The Animal Stars Collection

by Jackie French

  The fishing was mostly an excuse to stand at the rail and watch the land draw closer. They’d been travelling steadily towards it during the night, and now that the morning mist had risen, all on board could see it was one land mass, not a series of islands. So many sailors had climbed the mast already to get a better view that the ship had got top heavy. Mr Molineaux had ordered that no one was to climb the mast again except on his orders.

  Isaac stared at the green mountains rising out of the dim blue of sea and sky. He could just glimpse white cliffs too, though perhaps it was the white sand of a beach. ‘Mr Banks is sure it’s the Great South Land.’

  ‘The captain says it isn’t,’ said Magra, as though that settled the matter. Which it did, as far as Isaac was concerned. Mr Banks might be rich and enthusiastic, but he wasn’t a scientist or navigator. Even his precious plant specimens were just grabbed any old how. ‘He’s been studying Tasman’s maps, and he says it’s just an island.’

  ‘Well, we’ll soon know,’ said Jonathan. Isaac could hear the suppressed excitement in his voice. He felt the same. This was what he’d joined the navy for. The first Europeans to map this land!

  ‘Do you think there’ll be spices? Gold?’ wondered Magra.

  ‘Too far south for cinnamon trees or nutmegs. Too cold,’ said Jonathan. He grinned. ‘Just as long as there’s food and water, you can keep your goldmines.’

  Isaac knew that by now the ship badly needed both. So far not one of the crew had died of scurvy—almost a miracle, as many ships would have lost a third of their crew to the illness by now. But the fresh foods they’d brought from Tahiti were long gone. Already some of the crew were complaining of bleeding gums, the loose teeth and aches that meant scurvy was leaving its mark. Isaac felt his own teeth every morning. But so far they’d stayed firm, and Jonathan’s had too.

  Was that smoke on the horizon, or mist? Smoke meant people. The crew of the Endeavour needed a friendly land desperately, thought Isaac. Now the land was there. But were the people friendly?

  CHAPTER 21

  The Goat

  9th October, 1769

  It was out there. The Goat could smell it on the breeze. Somewhere out there were people, villages, canoes. But most important of all—green grass. Fresh grass, not the musty hay, dampened and dried who knows how many times. And lovely untainted fresh water.

  The Goat wasn’t as fussy as most of her kind. She’d got used to water that stank, from water barrels stored too long in the sun. But now that she could smell land she knew what she wanted.

  ‘Eeegh!’ she complained.

  The captain turned and smiled at her. The captain didn’t feed her or milk her, like the Boy, but sometimes lately he’d been bringing her up a snack from his table: a piece of dried apple, or a bit of real bread, instead of the bitter ship’s biscuit. He might be captain, but he knew what a goat liked. He knew where his milk came from too.

  ‘Feel like some fresh greens, do you, lass? Well, you’re not the only one. Mr Gore! Get the yawl ready. We’re going ashore.’

  The Goat peered out of her pen. She watched as the yawl was lowered, as the captain, Mr Banks and Dr Solander and a group of marines rowed ashore, followed by more of the crew in the pinnace, including her Boy. Finally, bored, she lay down on her straw again and began to chew a bit, not because she was hungry or it tasted good, just for something to do.

  Suddenly yells rang out across the bay, followed by two shots.

  The shots meant nothing to the Goat. She sat there, bored, till her sharp ears heard the sound of oars again. She stood up, waiting for her grass.

  ‘Eeegh?’

  No one answered. No one brought her grass, either. Instead she heard the excited voice of the Boy, explaining what had happened, to Jonathan Monkhouse. ‘They were going to steal the yawl! We could see the men running down to the beach as we rowed nearer. We landed by the river—it’s pretty shallow. But they all ran away. The captain and the men followed them to their village while we stayed with the boat.

  ‘What happened then?’ demanded Jonathan.

  ‘I saw four of them creeping back through the trees.’

  ‘What were they like?

  ‘Enormous! Bigger than any men I’ve ever seen! They looked like they could hold an ox above their heads! And black! And their faces are all tattooed. The coxswain fired shots over their heads but they ignored them. One was just about to throw his spear, but the cockswain got him,’ said Isaac with satisfaction.

  ‘Dead?’

  Isaac nodded. ‘Shot through the heart! And then they ran! Your brother went to look at the man who was shot! Ask him about it! And we came back to the ship.’

  It made no sense to the Goat. All that mattered was that she could smell green grass, but didn’t get any.

  CHAPTER 22

  Isaac

  10th October, 1769

  All that night Isaac could hear the New Zealand men talking and yelling on the shore. Cook ordered a strict watch be kept, in case the warlike men sneaked up in their canoes in the darkness and tried to capture the ship.

  But the night was peaceful. And despite the danger, Cook decided that the Endeavour needed fresh water too badly to keep sailing.

  They would have to try again.

  Isaac was one of the rowers in the first boat. He watched the shore draw closer: the white cliffs, the smoke from the village, the river they had seen before. I should be afraid, he told himself, as he felt the pull of the oars in the water. But he only felt excitement. It was the first time he’d ever been glad he wasn’t a midshipman yet. Jonathan would have given his thumbs to be a member of this party. But as a midshipman he was too senior to be a rower and too junior to have command of one of the boats.

  They drew up near the river. Isaac and the other sailors hopped out into the water, to draw the boat up onto the sand for Cook and the gentlemen. The two other boats from the ship were still making their way over to the shore.

  Isaac glanced at the other side of the river. Already a crowd of New Zealand men had gathered there, twenty or thirty of them, all armed with spears and axes and even stranger weapons. They looked enormous, very black—and very, very fierce.

  Isaac watched as Cook walked over to the river bank and faced the New Zealanders. Mr Banks and Dr Solander stood behind him.

  Cook called out a string of words in Tahitian. The men stared. One of them laughed. Then suddenly they were all yelling. They raised their spears above their heads and began to dance.

  It was the most terrifying performance Isaac had ever seen: twenty or thirty men in a line all screaming defiance, showing their tongues and widening their eyes.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked one of the marines. Their boat had landed now too, with the Tahitian navigator Tupia. Isaac shrugged, and pointed.

  The marines began to line up behind the captain, their weapons ready. Tupia hesitated. Suddenly he came to a decision. He left the marines and waded into the shallow river. He yelled something to the men on the other side.

  Suddenly the war dance stopped. One of the men called back to Tupia.

  Isaac stared in astonishment. They could understand each other!

  Tupia called out something else. As Isaac watched, amazed, one of the men crossed the river. He greeted Tupia, and they rubbed noses, then Tupia led him over the captain.

  Isaac let out a breath he hadn’t realised he’d been holding. It was all going to be all right! The men must know where water was. There’d be fresh food to trade too…

  He watched as the New Zealand men took beads and nails. If only he wasn’t stuck here guarding the boat! But at least he wasn’t still on the ship, like Jonathan…

  He blinked. Something was happening! Isaac craned to see, but it was all confusion. One of the big men was holding Mr Green’s sword, waving it around his head in triumph! Isaac watched in terror as the men began to snatch at the marines’ weapons—

  Bang!

  A musket shot rang out, and then another. The man with the s
word fell, bleeding from the chest. The men splashed over to a rock in the middle of the river, then dashed back to carry away their dying comrade.

  Cook bent down and tasted the water.

  ‘Salt,’ he said briefly. ‘Back to the ship. We’ll cross the bay and see if there’s fresh water there. If we can surprise some of the natives and give them presents we might be able to gain their friendship.’

  Perhaps, thought Isaac dubiously, as he helped push the boat back into the water. But it wasn’t his place to comment on the captain’s decisions.

  And what would the Goat think, he wondered, when they came back to the ship with neither fresh water nor fresh grass?

  The Goat was not impressed.

  She was even more annoyed the next day, when Cook again ordered Isaac to be one of the men to row him across the bay, with Tupia and a party of marines.

  Isaac pulled his oar with the rest; he was strong as any of them now. But from here he could hear the crash of the surf on the shore. Surely they’d never get the boat through that.

  It seemed the captain had come to the same decision. Then suddenly he pointed. Two canoes were heading in to shore from the sea, filled with the men that Tupia said were called Maoris.

  How can the Maoris manage to get canoes through surf like that? thought Isaac in admiration, just as Cook called:

  ‘Pull alongside them! We’ll try to capture a couple! Tupia, tell them we don’t intend to harm them!’

  Tupia stood, and began to yell. But the Maoris in the canoes shook their heads. One of them called out an order. The canoes began to turn away from the strangers.

  ‘You there! Fire a musket! One shot only! That should make them surrender…or jump overboard.’

  Isaac watched as the marine fired into the air.

  The Maori captain yelled again. But this was a yell of fury. His crew raised their spears. The first one hardly reached the boat. The second slid past Isaac’s head, so close he could hear the whistle as it passed.

  ‘Fire!’ yelled Cook, as the marines lifted their own weapons.

  It was over in seconds. Three Maoris slumped in their canoes, dead or dying. Another pressed his hand to his shoulder, desperate to stop the blood that pumped from his wound. Three boys jumped overboard into the bloodstained water, their eyes wide and terrified, and began to swim to shore.

  ‘Pick them up—bring them to the ship!’ called Cook.

  Isaac bent his back to the oars again, as the boat sped after the boys.

  What was he feeling, he wondered. Relief? A thrill of adventure?

  But there was confusion, too. The captain had been wrong! There had been no way people like this could have been scared into surrendering! And they had been killed—for nothing.

  Till now he had thought that Cook was perfect. There was no way he’d criticise the captain aloud—even to Jonathan. But for the first time he realised that even heroes could be wrong.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Goat

  10th October, 1769

  The Goat watched as the boys were brought aboard. Two of them looked even younger than her Boy, but were taller by far, and broader too. Why does the ship need more boys? she thought.

  ‘Clothe them,’ said the captain shortly.

  The boys looked at the Goat with interest. The Goat inspected them too, then ignored them. The rest of the ship might find them fascinating, but she wanted her grass and her fresh water. And the sooner the crew stopped fooling about with other humans, no matter how exotic, the better pleased she’d be.

  She was munching her hay that night when the captain passed. He stopped to scratch her ears, as he sometimes did. But tonight he seemed distracted, gazing back towards the shore.

  ‘I was wrong,’ the captain said softly. ‘The blood in the water was my fault alone. I do not think men at home will justify what I have done today. Nor can I excuse myself.’

  And then he went below.

  Cook ordered the boys be put ashore the next day. The boys protested, claiming that their enemies would find them and eat them. But Cook insisted.

  The Goat munched her hay and watched the boat take the boys and the captain back across the bay. At least her Boy wasn’t one of the party this time.

  She watched again as the boat rowed back—still without fresh water or food, despite further attempts to trade.

  The ship sailed on. The humans dashed here and there, trading red cloth for smelly fish with the local people in their canoes, or rescuing the little Tahitian servant boy, Taiata, when the local men tried to kidnap him. But despite trading for Maori potato or wild celery there was no place safe enough for the ship to anchor close enough to fill up with fresh water—or cut grass for the Goat.

  ‘Eeegh,’ the Goat yelled at the captain, at Mr Banks, at her Boy. But no one paid much attention.

  Finally, the Goat got the fresh grass she’d been waiting for. It was at Tolaga Bay, a place that the people in the previous bay had recommended for its good water and grass.

  For a Goat it was paradise. Even the air smelled of flowers. The Boy went ashore, and brought her the grass she craved. There were hills of shrubs to look at and smell—the boy even brought her a few branches, knowing she liked new things to nibble, as long as she wasn’t expected to give up her regular food.

  But the grass—the grass was the best she’d ever tasted. This place was good!

  CHAPTER 24

  Isaac

  28th October, 1769

  ‘Ready? The boat’s about to go!’

  ‘Almost!’ Isaac raced down to Mr Matthews with the milk bucket, then galloped back to the ladder as Jonathan urged the boatswain to wait just a minute more.

  Isaac had spent the last three days at Tolaga Bay cutting grass. Now it was spread out to dry enough to tie into bundles. It wasn’t going to be easy getting the bundles back to the ship, thought Isaac, as he settled into the boat next to Jonathan. It was a good mile and a half from the Endeavour to the shore, and the spray from the surf had drenched him every day.

  But he’d worry about that tomorrow. Today he and Jonathan had permission to go up to the Maori village.

  Isaac stared about as they climbed the hill. He wished he could draw like Mr Parkinson, to give his family at home some idea of it all. Mr Parkinson had sketched the big stone arch down in the cave, with a river running through it. How Isaac’s family would exclaim if they could see that! And the tall cabbage trees, with their dense sweet hearts that could be boiled and sliced; the giant parrots that flapped away in a massive cheeping cloud as they approached; the snares set to catch the giant native rats; the big sharp-leaved flax plants that the women used to make cloth.

  And what women! Isaac no longer blushed at the thought of a naked woman. The women here were almost as tall as the men, and as strong, proud and reserved, unlike the women of Tahiti. They wore more clothes, too, which had disappointed the boys—silky white skirts, and capes or jackets, green stone necklaces or jewellery made of teeth, and long hair that they wore down, decorated with leaves or feathers, not in top knots like the men.

  The women weren’t tattooed like the men either, but their lips were stained blue, and they wore red ochre on their faces.

  ‘Look!’ Jonathan pointed to a neat fence woven out of reeds. ‘Those must be yams in there.’

  Isaac didn’t ask him how he knew. Information just seemed to come to Jonathan in his sleep—though maybe this time his brother had seen it all the day before, when he’d visited the village to help trade cloth for vegetables. ‘Those hills must be for sweet potatoes…and those circles are arum plants…’

  Isaac was more interested in the village. The houses were arranged around a central square. The walls were made of reeds covered with thatch, with wooden beams on top, then a net of grass, and more thatch, reaching to the ground.

  Cook had forbidden anyone to go into a house if anyone was there. But the house at one end of the village seemed unoccupied.

  ‘Look!’ called Jonathan. ‘Low doors�
�I bet that’s so they can cut the heads off any enemies, like the Vikings. A fireplace in the middle…but no chimney.’

  ‘Which is why they smell of smoke,’ said Isaac. ‘Look at the carving up there!’

  ‘They do it all with stone chisels,’ said Jonathan. ‘Think what they could do with metal! Hey, look in here!’

  Isaac looked. ‘Erk!’

  Jonathan laughed. ‘That must be what Mr Banks meant by the “privy house”. He was very impressed! Do you think the whole village uses it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Isaac glanced up at the sun. It was descending the sky again, almost down to the tree tops. He sighed. The spring days were just too short for exploring.

  ‘I’d better get back,’ he said regretfully.

  ‘Yes. Your girlfriend will be waiting. Pity she’s got a beard.’ Jonathan said. Isaac punched his arm. They ran down the hill laughing together.

  The Goat was waiting for him. It was past her regular milking time, and she was annoyed. But, to apologise, he’d brought her back some new leaves to try. She accepted them graciously, munching happily as Isaac milked, then stuck her face into the dish of pease.

  The Endeavour stayed at Tolaga Bay for a week, as the crew laboured to stow twelve tons of water, all carted in barrels in the ship’s boat, and three boatloads of wood for cooking, and the sheaves of grass that Isaac had cut.

  There were fish to catch as well, and giant crayfish—one weighed eleven pounds! The crew gathered wild celery and scurvy grass, for Cookie Thompson to add to their morning oatmeal. The wild greens were slightly bitter, but no more bitter than the oatmeal was by then, with the weevils adding their distinctive flavour to the porridge.

  The Goat got scurvy grass as well. She took a few leaves from Isaacs fingers and chewed the new food thoughtfully, then bleated her approval ‘Eeegh!’ Then she butted the edge of the pen to show she wanted some more, ‘eeegh!’