Morgan’s Run

PART FIVE

From

January

until

October of 1788

Nothing very much happened over the next few days except that the seven slow ships turned up surprisingly soon after the Racers; they had been blown by the same winds and kept close enough behind to experience the same weather. Heaving in the restless water, all the ships remained at anchor unloaded, people crowding their rails, anyone with a spyglass peering at shoregoing parties of marines, naval officers and a few convicts, and at many Indians. None of this shore activity appeared significant. Rumor now said that the Governor did not consider Botany Bay an adequate site for this all-important experiment and had gone in a longboat to look at nearby Port Jackson, which Captain Cook had noted on his charts, but had not entered.

Richard’s feelings about Botany Bay were very much like those in every other breast, free or felon: a shocking place, was the universal verdict. It reminded no one of anywhere, even sailors as traveled as Donovan. Flat, bleak, sandy, swampy, inclement and dreary beyond all imagination. To the inhabitants of Alexander’s prison, Botany Bay loomed as a gigantic graveyard.

Orders came that the site of the first settlement was to be Port Jackson, not Botany Bay; they made ready to sail, but the winds were so against and the swell coming across the narrow bar so huge that all thought of leaving had to be abandoned. Then-a miracle! Two very big ships were sighted beating in for harbor.

“ ’Tis as strange a coincidence as two Irish peasants meeting at the court of the Empress of all the Russias,” said Donovan, who had shared a spyglass with Captain Sinclair and Mr. Long.

“They are English, of course,” said Jimmy Price.

“No, they are French. We think the expedition of the Comte de la Pérouse. Third-raters, which is why they are such big ships. One therefore must be La Boussole and the other L’Astrolabe. Though I imagine that we are a greater surprise to them than they to us-la Pérouse left France in 1785, long before our voyage was being talked about. Unless they have learned of us somewhere along their way. La Pérouse was given up as lost a year ago. Now-here he is.”

Another attempt to get out of Botany Bay was made on the morrow, with equal lack of success. The two French ships were not in sight at all, blown away southward and seaward. Toward sunset Supply managed to wriggle through the swell and headed north the ten or eleven miles to Port Jackson, while Governor Phillip’s chicks stayed another night in limbo.

A southeaster in the morning made things better, for the French ships too; La Boussole and L’Astrolabe passed inside Botany Bay as the ten ships of the English fleet hauled anchor and made for that dangerous entrance. Sirius, Alexander, Scarborough, Borrowdale, Fishburn, Golden Grove and Lady Penrhyn all departed gracefully. Then unlucky Friendship could not keep in her stays, drifted perilously close to the rocks, and collided with Prince of Wales. She lost her jib boom and compounded her woes by running into Charlotte’s stern. A considerable part of her decorative galleries destroyed, Charlotte almost went aground.

All this havoc caused much mirth on Alexander, shaking her own sails free to take advantage of the southeaster. The day was hot and fine, the view off the larboard side fascinating. Crescent-shaped yellow beaches foaming with surf alternated with reddish-yellow cliffs which grew ever taller as the miles passed by. A wealth of trees, somewhat greener than those in the distance at Botany Bay, spread inland beyond the beaches, and the smoke of many fires smudged the western sky. Then came two awesome 400-foot bastions, between them an opening about a mile wide. Alexander heeled and sailed into a wonderland.

“This is more like!” said Neddy Perrott.

“If Bristol had such a harbor, it would be the greatest port in Europe,” said Aaron Davis. “It could take a thousand ships of the line in perfect safety from every wind that blows.”

Richard said nothing, albeit his heart felt a little lighter. These trees at least were a kind of green, very tall and numerous, shimmering with a faint blue haze. But very strange trees! They had height and girth of wood, yet were leafed in sparse and ungainly fashion, like shredded flags. Little sandy bays free of surf scalloped the harbor to north and south, though the headlands inside were lower save for one immense bluff exactly opposite the entrance. They sailed to the south of it into what seemed a very long, wide arm, and six miles down in a small cove they found Supply. No need for anchors, at least to begin with. As each ship floated in slowly, it was simply moored to trees on shore, so deep was the water. Still and calm, as clear as ocean water, and full of small fish.

The sun had gone down in a welter of flame the seamen said promised a fine day on the morrow. As usual when things were out of kilter, no one remembered to feed Alexander’s convicts until after darkness fell.

Richard kept his thoughts to himself, understanding that even Will Connelly, the most sophisticated among his little band, was too naive to confide in the way he could with Stephen Donovan. For though he deemed Port Jackson a place of surpassing beauty, he did not think it oozed milk and honey.

They landed on the 28th of January in the midst of chaotic confusion. No one seemed to know what to do with them or where to send them, so they stood with their possessions around their feet and experienced solid land for the first time in over a year. Oh, solid land was hideous! It tossed, it swooped, it refused to stay still; like the rest who had not suffered much from seasickness, Richard was to be constantly nauseated for six weeks after he disembarked. And realized why sailors on terra firma walked with big, wide, slightly drunken footsteps.

The marines were as bewildered as the convicts, who milled about until some marine junior officer yapped at them and pointed them in a direction. Finally, amid the last hundred or so male felons, Richard and his nine satellites were told to go to a fairly flat, sparsely treed area on the eastern side, there to make camp.

“Build yourselves a shelter,” said Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark vaguely, looking blissfully happy to be on dry land.

Using what? Richard wondered as the ten of them staggered across ground tufted with crunchy yellow grass and dotted with occasional rocks to a place he decided was where Clark had indicated. Other groups of convicts were standing about the area in a confusion equal to their own; all Alexander men. How can we make shelters? We have no axes, no saws, no knives, no nails. Then a marine came along carrying a dozen hatchets and thrust one at Taffy Edmunds, who stood holding it limply and looking helplessly at Richard.

I have not divorced them yet. I still have Taffy Edmunds, Job Hollister, Joey Long, Jimmy Price, Bill Whiting, Neddy Perrott, Will Connelly, Johnny Cross and Billy Earl. Most of them rustics, many of them illiterate. Thank God that Tommy Crowder and Aaron Davis have found Bob Jones and Tom Kidner from Bristol-that means they have enough in their circle to fill a hut. If filling a hut is the official intention. Does no one have any idea what we are supposed to do? This is the worst planned expedition in the history of the world. The higher-ups have sat on Sirius for the best part of nine months, but all they have done, I suspect, is drink too much. There is no method, no trace of a system. We should have been kept on board until the clearing was done and shelters erected, even if our tables and benches have been dismantled to expose the big hold hatches. At least at night. The marines do not like being shepherds, they clearly want to be nothing but guards in the narrowest sense. Build ourselves a shelter… Well, we have one hatchet.

“Who can use a hatchet?” he asked.

All of them-for chopping up kindling.

“Who can build a shelter?”

No one, save for watching houses being built of brick, stone, plaster and beams. No hedgerow denizens among his flock.

“Perhaps we should start with a ridge pole and a support for either end,” said Will Connelly after a long silence; he had read Robinson Crusoe on the voyage. “We can make the roof and walls out of palm fronds.”

“We need a ridge pole, but also two other poles for the eaves,” said Richard. “Then we need six forked young trees, two taller than the other four. That will give us a frame. Will and I can begin on those with the hatchet. Taffy and Jimmy, see if ye can find a marine who can donate us a second hatchet, or an axe, or one of the huge knives we saw in Rio. The rest of you, find some palms and see if the fronds come off by pulling on them.”

“We could escape,” said Johnny Cross thoughtfully.

Richard stared at him as if he had grown another head. “Escape to where, Johnny?”

“To Botany Bay and the French ships.”

“They would not offer us asylum any more than the Dutch did Johnny Power in Teneriffe. And how are we to get to Botany Bay? You saw the Indians on shore there. This is a little kinder, so it must have Indians too. We have no idea what they are like-they might be cannibals like those in New Zealand. Certainly they will not welcome the advent of hundreds of alien people.”

“Why?” asked Joey Long, whose mind could not get beyond the fact that Lieutenant Shairp had not yet given him MacGregor.

“Put yourselves in the place of the Indians,” said Richard patiently. “What must they think? This is an excellent cove with a stream of good water-it must surely be popular among them. But we have usurped it. We are, besides, under strict orders not to harm any of them. Therefore, why court them by escaping into places where we will have none of our own English kind? We will stay here and mind our own business. Now do what I asked, please.”

He and Will found plenty of suitable young trees, none more than four or five inches in diameter. Ugly they might be when compared to an elm or chestnut, but they did have the virtue of growing up without low branches. Richard bent and swung the hatchet, made a nick.

“Christ! The wood is like iron and full of sap,” he said. “I need a saw, Will.”

But, lacking a saw, all he could do was chip away. The hatchet was neither sharp nor of good quality, would be useless by the time the three poles and six supports were cut. Tonight he would get out his files and sharpen it. The contractor, he thought, has supplied us with the rubbish the foundries in England could not sell. And he was light-headed and panting after cutting and trimming the ridge pole; all those months of poor food and lack of work were no preparation for this. Will Connelly took the hatchet to attack a second young tree and proved even slower. But in the end they had their ridge pole and their two main forked supports for the roof ridge, and chose four smaller ones for the side supports. By then Taffy and Jimmy had returned with a second hatchet, a mattock and a spade. While Richard and Will went in search of trees to connect their side support poles and complete the framework, Jimmy and Taffy were set to digging holes to plant the six supports in. Having no kind of measuring device, they paced it out as accurately as they could. Digging revealed that six inches down was bedrock.

The others had found plenty of palms, but the fronds were too high off the ground to reach. Then Neddy had a bright idea, climbed a neighboring tree, leaned out dangerously, grabbed the end of a frond, and dropped off his perch to pull the frond away by sheer weight. It worked with the older, browner appendages, but not with anything looking lush.

“Find Jimmy,” said Neddy to Job Hollister, “and change places with him. You dig. I have a better use for nimble Jimmy.”

Jimmy arrived trembling from the unaccustomed effort of digging.

“Have ye a head for heights?” Neddy asked him.

“Aye.”

“Then rest a moment before ye climb yon palm. Ye’re the most agile and smallest of us. Richard sent us the second hatchet, so tuck it in your waistband. Once ye get up the palm, chop down the fronds one at a time.”

The sun was westering, which gave them some means of orienting themselves-south and west of the area where the Governor was going to erect his portable house, a couple of storehouses, and the big round marquee in which Lieutenant Furzer had established himself and the commissariat. They had had the presence of mind to bring their wooden bowls, dippers and spoons, also their blankets, mats and buckets; Richard found the stream and put Bill Whiting to setting up the dripstones, then fetching water. It looked clean and healthy, but he trusted nothing here.

Of all of them, Bill Whiting looked the worst. His face had long since lost its roundness, of course, but now there were black crescents beneath his eyes. The poor fellow trembled as if he had a fever. He had not; his brow was cool. Simple exhaustion.

“It is time to stop,” said Richard, collecting his brood. “Lie down on your mats and rest. Bill, ye need a walk-yes, I know ye do not feel like walking, but come with me to find the commissariat. I have an idea.”

Lieutenant James Furzer was nothing like organized; that was too much to hope for. Richard and Bill entered chaos.

“Ye need more men, sir,” said Richard.

“Volunteering?” asked Furzer, recognizing their faces.

“One of us is,” said Richard, putting an arm around Whiting. “Here is a good man ye can trust, never been in any trouble since I met him in Gloucester Gaol in eighty-five.”

“That’s right, ye were the larboard head man on Alexander, and none of your men gave trouble. Morgan.”

“Aye, Lieutenant Furzer, Morgan. Can ye use Whiting here?”

“I can if he has brain enough to read and write.”

“He does both.”

They walked back to their camp bearing some loaves of hard bread, all the commissariat was able to issue. It had been baked in Cape Town and was very weevily, but it was food.

“We now have a man in the commissariat,” Richard announced, doling out the bread. “Furzer is going to use Bill to help deal with the salt meat. Which we cannot have until the kettles and pots are unloaded because from now on we cook for ourselves.”

Bill Whiting was looking a little better already; he would be working inside a shaded place, no matter how stifling, and doing something easier than clearing, sawing or gardening, which seemed to be what everybody was going to do eventually. “Once Lieutenant Furzer gets himself settled, we are to be issued with a week’s rations at a time,” Bill contributed, grateful for Richard’s perceptiveness. “There is supposed to be a storeship coming on from Cape Town soon, so we have enough provisions to last.”

At nightfall they put bags of clothing down as pillows and used their Alexander mats and blankets as ground cover, their old and tattered great-coats over them. Though it had been such a hot day, the moment the sun went down it grew cold. Their weariness was so great that they slept despite the unmentionable things which crawled everywhere.

Morning brought a sultry, steamy end to darkness’s chill. They went back to building their hut, hampered because they had nothing whatsoever to keep the palm fronds in place except long, strappy palm leaves they tried to turn into twine. The shelter itself seemed strong enough, though it worried Richard and Will, the best engineers, that they had no better foundation than six inches of sandy soil. They piled that soil up around their support posts and began to cut more saplings to lie flat on the ground as anchors, notching their supports and sliding the new poles into the notches.

Others were building around them with varying degrees of success. No one had any real enthusiasm for the task, but it was easy to see by the middle of that second day ashore which groups were either well led or had a mind for construction, and those owning neither. Tommy Crowder’s lot had started to wall their hut with a palisade of very thin saplings, an idea Richard resolved to imitate. Education and broader experience definitely showed; the Londoner Crowder had had a very checkered career and was besides a clever man.

There were a few marines around and about now, checking progress and counting heads; some convicts had absconded into the forest, including a woman named Ann Smith. Probably headed for Botany Bay and the French ships, which gossip said were staying a few days.

“Christ, what a place for ants and spiders!” said Jimmy Price, sucking at the edge of his hand. “That bugger of an ant bit me, and it hurts. Look at the size of the things! They are half an inch long and ye can see their nippers.” He cast a splendid, white-skinned tree a glance of loathing. “And what is it that deafens us with its-its croaking? My ears are ringing.”

His complaints about the croaking were as justified as about the ants; it was a good year for cicadas.

Billy Earl came through the trees white-faced and shaking. “I just saw a snake!” he gasped. “Christ, the thing was taller than Ike Rogers in his boots! Thick around as my arm! And there are huge fierce alligators on the other side of the cove, so Tommy Crowder told me. Oh, I hate this place!”

“We will get used to the creatures,” Richard soothed. “I’ve not heard that anybody has been bitten or eaten by anything bigger than an ant, even if the ant is the size of a beetle. The alligators are giant lizards, I saw one run up a tree.”

The house was finished by mid afternoon of that humid, torrid day full of surprises and terrors. The sun went in and the clouds began to pile up in the skies to the south of them. Black and dark blue, with faint flickers of lightning. They had built the hut in the lee of a large sandstone rock that had a little pocket in its under side, as if scooped out by a spoon.

“I think,” said Richard, looking at the approaching storm, “that we ought to put our belongings under our rock just in case. These palm fronds will not keep rain out.”

The tempest arrived an hour later with greater ferocity than that one at sea off Cape Dromedary, and more terrifying by far; every one of its colossal, brilliant bolts came straight to earth amid the trees. No wonder so many of them were split and blackened! Lightning. Not thirty feet in front of where they huddled, a huge tree with a satiny vermilion skin exploded in a cataclysm of blinding blue fire, sparks and thunder; it literally disintegrated, then burned fiercely. But not for long. The rain came in a cold, howling wind to put it out and wreck their palm-frond thatching within a single minute. The ground turned to a sea and the thick, hurtful rods pelted down, soaked them to the point of drowning. That night they slept amid the frame of their hut with chattering teeth, their only consolation the fact that their belongings were safe and dry under the rock ledge.

“We have to have better tools and something to hold our house together,” said Will Connelly in the morning, close to tears.

Time, thought Richard, to seek a higher authority than Furzer, who could not organize himself to save himself. I do not care if convicts are forbidden to approach those in authority-I am going to do just that.

He walked off in the cool air, pleased to see that the ground was so sandy it was incapable of turning to mud. When he reached the stream at the place where the marines had put three stones across it as a ford, he caught a glimpse of naked black bodies farther up the brook, smelled a strong odor of rotting fish. Not his imagination, then; he had been told that the Indians stank of a fish oil quite the equal of Bristol mud. When they came no closer he skipped across the stepping stones and turned to walk into the bigger settlement on the western side of the cove, where most of the male convicts were already encamped and all the female convicts would be located (the women were still being landed, a few at a time). There also stood the hospital tent, the marines’ tents, the marquees of the marine officers, and Major Ross’s marquee. On this side of the cove, he noted, the convicts lived in tents. Which simply meant that not enough tents had been put on the ships. Thus he and the rest of the last 100 male convicts had been relegated to the eastern side under whatever kind of shelter they could manufacture, out of sight and out of mind.

“May I see Major Ross?” he asked the marine sentry on duty outside the big round marquee.

The marine, a stranger to Richard, looked him up and down in contempt. “No,” he said.

“It is a matter of some urgency,” Richard persisted.

“The Lieutenant-Governor is too busy to see the likes of you.”

“Then may I wait until he has a free moment?”

“No. Now piss off-what’s your name?”

“Richard Morgan, number two-ought-three, Alexander.”

“Send him in,” said a voice from inside.

Richard entered a space fairly well lighted by open flaps on all sides, and having a wooden plank floor. An interior curtain divided it into an office and what were probably the Major’s living quarters. He was there at a folding table which served him as a desk and, typically, alone. Ross despised his subordinate officers quite as much as he did his enlisted men, yet defended the rights, entitlements and dignity of the Marine Corps against all Royal Navy comers. He considered Governor Arthur Phillip an impractical fool and deplored lenience.

“What is it, Morgan?”

“I am on the east side, sir, and would discuss that with ye.”

“A complaint, is it?”

“Nay, sir, merely a few requests,” said Richard, looking him straight in the eye and conscious that he must be one of the very few persons at Port Jackson who rather liked the picturesque Major.

“What requests?”

“We have nothing to build our shelters with, sir, apart from a few hatchets. Most of us have managed to get up some sort of frame, but we cannot thatch with palm fronds unless we have twine to tie them down. We would happily dispense with nails, but we have no instruments to bore holes, or saw, or hammer. The work would go faster if we had at least some tools.”

The Major rose to his feet. “I need a walk. Come with me,” he said curtly. “Ye have,” he went on as he preceded Richard out of the marquee, “a level head, I noted it in the matter of Alexander’s pumps and bilges. Ye’re a no-nonsense man and ye don’t pity yourself one wee bit. If we had more like ye and less like the scum of every Newgate in England, this settlement might have worked.”

From which Richard gathered, walking at the Major’s rapid pace, that the Lieutenant-Governor had no faith in this experiment. They passed the bachelor marine encampment and approached the four round marquees in which the marine officers dwelled. Lieutenant Shairp was sitting in the shade of an awning outside Captain James Meredith’s dwelling in the company of the Captain, drinking tea out of a fine china cup. On sight of the Major they rose to their feet, but in a manner which suggested that they actively disliked their outspoken, salty commandant. Well, everybody knew that, including the felons; fueled by rum and port, the divisions in the ranks of the officers led to quarrels, courts martial and, always, opposition to Ross. Who had his supporters in some circumstances, however.

“Are the sawpits under construction?” asked the Major frostily.

Meredith waved in a direction behind him. “Yes, sir.”

“When did ye last inspect, Captain-Lieutenant?”

“I am about to. After I have finished my breakfast.”

“Of rum rather than tea, I note. Ye drink too much, Captain-Lieutenant, and ye’re quarrelsome. Do not quarrel with me.”

Shairp had saluted and disappeared, returning a moment later with MacGregor in one hand. “Here, Morgan, take him. ’Twas one of your men won him, so I am told.” He giggled. “Cannot quite seem to remember, myself.”

Wanting to sink into the ground, Richard took the joyous scrap from Shairp and followed Major Ross down to the ford.

“D’ye mean to carry that thing to the commissary?”

“Not if I can find one of my men, sir. Our camp is on the way,” said Richard with a tranquillity he did not feel; he always seemed to be there when the Major had hard words to say to people.

“Well, ’tis time I visited the surplus. Lead the way, Morgan.”

Richard led the way, hanging on to the struggling MacGregor.

“He will survive by ratting,” said Major Ross as they arrived at the dozen or so shelters dispersed among the trees. “The place has as many rats as London.”

“Give this to Joey Long,” said Richard, thrusting MacGregor at a startled Johnny Cross. “As ye see, sir, we managed to get up a fair sort of frame, but I think convict Crowder has the best idea for walls. The trouble is that without tools and materials the work proceeds at a snail’s pace.”

“I did not know that there was so much ingeniousness among the English” was Ross’s comment, touring thoroughly. “Once ye’re done here, ye can start building another camp between where ye are and the Governor’s farm, which is being cleared and laid out already. If we get no fresh vegetables the scurvy will kill us all. There are too many women all together over on the western side. I will divide them, send some over here. Which does not mean congress, Morgan, understand?”

“I understand, sir.”

They proceeded to the commissariat, where confusion still reigned. The horses, cattle and other livestock had come off and were confined inside hastily erected barricades of piled branches, looking as miserable as everybody else.

“Furzer,” said the Lieutenant-Governor, erupting into the big marquee, “ye’re a typical fucken Irishman. Have ye never heard of method? What d’ye think ye’re going to do with those animals unless ye get them into grazing? Eat them? There is no corn left and very little hay. Ye’re not a quartermaster’s arsehole! Since there is nothing for the carpenters to do until they have some timber, get them onto building pens for the animals right now! Find someone who knows good grazing when he sees it and build the pens there. The cattle will have to be shepherded and the horses hobbled-and God help ye if they get away! Now where are your lists of what was on what ship, if it has come off, and where it is now?”

Lieutenant Furzer could produce no lists worth mentioning, had little idea of whereabouts anything landed had been stored; the only storehouses up were temporary canvas ones.

“I had thought to list things when they went into permanent storage, sir,” he faltered.

“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Furzer, ye’re a cretin!”

The quartermaster swallowed and stuck his chin out. “I cannot do it all with the men I have, Major Ross, and that is honest!”

“Then I suggest ye conscript more convicts. Morgan, have ye any ideas as to suitable men? Ye’re a convict, ye must know some.”

“I do, sir. Any amount. Commencing with Thomas Crowder and Aaron Davis. Bristol men and fond of clerking. Villains, but too clever to bite the hand gives them clerical work, so they’ll not steal. Threaten to put them to chopping down trees at the rate of a dozen a day and they will behave perfectly.”

“What about yourself?”

“I can be of more benefit elsewhere, sir,” Richard said.

“Doing what?”

“Sharpening saws, axes, hatchets and anything else in need of a keen edge. I can also set a saw’s teeth, which is a craft. I have some tools with me now and if my tool box was put on a ship, I will have everything I need.” He cleared his throat. “I do not mean to cast aspersions on those who are in command, sir, but the axes and hatchets are sadly inferior. So too the spades, shovels and mattocks.”

“I have noticed that for myself,” said Major Ross grimly. “We have been diddled by experts, Morgan, from the penny-pinching Admiralty officials to the contractor and the transport captains, some of whom are busy selling slops and better clothing already-including, I have reason to believe, personal possessions of the convicts.” He prepared to leave. “But I will make it my business to see if there is a tool box for one Richard Morgan. In the meantime, get what ye need from Furzer here, be it awls, nails, hammers or wire.” He nodded and marched out, clapping his cocked hat on his head. Always neat as a bandbox, Major Ross, no matter what the weather.

“Get me Crowder and Davis and ye can have whatever ye want,” said Lieutenant Furzer, beyond mortification.

Richard got him Crowder and Davis, and collected sufficient tools and materials to finish their own shelters and start on more for the women convicts.

Women convicts had suddenly become the focus of all attention as male convicts and single marines attempted to rid themselves of passions and urges largely unfulfilled for a year and more. The comings and goings after dark were so many that not ten times the number of marines on duty could have prevented them, even if the marines on duty had not been equally determined upon sexual relief. Complicated by the fact that there were not nearly enough women to go around, and further complicated by the fact that not all the women were interested in providing sexual relief for starved men. Luckily some women accepted their lot and cheerfully obliged all comers, while others would do so for a mug of rum or a man’s shirt. The rarity of rape lay somewhere between some women’s willingness to serve multiples of men and most men’s scruples about forcing themselves on unwilling women.

From the Governor to the Reverend Richard Johnson, however, those in command were horrified at the comings and goings in the women’s camp, viewing them as depraved, licentious, utterly immoral. Naturally this stemmed from their own access to women, be she Mrs. Deborah Brooks or Mrs. Mary Johnson. Something had to be done!

Richard’s group sneaked off after dark, of course. Except for himself, Taffy Edmunds and Joey Long. For Joey, having MacGregor was apparently enough. Taffy was a different breed, a loner with misogynistic tendencies that the sudden proximity of women actually reinforced. He was odd, that was all. Singing did it for Taffy. Of his own reasons for eschewing the women’s camp Richard was not sure, except that there was some Taffy in him, it seemed; the prospect of succeeding in having a woman after two years away from their company and more than three years since Annemarie Latour was not one he could face. Since Annemarie Latour his penis had not stirred, and why that was he did not know. Not extinction of the life force. More perhaps a terrible shame and guilt, coming as it had in the midst of William Henry and on the heels of so many other losses. But he did not know and did not want to know. Only that a part of him had died and another part of him had passed into a dreamless sleep. Whatever had happened inside his mind had banished sex. Whether that was confinement or liberation he did not know. He did not know. More importantly, it was not a grief to him.

On the 7th of February there was to be a big ceremony, the first the convicts were commanded to attend. At eleven in the morning they were marshaled, male separated from female, on the southeastern point of the cove amid ground cleared for the vegetable garden; carrying muskets and properly dressed for parade, every marine marched in to the music of fifes and drums, colors and pendants flying. His Excellency Governor Phillip arrived shortly thereafter, accompanied by the blond giant Captain David Collins, his Judge Advocate; Lieutenant-Governor Major Robert Ross; the Surveyor-General, Augustus Alt; the Surgeon-General, John White; and the chaplain, the Reverend Richard Johnson.

The marines dipped their colors, the Governor doffed his hat and complimented them, and the marines marched past with their band. After which the convicts were bidden sit upon the ground. A camp table was set in front of the Governor and two red leather cases were solemnly laid upon it. They were unsealed and opened in sight of all, after which the Judge Advocate read Phillip’s commission aloud, then followed it with the commission for the Court of Judicature.

Richard and his men heard mere snatches: His Excellency the Governor was authorized in the name of His Britannic Majesty George the Third, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, to have full power and authority in New South Wales, to build castles, fortresses, and towns, erect batteries, as seemed to him necessary… The sun was hot and the Governor’s duties apparently endless. By the time the legal commission was read out, some of the listeners were half-asleep and the ship’s captains, who had all come ashore to listen, were straggling off because no one had provided them with nice shady seats. Captain Duncan Sinclair was the first to go.

Thankful for his straw sailor’s hat, Richard strove to pay attention. Especially when Governor Phillip mounted a little dais and directed an address to the convicts. He had tried! he shouted-yes he had tried! But after these ten days ashore he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that few among them were worthwhile, that most were incorrigible, lazy and not worth feeding, that out of the 600 at work no more than 200 labored at all, and that those who would not work would not be fed.

Most of what he said was audible; out of that spare small frame there issued quite a voice. In future they would be treated with the utmost severity because evidently nothing else was going to have any effect. Theft of a chicken was not punishable by death in England, but here, where every chicken was more precious than a chest of rubies, theft of a chicken would be punishable by death. Every animal was reserved for breeding. The most trifling attempt to pilfer any item belonging to the Government would be a hanging matter-and he meant what he said, every word of it! Any man who tried to get into the women’s tents at night would be fired upon because they had not been brought all this way to fornicate. The only acceptable congress between men and women was through the agency of marriage, else why had they been provided with a chaplain? Justice would be fair but remorseless. Nor should any convict value his labor as equal to an English husbandman’s, for he did not have any wife and family to support on his wages-he was the property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government in New South Wales. Nobody would be worked beyond his ability, but everybody had to contribute to the general well-being. Their first duty would be to erect permanent buildings for the officers, then for the marines, and lastly for themselves. Now go away and think about all of that, because he truly did mean every word he said…

“How lovely it is to be wanted!” sighed Bill Whiting, getting to his feet. “Why did they not simply hang us in England if they intend to hang us here?” He blew a derisive noise. “What piffle! We were not brought all this way to fornicate! What did they think would happen? I joke about sheep, but it is no joke to be shot at for going near my Mary.”

“Mary?” Richard asked.

“Mary Williams off Lady Penrhyn. Old as the hills and ugly as sin, but both halves are mine, all mine! Or at least they were until I learned that I am to be shot at for yielding to a natural impulse. In England the only one could shoot me is her husband.”

“I am right glad to hear of Mary Williams, Bill. That was not the Governor speaking, that was the Reverend Johnson,” said Richard. “The fellow ought to have been a Methodist. I daresay that is why he took this job-he is too radical by far to have appealed to any Church of England bishop.”

“Why did they bring any women convicts out here if we are forbidden to go near them?” Neddy Perrott demanded.

“The Governor wants marriages, Neddy, to keep the Reverend Mr. Johnson happy. Also, I suspect,” Richard said, thinking out loud, “to make this whole expedition seem sanctified by God. The appearance of fornication in the flock looks like Satan’s work.”

“Well, I ain’t marrying my Mary yet a while,” said Bill. “I ain’t long enough out of one set of chains to take on another.”

Which may have been how Bill felt, but they were not feelings shared by all of his fellows. From the following Sunday on, more and more convict couples were married by a delighted chaplain.

Rations were now issued weekly. How difficult that was! To stay resolute and not wolf down the lot within two days. So very little, especially now they were working. Thanks to Lieutenant Furzer’s abject gratitude they now had good kettles and pots, even if there was not much to put in them.

The hut was finished down to a double layer of saplings for its walls, one lot vertical, the other horizontal, with enough slender slats in the roof to support densely interwoven palm fronds. They were fairly dry even in hard rain, though when the wind rose to a gale it penetrated the spaces between the lattice; to keep it out they covered the outside walls with palm fronds. It had no windows and but one door facing the sandstone boulder. Humble it might be, but it was still a great deal better than the Alexander prison. The smell was of a clean, pungent resin rather than a sickening mixture of oil of tar and decomposition, and the floor was a carpet of soft dead leaves. The group was, besides, unfettered and relatively free from supervision. The marines had their work cut out in keeping an eye on the known rogues, so those who never gave trouble were left to their own devices apart from regular checks to make sure they were at their places of work.

Richard’s place of work was a small, open bark shelter near the series of sawpits being dug behind the marines’ tents, not an easy business with bedrock six inches down. The pits had to be excavated by stone-splitting wedges and picks.

Though the saws had not yet come to light (unloading was a painfully slow business), the axes and hatchets were piling up faster than Richard could put edges on them.

“I could use help, sir,” he said to Major Ross within a day of commencing work. “Give me two men now and by the time the saws need attention I will have one man ready to deal with the axes and hatchets.”

“I see your reasons, dozens of ’em. But why two men?”

“Because there have already been arguments over ownership and I have not the facilities to keep a list. Better than a list would be a lettered helper to gouge the owner’s name on the helve of every axe and hatchet. When the saws come to light, he could do the same to them. ’Twould end in saving marine time, sir.”

The cold pale eyes crinkled up at their corners, though the mouth did not smile. “Aye, Morgan, ye do indeed have a head. I suppose ye know whom ye want?”

“Aye, sir. Two of my own men. Connelly for the lettering and Edmunds to learn to sharpen.”

“I have not yet located your tool box.”

Richard’s grief was genuine. “A pity,” he sighed. “I had some grand tools.”

“Do not despair, I will go on looking.”

February wore on with thunderstorms, an occasional cool sea change and a great deal of stifling, humid weather which always ended in a pile of black clouds in southern or northwestern sky. The southern tempests brought those blessed cool snaps in their wake, whereas the northwestern ones produced hail the size of eggs and continued sultriness.

Save for different kinds of rats and millions of ants, beetles, centipedes, spiders and other inimical insects, life forms anchored to the ground seemed rare. In contrast to the sky and trees, both full of thousands upon thousands of birds, most of them spectacularly beautiful. Of parrots there were more sorts than imagination dreamed existed-huge white ones with striking sulphur-yellow crests, grey ones with cyclamen breasts, black ones, rainbow-hued ones, tiny speckled chartreuse ones, red-and-blue ones, green ones, and dozens more besides. A big brown kingfisher bird killed snakes by breaking their backs on a tree branch, and laughed maniacally; one large ground bird had a tail like a Greek lyre and strutted in the manner of a peacock; there were reports from those who walked in the Governor’s train on his explorations of black swans; eagles had wing spans of up to nine feet, and competed with hawks and falcons for prey. Minute finches and wrens, cheeky and vivid, darted about fearlessly. The whole bird kingdom was gorgeously painted-and vocal to the point of distraction. Some birds sang more exquisitely than any nightingale, some screeched raucously, some chimed like silver bells-and one, a huge black raven, owned the most soul-chilling, desolate cry any Englishman had ever heard. Alas, the saddest fact about these myriads of birds was that none was worth eating.

Though some animal animals had been seen, like a fat, thickly furred waddler which burrowed, the one animal everybody yearned to see was a kangaroo. To no avail, if camp bound. Kangaroos never appeared within the precincts; they were obviously shy and timid. Not so the enormous tree-climbing lizards. They stalked through the camp as if men were beneath contempt, and rivaled the hungriest convict or thirstiest marine when it came to ransacking an officer’s marquee. One of the things was fully fourteen feet long and justifiably inspired the same terror an alligator would have.

“I wonder what to call it?” asked Richard of Taffy Edmunds when it strolled past their bark shelter, wicked head snaking.

“I think I would call it ‘sir,’ ” said Taffy.

The axes and hatchets kept coming to have new edges put on them, and by the end of February the saws started coming as well. The western sawpits had started working and a series of eastern ones was being dug under the same difficulty-bedrock. A new obstacle reared its head; the trees, felled and trimmed and put above the pit, were virtually impossible to saw into even the most mediocre of planks. The wood was not only sappy, it was as hard as iron. The sawyers, all convicts, labored so terribly that the Governor was obliged to give them extra rations and malt, else they collapsed. That irritated the marine privates, who forgot that they received butter, flour and rum in addition to the same rations of bread and salt meat as the convicts; they started to keep a ledger of grievances versus convict “privileges.” Only Major Ross and ruthless discipline kept them under control, but ruthless discipline meant more floggings-than the convicts, they whined.

The worst aspect of Richard’s life was the saws themselves. Only 175 hand saws and 20 pit saws had been sent, and all 20 of the pit saws were rip saws designed to rip the wood down its grain. No pit saw could cut across the grain of wood like this. Which meant that every tree had to be felled by an axe and segmented by an axe. Both kinds of saw were supposed to be of the best steel, but they were not. Months and months at sea had rusted them and there was no butter of antimony on any list for any ship.

25 hand saws and 5 pit saws had gone with Lieutenant Philip Gidley King to Norfolk Island when Supply sailed for that remote place halfway through February to establish a separate settlement there, turn the native flax into canvas and the huge pine trees Captain Cook had reported into ship’s masts.

“Sir, it is almost impossible,” said Richard to Major Ross. “I have made my own emery paper and removed the grosser rust, but the saws are not sleek enough. Whale oil is wondrous protective, but we have none. The oils we do have congeal to glue the moment heat builds up inside the cut. I need some substance like whale oil or butter of antimony. The saws are besides of such poor steel that, sawing timber as hard as this, I am terrified of break-ages. We have fifteen pit saws, which means no more than fourteen pits-I will always be working on one saw because this timber ruins the teeth. But most importantly, sir, I need a rust remover.”

Ross looked grimmer than ever; he had heard the same story from the sawyers. “Then we will have to look for a local substance,” he said. “Surgeon Bowes Smyth is an inquisitive sort of fellow, always tapping trees and boiling roots or leaves for curatives, resins and probably the elixir of life. Give me one of the very rusty hand saws and I will ask him to experiment.”

Off he stumped. Richard felt very sorry for him; he had great talent for organization and action, yet he had no sympathy for the frailties of others, especially if they were his own marines. Whom, when they transgressed, he was at liberty to flog. When he wanted to flog a convict, he had at least to mention the matter to the Governor. To crown the many woes this conflict within his breast generated, Ross had developed an affinity for lightning; his small stock of sheep had perished sheltering under a tree, then his marque had been struck and most of his papers and records were burned together with much else. What Richard thought as he watched the military figure disappear was that without Major Ross, chaos at Port Jackson would be infinite. The Governor is an idealist; the Lieutenant-Governor is a realist.

Richard’s bark shelter had grown much larger and he had added two more men to his team, Neddy Perrott and Job Hollister. Billy Earl, Johnny Cross and Jimmy Price had gone to join Bill Whiting in Government Stores, which left only Joey Long without a delegated job. Richard scrounged a grubbing hoe to add to their spade and mattock and set him to making a garden outside their hut, praying that no one would commandeer him for other work, or question his activities; he was fairly well known to be simple in the head, which made him less desirable. If Joey stayed at the hut, their inedible belongings would be safe. The pillaging of food was so universal that every man and woman carried their rations with them to their place of work-and then had to be vigilant to make sure nothing was stolen. Most food thefts were internecine and therefore of no interest to the Governor or the marines; the strong convicts stole from the weak or sickening convicts with impunity.

Dysentery had broken out within two weeks of landing. Richard’s instincts about the stream of water were right, though how it had become polluted at the place where water was drawn was a mystery the surgeons could not solve. Their theory was that the water of New South Wales was too alien for an English gut. Three convicts in the hospital tent died and a second hospital had to be erected out of whatever was to hand. Scurvy was rife too; the sallow skin and painful limping gave it away long before the gums started to swell and bleed. Richard still had malt and could stretch it further because Lieutenant Furzer in Government Stores prized his small band of convict helpers so much that he secretly dosed them with malt. This kind of favoritism, as with the sawyers, was inevitable in the face of growing privation.

“But if it comes to it,” said Richard to his group in a tone brooking no argument, “we will eat sour crout. I do not care if I have to sit on your chests and force it down your throats. Remember your mothers-we were all brought up to believe that medicine did no good unless it tasted abominable. Sour crout is medicine.”

Port Jackson had no natural remedies for the scurvy in anything like sufficient quantity to feed its new population; very few local plants and berries did not cause symptoms of poisoning. The germinating plants faithfully watered in the Government gardens poked up shoots to look at the sun and the sky, and died of sheer discouragement. Nothing would grow, nothing.

It is late summer here, coming into autumn, thought Richard, considering the citrus seeds he had saved from Rio de Janeiro. So I will not sow my seeds until September or October, when it is spring. Who knows how chill the winter is here? In New York the summer is very hot, yet in winter the sea can freeze. From the look of our Indians, I doubt it ever gets that cold, but I cannot afford to take chances by planting anything now.

Three convicts-Barrett, Lovell and Hall-were caught in the act of stealing bread and salt meat from the Government Stores, and another was caught in the act of stealing wine. The three food thieves were sentenced to death; the wine thief was appointed the Publick Executioner.

On the western shore of the cove between the men’s and the women’s tents stood a tall, solid, handsome tree with one oddity: a strong, straight, aberrant branch projected from it ten feet off the ground. Thus did it become the Hanging Tree, for there was no timber to spare for erecting a gallows. On the 25th of February the three wretches were escorted to it under the gaze of every convict, ordered to attend on pain of 100 lashes. Governor Phillip was determined that this last-ditch lesson would have the desired effect-they had to be made to stop stealing food! His own belly, of course, like the belly belonging to every senior person, was at least full. So, as in the business of fornication, the desperate measures introduced to rectify the trouble could not succeed. The hope that they would arose from empty scrotums and full bellies.

Many among the audience, free or felon, had seen a hanging; in England they were occasions of fete and celebration. But many had not, preferring, like Richard and his men, to leave that kind of macabre pleasure to others.

The first condemned man, Barrett, was placed atop the stool and the Publick Executioner was directed to put the looped rope about his neck, tighten it. This he did white-faced and weeping, but he refused to kick the stool away until several marines put powder and ball in their muskets and aimed at him from point-blank distance. Very pale but composed, Barrett kept himself steady. A die-hard. Because the drop was not sufficient to break his neck, he lunged and writhed at the end of his rope for what seemed an eternity. When he did eventually die, it was from lack of air. A full hour later the body was removed and the stool positioned to receive Lovell.

Lieutenant George Johnston, the Governor’s aide-de-camp now that Lieutenant King was gone to Norfolk Island, stepped forward and announced that Lovell and Hall had been granted a twenty-four-hour reprieve. The convicts were then dismissed. Phillip’s lesson was wasted; those of a mind to steal would continue to steal, and those of a mind not to steal would not. The most that hanging could do was to reduce the number of thieves by simple subtraction.

While Richard was moving away he chanced to look at the ranks of the women convicts, and there he saw some scarlet ostrich feathers nodding over a glamorous black hat. Stunned, he stopped in his tracks. Lizzie Lock! It had to be Lizzie Lock. She had been transported along with her cherished hat. Which looked remarkably fine in light of its travels. But then, she had probably looked after it better than she had her own person. Now was not the time to try to approach her; a moment would arrive. Knowing she was here was sufficient comfort.

On the morrow everybody was again compelled to assemble-in the midst of pouring rain-only to be informed that His Excellency the Governor had reprieved Lovell and Hall in favor of exile to some place as yet to be determined. However, said Lieutenant George Johnston in minatory tones, His Excellency was seriously considering shipping all recalcitrants to New Zealand and dumping them ashore to be eaten by the cannibals. Once Supply could be spared, that was where they were all going, and he meant every single word of it, make no mistake! In the meantime, exiles were to go in irons to a barren rock near the cove which had already earned the name “Pinchgut” and subsist there on quarter-rations of bread plus a little water. Yet Pinchgut, the noose and the threat of cannibal feasts did not stop the desperate from stealing food.

If the convicts concentrated upon edibles, the marines preferred to plunder rum and women; marine floggings went from 50 to 100 to 150 lashes, though the flogger never laid it on as hard as he did were his victim a convict-understandable. That the marines could concentrate upon booze and sex lay in the fact that they doled out the food; no matter how this operation was supervised, the portions for marines were always much larger than the portions for convicts. Again, understandable.

The natives were becoming harder to control into the bargain, took to filching fish, spades, shovels and what few vegetables had managed to survive on a fertile isle to the east of the cove where the big Government Farm was under construction in the hope that the ground would be ready for wheat by September. If this ground could ever grow wheat. Men sent to cut rushes for thatch in a bay farther around than Garden Island were first attacked by some Indians, who wounded one; after that two men were killed in the same place. A search up the stream to its swampy source revealed the carcasses of several big lizards decomposing in it, a signal that the natives were neither stupid nor unaware of how to foul water.

Guard duty for the marines grew more taxing as the settlement expanded on a needs-must basis. A tree Sir Joseph Banks had classified as casuarina was found to yield very good shingle timber, but was located some distance away around the stream swamp, and excellent brick clay was discovered a mile inland. The parties foraged into virgin territory and had to be guarded. To make matters worse, the natives were less gun-shy and bolder in their stealing forays, it seemed aware that the orders were not to harm them at any cost.

Governor Phillip went to explore another harbor in the north called Broken Bay, only to return dejected; it afforded good shelter for ships, but had no arable land whatsoever. His Excellency had the best reasons for his dejection. The Heads of a Plan as prepared at the Home Office had blithely assumed that crops would shoot out of ground needing only to be tickled, that splendid timber would be readily available for all conceivable purposes, that the livestock would multiply by leaps and bounds, and that within a year New South Wales would be virtually self-sufficient. Hence the neglect on the part of the Home Office, the Admiralty and the contractor to make sure that there really were three years’ worth of supplies with the fleet. The reality was more like a year, which meant that the first storeship due would not come in time. And how could men-or women-work fruitfully when they were perpetually hungry?

Two months around Sydney Cove, as the original landing place was called, had proven only that this place was hard, indifferently and indiscriminately cruel. It seemed mighty, changeless and alien, the kind of land wherein men might eventually scratch a subsistence living but never truly prosper. The natives, primitive in the extreme to English eyes, were a very accurate indicator of what New South Wales promised: misery allied to squalor.

The last week of March saw a cessation in the thunderstorms and the worst of that humid heat. Those possessed of hats had turned them into Yankey headpieces by snapping tricorn brims down all around, but Richard had kept his tricorn a tricorn because he had his bark shelter to work in and his straw sailor’s hat-and because he liked to be properly dressed for Sunday service. The habits of Bristol died hard.

Sunday service was held in any one of a number of places, but on Sunday the 23rd of March-the third anniversary of his conviction and sentence at Gloucester-it happened near the bachelor marines’ camp on a stack of rocky shelves which gave the congregation some chance to see and hear the Reverend Mr. Richard Johnson exhort them in the Name of the Lord to rein in their shameful urges and join the ranks of those who were marrying.

Having resolved on a course of action, Richard had wanted to pray and receive enlightenment, but the sermon did not do a thing to help. Instead, God answered him by presenting him with the figure of Stephen Donovan, who ranged himself alongside Richard and walked with him around the cove, across the stepping stones and down to the water’s edge near the new farm.

“Terrible, is it not?” asked Donovan, breaking the silence as they sat, arms around their knees, on a rock five feet above the placidly lapping water. “I hear that it takes six men a whole week to grub out one stump from yon wheat field, and that the Governor has decided the ground will have to be hoed by hand to receive the grain, for put a plough in it he dares not.”

“And that in turn means that one day I will not eat,” said Richard, taking off his best coat and disposing his person in the shade of an overhanging tree. “How thin the shade is here.”

“And how hard the life. Still,” said Donovan, flicking dead leaves into the water, “it will improve, you know. ’Tis like any brand-new venture, at its worst during the first six months. I am never sure why it then begins to look more bearable, save perhaps that the strangeness goes away. One thing is certain. Whenever it was that God made this corner of the globe, He used a different template.” His voice dropped, grew softer. “Only the strong will survive, and you will be one of those who survives.”

“Oh, ye can depend on that, Mr. Donovan. If I managed Ceres and Alexander, I can manage this. Nay, I do not despair. But I have missed ye. How goes Alexander and dear fat Esmeralda?”

“I would not know, Richard, for I am not in Alexander. The parting of the ways came after I caught Esmeralda opening all the convicts’ belongings and parcels stored in his holds. To see what he could sell for a fortune.”

“Bastard.”

“Oh, Sinclair is all of that and more.” The long, supple body stretched and twisted luxuriously. “I have a far better berth now. You see, I fell in love.”

Richard smiled. “With whom, Mr. Donovan?”

“Would you believe, Captain Hunter’s valet? Johnny Livingstone. As Sirius is down six or seven seamen, I applied to join her crew, and was accepted. Captain Hunter’s nose may be a trifle out of joint over the affair, but he ain’t about to turn down a seaman of my experience. So I am on good rations and have a little love into the bargain.”

“I am pleased,” said Richard sincerely. “Also very glad to see ye on this day above all others. As it is a Sunday, I do not have to work. Which means that I am at your disposal. I need an ear.”

“Only say the word and ye can have more than an ear.”

“Thank you for the offer, but remember Johnny Livingstone.”

“The water,” said Mr. Donovan, “looks good enough to sport in. I would, but for the fact that Sirius caught a shark the other day measured six and a half feet around the shoulders. Inside Port Jackson!” He rolled up his coat for a pillow and lay flat. “I never did ask ye, Richard-did ye succeed in swimming?”

“Oh, aye. The moment I imitated Wallace, it was easy. Joey Long got his pup, by the way. Winsome little fellow, rats a treat. Eats better than we do, though I am not tempted to change to his diet.”

“Have ye seen a kangaroo?”

“Not even the swish of a tail through the trees. But I do not get out of camp-I sharpen our wretched saws and axes.” Richard sat up. “I do not suppose Sirius has any butter of antimony?”

The thick black lashes lifted, the eyes gleamed blue. “Cow’s butter we have, but not any other kind. How d’ye know about things like butter of antimony?”

“Any good saw setter and sharpener does.”

“Not any I ever met before.” The lids fell. “A lovely Sunday, here in the open air with you. I will enquire about the butter. I also hear that the timber is unsawable.”

“Not quite, just exceeding slow work. Made slower because the saws are rubbish. Everything, in fact, seems to be rubbish.” Richard’s face hardened. “That is how I know what England thinks of us. She equipped her rubbish with rubbish. She did not give us a fair chance to succeed. But there are some like me who are more steeled and stubborn knowing that.”

Donovan got to his feet. “Make me a promise,” he said, putting on his hat.

Conscious of huge disappointment, Richard tried to look as if this abrupt departure did not matter. “Name it,” he said.

“I will be gone an hour. Wait here for me.”

“I will be here, but will use the time to change. ’Tis too hot for Sunday clothes.”

Richard returned before Donovan did, clad as most of the convicts were two months into their sojourn at Sydney Cove; canvas trowsers cut off below the knee, bare feet, a checkered linen shirt so faded that the pattern was as subtle as shade inside shade. When Donovan appeared he too wore simple gear, and staggered under the weight of a Rio orange basket.

“A few things ye may need,” he said, dumping it down.

His skin prickled, the color drained from his face. “Mr. Donovan, I cannot take Sirius’s property!”

“None of it is-or rather, all of it was gotten legitimately-well, almost all,” said Donovan, quite unruffled. “I confess I did pluck some of Captain Hunter’s watercress-he grows it on wet beds of lint. So we have a good lunch, and there will be plenty to take back to the others. The marines will not bother ye if I walk home with ye and carry the basket myself. I bought malt from our commissary, another sailor’s hat, some good stout fishing line, hooks, a piece of cork to make floats, and some old scuttle lead for sinkers. The main reason why the basket is so heavy,” he went on as he dug around, “is due to the books. Would you believe that some of the marines on board from Portsmouth disembarked and left their books behind? Christ! Ah!” He held up a little pot. “We have butter for our bread rolls, baked fresh this morning. And a jug of small beer.”

The only other meal of his life which could compare was the one Donovan had provided after they had filled the water tuns in Teneriffe, but even it paled at the taste of watercress-green! Richard ate ravenously while Donovan watched, donating him all the cress and butter, most of the rolls.

“Have ye written home yet, Richard?” he asked afterward.

Richard savored the small beer. “There is neither the time nor the-the will,” he said. “I dislike New South Wales. All of us do. Before I write any letters, I want to have something truly cheerful to say.”

“Well, ye have a little time yet. Scarborough, Lady Penrhyn and Charlotte sail in May, but to Cathay to pick up cargoes of tea. Alexander, Friendship, Prince of Wales and Borrowdale sail direct for England about the middle of July, I hear, so give your letters to one of them. Fishburn and Golden Grove cannot leave until thief-proof buildings have been erected to receive their rum, wine, porter and even the surgeons’ proof spirits.”

“What of Sirius? I understood that she was to return to naval duties as soon as may be.”

Donovan frowned. “The Governor is reluctant to let her go until he is sure that the settlement here will survive. To retain only Supply-thirty years old and so small-brrr! Captain Hunter, however, is not pleased. Like Major Ross, Captain Hunter thinks this whole enterprise is a waste of English time and money.”

The last mouthful of small beer went down. “Oh, what a feast! I cannot thank you enough. And I am delighted that ye won’t be leaving in a hurry.” Richard grimaced, shook his head. “I cannot even take small beer without feeling dizzy.”

“Lie down and nap a while. We have the rest of the day.”

Richard did just that. The moment he put his head on a nest of leaves, he was asleep.

Curled into a defensive position, Stephen Donovan noted, having no intention of dozing himself. Perhaps because he was a free man and a sailor who genuinely loved the sea, he looked at New South Wales very differently from captive Richard Morgan; there was naught to stop him picking up his traps and moving on. That he owned a desire to stay could in most measure be attributed to Richard, whose fate he cared about-no, whose whole person he cared about. A tragedy that his affections had fixed upon a man unable to return them, but not a tragedy of epic proportions; having voluntarily chosen his sexual preferences before he went to sea, he had lived with them in a spirit of optimism and content, keeping his affairs light-hearted and his sea bags packed to shift ship at a moment’s notice. He had felt no premonition when he boarded Alexander that Richard Morgan was about to destroy his complacency. Nor really did he know why his heart had settled upon Richard Morgan. It had just happened. Love was like that. A thing apart, a thing of the soul. He had crossed the deck on winged feet, so sure of his instincts that he had expected a kindred recognition. Failing to find it was irrelevant; at first glance it was already too late to retreat.

This alien land also prompted him to stay. Its fate drew him. The poor natives would perish, and knew it in their bones. That was why they were beginning to fight back. But they were neither as sophisticated nor as organized as the American Indians, whose tribal ties extended into whole nations and who understood the art of war, vide their alliances with the French against the English, or the English against the French. Whereas these indigenes were simply not numerous enough, and appeared to war one small tribe against another; concepts like military alliances were not in their nature, which Donovan suspected was highly spiritual. Unlike Richard, he was in a position to listen to those who had had some contacts and dealings with the natives of New South Wales. The Governor had the right attitude, but the marines did not share it. Nor was it shared by the convicts, who saw the natives as just one more enemy to be feared and loathed. In a funny way, the convicts were in the middle, like the piece of iron between the anvil and the hammer. A good analogy. Sometimes that piece of iron became a sword.

The countryside fascinated Donovan, though like everybody else he had no idea whether it could be tamed to something like English prosperity. One thing he did know: it would never breed a cozy village life, wherein a man tilled a few small fields and pastured a few more, and could walk to the local tavern in half an hour. If this place was tamed, the distances would be enormous and the sense of isolation all-pervasive, from how far away the tavern was to how far away a kindred civilization was.

He liked the feel of it, maybe because he communed with birds, and this was a land of birds. Soaring, wheeling, free. He flew the ocean, they flew the skies. And the sky was like no sky anywhere else, illimitable, pure. At night the heavens spread a sea of stars so dense they formed gauzy clouds, a web of cold and fiery infinity that rendered a man less significant than a drop of rain fallen into the ocean. He loved his insignificance; it comforted him, for he did not want to matter. Mattering reduced the world to Man’s toy, a grief. Richard sought God in a church because he had been brought up to do so, but Donovan’s God could not be so confined. Donovan’s God was up there amid that splendor, and the stars were the vapor of His breath.

Richard woke after sleeping for two hours, curled up and not moving or sighing once. “Have I been out to it for long?” he asked, sitting up and stretching.

“D’ye have no watch?”

“Aye, I do, but I keep it safe in my box. ’Twill come out when I have my own house and the stealing dies down.” His gaze was caught by the sudden appearance of hordes of little fish in the water, striped in black and white with yellow fins. “We have not heard what happened when Lieutenant King got to Norfolk Island-d’ye know?” he asked. A great deal of convict talk revolved around Norfolk Island, which had taken on the allure of an alternative destination kinder and more productive than Port Jackson.

“Only that it took King five days and many trips ashore to find a landing place. Of harbors there are none, just a lagoon within a coral reef beset by surf, and in the end that proved the only possible spot to land. There is one section of the reef is sufficiently submerged to get a jollyboat over. But of flax King could find none, and the pine trees, even if suitable for masts, will never be able to come aboard a ship, as there is nowhere to load them and they do not float. However, the soil is remarkable rich and deep. Supply left before further news was available, but she is to go back soon. Then we will know more. The isle is tiny-not above ten thousand acres in all-and is thickly forested with these giant pines. I am afraid, Richard, that Norfolk Island is no more a paradise than Port Jackson.”

“Well, that stands to reason.” Richard hesitated, then decided to take the plunge. “Mr. Donovan, there is a matter I need to talk about, and ye’re the only one I trust to advise me truthfully. Ye have no personal interest in the way my men do.”

“Speak, then.”

“One of my chatterboxes in Government Stores said too much-Furzer has discovered that Joey Long can mend shoes. So I am going to be without my house guard. I asked Furzer for a week’s grace because we have a few vegetables coming up in our garden thanks to Joey’s labors, and Furzer is a man one can talk business with. I got my week’s grace in return for a share of whatever survives,” Richard said without resentment.

“Vegetables are almost as good a currency as rum” was Donovan’s dry comment. “Go on.”

“While I was in Gloucester Gaol I had an arrangement with a woman convict named Elizabeth Lock-Lizzie. In return for my protection, she looked after my belongings. I have just found out that she is here. I have a mind to marry her, since no less formal way to obtain her services exists.”

Donovan looked startled. “For you, Richard, that sounds sadly cold. I had not thought you so”-he shrugged-“detached.”

“I know it sounds cold,” said Richard unhappily, “but I can see no other solution to our problems. I had hoped that one of my men might wish to marry-most of them visit the women in spite of the Governor’s threat-but so far none of them shows a desire to.”

“Ye’re talking about inanimate possessions in the same breath as a legal union for life-as if the first is worth the second and no different in nature. Ye’re a man, Richard, and a man for women. Why can’t ye simply admit that ye’d like to take this Lizzie Lock to wife? That ye’re as starved for feminine company as most others are? When ye said that ye gave her your protection in Gloucester Gaol, I presume that meant ye had sex with her. I presume ye intend to have sex with her now. What baffles me is how cold-blooded ye sound-noble for the wrong reasons.”

“I did not have sex with her!” Richard snapped, angry. “I am not talking about sex! Lizzie was like my sister, and so I still think of her. She is terrified of conceiving, so she did not want sex either.”

Hands cupping his face, Donovan leaned his elbows on his knees and stared at Richard in consternation. What was the matter with him? All this because of too much pleasure? No! He is a subtle man who gets his own way by being in the right place at the right time and knowing how to approach those who rule him. Not a crawler like most such because he has too much pride to crawl. I am looking at a mystery, but I do have some ideas.

“If I knew the story of your life, Richard, I might be able to help,” he said. “Tell it to me, please.”

“I cannot.”

“Ye’re very much afraid, but not of sex. Ye’re afraid of love. But what is there to be afraid of in love?”

“Where I have been,” said Richard, drawing a breath, “I would not go again because I do not think I could survive it a second time. I can love Lizzie like a sister and you like a brother, but further than that I cannot go. The wholeness of the love I had for my wife and children is sacred.”

“And they are dead.”

“Yes.”

“Ye’re young still-this is a new place-why not begin anew?”

“All things are possible. But not with Lizzie Lock.”

“Then why marry her?” Donovan asked, eyes shimmering.

“Because I suspect her lot is very hard, and I do love her in a brotherly way. Ye must know, Mr. Donovan, that love is not a thing expedience can conjure up. Were it, then I would perhaps elect to love Lizzie Lock. But I never will. We were a whole year together in Gloucester Gaol, it would have happened.”

“So what ye’re proposing is not so cold-blooded after all. And ye’re right. Love is not a thing expedience can conjure up.”

The sun had gone behind the rocks on the western side of the cove and the light was long and golden; Stephen Donovan sat and thought about the vagaries of the human heart. Oh yes, he was right. Love came unasked, and sometimes was an unwelcome visitor. Richard was attempting to insulate himself from it by espousing a sister whom he pitied and would help.

“If ye marry Lizzie Lock,” he said finally, “ye’ll not be free to marry elsewhere. One day that might matter very much.”

“You would advise me not to, then?”

“Aye.”

“I will think about it,” said Richard, scrambling up.

On Monday morning Richard secured permission from Major Ross to see the Reverend Mr. Johnson, and asked him for permission to see Elizabeth Lock, convict woman in the women’s camp, with the possible intention of asking her to marry him.

In his early thirties, Mr. Johnson was a round-faced, full-lipped and slightly feminine-looking man of carefully episcopal dress, from his starched white stock to his black minister’s robe; this latter garment tended to conceal his paunch, for naturally he did not want to look too well fed in this hungry place. The pale eyes burned with the kind of fervor Cousin James-of-the-clergy called Jesuitically messianic, and at New South Wales he had found his mission: to uplift the moral tone, care for the sick and the orphaned, run his own church his own way, and be deemed a benefactor of humanity. His intentions were genuinely good, but the depth of his understanding was shallow and his compassion entirely reserved for the helpless. The adult convicts he regarded as universally depraved and hardly worth the saving-if they were not depraved, then why were they convicts?

On learning that Richard’s first cousin (once removed) was the rector of St. James’s, Bristol, and discovering that Morgan was an educated, courteous and apparently sincere fellow, Mr. Johnson gave him his pass and provisionally arranged that Richard should marry Elizabeth Lock during next Sunday’s service, when all the convicts could see how successful his policy was.

As soon as the sun went down Richard walked from his bark shelter to the women’s camp, presented his pass to the sentry and asked whereabouts lay Elizabeth Lock. The sentry had no idea, but a woman hefting a bucket of water overheard and pointed to a tent. How did one knock on a tent? He compromised by scratching at the flap, which was closed.

“Come in if ye’re good-looking!” cried a female voice.

Richard pushed the flap aside and entered a canvas dormitory which would have held ten women comfortably, but instead had been made to house twenty. Ten narrow stretcher beds were jammed cheek by jowl down either long wall, and the space between was littered with impedimenta varying from a hat box to a mother cat nursing six kittens. The inhabitants, having eaten at the communal cooking fire outside, were disposed upon their beds in various stages of undress. Thin, frail and indomitable, all of them. Lizzie was on the bed owned the hat box. Of course.

An absolute silence had fallen; nineteen pairs of round eyes surveyed him with keen appreciation as he threaded his way between the impedimenta to the hat box and the dozing Lizzie Lock.

“Asleep already, Lizzie?” he asked, a smile in his voice.

Her eyes flew open, stared up incredulously at the beloved face. “Richard! Oh, Richard my love!” She launched herself off the bed and clung to him in a frenzy of weeping.

“No tears, Lizzie,” he said gently when she quietened. “Come and talk to me.”

He guided her out, an arm about her waist, all eyes following.

“Half your luck, Lizzie,” said one woman, not young anymore.

“A quarter of it would do,” said her companion, very pregnant.

They walked down to the water of the cove near the temporary bake-house, Lizzie hanging on to his hand for dear life, and found a pile of quarried sandstone blocks to sit on.

“How was it after we left?” he asked.

“I stayed on in Gloucester for a long time, then was sent to the London Newgate,” she said, shivering. It was beginning to be cool, and she was wearing a skimpy, tattered slops dress.

Richard took off his canvas jacket and draped it around her emaciated shoulders, studying her closely. What was she now, two years past thirty? She looked two years past forty, but the beady black eyes had still not given up on life. When she threw her arms around him he had waited for a surge of love or even of desire, but felt neither. He cared for her, pitied her. No more than those. “Tell me all of it,” he said. “I want to know.”

“I am very glad I did not stay long in London-the prison is a hell-hole. We were sent on board Lady Penrhyn, which carried no male convicts and no marines worth speaking of. The ship was much as it is in the tent-shoved together. Some women had children. Some were heavy and bore their babes at sea. The babes and children mostly died-their mothers could not give them suck. My friend Ann’s boy died. Some fell on the voyage and are heavy now.”

She clutched his arm, shook it angrily. “Can you imagine, Richard? They gave us no rags for our bleeding courses, so we had to start tearing up our own clothes-slops like this. Whatever we wore when we came on board went into the hold for here. In Rio de Janeiro the Governor sent us a hundred hempen bread sacks to wear because no women’s clothing reached Portsmouth before the fleet sailed. He would have done us a better turn to send us some bolts of the cheapest cloth, needles and thread and scissors,” she said bitterly. “The sacks could not be used for rags. When we stole the sailors’ shirts to use as rags they flogged us, or cut off our hair and shaved our heads. Those who gave them cheek were gagged. The worst punishment was to be stripped naked and put inside a barrel with our heads, arms and legs poking out. We kept washing the rags as long as we could, but sea-water sets the blood. I was able to make a few pence by sewing and mending for the surgeon and the officers, but many of the girls were so poor that they had nothing, so we shared what we had.”

She shivered despite the coat. “That was not the worst of it!” she said through shut teeth. “Every man on Lady Penrhyn looked at us and spoke to us as if we were whores-whether we were whores or not, and most of us were not. As if to them, we had no other thing to offer than our cunts.”

“That is what many men think,” said Richard, throat tight.

“They took away our pride. When we arrived here, we were given a slops dress and our own clothes out of the hold if we had any-my hat box came, is that not wondrous?” she asked, eyes shining. “When came Ann Smith’s turn, Miller of the Commissary looked her up and down and said nothing could improve her slovenly appearance-she had naught, being very poor. And she threw the slops on the deck, wiped her feet on them and said he could keep his fucken clothes, she would wear what she had with pride.”

“Ann Smith,” said Richard, in agonies of anger, grief, shame. “She absconded soon after.”

“Aye, and has not been seen since. She swore she would go-the fiercest monsters and Indians held no terrors for her after Lady Penrhyn and Englishmen, she said. No matter what they did to her, she would not truckle. There were others who would not truckle and were sad abused. When Captain Sever threatened to flog Mary Gamble-that was just after we boarded-she told him to kiss her cunt because he wanted to fuck her, not flog her.” She sighed, snuggled. “So we had our few victories, and they kept us going. Samsons that we are, it was always the women who broke through the bulkhead to get in among the sailors, lusting after men! Never the men doing the lusting or the breaking in, saints that they are. Still, never mind, never mind. It is over and I am on dry land and you are here, Richard my love. I have prayed for nothing more.”

“Did the men come after you, Lizzie?”

“Nay! I am not pretty enough or young enough, and the first place I lose weight is where I never had any to begin with-in the tits. The men were after the big girls, and there were not a lot of men-just the sailors and six marines. I kept to myself except for Ann.”

“Ann Smith?”

“No, Ann Colpitts. She is in the next bed to me. The one who lost her baby boy at sea.”

Darkness was falling. Time to go. Why did this happen? What under the sun could these poor creatures have done to deserve such contempt? Such humiliation? Such misery, beggared even of their pride? Given sacks to wear, reducing themselves to rags to get rags. How could the contractors have forgotten that women bleed and must have rags? I want to crawl away and die…

Poor wretch, not young enough or pretty enough to attract a satiated eye-what a time of it the sailors must have had! And what kind of fate does Lizzie face here, where nothing is different from Lady Penrhyn save that the land does not move? I do not love her and God knows she does not stir me, but it is in my power to give her a little status among old friends. Stephen might say that I am playing God or even condescending, but I do not mean it thus. I mean it for the best, though whether it is for the best I do not know. All I do know is that I owe her a debt. She cared for me.

“Lizzie,” he said, “would ye be willing to take up the same sort of arrangement with me that we had in Gloucester? Protection in return for your looking after me and my men.”

“Oh, yes!” she cried, face lighting up.

“It means marrying me, for I can get you no other way.”

She hesitated. “Do you love me, Richard?” she asked.

He hesitated. “In a way,” he said slowly, “in a way. But if you want to be loved as a husband loves the wife of his heart, it would be better to say no.”

She had always known she did not move him, and thought well of him for being honest. After she landed she had looked in vain for him among the men who thronged the women’s camp, sent out feelers to ascertain if any woman there could boast of bedding Richard Morgan. Nothing. Therefore she had deduced that he was not among the men sent to Botany Bay. Now here he was, asking her to marry him. Not because he loved her or desired her. Because he needed her services. Pitied her? No, that she could not bear! Because he needed her services. That she could bear.

“I will marry you,” she said, “on conditions.”

“Name them.”

“That people do not know how things stand between us. This is not Gloucester Gaol, and I would not have your men think that I am-I am-in need of anything.”

“My men will not bother you,” he said, relaxing. “Ye know them. They are either old friends or the few who came in shortly before we were sent to Ceres.”

“Bill Whiting? Jimmy Price? Joey Long?”

“Aye, but not Ike Rogers or Willy Wilton. They died.”

Thus it was that on the 30th of March, 1788, Richard Morgan married Elizabeth Lock. Bill Whiting stood in dazed delight as his witness, and Ann Colpitts stood for Lizzie.

When Richard signed the chaplain’s register he was horrified to discover that he had almost forgotten how to write.

The Reverend Johnson’s face made his feelings about the union quite clear: he thought Richard was marrying beneath him. Lizzie had come in the outfit she had preserved since entering Gloucester Gaol-a voluminous-skirted lustring gown of black-and-scarlet stripes, a red feather boa, high-heeled black velvet shoes buckled with paste diamonds, white stockings clocked in black, a scarlet lace reticule and Mr. James Thistlethwaite’s fabulous hat. She looked like a harlot trying to make herself respectable.

A sudden, savage urge to wound invaded Richard’s mind; he leaned over and put his lips close to the Reverend’s ear. “There is no need to worry,” he whispered, winking at Stephen Donovan over Mr. Johnson’s shoulder, “I am simply obtaining a servant. It was so clever of ye to think of marriage, honored sir. Once married, they cannot get away.”

The chaplain stepped back so quickly that he trod heavily on his wife’s foot; she yelped, he apologized profusely, and so managed to get away with dignity more or less intact.

“A perfectly matched couple,” said Donovan to their retreating backs. “They labor with equal zeal in the Lord’s Name.” Then he turned his laughing eyes upon Lizzie, scooped her up and kissed her thoroughly. “I am Stephen Donovan, able seaman off Sirius, Mrs. Morgan,” he said, bowing with a flourish of his Sunday tricorn. “I wish ye the whole world.” After which he wrung Richard’s hand.

“There is no wedding feast,” said Richard, “but we would be pleased if ye’d join us, Mr. Donovan.”

“Thankee, but no, I have the Watch in an hour. Here, a small present,” he said, thrust a package into Richard’s hand and walked off blowing light-hearted kisses to a group of ogling women.

The parcel contained butter of antimony and a lavishly fringed scarlet silk shawl.

“How did he know I love red?” asked Lizzie, purring.

How did he? Richard laughed and shook his head. “That is a man sees through iron doors, Lizzie, but he is another ye can trust.”

In May the Governor located a patch of reasonably good land about fifteen miles inland to the west and decided to shift some convicts to the site, crowned by Rose Hill (after his patron, Sir George Rose), to clear it fully and prepare the ground for wheat and maize. Barley he would continue to try to grow on the farm at Sydney Cove. A very little timber was coming out of the sawpits, but quantities of palm logs were now being freighted from coves nearer to the rearing bastions of the Heads. These round, fairly straight boles were flimsy and rotted quickly, but they could be easily sawed and chinked with mud, so most of the increased spate of building was done with palm logs and a thatch of palm fronds or rushes. The casuarina shingles were being weathered and saved for permanent structures, starting with the Governor’s house.

The bricks of the nucleus of this had been landed and the wonderful field of brick clay not so very distant was already being worked-brick making went on as fast as the miserable twelve brick molds put on board could be turned around. There was, however, one problem about building in brick or the stunning local yellow sandstone: no one had found a single trace of limestone anywhere. Anywhere! Which was-it was ridiculous! Limestone was like soil-it was always so abundant that no one in London had given it a thought. Yet how, in the absence of limestone, could any mortar be mixed to join bricks or sandstone blocks together?

Needs must. The ships’ boats were sent out to collect every empty oyster shell dumped around Port Jackson’s beaches and rock shelves, a heavy undertaking. The natives were partial to oysters (very tasty oysters, all the senior officers pronounced) and left the shells piled up like miniature slag heaps. If there was no alternative, then the Government would burn oyster shells to make lime for mortar. Experience proved that it took 30,000 empty shells to produce enough mortar to lay 5,000 bricks, the number contained in a tiny house, so as time went on the forays in search of this only source of lime extended to Botany Bay and Port Hacking to the south and almost 100 miles north of Port Jackson. Millions upon millions of empty oyster shells, burned and ground to dust, went between the bricks and blocks of the first solid, imperishable buildings around Sydney Cove.

Almost everybody began to display the early symptoms of scurvy, including the marines, whose flour rations were being cut back to eke out what flour was left in the stores. The convicts chewed at grass and any sort of tender leaf not redolent with resin. If it stayed down, they ate more of it-if it came up or they collapsed in agony, they avoided it. What else could they do? Having the time and the armaments to venture afield, the senior free men reaped the minute supply of edible greens: samphire (a succulent growing in the salt swamps of Botany Bay), a wild parsley, and a vine leaf which, when infused in boiling water, yielded a sweet, palatable tea.

No matter how many were banished in irons to Pinchgut, flogged, or even hanged, thefts of food continued. Whoever possessed any thriving vegetables was sure to lose them the instant vigilance was relaxed; in that respect Richard’s men were lucky, for they had MacGregor, a splendid watchdog during the night hours, and Lizzie Morgan to watch during daylight.

The death toll was mounting alarmingly among the free as well as the felon, and included women and children. A few convicts had absconded, hardly ever to be seen again. Some attrition, but not enough; Sydney Cove still held over 1,000 people on Government rations. Scurvy and semistarvation meant that the pace of work was appallingly slow, and there were of course a proportion of convicts-and marines-who objected to work on principle. With a governor like Arthur Phillip they were not flogged to work; an excuse was easy to find.

May also saw the first frosts of coming winter, heavy enough to kill almost everything in the gardens. Lizzie looked at her vegetable patch and wept, then went scratching dangerously farther afield in search of anything she thought green and edible. After two convict bodies were carried naked into the camp, killed by the natives, Richard forbade her to leave the cove environs. They had sour crout and it would be eaten. If the rest of the world chose scurvy in preference, that was hard luck.

On the 4th of June came the King’s birthday and a celebration, perhaps Governor Phillip’s way of injecting some heart into his dwindling, apathetic chicks. Guns thundered, marines marched, a bit of extra food was issued, and after dark a huge bonfire was kindled. The convicts were given a whole three days off work, but what mattered far more was the gift of a half-pint of rum broken down into grog by the addition of a half-pint of water. The free people each received a half-pint of neat rum and a pint of porter, which was a thick, black beer. To mark the occasion with some official deed, His Excellency the Governor determined the boundaries of the first county in New South Wales and christened it Cumberland County.

“Tchah!” Surgeon-General White was overheard to exclaim. “It is without a doubt the largest county in the world, but there is absolutely nothing in it. Tchah!”

This statement was not quite accurate; somewhere in Cumberland County were four black Cape cows and one black Cape bull. The precious Government herd of cattle, pastured near the farm under the care of a convict, took advantage of his rummy state, swished their tails and broke out of their compound. The search for them was frenzied and signs of their passing were found in heaps of dung and chewed shrubs, but they had no intention of being recaptured, and were not. A disaster!

Supply had come back from a second trip to Norfolk Island with some cheering news and some depressing news. The pine logs could not be loaded whole thanks to lack of an anchorage, nor could they be towed because they were so heavy they sank, but they could provide plenty of sawn beams, scantlings and boards for Port Jackson. This meant that Port Jackson could erect better wooden buildings than palm log, and concentrate upon a liquor store in stone-Fishburn and Golden Grove were stuck until some secure premises were erected on shore for the liquor.

On the other hand, Supply reported, growing plants in Norfolk Island was proving almost insuperably difficult because the place was infested with literally millions of caterpillars and grubs. Lieutenant King was so desperate that he was sitting his handful of women convicts among the plants to pick the grubs off by hand. But as fast as they picked, two replaced every one grub removed. Such rich, deep, fertile soil! Yet he could not grow in it. What did shine through in Lieutenant King’s despatches, rumor had it, was an unquenchable enthusiasm for Norfolk Island. Despite its myriad pests, he truly believed that it had more potential to support people than did the environs of Port Jackson.

Among the ailing were pockets of healthy convicts, the majority of them led by resourceful men with the ability to general their dependents toward good health, a minority led by men of different resource-robbing the weak. There were no regulations to the effect that convicts who encountered patches of wild parsley or the sweet tea vine (samphire was just too far away) must surrender their spoils to those in command. The chief restriction on plant-gathering expeditions was fear of the natives, who were getting bolder and now even came into the camp from time to time. The Governor was hoping to capture and tame a few-introduce them to the English language and English ways-and thus, by returning them, Anglicized, to their tribes, persuade these wretched people to ally themselves with the English effort. Did they, he was convinced, their own standard of living would be immeasurably improved; it never began to occur to him that perhaps they preferred their own way of life-why should they, when it was so draggled and pathetic?

To English eyes the indigenes were ugly, far less prepossessing than African negroes because they stank, daubed themselves with a white clay, mutilated their faces either by knocking out an incisor tooth or perforating the gristle between their nostrils with a small bone. Their unashamed nakedness offended grossly, as did the behavior of their women, who on some occasions would coquette brazenly, on others scream vituperation.

Poles apart, neither group stood a chance of understanding the other, nor did sensitivity rule conduct. Inundated by exhortations from the Governor that the natives were to be handled through kid gloves, the convicts grew to loathe these feckless primitives, especially as they were immune from punishment when they stole fish or vegetables or tools. To make matters worse, the Governor always blamed the convicts for the occasional attacks and murders; even if there were no witnesses, he assumed that the convicts had done something to provoke the natives. Whereas the convicts assumed that this was not so: the Governor would side with Satan if a convict were involved because convicts were an even lower form of life than natives. Those first few months at Sydney Cove cemented attitudes which were to persist far into the future.

The winter was cold, yet not unbearably so; no one would freeze to death. Had the invaders been decently fed, they would probably not have shivered the way they did. Food warmed. A few hut owners piled sandstone into unmortared chimneys and reduced their residences to cinders so frequently that the Governor issued orders-no chimneys were to be put on any save brick or stone houses. The smithy burned down; luckily perishable items like bellows were rescued, as were the rest of the tools, but clearly the smithy would have to go high on the priority list of solid buildings. So too the bakehouses, one communal, the other devoted to baking bread for Sirius and Supply.

Ned Pugh from Gloucester Gaol presented himself to his old comrades. He had been sent to Friendship with his wife, Bess Parker, and their little girl, two years old when they landed in New South Wales. Within three weeks Bess and the child were dead of dysentery. Ned was so inconsolable that Hannah Smith, a convict who had become friendly with Bess between Rio de Janeiro and Cape Town, took him under her wing. She had an eighteen-month-old son, who died at Sydney Cove on the 6th of June. Nine days later she and Ned Pugh married. Aside from lack of food they were prospering; Ned was a carpenter by trade and a good worker. A child was on the way and both prospective parents were determined to keep this one.

Maisie Harding, the cheerful giver of favors in Gloucester Gaol, had not been transported, though she was a fourteen-yearer reprieved from the noose; what had happened to her, no one knew. Whereas Betty Mason had come out on Friendship, pregnant yet again to her Gloucester gaoler. Her baby son died at sea out of Cape Town, and that plus her yearning for Johnny the gaoler had eroded her thought processes; she turned bitter and hard, was one of those who was occasionally lashed for stealing men’s shirts. Though Lizzie Morgan stoutly maintained that another convict woman had it in for her and victimized her.

In Richard’s hut all was well apart from perpetual hunger. Lizzie was so well known to at least half the men that they accepted her as a sister returned to the fold; the only one she could not charm was Taffy Edmunds, whose misogynistic tendencies worsened. He refused to be fussed or clucked over, did his own washing and mending, and came to life only on Sunday evenings, when the group lit a fire outside next to the fallow vegetable garden and he could sing counter to Richard’s baritone.

Richard and Lizzie had their own small room, added onto the basic structure, though they slept apart even through the coldest weather. On some nights when sleep was far away Lizzie would toy with the idea of making overtures, but never did. She was too afraid of rejection, preferred not to test the temperature of his affections and drives. Men were supposed to suffer powerfully from sexual deprivation, but among her ten men there were three who seemed to give the lie to this-Joey Long, Taffy Edmunds and her own Richard. She knew too from congress with the other women at the laundering place and around and about that Joey, Taffy and Richard were not unique; there were certainly some men who liked men, but there were others scattered here and there who elected to be monks, who had shut themselves away from sexual solace of any kind-even, she suspected, tossing off. If Richard tossed off, it was extremely silently and without moving. So she was afraid, too afraid to attempt anything he might dismiss her for.

Not all of life revolved around food and the lack of it, and there were good moments. Despite the two-thirds rations issued to their mothers (convict and marine wife alike) and the half-rations they themselves received, the children who managed to survive played, whooped, got into mischief and rejected the attempts of the Reverend Mr. Johnson to confine them in a school to learn reading, writing and arithmetic. Those he could not capture were the offspring of living parents; orphans had to do as he bade them. Family life did exist among the convicts and enlisted marines, often of a happy nature. Feuds existed too, especially between the women, who could conduct vendettas any Sardinian might have been proud of. As they refused to be bullied and answered back with profane fluency, the women were lashed more frequently than the men. Not for stealing food. They stole men’s shirts.

Of Stephen Donovan, Richard saw absolutely nothing. Since the 30th of March he had absented himself, Richard deduced because he hoped that the marriage would work itself into something both parties to it enjoyed. Oh, he missed Stephen! He missed the easy friendship, the sparkling conversation, the discussions they used to have about a book one had read and the other was reading. Mrs. Richard Morgan was no substitute. He admitted her loyalty, her capacity to work, her simplicity, her cheerfulness. Qualities which inspired him to care for her. But love her as a wife he could not.

The first of the transports and storeships had sailed in May, and Alexander, Friendship, Prince of Wales and Borrowdale were due to sail halfway through July.

So when the convict couple Henry Cable and Susannah Holmes from Norfolk prosecuted Captain Duncan Sinclair for loss of most of their belongings early in July, the convicts who had sailed in Alexander exulted, even if Sinclair was bound to win the case. Cable had fallen in love with Susannah in Yarmouth prison, and Susannah had borne a son. But when she was sent alone to Dunkirk hulk in Plymouth, she was not allowed to take her baby with her. This London callousness provoked an outcry around Yarmouth and resulted in a petition’s being sent to Lord Sydney. When Cable followed Susannah to Dunkirk hulk, he brought their baby with him. Their plight had touched many Yarmouth hearts; a goodly amount of clothing and some books were wrapped in canvas and sewn into a parcel by their well-wishers in Norfolk and sent aboard Alexander, though the Cables had sailed on Friendship. At Sydney Cove all Sinclair gave them were the books; the clothing could not be found.

As it was a civil case, the panel which sat to hear it was presided over by the Judge Advocate, marine captain David Collins, assisted by the Surgeon-General, John White, and the Reverend Mr. Johnson. Sinclair’s contention was that the parcel had broken when being moved from one part of the hold to another and that the books had fallen out, so had been kept separately. As to what happened to the parcel itself, he had no idea. The court found in favor of the Cables, whom the Reverend Johnson had married after they landed. The worth of the books was assessed at £5 of the £20 total value; Captain Duncan Sinclair was ordered to pay the Cables £15 in damages.

“I will not!” he cried, outraged. “Let them pay me fifteen pounds! They owe me for freightage of their wretched parcel!”

“Pay up, sir,” said Judge Advocate Collins wearily, “and stop wasting this court’s precious time. Your ship was in the service of Government and you were remunerated accordingly for the sole purpose of conveying these people and the little property they possess to this country. Fifteen pounds, sir, and no nonsense!”

A verdict which told Alexander’s convicts that the higher-ups were well aware that Esmeralda Sinclair had been selling convicts’ belongings at Sydney Cove.

The episode had one curious consequence. Two days after the court case Major Robert Ross sent for Richard to his palm log house; a stone house was being built for him with haste, as his accommodations were not fitting for the Lieutenant-Governor. His nine-year-old son, John, had been disembarked from Sirius and was now living with him; the child’s mother and younger brothers and sisters had remained behind in England.

The Major was in a wonderful mood, smiles from ear to ear.

“Ah, Morgan! Ye heard that Captain Sinclair lost the case?”

“Aye, sir,” said Richard, returning the grin cautiously.

“Take that-’tis your property,” said Ross. “It magically appeared out of nothing in Alexander’s hold. But first, ye’d best look to see what’s missing.”

There on a camp stool stood Richard’s big wooden tool chest, bare of any cloth wrappings; had it not still borne the brass plate with his name on it, who would ever have known? The locks had been broken; his heart sank. But when he opened it and removed all its nested trays, he could find nothing missing.

“I’ll be buggered!” said the Major, peering at the contents of the trays. “Ye’re no saw sharpener, Morgan-ye’re a gunsmith.”

Everything was perfectly ordered. Senhor Tomas Habitas must have packed the box himself because it contained whole flintlocks, parts of flintlocks, screws, pins, bolts, brass and copper cladding, springs, various liquids-whale oil!-special brushes. Far more than he had ever needed to carry to and from work. Nothing had moved or broken; everything was so tightly wadded in lint that a bedbug could not have crawled inside. With what was in here, he could make a gun did he have an unfinished stock and a freshly forged barrel and breech.

“I am a master gunsmith,” Richard admitted apologetically. “However, sir, I am a genuine saw sharpener too. My brother in Bristol is a sawyer and I always set his saws for him.”

“Ye’ve been very close about the gunsmithing.”

“As a convicted felon, Major Ross, I thought it inadvisable to air my skills at handling weapons. My interest might have been misinterpreted.”

“Fuck that!” rapped the Major, delighted. “Ye can turn to and overhaul every musket, pistol and fowling piece in this camp. I’ll have a proving butt built immediately-there are too many children running loose to pot bottles on tree stumps. How is your apprentice saw sharpener coming on?”

“He is as good as I am at it, sir.”

“Then he sharpens saws and you work on guns.”

“To work on guns, Major Ross, I will need a proper work-bench of the right height, some sort of stool, and shade allied to plenty of light. ’Tis not work can be done well otherwise.”

“Ye shall have whatever ye need-the rust, Morgan, the rust! There is not a gun in this place smaller than a cannon is not full of rust. Half the muskets aimed above the natives’ heads or at the kangaroos hang fire, flash in the pan or fizzle. Well, well!” The Major rubbed his hands together gleefully. “I knew that fat fucken flawn Sinclair had your tools, so as soon as the court rose I took him by the collar and told him I had an informer willing to give evidence that he’d stolen a chest of tools belonging to the convict Richard Morgan. Next morning I took delivery of it.” He emitted a short bark which Richard decided was his version of a hearty laugh. “He must have taken one look inside it and thought it more profitable to sell the thing intact in London.”

“I cannot thank ye enough, sir,” said Richard, wishing he might shake the Major’s hand.

The Major clapped a hand against his forehead. “Wait a moment! Nearly forgot I have something else for ye.” He scrabbled around in a heap of items rescued from his lightning-ruined marquee and held up a large bottle of sluggish fluid. “Assistant Surgeon Balmain distilled this while he was-er-slightly incapacitated last month. ’Twas Mr. Bowes Smyth found the tree before he sailed for Cathay. He thought it not unlike a turpentine, though its sap is a sort of a blue color. It fell to Mr. Balmain to test it on the rusty saw. He said it worked very well.”

Richard stood expressionless as the Major gave him this information, well aware (as were all his fellow convicts) of what the officers were convinced they had kept a close secret: that Mr. William Balmain and Mr. John White, who had loathed each other ever since the affair of Alexander’s bilge pumps, had had such a fierce and drunken quarrel at the King’s birthday feast that they promptly went out with a pair of pistols and fought a duel. Mr. Balmain had received a flesh wound in the thigh, and the Governor had been forced to tell the two combatants very gently that surgeons should concentrate upon letting blood out of patients, not out of each other.

“Then I shall save my butter of antimony and whale oil for the guns and give Edmunds this bottle of whatever-it-is for the saws,” said Richard, and departed hardly crediting his good fortune.

Within two days he was ensconced beneath the shelter of a stout canvas tent, its sides retractable, at a work-bench of the right height and with a stool to match. Major Ross had not exaggerated; the settlement’s armaments were shockingly rusted.

“What a close-mouthed bastard you are, Richard,” said Stephen Donovan, arriving to investigate the latest rumor.

Oh, how good to see him! “I did not think it right to speak of things that were behind me, Mr. Donovan,” he said, making no attempt to conceal his joy, written all over his face. “Now that I am officially a gunsmith, I am happy to discuss it with you.”

Chin tucked in, eyes gleaming derisively, Donovan said no more for perhaps an hour, contenting himself with watching Richard work on his first consignment, a pair of pistols belonging to the Major. What a treat to be privileged to watch a consummate craftsman doing something he loved to do! The strong sure hands moved over the gun delicately, applying a drop of whale oil with the tip of a lint-bound stick, working at the frizzen spring.

“The frizzen is soft,” Richard explained, “so ’twill not strike sufficient spark. Aside from that, the Major has kept his pistols very nicely. I have removed the rust and browned them with my butter of antimony again. Thank you for the wedding present, it is more appreciated now than it was then. What have ye been doing with yourself?”

“Captaining a longboat to bring oyster shells, mostly. We are taking the boats out to sea now that Port Jackson is exhausted.”

“Then ye’d better go back to your longboat, captain. I can see Major Ross approaching,” said Richard, putting the pistol down with a sigh of content.

Donovan took the hint and departed.

“Done?” asked Ross brusquely.

“Aye, sir. All remaining is to test them.”

“Then come with me to the proving butt,” said the Major, taking the walnut case from Richard. “Once the muskets are something like workable, there will be practice every Saturday at the butt, and ye will supervise. This place should be fortified, but since His Excellency deems battlements and gun emplacements frivolous, the best I can do is have my men prepared for emergencies. What happens if the French arrive? There is not a ship moored in a defensive position nor a cannon could be fired in under three hours.”

The proving butt was a log house with no front wall and sand piled inside it; a post bearing a chunk of blackened wood was the target. The Major fired at it while Richard loaded his second gun, fired that, and grunted in satisfaction. “Better than when I first bought them. Ye can start on the muskets tomorrow. And I have found ye an apprentice.”

That, thought Richard, is the trouble with dictators. I just hope my Ross-appointed apprentice has the right temperament for this painstaking work. Dealing with pretty pistols-he is an honest man, this one, and offered up his own possessions for sacrifice in case I was ham-fisted-dealing with pretty pistols is all very well, but I have to break down, clean and reassemble about two hundred Brown Besses, if not more. A good helper will be a godsend, an unsuitable one a handicap.

Private Daniel Stanfield was a godsend. A slight, fair young man with no pretensions to good looks, he spoke a grammatical, fairly regionless English and had, he said in answer to Richard’s question, been carefully tutored by his mother before going to a charity school. His taste inclined more to reading than to rum, and while he was extremely eager to learn, he had sufficient good sense not to make a nuisance of himself. He listened and remembered, put things back where they belonged, and was deft with his hands.

“This is a peculiar situation,” he remarked as he watched Richard break down a musket.

“How so?” asked Richard, driving the pins out along the barrel stock. “I am preparing to separate the piece into its component parts, so do not take your eyes off me. There is always a correct direction to punch out the pins, it is not mere brute strength. They taper, so if you strike them with your punch on the wrong side ye’ll ruin the pins-and possibly the gun.”

“This is a peculiar situation,” Stanfield repeated, “because officially I am your master, yet in this tent ye’re my master. I am not comfortable to have you address me as ‘mister’ while I call ye ‘Morgan.’ An it pleases ye, I would have ye call me Daniel while I call ye Mister Morgan. Inside this tent.”

Blinking in surprise, Richard smiled. “ ’Tis up to you, but I would be glad to call ye Daniel. Ye’re almost young enough to be my son.” An indiscreet thing to say: Richard felt his heart twist. Go back to sleep, William Henry, go back to sleep in the bottom of my mind.

“Ye’re well known as one of the quiet convicts,” said Daniel some days later, able to break down a musket himself. “I know not what ye did nor why, but we marines all know who is who, if not what and why. Ye’re also the head man of a number of quiet groups, which means ye’re respected in the marine camp. Less work.”

Richard did not look up to grin, he grinned to a Brown Bess between his knees.

When Major Ross had summoned him, Daniel Stanfield had gone secure in the knowledge that he had committed no crimes, even in the matter of women. His attentions were devoted to Mrs. Alice Harmsworth, who had lost her baby son a month after landing and her marine husband two months after that. Now a widow with two surviving children, she existed as best she could. Stanfield’s protection, which as yet displayed no amorous side, made the world of difference to her and her children.

“I need to train one of my own men as a gunsmith, Stanfield,” said Major Ross, “and my eye has lighted upon ye because ye’re the best shot here and ye’re also good with your hands. I have found a convict who is a master gunsmith-Morgan, late Alexander. His Excellency the Governor is leaning more and more toward making a larger settlement at Norfolk Island, and that means we will need a saw sharpener and a gunsmith for both settlements. Therefore I am sending ye to Morgan to learn at least the rudiments of gunsmithing. Whichever one of ye goes to Norfolk Island will have to be skilled enough to attend to the muskets there. If ’tis ye who goes to Norfolk Island, I would have to send a saw sharpener as well, which means I lean to sending Morgan there. But only if ye can maintain Port Jackson’s pieces. So start learning, Stanfield-and learn fast.”

Winter was proving itself the rainy season; at the beginning of August, well after the men of Richard’s hut had waved an ironic farewell to Alexander, it rained without let for fourteen days. The stream flooded and drove the married marines out of their camp conveniently close by, even this sandy soil tried to turn to muck, and every chinked log house was a death trap of whistling chilly winds after the mud plaster melted. The thatched roofs did not merely leak, they let waterfalls through, property stored in the open was irreparably damaged, and the Government Stores was beset with molds, damp, crawlies and deterioration.

As usual, the more enterprising suffered less. Having no garden to tend, Lizzie made use of the astonishing trees of this place, which may not have been lushly beautiful of foliage, but did own some spectacular trunks. Some had brown or grey-brown bark like English trees, but many had skins of different colors-white, grey, yellow, soft pink, deep pink, vermilion, cream, a grey almost blue, an occasional rich pink-brown. And these trunks varied in other ways: the basis might be covered in aimless corneille scribbles-striped with other colors-smooth as silk or stringier than unraveling rope-patched-spotted-scaled-tattered. No tree appeared to lose its leaves over winter, but many seemed to shed their bark.

The ones Lizzie was interested in were the ones the natives used to make their humpies; they yielded sheets of leathery, rust-colored bark. Having pestered Ned Pugh into making her a short ladder, she used the bark to cover the palm thatch on their ever-growing hut, then sewed it down and together with twine and a baling needle cadged from Stores on condition that the needle came back. So when the rains arrived they had no leaks could not be fixed by another bark appliqué; Lizzie kept a stock of bark in a room added on to store their belongings. At the painful rate the brick and stone buildings were going up, it would be years before any convict had a more substantial dwelling than palm log or sapling lattice. And sapling lattice like theirs, curtained as it was with woven palm leaflets, was proving itself more desirable in this cold rain than fruitlessly chinked logs.

In fact, they were quite cozy. All of them were able to keep working through the fortnight’s bad weather; Major Ross had given the saw sharpeners a tent the moment one came free. His own stone house became habitable just before the rain, his first stroke of luck in some time. As was true of other senior men, most of his more luxurious possessions had remained in England to come out on a storeship thought to be Guardian, expected in New South Wales at any time after the dawn of 1789. She would also be bringing more food, more cattle, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens, turkeys, geese and ducks. London had been hopelessly over-optimistic about how long things like flour sent with the fleet would last because London had counted on rapid crops of grain and lots of vegetables, melons and other quick-yielding fruit within the first year. That was not going to happen, everybody from highest to lowest knew it. The hard bread was all used up, they were now baking minute loaves from weevily flour, and the salt meat had been in the casks so long that a pound of it yielded four tiny bits after boiling. Yet on this plus pease and rice the convicts were expected to live; they did not get bread anymore save on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays.

Rations were being doled out daily again; no one could keep a week’s rations on hand without their being stolen, even after a desperate Governor Phillip hanged a seventeen-year-old boy for stealing food. Sickly babies and children died; the miracle was that any survived at all, yet some did. Orphans became common, deprived of both convict parents; these the Reverend Mr. Johnson gathered in, cared for, fed, and rejoiced that their depraved parents were dead. Depraved beyond redemption they definitely were-why, otherwise, would God have visited Port Jackson with an earthquake and the reek of sulphur for a day afterward?

The natives were becoming steadily more aggressive and took to stealing goats. Apparently they did not fancy sheep, perhaps not sure what lay beneath all that wool. Goat hide resembled the hide of a kangaroo.

A goat, in fact, was the source of the only trouble Richard’s men got into. When one of the Stores workers, Anthony Rope, married Elizabeth Pulley, Johnny Cross stumbled upon a dead goat, which he appropriated with delight and presented to the newlyweds as the basis for a wedding feast. They made a sea-pye out of its meat, nesting it in a crust of bread for want of pastry. The whole group was arrested and tried for killing the goat rather than for eating it. Amazingly, the military court believed the convicts’ frantic oaths that the goat was already dead; all of them were acquitted, including Johnny Cross and Jimmy Price.

The ships save for Fishburn and Golden Grove had sailed, but Richard wrote no letters. He had taken to copying excerpts out of books to keep his handwriting steady, but write letters home he would not. As if, did he not, the pain would stay buried.

At the end of August spring arrived with a cessation of the rains and typical equinoctial winds. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Undistinguished small trees and bushes suddenly produced brilliant, fluffy yellow balls, spiky crimson pendants that resembled bottle brushes, spidery-looking pink and fawn and orange tufts. Even the tallest trees nodded with masses of cream-lashed eyes and produced young foliage of an exquisite pink. The mode of flowering was mostly of this brushy, wispy kind than English or American petaled blossoms. For petals they had to look among the grasses, where little shrubs were laden with cyclamen flowers like miniature tulips. The clean, sweetly resinous air was filled with a thousand perfumes, some subtle, some suffocating.

And on the 5th of September came a night sky the like of which few had ever seen, and that never with such structure as this huge display of celestial fireworks. The vault glowed and shimmered with fabulously draped curtains and arches dripping luminous fringes in greenish-yellow, crimson and violet; great steely-indigo beams shot from all horizons to the zenith, moving as fast as lightning or eerily still and radiant. There had been an aurora in England in 1750, but no one remembered it as more than a cloudy, colorful glow. This was, the sailors assured people the next day, more wondrous by far than any Northern Lights.

Spirits picked up, even though there had been no real winter, nor any dramatic increase in warmth. But sheep were lambing, goats kidding, hens hatching eggs. None of which could be touched, yet at least augured well for some vague future. If anybody lived to see it; rations did not improve.

Lizzie applied for and received more seeds, and set to in the garden again with renewed enthusiasm. Oh, for a seed potato! Still, if the carrots and turnips came up they would eat something having substance, real belly-filling nourishment. Greens might be good for the scurvy, but they were not filling.

Governor Phillip had decided to send Sirius to Cape Town for more provisions; storeship Guardian was just too distant a prospect to cherish hopes of survival without something to go on with. She was to sail east for Cape Horn on her way there; the decision as to whether she would return around Van Diemen’s Land or Cape Horn was left to Captain Hunter. And Golden Grove would leave Port Jackson with her because the liquor store was almost finished. She would sail first to Norfolk Island bearing the first consignment of convicts under Phillip’s scheme to add to the tiny settlement and subtract from the big and overburdened one.

When Major Ross sent for him on the last day of September, Richard knew what he was going to say. He had not long turned forty years old and every birthday since his thirty-sixth had been spent in a different place-Gloucester Gaol, Ceres hulk, Alexander and New South Wales. He would go somewhere else before he turned one-and-forty, though this was sooner than he had expected. In a few weeks he would be at Norfolk Island. Nothing surer.

“Ye’ve worked wonders with Private Stanfield, Morgan,” said the Lieutenant-Governor, “and ye’ve left us with two trained saw sharpeners as well. I had thought of sending Stanfield to Norfolk Island, but he is concerned for the welfare of Mistress Harmsworth and her children, and I am obliged to consider not only my marines, but also their wives, widows and dependents. Stanfield will stay here and continue with the muskets. Ye’ll go to Norfolk Island as a sawyer, saw sharpener and gunsmith. Lieutenant King has informed His Excellency that his only skilled sawyer has drowned. While ye’re not a skilled sawyer, Morgan, I have no doubt ye’ll soon pick up the art. Ye’re that sort of man. I have told Lieutenant King in my own despatches that ye’ll be an asset to Norfolk Island.” The thin lips stretched in a sour smile. “As well that some who go will be assets.”

“May I take my wife, sir?” Richard asked.

“I am afraid not. There are no vacant berths for women-His Excellency has given me a list of the women who will be going. I have Blackall from Alexander in mind as another sawyer because I suspect ye’ll have a lot of sharpening to do. Our building timber for Port Jackson is coming from Norfolk Island until we can find a proper source of limestone to use stone or brick. The local timber is impossible, whereas the beams and planks Supply has brought back with her are ideal. Supply had a very rough voyage and has to be laid up, which is why Golden Grove has been commissioned to drop ye off at Norfolk Island.”

“May I take my tools with me?”

Ross looked offended. “His Majesty’s Government of New South Wales is not empowered to deprive ye of a single nail or stocking,” he said stiffly. “Take all that belongs to ye, that is an order. I am sorry about your wife, but that is not in my command. Private Stanfield will manage on Government issue now that he knows how to make emery paper and files. Go and get your things together. Ye board tomorrow afternoon at four. Be waiting at the east jetty-and do not bring a great company to farewell ye, hear?”

Private Daniel Stanfield was absorbed in a Brown Bess, did not look up when Richard entered the tent.

“Mr. Stanfield,” Richard said.

That made him jump. “Ah! Ye’re to Norfolk Island.”

“Aye, and have been ordered to take every tool and item I own, for which I am sorry. Major Ross assures me that ye’ll be able to continue out of Government issue.”

“Indeed I will,” said Stanfield cheerfully. He got to his feet and held out his hand. “I thank ye, Richard, for your generosity and time. And I am sorry it has to be you who goes. If it were not for poor Mistress Harmsworth, I would welcome the change.”

Richard shook the hand warmly. “I hope we meet again, Daniel.”

“Oh, I fancy that we will. I am not of a mind to go home in a hurry. Nor is Mistress Harmsworth. Sooner or later there will be plenty of food, we both believe that. As a private of marines I would be lucky to end my career as a sergeant, so life in England upon retirement would be hard. Whereas here I have the opportunity to be a landowner once my three years are expired, and I can farm. Looking twenty years into the future, I believe I will be better off in New South Wales than in England,” said Daniel Stanfield. He began to help Richard pack his tool chest. “When does your sentence end?”

“March of 1792.”

“Then in all probability ye’ll finish your time at Norfolk Island. Where,” said Stanfield, making sure a cork was tied down thoroughly, “I am undoubtedly going to be sent at some time or other before I am through. Major Ross does not intend to have any marines permanently stationed on the island, we will all do our turns. Which is why I have to persuade Mistress Harmsworth to marry me before I am posted there.”

“She would be foolish to turn ye down, Daniel. However, if history continues as it has with me,” Richard said, adjusting the lint wadding, “by the time ye’re sent to Norfolk Island the Crown will have developed another settlement elsewhere in this vast place and I will have been sent there.”

“Not for some years at least,” said the young marine emphatically. “Those here have first to prove that settling Englishmen so far away will succeed. Especially because few of them wanted to come or had any choice. The Governor is determined not to fail, but there are many others not very junior to him who do not feel the same.” His fine, light grey eyes looked at Richard very directly. “I take it that this conversation will not go any further?”

“Not from my mouth,” said Richard. “There is nothing wrong here that could not have been solved before we set sail. Whatever the official attitudes are here, it is lack of planning and specific orders in London to blame. And the rivalries between naval officers and marine officers.”

“In a nutshell.” Stanfield smiled.

Richard drew a breath and put the welfare of his back in Daniel Stanfield’s hands. “The Major is a curious mixture,” he said.

“That he is. He sees his commissioned duties as any marine major would, and disapproves of duties which don’t contribute to the well-being of the Corps or marines’ pockets. So he will let those of us with a trade work as carpenters or masons or smiths, but he will not countenance his officers serving on criminal courts because they are not paid for the extra duty. The Governor insists that it is every man’s duty to do whatever the Crown asks, and in New South Wales he is the Crown. Then there is Captain Hunter, who sides with the Governor for no other reason than that both are Royal Navy.” He shrugged. “It makes things very difficult.”

“Especially,” said Richard thoughtfully, “because ye’re more grown up than many of the officers, Daniel. They act like children-quarrel in their cups, fight duels-refuse to get on together.”

“How,” asked Stanfield, “d’ye know that, Richard?”

“In a place this size? With not many more than a thousand souls? We may be felons, Daniel, but we have eyes and ears the same as free men. And, no matter how low our status at the moment, all of us were born free Englishmen, even if some of us hail from Ireland or Wales. None from Scotland, where they do not use English judges.”

“Aye, that is another bone of contention. The majority of our officers are Scotchmen, whereas the sailors can be anything.”

“Let us hope,” said Richard, locking his chest, “that those who do remain in this place learn to bury the differences this place renders meaningless. Though I doubt that will happen.” He held out his hand a second time. “I wish ye luck.”

“And I you.”

The men were all home to dinner, which Lizzie cooked; had she only a few ingredients it would have been obvious that she was a good cook. As it was, the menu consisted of pease pottage to coat a kettle of rice. And a spoonful of sour crout each.

Richard put his tool box away and joined the circle around the fire; of wood for sawing there might be none, but of wood for burning there was plenty.

How to do it? How to tell them? Ought he to tell Lizzie in private? Yes, of course he had to tell her first, and in private, no matter how he dreaded the tears and protestations. She would assume he had asked not to take her with him.

He ate his food in silence, glad that no one had noticed him deposit the tool box in their belongings room. Of long experience they saved a little of the pease-and-rice for a cold breakfast, even though every one of them could have devoured the lot and still felt hungry.

How would they survive without him? Well enough, he thought; after eight months here, each of them has forged some kind of life for himself independent of the group. Only food and shelter keep them intact. The Government Stores men-and that is most-have excellent relationships with other convicts in Stores and with Lieutenant Furzer, and the others all sharpen together. If I worry about any of them, it is Joey Long, such a simple and easily led soul. I pray the rest watch out for him. As for Lizzie-she would survive the sinking of the Royal George. Mine has never been a push sort of leadership; they will hardly know I am gone, and maybe some of them will be glad to strike out on their own.

“Walk with me, Lizzie,” he said when the meal was over.

She looked surprised, but accompanied him without a murmur, aware that something bothered him tonight, yet sure it was nothing she had done.

Dusk was thickening but the official curfew stayed at eight o’clock all year round, still well after dark. Richard led his wife to a quiet place by the water and found a seat for them on a rock. Crickets were making a racket in the grass and the huge huntsman spiders were on the prowl, but there was little else to disturb them.

“Major Ross summoned me today,” he said steadily, looking out across the cove to where the myriad lights of the western shore flickered and flamed. “He informed me that tomorrow I am to board Golden Grove. I am being sent to Norfolk Island.”

His voice told her that she was not to accompany him, but she had to ask. “Am I to go with you?”

“No. I did ask that ye might, but I was refused. Apparently the Governor has already picked the women.”

A tear splashed on the rock, still warm from the last sunlight; her mouth began to tremble, though she fought valiantly to maintain her calm. He would not like a scene, this man of the shadows. Not wanting to stand out from the rest, yet speared on his own abilities and excellences. Nothing will draw him out of his armor, nothing can weaken him, nothing will deflect him from what he sees as his purpose. And I too am a nothing in his eyes, for all that he does genuinely care about my well-being. If he ever had a light inside of him he has snuffed it out. I know nothing about him because he never speaks of himself; when he is angry it only shows as a different sort of silence, after which he proceeds to get his own way by some other means. I am sure that inside his mind he was able to intrude his name into Major Ross’s mind. Silly thought! How can one mind influence another without the necessity for speech and glances and nearness? Yet he can do it. Who else in this place has managed to get on the right side of Major Ross? Without smarming or greasing-well, Major Ross cannot be so cozened, as all know who have tried. He wants to go. Richard wants to go. I am sure he did ask for me, but I am quite as sure that he knew the answer would be no. Were he evil, I would say he had sold his soul to the Devil, but there is no evil in him. Has he sold his soul to God? Does God buy souls?

“It is all right, Richard,” she said in a voice which did not betray her grief. “We go where we are sent because we are not free to choose. We are not paid for our labors and we cannot insist on having what we want. I will continue to live here and look after our family. If I behave soberly and decently they cannot force me back into the women’s camp. I am a married woman separated from her husband at the Governor’s whim. And I have a good arrangement with Lieutenant Furzer about vegetables, so he will not want me back in the women’s camp. Yes, it will be all right.” She got up quickly. “Now let us go back and tell the others.”

It was Joey Long who cried.

Shortly after dawn Joey’s woebegone face became wreathed in delighted smiles; Sergeant Thomas Smyth appeared to inform him that he would be going to Norfolk Island on Golden Grove, so get his things together and be at the eastern jetty for embarkation at four that afternoon-and no farewelling crowd, either.

His own few things were packed more quickly than Richard’s, for they mostly fitted into his box. What Richard had to do was to sort out which books he would take with him and which he would leave in Port Jackson for Will, Bill, Neddy, Tommy Crowder and Aaron Davis. The collection had grown amazingly, mostly thanks to Stephen Donovan’s efforts in gathering those books the marine officers and enlisted men had left behind in Sirius. Finally he selected the ones he thought would be of most practical use plus those Cousin James-of-the-clergy had given him. What he needed was Encyclopaedia Britannica, but that would have to wait until he wrote home to beg for it, as would Jethro Tull’s book about farming, published fifty-five years ago but still every cultivating man’s bible. One day he must write home! Only not yet. Not yet.

Golden Grove’s longboat was waiting at the hastily constructed little jetty, companion to a second on the western shore of Sydney Cove; there were 19 other convicts to go on board, some of whom Richard knew well from Alexander. Willy Dring and Joe Robinson from Hull! John Allen and his beloved violin-there would be good music at Norfolk Island. Bill Blackall, a rather moody individual from the starboard side. Len Dyer, a Cockney who had lived forward, truculent and given to violent outbursts. Will Francis, who went back to Ceres as well as Alexander, a constant nuisance to those in authority. Jim Richardson, also from Ceres as well as Alexander, another moody individual; he and Dyer had been up a deck among the Londoners on Ceres. The rest were strangers come on other ships from other hulks.

There is, thought Richard as he got himself, Joey Long and MacGregor settled in the bow, a solution to this human equation which time will give to me. When I see which women the Governor has personally chosen, the answer will grow clearer.

As Golden Grove was a storeship she owned no slaver-style accommodation; the men were led to the after hatch and found themselves in a lower deck devoid of anything save hammocks. A two-decker, this ship’s remaining cargo, for Norfolk Island, was stored further below. He left Joey Long and MacGregor to guard their belongings and went up on deck.

“We meet again,” said Stephen Donovan.

Wordless, Richard gaped.

“How nice to see ye without an answer,” Donovan purred, taking his companion by one arm and drawing him forward. “Johnny, this is Richard Morgan. Richard, this is my friend Johnny Livingstone.”

One glance was enough to make the attraction understandable; Johnny Livingstone was slight, graceful, owned a mop of golden curls and large, soulful greenish eyes fringed with very long, black lashes. Extremely pretty and probably a very nice fellow doomed, if he had followed the sea as a profession from childhood, to be the plaything of a succession of naval officers. He had the look of a ship’s boy, of whom there had been three on Alexander, all the property of Trimmings the steward, who would have been neither gentle nor compassionate.

“I cannot shake your hand, Mr. Livingstone,” said Richard with a smile, “but I am very glad to meet you.” He moved to the rail to put distance between himself and the free pair because other convicts were back on deck again, gazing curiously. “I thought ye were with Sirius.”

“And off to the Cape of Good Hope around Cape Horn,” Donovan said, nodding. “The trouble is that we are not needed as badly aboard Sirius as we are at Norfolk Island. His Excellency is very short of free men to act as supervisors of convicts because Major Ross has let it be known very loudly that the Marine Corps is not about to extend guard duty to supervisory duties. So the Crown has deputed me to act as supervisor of convicts at Norfolk Island.” He dropped his voice, wriggling his brows expressively. “I suspect Captain Hunter decided he would like a nice long cruise alone with Johnny, and personally nominated me to the Governor. But, alas, Johnny elected to go to Norfolk Island too. Captain Hunter has retired cursing, but no doubt will live to seek a return bout.”

“What will you do at Norfolk Island, Mr. Livingstone?” asked Richard, resigning himself to being identified by his fellow convicts as friendly with two free men who were a little-free.

Mr. Livingstone made no attempt to answer for himself; he was, as Richard discovered, extremely shy and self-conscious.

“Johnny has a great talent for the woodworking lathe, one of which-it is probably the only one, knowing London-is aboard for use at Norfolk Island. The wood at Port Jackson cannot be worked on a lathe, whereas the pine can be. That His Excellency was eager to accommodate Johnny in the matter of his desire to leave Sirius lies in the new Government House’s balusters-he will turn them at the source of the timber. Also many other useful wooden objects His Excellency lacks.”

“Surely a job better done at Port Jackson?”

“There is not room for the raw timber aboard ships plying back and forth between the two settlements-every ship will be loaded to the gunwales with sawn timber to get the bachelor marines and convicts into better houses.”

“Of course. I should have thought of that.”

“And here,” Donovan announced blithely, “are the ladies.”

There were eleven women in the longboat. Richard knew most of them by sight thanks to Lizzie, though none by acquaintance. Mary Gamble, who had told Captain Sever to kiss her cunt and had cut a swathe through those men who prided their masculinity by demeaning it in any way her barbed tongue could; her back would scarcely have time to heal before she was lashed again. Ann Dutton, who loved rum and marines, and would go after the latter to obtain the former. Rachel Early, a slattern who would pick a fight with an iron post. Elizabeth Cole, who had married a fellow convict shortly after reaching Port Jackson and been so shockingly beaten by him that Major Ross had stepped in and put her in the women’s camp as a laundress. If the other seven were like these, then His Excellency was ridding himself of nuisances, though obviously Elizabeth Cole was being sent 1,100 miles from her husband as an act of pure compassion.

“What a jolly voyage this is going to be,” Richard sighed, watching the women being herded to the forward hatch.

Golden Grove sailed at dawn on the 2nd of October, 1788, in company with Sirius until the two ships shook free of the Heads; then Golden Grove tacked to find a wind to bear her northeast while Sirius took advantage of the south-flowing coastal current and headed away to find her eastings for Cape Horn, 4,000 miles to the east.

By the time that the ship drew close to Lord Howe Island five days later, Richard had solved his equation. As he suspected, the Governor was ridding himself of nuisances. Not necessarily because they were disciplinary problems like Mary Gamble and Will Francis. No, the majority were less fortunate than that: they had been adjudged mildly mad. Only four of the men could pass muster as what the ship’s manifest purported them to be-young, strong, unattached and sea crazy. They were to man the fishing coble at Norfolk Island. For himself, he was not sure quite why he had been chosen-a sawyer he was not, yet that was what he was listed as. Did Major Ross somehow sense that Morgan was tired of Port Jackson? And if he had, what was so different about that? Everybody was tired of Port Jackson, even the Governor. At the core of him he had a feeling that Major Ross was banking him like money-tucking him away for future use. Well, maybe…

Men like poor, timid John Allen and Sam Hussey were distinctly peculiar, twitched or muttered or stayed too long in one position. The real villains were outstanding ones-Will Francis, Josh Peck, Len Dyer and Sam Pickett. Some were married and had been allowed to bring their wives, in every case because one or the other or both were odd-John Anderson and Liz Bruce; the fanatical Catholics John Bryant and Ann Coombes; John Price and Rachel Early; James Davis and Martha Burkitt.

Sergeant Thomas Smyth, Corporal John Gowen and four privates of marines made up the guard detachment, though guard on Golden Grove was so relaxed a business that Private Sammy King was able to commence a touching and passionate affair with Mary Rolt, one of the peculiarities (she conducted whole conversations with herself). A temporary aberration, it seemed, for after she and the Private became lovers her imaginary dialogues stopped completely. A sea voyage, Richard mused, could indeed be highly beneficial.

For him it had commenced badly; Len Dyer and Tom Jones lay in wait for him below to teach him how they felt about convicts who not only hobnobbed with free men but with Miss Molly free men into the bargain.

“Oh, grow up!” he said wearily, not backing down. “I can take both of ye with one hand tied behind me.”

“How about six of us?” asked Dyer, beckoning.

Suddenly there was MacGregor, snapping and snarling; Dyer aimed a foot at him, caught him on the hind leg just as Golden Grove heeled hard over. The rest of it happened very quickly as Joey Long hurled himself into the fray and three of the six attackers lost interest in anything but their rising gorges. Richard put a shod toe into Dyer’s backside right behind his testicles, Joey climbed on Jones’s back and started biting and scratching, and MacGregor, uninjured, sank his teeth into Josh Peck’s heel tendon. Francis, Pickett and Richardson were busy vomiting, which came in very handy; Richard finished the fight by rubbing Dyer’s face in spattered deck and putting all his weight into kicking Jones and Peck in the groin.

“I fight dirty,” he said, panting, “so do not lie in wait for me again. Otherwise ye’ll never sire children.”

It was politic, however, he decided after making sure that Joey and MacGregor were all right, to shift themselves and their stuff up on deck. If it rained they would shelter under a boat.

“I hope,” he said to Stephen Donovan later, “that ye can handle yourself, Mr. Donovan. Tom Jones and Len Dyer do not care for Miss Mollies. Ye’ll be supervising them, not to mention Peck, Pickett and Francis. Though the last man is their leader, he let Dyer do the job. Therefore he is dangerous.”

“I thank ye for the warning, Richard.” Donovan studied him thoughtfully. “No black eyes or bruises that I can see.”

“I kicked them in the balls. Seasickness,” Richard grinned, “was a great help. My luck held, you see. Just as they rushed me Golden Grove found a wind and some of the stomachs revolted.”

“ ’Tis true, Richard, ye do have luck. It seems odd to say that of a man unlucky enough to have gone down for something he did not do, yet ye do have luck.”

“Morgan’s run,” said Richard, nodding. “Luck runs.”

“Ye have had your runs of bad luck too.”

“In Bristol, aye. As a convict I have had very good luck.”

Lord Howe Island marked a kind of halfway point, and save for the day they spent in its vicinity the weather was glorious. That meant the ship’s company never saw this magical island of turtles, palm trees and soaring peaks, 500 miles east of the coast of New South Wales. They ploughed onward, another 600 miles to go.

This was Richard’s first venture into the mightiest of all seas, the Pacific, which he had thought to find no different from the King’s herring pond, or that unnamed monster of an ocean south of whatever lay between New Holland and Van Diemen’s Land. But the Pacific was different; it must, he decided, leaning for hour after hour over the rail looking into illimitable distances, be unfathomably deep. Seen close up as the tremendous yet tranquil swell cradled Golden Grove, its waves were a luminous ultramarine shot with pure purple. Of fish they caught none, though of denizens there were plenty-huge turtles skimmed along, porpoises leaped. Massive sharks cruised by scornfully ignoring the baited lines, their dorsal fins three feet clear of the water, their length terrifying. A sea of giant sharks rather than whales. Until the day when they were surrounded by leviathans, voyaging south to summer while Golden Grove, inexplicable marine creature, surged northeast. Strange. He had never really felt lonely on the way to New South Wales, but now he was perpetually conscious of his loneliness. The sense of belonging a year ago probably lay in the fact that there were always ten sets of sail in sight. Here no ship ventured except Golden Grove.

At some time during the eleventh night he became aware that he was not lifting and falling gently; Golden Grove had backed her sails and was standing. We are here.

The deck was absolutely quiet because the sailors had nothing to do and the helmsman, out in the open on the quarterdeck, had only to keep the tiller steady. The night was still, the sky cloudless save for that haunting wilderness of numberless stars, no moon to dim them as they wheeled in some incalculable cycle across the heavens. Anything so thinly and ethereally brilliant, he felt, ought to be audible: what privileged ear could hear the music of the spheres? His ear heard naught but the creaks and washes of a ship standing in an easy sea, and the shadow-sounds of night birds flitting like ghosts. Land is there, invisible. Yet another shape to my fate. I am going to a tiny isle in the midst of utter nowhere, so remote that even men have not dwelled in it until we English came. Counting us, there will be about sixty Englishmen and Englishwomen.

One thing is certain. This place can never be home. I come alone through a lonely sea, and I will leave alone through a lonely sea. Nothing so far away can have substance, for I have reached that point on the globe where I begin to swallow my own tail.