The Animal Stars Collection

by Jackie French

  ‘Very wholesome stuff, and a good antiscorbutic,’ said the captain, as Isaac pushed a large bunch of the tender grass into the Goat’s enclosure. He added, ‘I have no doubt it is good for goats too.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ said Isaac, flushing at the unaccustomed attention.

  Cook smiled. ‘You’re a good lad, Manley,’ he said, and Isaac flushed even more.

  CHAPTER 25

  Isaac

  October 1769–April 1770

  The Endeavour continued on her way, with Cook mapping the coastline as they went.

  There were troubles, too, like when Mr Gore shot a man who took a piece of cloth without giving anything in exchange. Cook was worried that the locals might take revenge, but they held their own inquest, and decided that the man was guilty and had deserved the killing. And in the sweep of mountains, sea and sunlight the captain called the Bay of Islands, perhaps six hundred chanting warriors tried to steal the ship’s boats, till Mr Hicks fired the ship’s cannon over their heads.

  Mapping an uncharted land wasn’t easy—sailing so close to shore meant a far greater risk of being wrecked on the rocks, running aground on sandbars or being trapped on a lee shore. More than once the ship was caught in a savage current and almost dashed against the shore. And when the sailors on watch thought a big rock was a whale the Endeavour crashed against it, with a horrid wrench of timbers. But a wave lifted them up and away before too much damage was done.

  Mostly it was a fascinating time—a chance for all the officers to try their hand at mapping, and for a boy like Isaac to learn from Cook, the man who was probably the world’s greatest chartsman. And always there were the fascinating people, and the strange and glorious land on shore.

  It was a green and fertile land, mostly, with villages and high wooden forts with wooden palisades and cultivated fields with rows of taro, yams and sweet potato mounds. Mr Banks declared the locals to be better farmers even than the English: the highest praise that he could give. The people dressed in skirts and jackets of flax cloth, sometimes decorated with dog fur or bright feathers, or skirts of sweet-smelling leaves.

  Down at the sound Cook named after Queen Charlotte, there was a fortified village to see too, with singing and the music of wooden flutes and shell trumpets and wild ferocious dancing from three native boys.

  The people wouldn’t trade their green stone earrings. One officer traded a piece of cloth for time with one of the girls—and then discovered she was a boy, the whole village laughing at the trick. The beautiful big local women, it seemed, weren’t attracted to the puny foreigners.

  But Cook could never be sure when canoes approached whether the people had come to trade or fight. And to the men’s horror it seemed the people of this gentle-seeming land were cannibals, as well as warriors: Cook had found a human arm picked clean of flesh. Soon many of the crew had exchanged beads and cloth for human bones, to take home to astonish their families.

  But the trade was necessary, despite the dangers, as the Endeavour was becoming increasingly short of food. None of the food they’d taken on board the ship at Tahiti had lasted more than a couple of months.

  The people here bartered fish for cloth—especially the Tahitian tapa cloth—or nails. Sometimes they sold the ship bracken-root flour or sweet potatoes, and even rats and dogs that they raised for meat. At other times there were lobsters or mussels or conger eels. The crew fished as usual—though often without success—and hunted shellfish.

  The fresh food kept them healthy, and made a welcome change to the diet of old biscuits and even older salt meat. But although Cook ordered that as much wild celery and scurvy grass as possible be dried, and they salted down several barrels of fish and dog, there was nothing else that added to the Endeavour’s supply of dried foods.

  The Endeavour had circled New Zealand now, proving that it was two islands and not the tip of the Great South Land, as Banks had believed. The ship had only enough stores for six months’ more sailing—and that only if each man was given two thirds of the normal ration.

  It would keep them alive—just—till they could reach the Cape of Good Hope and take on more provisions. But if anything delayed them the crew would starve.

  ‘I were on a ship like this, ah, fifteen year ago it must be,’ said Cookie Thompson, stirring the pot with the ladle in his remaining hand, as Isaac carried in the buckets of fresh water for him to soak the salt meat for tomorrow’s dinner. ‘Starving, we were, and the cap’n didn’t care. Cap’ns ‘ave their own supplies. Officers too. Don’t care most times what ‘appens to the likes of us. Thin as a rail with the wood carved off, we were. Afraid to cough in case another tooth fell out. Lost more’n ‘alf the crew on the way home. Almost too few to sail ‘er into ‘arbour.’

  ‘Do you think that could happen to us?’ asked Isaac.

  Cookie shook his head. ‘Nah. We’ll be safe matey. Never known a cap’n to care for ‘is crew like this one. Sticks ‘is nose even into my kitchen, ‘e does. “You soaking the meat properly?” ’e asks. “You been using that soup o’ mine?” “Yes, cap’n, o’ course I ‘ave,” I tell ‘im. ‘E’s a good man, the cap’n, for all ‘e’s not a gentleman like your Mr Banks. Nay, we won’t starve with ‘im.’

  But what would happen to the ship next? Where were they going after New Zealand? Back to England? Which way would they go?

  It wasn’t the sort of thing anyone could ask the captain. Captains made decisions, then told the crew. All the crew could do was wait till they were told.

  How does a captain make a decision like that? wondered Isaac. A decision that might mean life or death for so many men?

  Then one night he found out.

  It was late. He’d been on shore, swinging his scythe through the thick green grass. Tomorrow he’d rake it over, so it dried evenly. He’d ridden back on the last boat from shore, along with a pile of firewood.

  It was almost dark by the time they’d pulled up alongside and he’d clambered up the rope ladder on board. Dinner was over, but Jonathan had saved him some biscuits and a hunk of cheese.

  The cheese was so hard now a knife could hardly cut it, and it stank like sweaty armpits. But Isaac was used to it now. As the old sailors said, worse things happened at sea.

  Isaac took his food up to the deck to munch in the cool of the evening. He wondered if the Goat would like a snack too. He’d filled up on oysters back on shore, and wasn’t really hungry. Besides, the Goat was fond of ship’s biscuit.

  Isaac tapped the biscuit on the deck, to get rid of the weevils that crawled through all the biscuits now. Mr Banks had identified four different sorts of weevils in the Endeavour’s biscuits, as well as maggots. But Mr Banks had the luxury of a small oven—before they were served, his servants heated his biscuits till the weevils ran out.

  Isaac heard voices on the top deck, the soft American tones of Mr Gore and the captain’s lower Yorkshire rumble. As Isaac stood in the shadows, Mr Gore came past and went below.

  Which left only the captain on the quarterdeck. Normally Isaac would have asked permission to tend the Goat. But normally there’d have been more than one officer up there, and not just the captain alone. He hesitated, there in the darkness. Then suddenly he heard the captain’s voice again.

  Who was he speaking to?

  Suddenly Isaac realised.

  James Cook was talking to the Goat.

  ‘Well, lass, what would you advise me, eh?’

  ‘Eeegh?’ said the Goat.

  Cook laughed. Isaac watched as Cook bent over the pen and rubbed the Goat’s furry ears. The Goat pushed her head to the edge of the pen to encourage him. He’d done this before, Isaac realised, talked with the Goat in the darkness and rubbed her ears. They’re friends, he thought, and I never knew it.

  He felt a stab of jealousy. The Goat was his charge! Then he smiled at himself. The whole ship was the captain’s, including the Goat.

  Cook was still speaking, so softly Isaac had to strain to hear.

  ‘She’s been
damaged, you know,’ said Cook, and Isaac realised he was talking about the ship. ‘Those southern gales did for us, and the storms in the past months have been as bad. Broken rigging, and I hate to think what her planking’s like.

  ‘So which way should we go? We could sail south, then east, and back around the Cape the way we came. That’d settle once and for all the question of whether there’s a Great South Land lurking in that empty ocean.’

  ‘Eeegh,’ said the Goat.

  Cook smiled in the darkness. ‘You’re right lass,’ he said. ‘There’ll be too many storms to face that way. The ship won’t make it, lass, and that’s a fact.’

  ‘Eeegh?’ said the Goat.

  ‘Well, then, we could sail south of Van Diemen’s Land. Tasman mapped that route more than a hundred years ago, did you know that, lass? So we’d know what we were going to face, that way. But there’s nothing new to discover either—too many Dutch captains have mapped New Holland’s west already. And it’s a dry, barren land. No good harbours for us to rest in, no fresh water even.’

  Cook picked up a stalk of the Goat’s hay and chewed it thoughtfully.

  ‘Which leaves just one possible way,’ he told the Goat. ‘And that’s to sail west, till we find Van Diemen’s Land, then sail north. Who knows what we’ll find up there?’ He laughed softly. ‘Not much, perhaps. It may be just as barren as the west. But at least the first man to map it will be me. What do you think, lass?’

  The Goat said nothing, just nibbled at Cook’s fingers.

  Cook laughed again. ‘Well, you may be right. There’s no one to say what is the right decision. Maybe that way is safer. Or maybe there’ll be dangers we never thought of. Unknown reefs, treacherous currents, cannibals. Sea monsters…you know, when I was a lad I half believed in those. Mermaids…

  ‘There’s one thing more you know. Mr Banks has a map down there in his cabin, a copy of an old one by the Portuguese captain Torres. It shows a strait between New Holland and the land to the north, a short cut perhaps to Batavia. If the map is right…if that strait exists…well, we’ve got a chance then, Mrs Goat. And maybe you’ll see the green fields of England once again.

  ‘And maybe,’ Cook looked out at the dark sea now, not at the Goat. ‘Just maybe, I won’t be just another captain who failed to find the Great South Land, good for nothing but to map lands that someone else has found. Maybe over there we’ll find…who knows…something that in a hundred years—two hundred—they’ll still remember me for…’

  Cook turned back to the Goat and scratched her ears as Mr Gore climbed back onto the deck and joined him.

  Isaac stayed in the shadows till the two men were talking again, then crept below. He said nothing of what he’d seen or heard.

  And the next day the Endeavour left New Zealand from the cape they named Farewell. Her destination: New Holland, to the west.

  CHAPTER 26

  Isaac

  31st March–28th April, 1770

  They’d surveyed the entire New Zealand coast, more than two and a half thousand miles of unknown waters. It was an incredible achievement. Surveying a country wasn’t as romantic as finding a new land, thought Isaac—new to European sailors, anyway. It wasn’t as exciting as finding the Great South Land with its gold mines and spices. But it was far more difficult.

  Now the Endeavour once again headed into unknown seas, to the uncharted east coast of New Holland.

  The winds blew sweetly and filled the sails. Three weeks later, birds and waves indicated land ahead, even though by Cook’s calculations they were still far to the north and west of Tasman’s landfall.

  Land must be out there somewhere!

  And suddenly the weather turned savage again. Waves crashed about the ship. The rain fell hard and cold.

  Isaac shivered as he clambered up to the lookout, high on top of the main mast. It was his watch now—four hours in the freezing winds, gazing out across the ocean, straining his eyes to see rocks or reefs that might wreck the ship.

  His cheeks burned with the cold, then went numb. The lookout swayed as the ship lurched from wave to wave. Isaac strained to see through the rain and spray that were so thick it was impossible to see far ahead. How near was the land? Any moment the ship might crash onto rocks or reefs—there was no way of knowing what was ahead. It was an incredible responsibility, knowing that if anything bad happened to the ship it would be his fault.

  But it was exhilarating, too. Had anyone in the world ever sailed these seas? Perhaps any moment he’d see an island, or be the first Englishman ever to see the east coast of New Holland.

  Despite the cold and rain and spray, it was far more exciting than sitting down below deck, helping to sew up the sails—a constant job these days, as the hard-pushed Endeavour’s sails and rigging were now badly worn. In fact, Mr Ravenhill, the sailmaker, complained that soon they’d run out of twine altogether and where would the ship be then, with no twine to mend the sails?

  The rain lessened for a moment. Isaac strained to see into the distance. But all he could see was grey sky and greyer sea, and the white caps of the tossing waves.

  He glanced below. There were the sheep, huddled in their pen, and Mr Banks pacing the deck with his musket, bored and hoping for a sea bird to shoot. And there was the Goat. Lieutenant Hicks was on the quarterdeck today. As Isaac watched, the man reached over and gave the Goat’s ears a rub.

  Isaac grinned. He wasn’t the only one who was fond of the Goat. And despite her stroppiness, the Goat seemed fond of them, too. Goats liked company, he supposed, and the men on the quarterdeck were the only friends she had.

  The shrill tones of the boatswain’s whistle reached up even as high as the lookout. Isaac shrugged. No new lands on his watch, then. Maybe next time…

  But Isaac wasn’t to be the first to see New Holland either. At 1:00 a.m. on the 19th of April, 1770, Cook ordered the crew to drop line and see how deep the water was below them—approaching unknown land in the darkness was risky, as there might be shallows and reefs.

  At 5.00 a.m. he ordered the topsail reefed, so that the ship travelled more slowly and cautiously. Then, at first light Lieutenant Zachary Hicks, the Endeavour’s second in command, was the first to see land—a headland that Cook named Point Hicks.

  It was about five or six leagues away, and below the water there was a fine sandy bottom, with no rocks or reefs. There was no sign of land to the south of them, though according to Tasman’s calculations land should have been in sight, so Cook was unable to tell which of the possibilities was true—whether Van Diemen’s Land joined the land he now saw; or if there were two islands; or two continents; or one continent and one island.

  Isaac stared out at the new land. He’d expected brown hills and desert. William Dampier had written about the west coast of New Holland in a book Isaac had read, years ago now, at home in Exeter. Dampier had said it was one of the most miserable places on earth! But this was a green and hilly land, covered in trees. The beaches were rimmed with pale gold sand, though they were too far away to see the surf.

  ‘Look,’ said Jonathan, coming up beside him. ‘Smoke! There are people there.’

  ‘Dampier said they were savages,’ said Isaac. ‘Have you read his book?’

  Jonathan nodded. ‘Of course. It made me want to come and see.’ The two boys grinned at each other. Their dreams at home seemed a long way from the reality of today.

  But reality, thought Isaac, as he stared out at the new land, is even more exciting.

  ‘Eeegh,’ said the Goat, up on the quarterdeck. She could smell grass and fresh water, and she wanted them now!

  But there was nowhere to bring the ship closer to shore. The Endeavour needed a safe harbour, somewhere she could be sheltered from the fierce south wind, somewhere the ship’s boats didn’t have to cope with the pounding surf. Her crew was as eager for fresh water as the Goat, and fresh meat and space to stretch. It was tormenting, knowing that all they wished for was so close. But there was no way they could reach it
.

  Day after the day the ship sailed up the coast. Where were the rivers and bays of New Zealand? Day after day the surf was too high or the winds too strong to allow them to land.

  On Friday, the 20th of April they passed what Cook named Cape Howe, then on Saturday they saw and named Mount Dromedary, named for its camel-like hump, and in the evening Bateman’s Bay, after Mr Bateman. It was the first possible landing place they had seen, but a savage southerly wind kept them from shore.

  And day by day the stores of fresh water dropped lower, and lower still. Hungry and thirsty, the crew of the Endeavour sailed on.

  CHAPTER 27

  The Goat

  29th April, 1770

  The Goat shifted uneasily in her pen. The sheep on the lower deck had been bleating all night. They too could smell the land, the grass, the fresh water. Why weren’t the humans doing something about it?

  The Goat was still given her full food and water rations. A goat in milk needs good water and feed to keep producing. But the crying of the thirsty sheep made her uneasy.

  She wanted fresh grass too. The grass the Boy had dried in New Zealand was musty now; there was just nowhere on board the ship to keep it dry. The Goat hated musty hay.

  A diet of hay and dried pease was boring, too. Land meant fresh leaves and branches, new foods to try.

  ‘Eeegh,’ she yelled at the captain.

  Cook smiled at her, and scratched her ears, then dodged out of the way when she tried to nip him. Still he didn’t order the ship to head to the shore.

  Finally, to the Goat’s relief, on the 29th of April, the ship headed into a bay. It was shallow, and there was no big river for fresh water. But at least it would shelter them from the strong southerly winds. The Goat stared at the low hills and sandy beaches.