowly down the river, day by day, sometimes only moving a few hundred yards, sometimes a mile or so. We had no definite goal, we discussed no purpose, but we seemed to be drawn towards the coast. I suspect that something in our hearts yearned for contact with our fellow Englishmen again, perilous though such an aspiration must be. It was certain, however, that white settlers would be found in greater numbers along the coast than inland, and that if we continued downstream we might eventually make contact with them.
Most days we ate quite well but some days we went hungry. Where sizeable tributaries joined the main river Johnny taught me to explore up these streams, looking for pools in which fish might linger. He taught me a trick he had learned in Scotland, of feeling under the banks of the pools and tickling fish that lurked there. The first time he told me about it I thought he was teasing, but he had the last laugh when he landed a trout that must have weighed three pounds. It was of a type I had never seen before, with a brown speckled body, a big mouth and an overhanging upper jaw. It had a dark blue stripe running from its nose almost to the gill, and was delicious. From then on this was our preferred method of fishing, and it was a fine day for me when I lande
d a two-pounder myself.
Now that he had opened his life’s book to me, Johnny became an even better companion, proving to be a man of many talents, and much learning that he had picked up in the course of his adventures. ‘The darling of all who knew him,’ Silas had said, and I thought it significant that Silas had not mentioned any old wounds between him and his son. So often one remembers but the other forgets. I felt now that I was seeing the Johnny whom Silas had described. A bond had already been forged between us by our shared hardships, but the connection with his family had created a new and, I felt, more enduring friendship. It was articulated by Johnny one evening, when he said to me, as we crouched over our little fire, ‘You know, Barnaby, I feel you are my brother now. God sent you to me for a reason. You have no family, and I will never see my family again. We only have each other.’
‘I feel that too, Johnny,’ I replied, and no more was said between us on that topic, but I had the strong sense from then on that it would take more than the Royal Navy and Royal Marines, let alone the worthy soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, to separate us.
Yet our destinies were about to take another unexpected turn. We had endured a cold and dark morning, with thunder grumbling and rumbling about us, and heavy raindrops falling, followed by a monumental downpour that lasted two or three hours. Strong rain had already fallen the night before, but we had holed up in a providential cave. These days we followed the custom of the Indians and carried a firestick, so when we found a hole in the back of the cave which gave access to the outside, we lit a fire, using the hole as a chimney. We were quite snug in our hideaway, and I dozed for most of the morning.
