The Exile Breed

by Charles Egan

  Most of the time the sun shone from the right. Luke could see the ship was sailing east. He was holystoning the deck one afternoon when Tyler appeared beside him with a sailor.

  ‘We’re taking you off the scrubbing, Luke,’ Tyler said. ‘Mr. Starkey reckons you have too many other tasks. Pumping, slopping out and the funerals should be enough for any man.’

  Luke stood up, and handed the holystone block to the sailor, with a smile.

  ‘We're heading back the other way,’ he said to Tyler. ‘Are ye taking us back to Liverpool?’

  ‘Will you stop worrying, you fool. It's just the shape of Labrador. We have to head this way to get around it, that’s all.’

  ‘Fine so,’ said Luke.

  ‘So forget about all that, there’s more important things for you to consider. Have you thought any further about working the forests?’

  Luke leant on the railing. Small pieces of ice passed the ship.

  ‘I have,’ he said. ‘I can’t see any better way of getting to New York, except through logging. At least I’d earn some money through the winter.’

  Tyler knocked his pipe on the railing. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘There’s good money in the forests. Mind what I say though. The real money is out in the forest, not in the caboose. Felling the lumber, driving the horses.’

  ‘Horses?’

  ‘They use teams of horses for dragging the lumber to the river. Have you worked with horses?’

  ‘I have,’ Luke said, thinking of the teams of horses dragging soil and rock on the railways.

  ‘You’ll make good money so.’

  ‘I hope so,’ said Luke. ‘But I’ve little enough hard facts to be thinking about. What would you say I should do to start?’

  ‘What I’d say is this. The moment you get off this wreck, head straight for Gilmours. They’re one of the big saw-mills. They send more lumber from Quebec than any of them. Shipbuilders too. Most of the ships running to Liverpool were built by Gilmours, this is one of them. Tough bastards, they are. They’ll work you hard, but you’ll make good money. And there’s no complaining about that.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ Luke agreed.

  ‘I worked with Gilmours years back, but things might have changed since then. They’re logging the timberlands at a hell of a rate now, and they’ve a great need for men, both as millhands and loggers. Last time I was in Quebec, they were still working the Gatineau hard.’

  ‘The Gatineau?’ Luke echoed.

  ‘It’s a river in Quebec Province. Flows to the Outaouais River, and so to the St. Lawrence. There are big timber lands up there. We’d work there the whole winter, right up to April. So you can do the same. That’s provided nothing goes wrong.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like getting delayed too much on this accursed boat. Even supposing we make the Gulf of St. Lawrence in time, we’ll still have problems. If we have to stop off for quarantine at Grosse Île – and we will – we’ll be running things very tight. Once the river freezes and the snows come, it’ll be damned tough to get up the Gatineau.’

  Another whale breached.

  ‘I’m thinking of all you say,’ Luke said, ‘and it seems a good plan. There’s one other question though. What of Conaire?’

  ‘Your friend?’

  ‘Well – yes.’

  ‘I don’t know, Luke. Gilmours are a damned rough lot. I doubt he’d have the strength for it.’

  A few days later, they came to the end of Labrador, but as Tyler had said, they did not take the Labrador Strait.

  ‘Too dangerous,’ Luke said to Conaire. ‘And that means another week to run around Newfoundland Island.’

  ‘We’re going to run out of food so. None of us have enough, and even the sea biscuits will run out.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said Luke.

  Next day, they were outside again.

  Four more bodies were lying on the deck beside them – two women, one man and a child. All had bloated faces, bloated feet and black and purple sores. Their families stripped the clothes from the corpses.

  Again and again, the priest gave the blessing.

  ‘Per istam sanctam Unctionem…’

  Conaire and Luke threw the bodies over the rail. The bodies were weighted, so as not to float. They were too close to land to risk the bodies drifting onshore. Luke was afraid of getting fever, but he had no choice.

  He cut back on his rations again, wondering how much weight he had lost on this voyage already. Whatever he had lost though, Conaire had lost more, and it concerned him.

  He saw too the effects of starvation around him. At first this had been limited, and he had been more concerned about fever. But now, more and more, he saw the children with the facial hair. The faces of foxes. The faces of hunger.

  For some days, the ship was caught in a thick fog. From time to time, Luke could hear the distant sound of bells from fishing trawlers on the Newfoundland Banks. Then the fog disappeared, and it began to rain. That night was dark, and he was concerned that the ship was still sailing fast, but Tyler assured him that Starkey was navigating on dead reckoning. Luke was worried that Starkey might not have the ability to do this, and he was relieved when the ship hove to at St. John’s in Newfoundland. Many passengers lined the deck, though fewer than before.

  The waterfront of the city was a wasteland of burnt out houses.

  ‘I’d heard about this,’ Tyler told him. ‘Summer of last year. That’s what comes from building in wood, when they’re packed too close together.’

  Eleven ships were riding at anchor.

  ‘Seems busy,’ Luke said. ‘I thought St. John’s was a small place.’

  ‘And so it is. It’ll be a hell of a bigger place when this crowd have all off-loaded. Most’ll go into quarantine on the island. Those that don’t will be held on the ships. Most of them die there anyhow.’

  The passengers on the Centaurus were being herded back down.

  It was only as the ship was moving again that they discovered that barrels of fresh ship biscuit had been taken aboard. Luke bought ten pounds weight of biscuit, using it together with his own food so as to spin out his provisions. Conaire had no money though, so Luke had to share. He noticed many of the other passengers had no money either.

  ‘No maggots this time,’ he observed. ‘For us with the money. But the rest…?’

  ‘Back to starvation for them,’ Conaire said.

  ‘Aye,’ Luke said. ‘Just like Mayo.’

  They sailed into the Gulf of St. Lawrence, entering through the Cabot Strait. St. Paul Island passed to the south, with the coast of Nova Scotia beyond. Then the Magdalen Islands were visible in the distance.

  Luke never tired of watching the changing scenery. In some ways it calmed him, so that for some time at least he could forget the brutal horror of the Centaurus, and the uncertainty of his future.

  The decision had now been made that, since they were in the Gulf, there would be no further sea burials at all, and all new corpses were bundled in a rick near the bow. Now the outer deck held its own horrors, day and night. Still, Luke spent much of his free time at the rail. One morning, he saw the body of the priest had been added to the pile of the dead.

  The ship was becalmed for a day, before sailing up between Anticosti Island and the Gaspé Peninsula. From time to time, the high lands in the south were covered by dense clouds of mist, always in motion, sometimes brilliant white, sometimes red. Then the mist would clear, revealing wooded mountains and bays, and, on one occasion, there were walrus in the water. Not that he knew the name of the animals, but their unfamiliar tusks fascinated him.

  One night he stayed out late after most of the others had gone back down. He had been watching the shore to the south of the ship. He went to walk to the starboard rail. He stopped, and stood dead still.

  High over the northern horizon, the sky was swirling with yellow and green.

  It brought back memories of the first time he had seen the aurora. 1839, just after the Big Wind and before l
ittle Alicia’s death.

  Fever then. Fever now.

  Next day.

  ‘So what do you think of this business of having to speak English?’ Conaire asked.

  ‘You have to do it, that’s all about it.’

  ‘But how?’

  ‘Not by staying with only Irish speakers, that’s for sure. They’re the ones that get mistreated. An Irish ganger gets hold of them, and they do what they’re told, because they can’t understand anything else. They stay together at night too. That’s no way to learn.’

  ‘So how did you learn?’

  ‘First, because my Uncle Murty was a teacher and he taught us. And second, the years working the railways in England. Sure, we had our own ganger, and he was Irish, but we all had to deal with the other fellows on the line, and we even spoke English among ourselves. Martin Farrelly was one of us too, no interest in taking advantage of us. That’s why we’d elected him as ganger. The other fellows don’t have that kind of choice. They don’t elect their gangers, just take who they get.’

  Silence.

  ‘God, but it’s cold,’ Conaire said at length, ‘I’m going back down.’

  ‘You go on,’ Luke replied. ‘I’ll stay here a while.’

  He stood at the railing, not noticing that most of the other passengers had gone back down to the warmth of the passenger decks.

  On one side, the land ran along to a cape with a lighthouse, a small white cottage beside it. Seals too. On the other side, the land was low, with pine along the water’s edge.

  It was clear to Luke that Conaire was afraid of trying to live and work in a land and a language he did not know. He depended on Luke. By rights, Luke knew, he shouldn’t have been concerned about Conaire in any way. Did Conaire even respect him? He himself believed that he was right in what he had done, acting as a ganger on the Relief Works. Conaire had listened to his excuses, but he surely despised gangers, and Luke was not sure how far he accepted his reasoning. But they spoke together, they ate together, the question was – why? Were they both becoming more accepting of each other? Perhaps. And he might need Conaire and Conaire’s contacts when they arrived in New York. But would Conaire have the strength to work in the forests, and survive a Canadian winter?

  He tried counting the number of whales, but gave up. Always some were blowing, while others dived. The woods came down to the shore, trees standing right to the edge of the cliffs. From time to time there were breaks in the forest with small wooden houses.

  Near a cape was a more substantial wooden village. He could see canoes with men fishing. As the ship came abreast he waved, and one man waved back.

  ‘They’re the Innu,’ a voice said from behind him.

  He turned around. Tyler was there, smoking a pipe.

  ‘The Innu?’

  ‘Innu Indians, that’s their settlement. Filthy they are, the scum of the earth. But don’t worry. Soon enough, we’ll be rid of them. Quebec is opening the Indian lands to settlement. Far too good for them, I reckon. The government should hunt them down, shoot them all, that’s what I say.’

  Luke was stunned. Hunt the Indians? Why not hunt the Irish? He thought of the Clanowen evictions at Gort-na-Móna. Yes – hunt us all down. Why not? Why should I think like this? The devil take it.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, ‘they look a lot healthier than we do, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Aye,’ Tyler said, ‘you’re right there, but the Irishman and the Englishman aren’t that far different, and if we weren’t on this ship, there’d be no damned difference at all.’

  An Indian stood up in a canoe, holding a fish and pointing at it. Luke waved again, half expecting the Indian to bring the fish over, but he did not.

  A pod of whales was following the ship.

  ‘See them there,’ Tyler said. ‘They’re Minke.’

  At that precise moment, another whale breached, and crashed back violently.

  ‘And that’s the Blue Whale,’ Tyler said. ‘Giant of the oceans. Biggest living creature. That one could sink a ship, if it tried. Has done, many times.’

  Sharkey called out. Tyler swore silently, knocked the ashes from his pipe, and left.

  The shore was tree-lined on both sides since they had left the village of tents behind. But Luke was still thinking of the Innu, and Tyler’s comments.

  To hell with that – just stop thinking about it. Watch the river.

  The whales still followed the ship.

  A few days later, Luke was at the rail when he spotted a schooner in the distance. Behind him there was activity among the sailors at the stern.

  He went down to the passenger deck. Conaire was asleep. He shook his shoulders.

  ‘Come on, there’s a boat outside.’

  ‘Just like a ganger, always giving orders, eh?’

  ‘Arra what. Come on up, and no more of that.’

  Conaire followed him, and they both leant on the rail, watching the schooner.

  ‘Still hate me?’ Luke asked.

  ‘Getting less. Anyhow, it was our own people are to blame for the hunger.’

  ‘The landlords?’

  ‘I wouldn’t blame them the most, bad enough as they all were. No, it’s our own people, they’re the ones to blame. They’re the guilty ones. You, me, our own families, and all the rest of them. Never had the guts to stand up and take them on.’

  ‘But…what could they do?’ asked Luke, surprised.

  ‘What could they do? Everything. Stop working for them. Stop paying the rent…’

  ‘But they’d only have the police on them, or the army.’

  ‘We could fight them.’

  ‘Fight them!’ Luke exclaimed. ‘The army!’

  ‘Yes, the army. And the landlords, their agents, the police and anyone else who as much as spoke to them. Kill them. The priests too, God damn them.’

  Luke was staring at Conaire, unsure if he could believe what he was hearing.

  ‘Kill them?’

  ‘Yes, kill them. All of them.’

  ‘And their agents?’

  ‘Their agents, surely, filth that they are. Their servants, and anyone who works for them, just give them one warning. After that, kill them. Everyone goes on and on about who’s to blame for the evictions. The truth is simple. We are. We’re the guilty ones. We let them ride all over us, and do nothing to stop it.’

  ‘But people are starving. Dying.’

  ‘All the more reason. All them down below – men, women and children – they brought it upon themselves.’

  Luke was thoroughly stunned. He tried to think what to say, but then decided to stay silent.

  ‘Have I shocked you?’ Conaire asked.

  ‘A lot more than you might think. You’re a strange man, that’s for sure.’

  ‘You can hardly talk, and you a ganger man.’

  There was a loud rattling from the stern. The ship had dropped anchor. The schooner came alongside. A man scrambled on board from the schooner, which then departed. Tyler had come out to meet the man. They spoke for some time, and then the man went into the bridge, where Starkey was waiting.

  ‘I wonder who the devil he is,’ Conaire asked.

  ‘Some fellow trying to get up to Quebec? Though I’d guess there are quicker ways than that.’

  ‘He’d know,’ Conaire said, pointing to where Tyler was supervising the sailors working the capstan, weighing anchor again. Luke went across, and waited ’till they finished.

  ‘Who’s that fellow there, we just took on board, Mr. Tyler?’

  ‘Oh, him. That’s the pilot. Wouldn’t you have known? You need the local fellows to show the way up river. Otherwise we’d be aground soon enough.’

  ‘I see,’ said Luke. ‘Help us on our way, like?’

  ‘That’s it,’ Tyler said. ‘But he’s bringing bad news from ahead. The quarantine is getting tighter, and the island’s a living hell.’

  Luke did not have to ask about that. He knew exactly what ‘quarantine’ meant from his time in the moun
tains of Mayo during the fever epidemic. But how would they be quarantined here? Forced into cottages with fevered patients? To get this far across the ocean, and die at the end of it. No.

  ‘So what happens now?’ he asked.

  ‘We wait ’till we get to Grosse Île, then we anchor, hoist the ensign and wait for the quarantine officer.’

  Tyler walked back to the bridge. Luke watched him go, thinking of what he had said about the killing of the Innu. He thought too of Conaire’s ideas about killing off the landlords, and holding the starving guilty for their own starvation. It struck him now that Tyler and Conaire were far stranger than he had thought. More brutal too.

  Conaire was there.

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Seems like we’re going to be a good while at Grosse Île,’ Luke said.

  ‘Yes. I’d guessed that.’

  ‘And longer again in Quebec, I’d say. Then I’m heading out the forests, and God knows how long it will take to get down to New York.’

  ‘So you will go to the forests? You’ve decided?’

  ‘I have,’ Luke said. He hesitated. ‘Do you want to come?’

  ‘For sure. And then we can both head to New York in the spring.’

  ‘We can,’ Luke said.

  ‘And you get out to your friends on the railways?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s far enough.’

  ‘Damn it to hell, don’t remind me.’

  ‘Is it so good, this railway work?’

  ‘I hope so. From all I hear, they’re paying well.’

  ‘Better than England?’

  ‘So I believe, though if I’d stayed on longer in England, I’d be making more money than on any railways, American or otherwise, that’s for sure.’

  ‘How’s that?’

  ‘Better chances’ Luke said. ‘When I was working in England, I was with my cousin. Worked with him for six years, and he seemed like all the rest of us. But he always had this thing about being a contractor, working for himself, employing men and making money out of them. So that’s what he did. Left us and set up contracting. Good at it too, he is, and one of the toughest rats in creation, but I couldn’t work with a man like that.’