Bitter Eden

by Salvato, Sharon Anne

  cenous, calloused, and understanding women, who knew what it was to live as they did, and who had the bloody courage to say "Be damnedl" to the guards. They thrust their gin bottles into the guards' faces, lifted their dirty petticoats in obscene defiance, laughed their bawdy laughter, sang their bawdy songs.

  During the first days aboard the hulks, Peter had been horrified by these women and their men, and more than a little afraid of their raw, unfettered vi-ciousness. He had never seen people like this, not so many and not so close at hand. He had heard of them. He knew, as all gentlemen knew, that the streets of London were not safe because of people like these; but now, living among them, seeing them both in prison and clustered in groups along the way to the stone barges, it was different. He thought, rather bewildered, of the people in Kent he had tried to help. Were they like these people? Had he been among them, spoken to them of justice, freedom, hope, and not known their true nature? No, he knew the Kent workers had not been as were these Londoners. They had not, for all their poverty, been crowded like so many dead herrings into tenements not suited to hold half their number. They had not been raised in the atmosphere and the expectancy of crime that these men and women had been. Poverty and injustice and hate had fallen unexpectedly on the rich Kent countryside, the fault of innumerable unforeseen events. These city people had had violence and cruelty bred into their bones. It was like a permanent barrier they no longer had the stature to see over or beyond.

  With some admiration Peter thought of Ian Dawson, who had had the fortitude and the audacity to challenge the morass of poverty that afflicted these people. It was almost incomprehensible to Peter that a

  man would dare to try to undo what centuries had done. Yet Ian had. Callie had told him often of her father and the kind of man he was. Peter wished he had known Ian, for he had possessed a strength that Peter knew he didn't possess. It was a strength that Peter couldn't even understand, and he staggered beneath the weight of his need for it. He was afraid, and faced a lightless future with a trembling soul and a heart that knew hope only by the scrap of colored cloth a young girl had given him.

  Peter was held on the convict hulks for twenty-one days. Most of the time he stayed with the prisoners who were more like himself, men of some education, men able to talk of principles and philosophies. But the talk of such things served only to emphasize the callous injustice of the convicts' treatment. And while he said nothing aloud, inside of Peter welled up the cry, "I don't belong here! I'm innocentl I did nothing!" making him feel reckless and hopeless and driven. Then Peter would listen to the other convicts, hearing their constant chatter, allowing their chronicles of age-old injustice to become a part of the bitterness he felt.

  After twenty-one days aboard the Justitia Peter came to look upon the men who guarded him as a different breed, separate from him, his enemy. It seemed ridiculous and humiliating to him that he had once been naive enough to believe the guards and officers would accept him, even like him for who he was. He had been a friendly man, a man willing to work, and if he hadn't willingly resigned himself to the necessity of serving a term for a crime he hadn't committed, he was at least resigned to the fact that he couldn't change it.

  He had quickly learned that none of this made the slightest impression on the guards. Innocence or guilt

  meant nothing to them. The quality of one prisoner or another meant even less. They had a mass of resentful humanity to control, and control it they did. With few exceptions the soldiers and guards detailed to the hulks were as miserable and of as beggarly a disposition as were the convicts. Most of them were men unfit for finer duty, sentenced much as the convicts were to a wretched life, blighted by the pestilence of hopelessness and frustration. Their pride and sense of accomplishment came not from their position, but from the degree of difference they could create between their wretched lot and the far greater misery they inflicted on the prisoners. They were men only because the humans they guarded were reduced to depraved beasts.

  From the beginning the credo of degradation was forced on Peter by the guards and the soldiers and the people in the streets. He was a convict and convicts were to be despised. Mentally he chafed at this. He thought about it and dredged up all the history he knew, thought of Plato and Aristotle and Socrates and knew that the bitter, godless hate that was thrust on him was wrong.

  But reason has no voice to penetrate the deaf ear of despair. From the outset, had he but seen it, Peter had had to choose to live in the solitary isolation of his own memory, or join with the other prisoners as enemies of society. He joined with the others, hesitantly at first, then with greater relish as they made life more difficult for the guards, stealing biscuits, rations, handkerchiefs, taking gin from the women, any smal] infraction possible. Playing the clown, falling and holding up a chain gang, often worked well to annoy, providing the warder wasn't one too free with the use of his whip or stick.

  These were the childish ways of tormenting the tor-

  mentors that made no sense, yet somehow eased the despair by giving the illusion of protest. Peter learned them all and allowed himself to be dragged down into the confused morass of tortured humanity who danced devillike around him, their mouths stretched taut in smiles revealing their rotting teeth, their faces pocked with disease, their minds bent and twisted by a life of degradation. His one hold on life as it had been was the scarf that Callie had given him and the memories he conjured into visions during the night, when the demon world was asleep and unable to plague him.

  On September 3, 1832, one week before Callie and Stephen were due to sail for America, Peter Berean was taken in chains aboard the George III, the transport ship that would carry the convicts to Van Die-men's Land, or Tasmania as it was sometimes called.

  The sun lighted the September sky as the ship moved slowly down the Thames, but there was no accompanying lightening of Peter's spirit. Only months before he had believed, as did most Englishmen, that transportation was an easy sentence. All Englishmen knew of the horrors of Newgate, Fleet Street Prison, and others, and no one who had been to London could doubt the wretchedness of life aboard the hulks; but of transportation little was known.

  Convicts were sent to new unsettled lands. Once it had been America, until England had lost this fertile dumping ground, and then it was Australia, and now it was Van Diemen's Land. To most it seemed a fair chance for a man to redeem himself by helping to settle an unsettled land, an opportunity to extend the might and glory of England. The worst aspect of transportation appeared to be that of exile, the terrible pain of being deprived of life in Mother England, the fairest land on earth. Now, boarding the George III 9 Peter no longer knew.

  He was embarking on a voyage into the unknown aboard a ship the convicts had told him was called a "floating hell." His name was already in the logbook as a known troublemaker from the hulks. Whatever inconvenience he had caused his captors, he was certain they would repay him tenfold. He found it hard to see hope in anything that might come from Van Diemen's Land, for Peter now knew the quality of all imprisonment depended on those who administered it. Each step of his confinement had been an experience worse than the one preceding it. He no longer knew what the word lenient meant, though he heard it often enough when he was given rations of brackish water and hard bread instead of lashes. To him this life was a descent into the Pit, a consummation of spirit whose pain grew greater and more unbearable with every agonized kindness. He never dreamed that kindness could be a cruelty, but now he knew better. It hurt far more than the lashes when its touch meant only the memory of what had been and would never again be.

  Many times he would look at Callie's scarf, hating it as though it had been his betrayer. At least once each day he'd want to tear the scarf to shreds, drop it over the side of the ship, and watch it sink far below the water, drowning it, and with it his aching hope. But he never could.

  For all its betrayal, with each succeeding day the scarf remained a symbol of promise for the next. He couldn't stop the cr
aving he had for one more bright, free day. He kept Callie's scarf, hating it by day and putting his faith in the strength it symbolized by night.

  The George HI carried one hundred and eighty men and boys to transportation in Van Diemens Land this voyage. The boys from eight years upward in age would

  be taken to Point Puer if they survived the trip. The men would be landed at Hobart Town to be sent from there to a variety of penal colonies on the island, depending on the seriousness of their crime and whether they were classified as good-conduct men or incorrigi-bles.

  The George III, specially rigged for her human cargo, still bore the rank, acrid odors of the convicts who had gone before. The first special structure that Peter saw when he boarded was a cattle pen. It was a strong wooden barricade at the foot of the foremast and at the quarterdeck, extending from bulwark to bulwark.

  Though that first morning he had not even liked looking at the cattle pen, Peter shortly learned to look upon it as an El Dorado, a place of golden, blessed light. For two hours a day the prisoners, under armed guard, were led to the exercise pen. Two hours in which to see the sky, in which to breathe. Two hours in which to relieve themselves of the claustrophobic oppression of the prisoners quarters.

  Even the most hardened felons dreaded *the return to the prisoners' quarters. No man likes facing death, and it was death the prisoners faced 'tween decks. The barricade walls of the cattle pen extended down the main hatchway forming the side walls of the ship's prison on the 'tween decks.

  The convicts were prodded along the passageway down into the room where they lived for twenty-two hours every day. Each man was counted and identi- J fied as he entered the prison. The men bumped into I each other, tempers flared, curses muttered by some were shouted by others. The stench of urine, refuse, ji and disease was imbedded in the walls, thick in the | poor air. Peter's stomach rolled; hot bile burning in'l his throat threatened to spill from his mouth. His head \

  reeled as he tried to hold his breath and adjust to the pitch of the ship and the overpowering odors. That first day he had looked dazedly over the shoulders of the other convicts, pushing at one another as they moved to their bunks.

  The prison was a fifty-foot cage. In it were pressed one hundred and eighty men and boys. Peter and some of the other men were stooped, their necks bent as the height of the cage was only five feet ten inches, four inches too low to accommodate Peter's height. The only ventilation came through the loop holes, and where the planks of oak didn't fit tightly. Otherwise it was little better than being sealed in a communal coffin. What light there was came from two candle stubs hanging from the roof. The candles smoked and gut-- tered, barely able to remain lit in the airless hole. Some of the younger children whimpered and cried. Men swore and fought each other as panic joined the medley of convict emotions. Twenty-two hours a day trapped and guarded in this airless pen was more than most could comprehend. Hunger seemed nothing, thirst but a minor discomfort; it was air they wanted, air to fill lungs that barely moved, air to cleanse the room of the damp moistness of the coughing sick.

  Peter climbed into his bunk and lay on his side, his head and feet hanging over the edge. His face was but inches away from the man in front of him, and he could feel the hot, panting breath of the man in the bunk behind him. The prison berths were five feet three inches long, and the space allotted to each man was sixteen inches. Six men were assigned to each berth to sleep in triple-tiered bunks. Peter and his bunkmates lay on the hard surfaces as long as they could; then as one they moved to take their turn pacing about the narrow confines of the room. As they got up from their bunks other men were asked, then

  threatened into their bunks. It was the only way to make enough space on the open floor for any of them to move around.

  As Peter, hunched over, walked back and forth along the space between the bunks, he looked at the miserable, crowded prison. In the walls were ports, tightly shut now, but easily opened from the outside should there be a riot or mutiny among the prisoners. From that vantage the guards could have an excellent record of marksmanship. A gun fired into this crowded room could hardly miss. Irritated, he doubled his fist and slammed it into one of the ports. Almost immediately it was opened to show the face of a smooth-cheeked sentinel. Peter laughed bitterly, making an obscene gesture with his finger; then he walked on, hunching down the row of bunks. Some of the convicts played cards with a deck that better resembled a collection of limp rags. With sly glintings in their eyes, the men gambled away what small possessions they had. One had a small wad of tobacco, another had a few shillings, one wagered his shirt— "almost new," he said, "brought by my ma at the parting." One man clutched a bottle of gin, which he was sharing with no one. And though there were other men in tremors and desperate enough to risk nearly anything for a sip of gin, he was left alone for he was under the protection of the seaman who had given it to him. Peter shot a look of revulsion at the man, who for services rendered to his seaman would enjoy a far better voyage than would the rest of them.

  Soon another man scrambled over the body of his mate to reach the prison floor. He tapped Peter on the shoulder, asking with his eyes for Peter to return to his hard bunk. Peter didn't move; then from the sides of the room several men began to get up, each pushing at the others. The floor would be- held by the

  meanest, the strongest, the men most willing to fight. Peter glanced at the group who had emerged from their foul bunks together. Their faces were lit with vicious smiles. In less than a minute the first convict fight would occur aboard the George III.

  As the sixteen-thousand-mile voyage continued, tempers grew shorter, nerves were constantly on edge, fights common, and lethargy more frequent. Men lay for hours, their heads hanging out of the narrow, short bunks, staring at nothing. Eyes glazed, skin pasty-white and sickly, faces expressionless, they thought of the great nothingness surrounding them.

  Men maliciously began to think of the inevitable. Seasickness. Fever. Scurvy. Death. A bunk with one less man in it. Clothes the dead man wouldn't need. Food the dead man wouldn't eat—if his body could be kept hidden for a time.

  The two-hour exercise period in the cattle pen became something Peter lived for. For that short time he could forget where he was, and see in the clouds above the configurations that he could turn into the sights of days he could remember in Kent when he was very young and burning to see the world. In the subtle fusion of sea and sky there was a doorway to the good things that had touched his life: Callie and her clear-eyed belief in him that never seemed to falter; Stephen, whom he had teased about his seriousness, and who had stayed with him each step of the way making their victories all the greater and their defeats small.

  He stayed to himself in the cattle pen, resenting any intrusion on his reverie. It was the single bright moment in his day, and perhaps the time he inflicted the worst of mental tortures on himself. By contrast to his memories, the guards' treatment was all the more hateful. His memories opened him time and again to

  reach out for personal communication and understanding. Each time it was forced on him by the guards that he was despicable, unworthy of being considered a man as decent men were. It was not long before he too questioned the worth of himself. To think of touching Callie as an outcast, as the brute he was fast becoming, depraved and deserving of loathing, was hard. He soon became unable to think of himself with her without feeling ashamed. He saw himself clearly as a man reeking with his own filth, unwashed, smelling of his own dried sweat, condemned, unwanted, and he saw Callie with her creamy white skin, her cheeks touched by healthy rose, her skin clean and smelling of sunshine and herbs. It had become nearly impossible for him to see himself as he had once been; always the vision of the convict, the despised, filthy convict, intruded and made his fantasies revolting, humiliating nightmares.

  Self-degradation was only one of the mental tolls each convict would pay in his own time. Physically, the worst toll of the ship would be taken by men contracting both typhus and typhoid due to u
nhealthy conditions, bad water, and little food. The best insurance they had of arriving in Van Diemen's Land alive was the one-half guinea the ship's surgeon was paid for every man delivered alive at Hobart Town.

  Peter seldom gave thought to Van Diemens Land. He heard the other convicts talking and speculating about their destination. Some optimistically told tales of men they had known who had been transported to Australia in earlier years. It didn't sound so bad, and Sydney was a thriving settlement now. Perhaps the same could be hoped for Van Diemens Land. To Peter it seemed something beyond his reckoning. He couldn't think of a new, unsettled land without his imagination soaring and his mind groping for ways to clear and

  plant the soil. And yet he could see none of this as remotely possible while standing in the cattle pen, no better than a prize steer exhibited for the curious civilian passengers carried aboard the George III.

  From the corner of his eye, Peter often watched the passengers as they sat comfortably on deck shaded from^the hot sun by a canvas raised for their benefit. Occasionally, attended by the amused smiles of his fellows, one of the passengers would make his way to the cattle pen, laced kerchief daintily held to his prim nose, to make conversation with one of the convicts. It provided entertainment for the spoiled, bored Englishmen on their way to settle in Van Diemen's Land. Oftentimes the man bold enough to talk to the convict beasts was considered daring and brave by the prettily gowned and perfumed ladies in the party.

  Peter stayed as far from their reach as he was able. Men who would once have taken their hats off to him and been flattered had he spoken to them waited now in affected impatient boredom as he touched his forelock in deference to them. Peter couldn't count the number of times he had felt the quick surge of anger make his face red with blood before humiliation swept it away as he tugged his forelock, his eyes sliding away shamefully from the well-dressed tormentor. How often he had wanted to smash his fist into those supercilious faces, only to glance aside and see the sentry with his ever present gun butt there, poised and ready to see that the convicts gave signs of respect to free citizens with alacrity and humility. The voyage had barely begun before Peter was deemed hostile and sullen to his betters.