The Potato Factory

Chapter Twenty-six

Ikey saw very little of Hobart Town upon his arrival back in Van Diemen's Land. He was taken directly to Richmond Gaol, some twenty miles out of town, where convicts were put to work upgrading the road to Cole-brook. A huge penal settlement was being built to house the influx of convicts now that New South Wales was becoming a popular destination for free settlers from England.

'G'warn, get yer backs into it, yer miserable bastards!' Harris, the overseer of the road gang, liked to shout. 'Governor Arthur 'imself told me 'e needs a new place o' misery to 'ang ya and flog yer useless 'ides!'

In fact, Richmond Gaol served as much to hold the convicts building a road to Arthur's private property, Carrington, as for any other purpose. Governor Arthur abolished land grants to emancipists first, and then altogether, but had nonetheless awarded himself a great acreage, without the payment he demanded from everyone else. He then directed the ceaseless labour of convicts to be lavished upon it, equipping Carrington with a fine stone residence and outer building, fences and roads, all of which were the envy of the wealthiest free settler and worthy of any country estate in England. It was upon Arthur's own road near Richmond that Ikey found himself harnessed to a cart.

Much has been made of the Van Diemen's Land convict being made to pull the plough though, in truth, it was more as a cart horse than as an ox that he was customarily employed. The cart was as integral a part of the road gang as the pick-axe, shovel and wheelbarrow, and much the most onerous of the tasks allotted to a convict.

These carts, measuring six feet in length, two in depth and four and a half in width, were pulled by four men, as it was mistakenly calculated that this amount of human muscle is the equivalent to one well-conditioned cart horse. This might have been so if the men had been in excellent health and were the stature of a giant, six feet or more. But the prisoners were of an average English height, not much more than five feet and three inches and they were malnourished and scrawny. The four team members had leather collars which were attached by ropes and a hook to the cart. Near the extremity of the central harnessing pole were a pair of cross-bars which, when gripped, allowed for two men on either side of the pole to pull the cart. It was mandatory to fill the cart, usually with rocks and dirt, to the point of overflowing, which made it a herculean task to move.

Ikey had at first been given a pick-axe, a tool with which he was entirely unfamiliar. Besides, his confinement in chains on board ship had enfeebled him and his hands were as tender as an infant's. Despite being instructed by the more experienced lags to piss upon each hand to harden the surfaces of his palms, on Ikey's first day of labour his hands soon blistered. On the second day, the skin peeled away from the entire palm and even from between his fingers, and his fingernails were ripped off as a consequence of being made to labour with such a rough and heavy tool. But he was forced to labour for two more days until the handle of the pick was stained with his own blood, and particles of flesh remained upon it whenever he withdrew his hands. The pick itself was too large for even a robust man of his height, and Ikey was reduced to whimpering with each downward strike. Finally, an hour before sundown on the fourth day, he collapsed.

Several kicks of a more than tentative nature, administered by the overseer, Harris, failed to get Ikey to his feet. It was only when he was observed to cough blood that he was placed in a wheelbarrow after the day's work and several convicts, cursing him loudly, were made to take turns wheeling him back to Richmond Gaol.

That night the doctor was called to examine him. He thumped Ikey on the chest, and peeled back his eyes to peer at the jellied orb, whereupon he made him drop his breeches and, weighing his balls in his hand, commanded him to cough. Finally he squeezed Ikey's thigh and calf muscles. Standing up again he declared him fit to work.

'It be nothing but the softness of the voyage. This one will soon enough harden to labour. Put him back to work I say!' He seemed annoyed at being called out after supper for a matter so inconsequential and the superintendent felt compelled to apologise to him, explaining that Ikey was a prisoner of some renown or he would not have disturbed the good doctor.

Ikey groaned and held the lumps of raw flesh up for the surgeon to see. 'What about me hands?' he pleaded.

'Piss and spit soon fix them, my boy!' the doctor said, then turned to the superintendent. 'Tell the overseer to put this prisoner on carts – his legs be well muscled and strong enough by all accounts.'

Though the work on the carts was harder, each team being required to pull ten loads each of a mile every day, it suited Ikey better. Years of walking about the London rookeries at night had made his legs strong, and the strength of a prisoner's legs played the major function in pulling the brutal cart.

To add to the humiliation of the work, Harris thought it high jinks to place beside Ikey at the crossbar a black boy named Billygonequeer, who was captured as a lookout while other members of his Stoney Creek tribe were said to be raiding sheep. Billygonequeer had been in captivity three years when Ikey joined the road gang, and his major claim to fame was that he had received the most stripes to his back of any in their company. He would work as hard as any man at pulling the cart and no prisoner could fault him for not doing his share. But every few weeks, as though he sniffed something in the air, he grew most melancholy, would take no food, and refused to work by standing rigid in a single place. This was known to all in the road gang as 'Billy gone queer' and so the black boy had received this strange appendage to his name.

At night it was not customary to lock Billygonequeer in the cells. For if he should be placed in close confinement he would commence to shout all night so that no prisoner could sleep a wink. And so, summer and winter, with only a blanket to cover him for the coldest part of the year, he would be chained to a ring set into an outer wall which formed part of the courtyard of the gaol. Here he would sleep like an animal on the hard cobblestones.

But when Billygonequeer went queer, he would stand all night and look upwards at the stars and howl exactly like the Tasmanian tiger, the thylacine, a creature dog-like in appearance and extremely shy of humans. This beast, only seldom glimpsed in the outer camps and always in the depths of the forest where it would come to stand just beyond the edge of the firelight at night, was familiar to timber workers and road gangs for its dreadful howl. It was a hollow sound that came from inside, as though vibrating from deep within the chest, and was most disconcerting to the ear. Billygonequeer did not so much appear to make the sound as to be the sound. His eyes seemed to turn yellow and catch the light in the darkness, and his jaws unlocked and widened as the terrible creature cacophony came from him. They had tried to gag him once but this proved to no avail – the sound continued as though it emanated from his chest and sought no expulsion from his lips.

When morning came Billy still would not move and it was impossible to imagine that a man could stand so rigid and so long in one spot. If he should be knocked down by the overseer, as often happened, he would not cry out, but would get back to his feet and stand as before, impervious to pain.

Harris, despite having seen Billygonequeer go queer on numerous occasions, could not bring himself to accept his condition. He was a stickler for the rules and greatly afraid of the wrath of the authorities, and on each occasion he would cause Billy to be dragged before the district magistrate. Here Billy would stand before the beak, his dark eyes glazed over as though he were in some distant place of his imagining. Nor would he respond to questions, though his comprehension of English was said to be quite sufficient to this task. Finally, the magistrate, partly angered and bemused and in all parts impatient, would declare himself compelled to obey the law. He would hand down the most severe punishment for refusing to work, a sentence of one hundred lashes with the cat o' nine tails.

A month after Ikey had been put to the cart beside Billy, following the eating of their midday rations, Billy had suddenly turned his head in the direction of a breeze which had that very moment blown up and commenced to sigh high in the giant gum trees. He jumped to his feet and seemed to breathe deeply, pulling the air into his nostrils so that his broad nose flattened upon his face. In great agitation he began to tear his clothes from his slim body, as though some vicious biting insect were to be found within them. As each garment was removed he flung it into the bushes. Then he gave a great sigh and, naked as the day of his birth, stood rigid with his arms to his sides, the pale palms of his hands turned outward. His only movement was the distension and retraction of his nostrils as he pulled the wind into him, as though it were some invisible musk sent from heaven.

'Jaysus Christ! Billy's gone queer,' Seamus Calligan shouted. 'Sniffin' in the wind and that. I'll be damned if he'll not soon be standin' still as a bloody fence pole!'

Michael Mooney, Calligan's partner on the front cross-bar, cautioned Ikey not to catch the attention of Harris the overseer. 'Let him be a while, poor bugger will suffer enough soon as bloody Harris comes.'

'We'll not pull the cart with only the three of us,' Ikey ventured.

'We'll have to. Billygonequeer will not be comin' back these three weeks or more,' Mooney replied.

They left Billy standing and walked back to the cart. They were loading rock for gravel that day and the cart was almost too heavy for four men to pull. Now with only the three of them they were forced to lessen the load. Harris, seeing them pass with the load not extended beyond the rim of the cart, was soon alerted. Then he saw Ikey was alone at his cross-bar.

'Where's the nigger?' he shouted, using an expression he had picked up on an American whaling ship.

The three men brought the cart to a standstill. 'Billy's gone queer,' a reluctant Seamus replied.

Harris grinned. 'Oh 'e 'as now 'as 'e, that be most considerate o' the black bastard!' He turned and called another convict over to harness up beside Ikey. Then, rubbing his hands gleefully, he set off for the camp where the prisoners had taken their midday rations.

When the team returned for the evening muster they found Billy in the same spot as they'd left him. He was rigid as a well-rooted sapling, but with one eye half closed, and the blood from his nose caked upon his smooth ebony chest. His shoulders, too, were crimson caked, and it appeared as though the back of his head had been smashed with some sharp object. A great cloud of flies had settled about his shoulders and eyes, and swarmed about his wild black head. Billygonequeer did not appear to notice the presence of either the flies or the men standing around him.

The men did not ask how his injuries occurred. Those who had worked on the road gang for some time knew Harris to be a coward and a bully, and when Billy went queer it was always an occasion for sadistic gratification on Harris's part.

Billy, still rigid, was wheeled back to Richmond, his thin legs, like two black poles, sticking out beyond the front lip of the wheel-barrow. No prisoner complained of the extra effort, even though each was himself exhausted from the day's toil. Ikey knew this was most peculiar. Compassion for another was not a part of the convict nature. To feel for another was to put oneself in danger. A singular and ruthless attention to one's own survival was paramount in all matters concerning the convict's life. Ikey understood these rules better than anyone, for he had always lived in accordance with them. Yet no one complained at the need for Billygonequeer's wheeled transportation back to Richmond Gaol.

Billy spent the night in the courtyard standing without the slightest movement, though once every few minutes he emitted the long, lonely howl of the forest dog creature.

Ikey found it impossible to sleep that night. He cursed himself quietly for his insomnia, and wondered how he could possibly feel disquiet and sorrow for the plight of a black savage. Ikey remembered only once before experiencing such a stirring of compassion, when he had impulsively given Abraham Reuban money and his Waterloo medal to give to Mary. Now he felt it again for his black partner, and felt ashamed that he should do so. Morning found him hollow-eyed and still despairing of Billy's plight. He tried all day to convince himself that such was not the case, but the feeling of deep, instinctive sorrow would not go away.

Ikey sensed that Billy was mourning, though how this could have been brought about by a sudden shift of the wind on a day which seemed to Ikey like any other, was a mystery. But he was a Jew and he knew instinctively about loneliness and terror, and the evil golem that comes at times to molest and disturb the soul. The mischievous ghost of the past who comes to make a Jew feel guilty when, seemingly, with a shift of the winds of terror, those who would destroy him arrive, even when he has done nothing to deserve this fate. There is this eternal conundrum for every Jew who is not guilty but nevertheless feels guilty. Guilty of what? Guilty how? But guilty nonetheless.

For centuries the elders and the rabbis have questioned how it is that the victim should think himself to be guilty. How can a man feel guilty when it is his own blood, and the blood of his wife and children which has been spilled? Only the Jew knows how this can be done. But even a Jew does not know why he must be made to bear the shame of his own persecution.

Ikey could see in Billygonequeer the same mysterious forces, the same looming tragedy, the fear that a sudden change in the wind might bring with it a great destruction of his people. But he knew also that Billy's people had nowhere to go, no opportunity for a diaspora. No borders to steal across at night, no river to wade with forlorn bundles on their heads or mountain to scale with safety promised on the leeward side, no corrupt officials to bribe to gain a temporary haven. Billy's people had been placed at the ends of the earth. Now, with the coming of the white man, they would Be pushed over its edge to oblivion, where only the ghosts of the eleven lost tribes of Israel dwell in the howling, mournful, swirling mists of eternity.

When Billy had gone queer and thrown off his clothes, Ikey had seen his back. The lines of scar tissue joined in a contorted lunar landscape of ridges and troughs, so that no single piece of clear black skin remained. Billy had been beaten so often that his back looked like a shiny, carelessly plaited garment of hide pitted with a dozen small craters of yellow pus.

They left Billygonequeer behind that day at Richmond Gaol in order that he might be taken before the district magistrate. A police magistrate alone could order only three dozen lashes and this, Harris felt, was insufficient to curb the black man's constant rebellion. When the men returned that night they found Billy in the courtyard still standing rigid, his yellow palms turned outward, chained to the ring set into the prison wall. Harris informed them jauntily that they would not muster as usual at dawn, but would be allowed to rest until nine of the clock, and thereafter would be required to march to the nearby courthouse where the triangle stood and where they would witness Billygonequeer's sentence of flogging – one hundred strokes of the cat. The men cheered, for a late rising was like a holiday.

'Be there a man among you who will volunteer to be the flagellator?' Harris asked.

'Where be Rufus Manning?' someone called.

'Gorn to Hobart to do a floggin'. There be twelve men called to the triangle there and only two to flog the livin' daylights out o' them,' Harris explained, then added, 'It's double rations for him what volunteers to flagellate the nigger!'

There was a murmur among the prisoners though none stepped forward. Harris watched them, his eyes seeming to fix on each man before travelling on. Billygonequeer stood rigidly behind him in chains. The overseer saw the reluctance in each pair of eyes. 'Double rations and the 'arf day orf!' he now added.

The men shuffled and murmured among themselves. It was a prize each of them was much tempted to possess, and had it been any other man who was to be flogged, few would have hesitated. No man among them could remember when last he had felt his stomach contented. But they all felt differently about Billygonequeer, differently and afraid. Two flagellators who had whipped him in the past had died shortly afterwards, and were rumoured to have howled as they died, making the same dog-like noise as Billygonequeer. Afterwards the surgeon could find no cause of death, though there had been a look of great terror on their faces and both had torn at their guts until they drew deep furrows of blood. They did not for a moment believe that Manning had gone to Hobart. He had taken cover. Life on a road gang was not much to contemplate, but to die howling like a dog with some great terror ripping the life out of you from within, and all for the sake of half a day's rest and a good tightener, was a more fearful prospect.

'You do it, Mr 'Arris!' one of the prisoners shouted. 'G'warn, you flog 'im, you flog Billygonequeer!'

Harris grew suddenly pale, and while he tried to laugh off the suggestion, the corners of his mouth seemed for a moment out of control. 'It's not me job,' he finally muttered.

'It's not ours neither!' several of the men volunteered and there was a knowing snigger among the prisoners.

Suddenly Billy's arm rose stiff as a ramrod and pointed directly at Ikey, and from his throat came the howl. Harris turned to see the wild-eyed black pointing at Ikey's breast. Billy howled once more, then let his arm fall slowly to his side.

Ikey looked fearfully about him and then at the overseer and vigorously shook his head. 'Who, me? No, no, not me!' he said, taking a backwards step and bumping into the man behind him. 'Mercy be! I hates violence of any sort. Please, I begs you Mr Harris!' Ikey's eyes had grown wide with fear. 'No, no!' he repeated shaking his hand in front of his face. 'I cannot do it, I simply cannot, I should faint at the very prospect, I cannot abide the sight o' blood.' Ikey let out a sudden wail and fell to his knees at the overseer's feet. 'I begs you, no!' he sobbed.

The assembled prisoners were convulsed with laughter. Blood was such a common substance in their lives, they thought it hilarious that Ikey should declare his abhorrence to it. Before he had completed his prison sentence they knew he would see rivers of blood, until this substance would seem no more strange to him than the spittle on a man's tongue, or the beads of sweat gathered on his brow.

'Well now, you'll do nicely, it will be an excellent 'nitiation for ya, Ikey Solomon.' Harris smiled. 'Yer most fortunate, you are. You'll come to blood the easy way, not from the fresh opening of yer own Jew back, but upon the back o' the nigger!'

The gang mustered and was issued with their morning skilly and then marched by the three troopers who constantly guarded them to the nearby courthouse where the triangle stood.

The triangle, the dreaded flagellation post, was built of strong scantlings, that is to say posts or purlins of about five inches in width. They were placed so as to form a space about ten feet square at the bottom, and secured by pins into the ground in a slanted manner so that they rose to meet at a point in the centre. Horizontal bars were fastened to these posts, each about two feet apart, and it was to these that the person to be flogged was secured. He faced inwards, his back outwards, with his ankles, knees and outstretched arms tightly bound to the bars. The victim of the triangle was stripped, either to the waist or, more often, naked, this so that the blood would not damage his clothes, which were government property. Eight or ten men could be fastened to a single triangle, and several flagellators employed to beat them. These were usually ticket of leave men, expressly appointed to the position, and many took great pride in their work. Prisoners could also be selected if they were sufficiently robust to lend some weight to the task.

Ikey did not fit the bill in the least. Puny, with narrow sloping shoulders and delicate arms, in his hands the cat o' nine appeared to be a most incongruous instrument. Ikey carried the whip of many tails awkwardly, as though it were repulsive to him, and the knotted ends of the cutting cord drooped to the ground at his feet. Ikey's limbs appeared to tremble of their own accord, and his knees shook violently. There was no doubt in the mind of those brought in to bear witness that Billygonequeer was in for a soft time, a mere tickle of the flesh, and this prospect immensely cheered those who watched.

'You will put yer back into it, ya hear, Solomon? Step up and lay the cat square an'

'ard or, I swear, you'll receive the same yerself!' Harris shouted. He reached out, grabbed the knotted whip from Ikey's reluctant fingers, and demonstrated how it should be used. The cords whistled through the air and landed with a single hard smack across the smooth wood of one of the triangle's posts. Ikey's eyes screwed up in horror, and he trembled more than ever.

Harris handed him the whip and turned to the doctor. 'We are ready to yer count, sir.'

The doctor nodded to Ikey to commence and Ikey, uttering a low moan, raised the whip and brought it down upon Billygonequeer's back. The blow was so ineffectual that it brought a sudden gale of laughter from the onlookers. One of the knots at the end of the cord must have entered a festering pit in Billy's back, for a thin trickle of blood ran from it. Ikey gave a soft moan and fainted dead away to the hilarious laughter of the prisoners.

The doctor examined Ikey then took smelling |alts from his bag which revived him. But it was clear Ikey was not up to the task of flagellation. The doctor turned to Harris.

'We do not have a trooper who is corporal by rank among us. You will have to complete the flogging yourself.' There was a sudden and complete silence among the prisoners as they watched Harris.

'I am not inclined, sir. Can it not wait for Mr Manning? Some other day perhaps?'

'Nonsense, man! I have just seen how well you take to the task by the way you approached the whipping post. Get to it. I have but little time to waste in this tedious matter.'

'Sir, I shall lose respect among my men,' Harris tried again.

'Nay!' several prisoners shouted. 'That you will not! G'warn, Mr Harris, do the deed!'

'Be silent, you!' Harris snarled at the ranks, grateful to have a chance to vent his spleen.

'There you are, Harris, you have the full support of your men.' The doctor stooped and picked up the cat o' nine tails. 'Can't ask for more than that now, can you?' He handed the whip to Harris. 'Be a good person and do your duty in the name of the King.'

Harris seemed suddenly to lose all control and his face took on a fierce and desperate look. He lifted the whip and ran at Billygonequeer, and brought the cat down with all his might across the black man's back. He rained blow after blow on Billy, grunting and frothing at the mouth, so that long before he had completed the one hundred strokes he was exhausted and bowed down for want of energy. His hands were clasped upon his knees and his breath came in great gasps. Specks of flesh and blood splattered his blouse and face and hair.

'Why you are the consummate flagellator, Mr Harris. Taken to the art like a duck to water, eh?' the surgeon said calmly, then added, 'That be quite enough, cut the prisoner down.'

Throughout the terrible beating Billygonequeer did not once flinch or cry out. Nor did he register any expression when a trooper splashed his back with brine before cutting him from the triangle. He spat the leather mouthpiece out, strips of raw flesh hanging from his back, and stood rigid, eyes glazed, the yellow palms of his hands turned outwards. He then howled three times, the eerie call of the Tasmanian tiger dog, and the Irishmen among the prisoners were seen to cross themselves.

Billygonequeer was not placed in solitary confinement, as was the custom after a flogging, but chained once again to the wall in the courtyard. He stayed there for two weeks on bread and water until his back was sufficiently healed for him to return to the cart.

Each evening Ikey would go to the gaoler Mr Dodsworth and beg for liniment and clean rags, and he would clean out the wounds on Billy's back and to the back of his head, wincing and gagging as he cleared the maggots the flies had laid in the festering craters during the day. Billy had long since come out of his trance and he would smile as Ikey approached. Silently he'd allow Ikey to clean his wounds and rub the sulphur ointment into his back without flinching, though the pain must have been excruciating.

Ikey could not explain to himself this voluntary act of caring. He knew it to be completely contrary to his character and he was not aware of having undergone any change in his nature. In fact he seldom thought of Hannah and his children, and cared even less about their welfare. He would lie awake at night plotting to get Hannah's set of numbers for the safe, and told himself that, if ever he should succeed, he would escape his wife forever.

Occasionally, in a moment of sentimentality, he thought fondly of Mary, though he harboured no future ambitions for a reunion with her. He told himself he wished only for a future life as a rich man, a life far removed from any he had previously led, and he was determined not to bring any of the past into his future. Though it may be said that every heart on earth is kindled to love, Ikey had so early in his life been denied affection that he was dulled to its prospect. He had never felt the singular need to love. He felt he had loved Mary, if only briefly, but he had no notion of what he might expect from such an emotion. He did not care if he himself were liked, for he had come to expect the opposite. Now that the sycophancy on which he depended as a rich man was no longer available to him, he fully expected that he would be greatly disliked. That he himself should be loved was not a thought which ever entered his head. And so Ikey's feelings for Billygonequeer were hard for him to understand, and filled him with apprehension.

Almost every day as he laboured at the cart he would decide to ignore the black man on his return to the prison that night. But he was never able to do so. Billygonequeer would smile at him, his gleaming white teeth filling his astonishing coal-black face, and Ikey, inwardly cursing himself for his foolishness, would be off to Mr Dodsworth for liniment and cloth.

Ikey, as was his natural manner, talked to Billygonequeer at great length. To this torrent of words Billy would sometimes grunt, or smile, adding little more than sounds and nods to this one-way dialogue. Occasionally Billy would clutch Ikey's hand or pat him on his face and say, 'Good pella, Ikey.' Then he might grin and repeat, 'Much, much, good pella, Ikey.' It was as though, by Ikey's mannerisms and the few words Billy had at his disposal, he could grasp what his companion was saying.

Sometimes Billygonequeer would hear a bird cry and say aloud its Aboriginal name until Ikey could pronounce it clearly. He'd gather fruit or nuts, or grub for roots, and always share what he found. Ikey got used to the fat white grubs Billy would find under the bark of fallen trees and found them delicious when roasted. Whenever they came upon wild honey they would feast on it secretly for days. In these ways Billy supplemented their prison diet with bush tucker, and there were some days on the road gang when the four men on the cart counted their stomachs more full than empty. It was a wondrous thing to see Billy's willingness to share everything he found, and the smallest wild morsel would be meticulously divided.

Ikey had spent his life in acquisition, sharing as little as possible, and keeping as much for himself as he could. It would be nice to think that Billygonequeer might have changed this aspect of his nature, that the primitive savage could teach Ikey the highest achievement of civilisation, the equitable sharing of the combined resources of any society.

Alas, this is not the lesson Ikey took from the black man. Instead he came to realise that it was this very characteristic which would lead to the ultimate demise of the Van Diemen's Land savage. The rapacious white tribe who were arriving in increasing numbers, not only as convicts but also as settlers, wanted to own everything they touched. They slashed and burned the wilderness so that they might graze their sheep and grow their corn. They erected fences around the land they now called their own and which henceforth they were prepared to defend with muskets and sometimes even their lives. They built church steeples and prison walls and homes of granite hewn from the virgin rock and timber cut from the umbrageous mountain forests. They possessed everything upon the island, the wild beasts that grazed upon its surface, the birds that flew over it, the fish that swam in its rushing river torrents and the barking seals resting in the quiet bays and secluded inlets. Everything they thought worthwhile was attached to the notion of ownership.

Against this urgent and anxious desire for appropriation stood a handful of savages who seldom even built a shelter against the weather. They dressed in a single kangaroo skin, and believed that all they could see and walk upon was owned by all who moved across the land, and yet by none. A people who did not comprehend that one person could own, or wish to own, more than any other.

Ikey understood at once that the Aboriginal tribes in Van Diemen's Land must surely perish because they lacked the two things that had made human progress possible, the existence of greed and the desire to possess property. Ikey understood acquisition as the only guarantee of his survival. He saw that Billygonequeer's people were doomed, for they had not learned this fundamental lesson. Without the need to own there is no need to compete and an uncompetitive society can only exist if it is allowed to develop in isolation. For Billy's people, the isolation had come to an end.

Ikey was aware that Billygonequeer probably did not understand what he was saying, but he said it nonetheless. He would talk as he cleaned Billy's wounds and rubbed salve into his back. 'You must become like us, you must learn our ways, your ways are over, my dear!' Ikey would repeat this over and over, but all he got from Billygonequeer was a big smile. A big white smile in a very black face and always the same response.

'You good pella, Ikey!'

It was not three weeks after Billygonequeer had taken his place again beside Ikey on the cart when Harris began to suffer stomach pains. He would be shouting at the prisoners, or simply walking along, when suddenly he would grab at his stomach, doubling over with pain as each spasm came to him.

The road gang did not need to be told that he was dying. 'Harris's gone queer,' they'd say gleefully among themselves. A month later the overseer was dead, and it was rumoured that all the same symptoms, self-laceration of the stomach and howling in the manner of Billygonequeer, were in attendance at his death bed. Furthermore, the coroner conducting the autopsy could find no fault with his stomach and intestines.

The gang was now working too far from Richmond Gaol to return at night so they proceeded from a new out station, a series of rough buildings erected beside the road. These were infested with lice and fleas, with the addition of other vermin when the weather grew colder. A new overseer, James Strutt, who had come out from Launceston, proved not too harsh by the standards of the day, dealing with trouble only when he found it.

It was from Strutt that Ikey first learned the true extent of the range war which was being waged against the island's native people. Strutt was a member of a part-time militia unit, formed independently of the government troopers, and he spoke with great enthusiasm of the tactics to be employed in the killing of blacks. He had been a member of the Black Line in October the previous year, and spoke disparagingly of the bumbling manner in which this manoeuvre had been conducted. The Black Line was a government sponsored operation intended to drive the Aboriginals out of the settled areas. The plan was to drive the blacks south and east towards East Bay Neck, through the Forestier Peninsula, and into the Tasman Peninsula, where it was proposed a permanent Aboriginal reserve would be set up.

The task force consisted of two thousand men, five hundred of these soldiers, seven hundred convicts and eight hundred free settlers and involved a thousand muskets and three hundred pairs of handcuffs. Three weeks later this avenging army returned having captured one old Aboriginal man and a young boy.

Strutt dismissed the operation as an example of how not to go about the task of eliminating the blacks. 'Government and soldier be not the way. It be a question of us agin them, free men agin savages and, by God, we'll settle it soon enough!' he'd boast.

The Church talked of the salvation of the noble savage. For its part, the government talked increasingly of saving these primitive creatures from extinction by rounding them all up and placing them on a suitable island, which was yet to be found, where they would be out of harm's way.

It was estimated that a thousand natives still existed of the original three thousand who were thought to be on the island when it had been declared a penal settlement. As it turned out, this calculation was incorrect. A white man's respiratory disease had struck the tribes and only a few hundred Aboriginals still existed on the land they had traditionally occupied.

But it should not be supposed that the Tasmanian native was without courage. With wooden spears against muskets they valiantly fought back and caused great consternation among the settlers. During the four-year period of martial law they killed eighty-nine Europeans, while of the two hundred Aboriginals thought to be within the settled areas, fewer than fifty survived.

The government now believed that the natives might be persuaded to accept a safe haven. They appointed George Augustus Robinson, a religious zealot who spoke the main Aboriginal language, to peaceably round up what remained of the tribes for resettlement. In this task Robinson enlisted the help of an Aboriginal female, Truganini. She was his guide, and it was her influence which he hoped might persuade her people to capitulate, though the settlers thought the word 'guide' a very curious one for what they insisted was the true relationship between Robinson and the young and shapely Aboriginal woman.

If Church and State professed compassion for the Van Diemen's Land natives, the settlers held no such Christian or noble motives. They called openly for the elimination of the Tasmanian Aboriginal race and, in that duplicity so common to government, where a wink is as good as a nod, the authorities turned a blind eye as the settlers worked to bring that elimination about.

Governor Arthur issued a famous poster, which was nailed to trees in the wilderness, in which he showed the Aboriginals, by means of comic pictures, that there would be equal justice under British law. That a native killed by a white settler would see the culprit hanged as surely as if a black were to murder a white. Yet although hundreds of Aboriginal women and children were openly slaughtered, not a single European settler was ever hanged for the murder of a black.

Martial law was declared in 1828 which gave the military the right to apprehend or shoot on sight any Aboriginal found in the settled areas. The military proved ineffective in this task, and roving parties of settlers were formed under the pretence of a militia such as the one to which Strutt belonged. A bounty was introduced for the capture of Aboriginals, five pounds being paid for every adult and two pounds for each child. It was open season, and though few natives were captured, many were murdered with as little concern for the consequences as if they were kangaroos or a flock of marauding cockatoos.

To the settlers, Robinson, 'the Black Shepherd', was a bad joke and Strutt would often expostulate, 'While that Abo fucker George Robinson be playing sheepdog we be playin' huntin' dog. Before he can muster them black bastards, they'll all be on the roll call for the dead. They's vermin, scum, they's not human like us, a single fly-blown sheep be worth five o' them and a good huntin' hound worth ten!'

Whereupon Strutt would tell with alacrity one of his numerous stories of the hunting trips undertaken to kill the blacks. The men in Ikey's road gang thought these stories a great entertainment. Two favourites were the tale of Paddy Hexagon, a stock-keeper who lived near Deloraine, who shot and killed nineteen Aboriginals with a swivel gun filled with nails, and another which the prisoners on the road gang called 'Stuffing Leaves'.

'G'warn then, Mr Strutt, tell us the one about the woman and the stuffin' o' leaves!' one of the prisoners asked one night when they'd moved from Richmond Gaol, and were accommodated at the out station in the bush.

They were sitting around a fire, Ikey seated next to the always silent Billygonequeer. Billy appeared not to listen to or even understand these horror stories. Instead he sat on his haunches with his back turned to the fire, and seemed more interested in the sound of the wind in the gum trees and the call of the frogs from a nearby stream.

This stream ran into a small wetland and Billygonequeer seemed to take an unusual interest in the frogs which resided there. Every once in a while he would cup his hands to his mouth and precisely imitate a call, though at a slightly deeper pitch. Whereupon all the frogs would grow suddenly silent. Then he would carry on in a froggy language as though he were delivering an address, pause, then deliver a single, though somewhat different note, and the frogs would continue their croaking chatter.

At first this was seen by the men as a great joke. But Billygonequeer would continue in earnest conversation in frog language until the gang got so used to his nightly routine of croaking and ribet-ribeting with nature that they took no more notice than if a loud belch or fart had taken place among one of their number.

'Oh aye, the woman with leaves, that be a most pleasin' hunt,' Strutt chuckled in reply. 'The women be the worst. They'll scratch your eyes out soon as look at you.' Strutt stroked his beard as though reviewing all the details of the tale before he began. 'There be three of us, Paddy Hexagon, Sam O'Leary and yours truly, and we's huntin' kangaroo in the Coal River area when we seen this gin who were pregnant like. "Oi!" we shouts, thinkin' her too fat to make a run for it, and five pound in the bounty bag if you please and very nice too! And if the child be near to born, another two for what's inside her belly.' He paused and the men laughed and one of them, a wit named Cristin Puding, known of course as 'Christmas Pudding', made a customary crack.

'That I needs to see! A government bounty man what pays two pound for what's not yet come outside to be properly skinned and cured!'

'Well we shouts again,' Strutt continued, casting a look of annoyance at Puding, for he did not wish him to steal even the smallest rumble of his thunder, or tiny scrap of the laughter yet to come. 'And she sets off, waddlin' like a duck and makin' for the shelter o' some trees not twenty yards away. She's movin' too, movin' fast for the fat black duck she's become.' This brought a laugh, for the gang had heard it often enough and were properly cued to respond.

'We sets off to get to her, but the grass 'tween her and us be high and she be into the trees. By the time we gets there she ain't nowhere to be seen. High 'n low we searches and we's about to give it away when we hears a cry up above. We looks up and there she be, up fifty feet or more in the branches of a gum tree, well disguised behind the leaves and all. How she gone and got up in her state I'm buggered if I knows. It were no easy climb.'

The road gang grew silent and even Billygonequeer ceased making his frog sounds.

'There she be, high up in the fork o' the tree and, by Jaysus, the child inside her is beginnin' to be borned! She's gruntin' somethin' awful, snuffin' and snoofin' like a fat sow and then it's a screamin' and a caterwaulin' as the head and shoulders come to sniff the world outside! "Here's sport for all!" Sam O'Leary, me mate, shouts. "We'll wait this one out!"'

'Wait this one out!' Cristin Puding shouted, turning to the others. 'Get it? Wait this one out!' But the other prisoners hushed him fast, anxious for the story to continue.

'Well, you'll not believe it,' Strutt continued, once again ignoring Puding, 'though I swear on me mother's grave it be true! Out come the bloody mess. The child's got the birth cord twisted round its neck and stranglin' him, only later it turns out to be a her, a little girl, and it's hangin' itself in the air, and the black gin's tryin' to hold onto the cord, but it's slippin' through her hands. "Five shilling to him what shoots it down first!" Paddy Hexagon shouts.'

Strutt stopped suddenly and rocked back on the log he'd sat on and then began to chuckle softly.

'Well you never seen such a loadin' and firin' and missin' and, all the time, the cord stretchin' longer and longer with the black woman holdin' on to it at her end and screamin' blue murder! Then Paddy takes a bead and fires and the little black bastard explodes like a ripe pumpkin! There be blood rainin' down on us! Jaysus! I can tell you, we was all a mess to behold. "Bastard! Bitch! Black whore!" O'Leary shouts at the gin screamin' and sobbin' up in the tree.' The foreman laughed again. 'His wife just made him a new shirt and now it be spoiled, soaked in Abo's blood! Paddy and me, we damn near carked we laughed so much!'

He paused, enjoying the eyes of all the men fixed upon him. ' "You'll pay fer this ya black bitch!" O'Leary shouts upwards at her, shakin' his fist. Then he takes a careful shot. Bullseye! He hits the gin in the stomach. But she don't come tumblin' down, instead she starts to pick leaves from the tree and stuff them in her gut, in the hole what O'Leary's musket's made. We all shoot, but she stays up, and each time a shot strikes home she spits at us and stuffs more leaves where the new holes be. There we all be. Us shootin' and her stuffin' gum leaves and screamin' and spittin', the baby lyin' broke on the ground. It were grand sport, but then I takes a shot and hits her in the head, dead between the eyes, and she come tumblin' down and falls plop, lifeless to the ground.'

The men around the overseer clapped and whistled. Only Ikey and Billygonequeer remained silent.

Ikey turned and spat into the dark, thankful that Billygonequeer would not have understood a word of the foreman's grisly tale. Then someone threw a branch on the embers, and the dry leaves crackled and flared up and in the wider circle of light cast by the fire Ikey saw that tears were flowing from Billy's dark eyes. Large silent tears which ran onto the point of his chin and splashed in tiny explosions of dust at his feet. The fire died back to normal, and in the dark Ikey reached out and touched Billy's shoulder and whispered softly.

'You got to learn to be like us, Billygonequeer!' Then he added, 'Not like them. Jesus no! Like a Jew. I'll teach you, my dear. You could be a black Jew. All you got to learn is, when you've got suffering you've got to add cunning. Suffering plus cunning equals survival! That be the arithmetic of a Jew's life!'

Billygonequeer turned slowly and looked directly at Ikey, sniffing and wiping the tears from his eyes with the back of his hand.

'You good pella, Ikey,' he said, his voice hoarse and barely above a whisper. Then, 'You gib me name, Ikey!'

Ikey looked momentarily puzzled. 'You've already got a name, my dear. It ain't much, but it serves as good as most.'

Billygonequeer shook his head. 'Like Ikey. Name same like white pella.'

'Oh, you wants a proper name? Is that it, Billy?' He pointed to the men around the fire. 'Like them pella? Puding, Calligan, Mooney? Name like so?'

Billygonequeer nodded and smiled, his sad, teary face suddenly lighting up.

Ikey considered for a moment. After promising to turn Billygonequeer into a Jew he thought to give him a Jewish name, but then changed his mind. It would take too much explanation and might get Billygonequeer into even more trouble.

'William Lanney!' he said suddenly. It was the name of a carpenter mechanic who owed Ikey five pounds from a bet lost at ratting, a debt Ikey now knew he would never collect. 'Will-ee-am Lan-nee,' Ikey repeated slowly.

'Willeeamlanee!' Billygonequeer said in a musical tone as though it were the sound of a bird cry.

'No.' Ikey held up two fingers. 'Two words. William. Lanney.'

Billygonequeer was not only a dab hand at mastering frog calls, for he seemed now to grasp the pronunciation of his new name quite easily, 'William Lanney… William Lanney,' he said, with tolerable accuracy.

Ikey laughed. 'Good pella, Mr William Lanney!'

Billygonequeer stretched out and touched Ikey's face as though he was memorising his features through the tips of his long, slender fingers. 'You good pella, Ikey! Much, much good, pella!' He tested his new name. 'William Lanney!'

It was time for the evening lock up. The prisoners were led to their huts, mustered, and then each was manacled to his bunk and all locked in for the night, except for Billygonequeer, who was manacled and chained to a large old blue gum to sleep the night in the open.

At dawn Ikey wakened as the javelin man, the trusted prisoner in charge, entered the hut and called over for the man to come and unlock his shackles so that he might go outside to take a piss.

Ikey walked out into the crisp dawn. Above him, where the early sunrise touched the top of the gum trees, he could hear the doves cooing. When he'd emptied his bladder Ikey strolled over to the tree where Billygonequeer had been chained for the night. Here he stopped in surprise. The shackles, still fixed in their locks, lay upon the ground, but Billygonequeer was missing.

Ikey stood for a moment not fully comprehending. He wondered if Billygonequeer might have already risen, though it was customary to unchain him last of all. Then he noticed that the manacles and shackles had not been opened, and that there were bloodstains on the inside surfaces.

Ikey felt a great ache grow such as he had not felt before. A deep heaviness which started somewhere in his chest, and rose up and filled his throat so that he was scarcely able to breathe. He could hear his heart beating in his ears, his head seemed for a moment to float, and he was close to fainting. He stood very still, and he could hear the burble of water flowing over rock, and the wash of the wind in the leaves above him. Ikey, the most solitary of men, now felt more completely alone than ever before.

'May Jehovah be with you, Billygonequeer,' Ikey said, the words hurting in his throat as he spoke to the chains which lay unopened in the beaten grass where his friend had last lain. Then he began to rock back and forth and at the same time to recite the Kaddish, the prayer for the dead. Hot tears rolled silently down his cheeks and disappeared into his scraggly beard as the words of the ancient prayer frosted in the cold morning air.

And may he walk continually in the land of life, and may his soul rest in the bond of life.

Then he leaned against the smooth, cool bark of the gum tree and sobbed and sobbed. High above him in the silver gum trees he could hear the blue doves calling to their lost partners.