The Potato Factory

Chapter Eighteen

Mary's punishment was not completed with her beating and admission to hospital. A week after being released she was paraded on the prisoners' deck and charged with causing a riot within the prison. This was too grave an offence for Tiberias Potbottom to resolve by the usual proxy of his prayerful master, and Joshua Smiles himself was required to preside. With a charge of inciting a riot, the safety of the ship had been placed in jeopardy and the ship's master and those officers not on duty were required to be in attendance.

A muster of all the prisoners was called mid-morning with Mary standing with her head erect before the pale and mournful Smiles. The surgeon-superintendent, as was his usual habit, was dressed completely in black. This colour included both his blouse and neckerchief and a top hat of unusual height. The total effect gave him the appearance of being perhaps on stilts. He towered over the remainder of the prisoners, matrons, guards and even the tallest of the ship's officers present, and Mary was seen to come not much above the waist of his frock coat.

In a tone incurious to the consequence of his words he read out the charges against Mary and then, without raising his voice or heightening the inflections placed upon his words, he pronounced sentence. It was a noticeable contradiction to the blandness of his voice that throughout his reading the surgeon-superintendent, on no single occasion looked up or at the prisoner, and his hands shook as though in a tremor as they held the paper from which he read.

'… Mary Abacus, I, Joshua Jeremiah Smiles, under the authority given to me by the Admiralty and further, under the provisions of the Home Department and in the name of His Majesty King George IV, sentence you to twenty-five strokes of the lash to be administered at one time. Whereupon you shall have your hair shaved and be placed in solitary confinement within the coal hole and shall remain there for one week, this to exclude the Sabbath. During this time you shall be given bread and water as your only sustenance. I further order that the sentence be carried out immediately by Mr Tiberias Potbottom and that all prisoners and those who be in charge of them, and therefore under my authority, shall bear witness to these proceedings.'

There was a gasp from the prisoners, for even the whores felt great remorse at what they'd done to Mary.

'Ya bloody bastard!' a voice shouted from the centre of the crowd.

'Who said that?' Tiberias Potbottom called out, jumping up and down to try to see into the lines of assembled women.

'I did, ya fuckin' ape!' Ann Gower called as two guards moved into the crowd of suddenly thronging and excited women and grabbed her. 'You murderers!' she shouted again as she was pulled away and led from the deck. 'May ya rot in 'ell!' A guard struck her on the side of the head with his truncheon, so that she fell to her knees and was dragged down the hatchway.

Mary was placed over an empty barrel, her arms and legs held by the wrists and ankles, each limb by a separate male prison guard. The matron of the hospital, who had so recently nursed her back to health, was then required to fully expose her back. Mary was given a small square of folded cloth to place between her teeth.

The sky above was brilliant blue with no cloud to interrupt its surface, a storm having come up during the night so that the ocean and the sky seemed to shine in a world washed clean. The ship sailed steadily at eight knots to a breeze from the south-west, its prow cutting majestically through the waves. Even the sun, though warm, was not torturous, the breeze cooling the deck where Mary lay sprawled over a barrel in preparation for 'the Botany Bay dozen' – that is, twenty-five strokes of the lash. Potbottom stood over her wielding the dreaded cat. He was so tiny that the lash, with its three knotted leather straps attached to a wooden handle, seemed too big in his hand.

That he should have been allocated such a task was unusual in the extreme. Had such a need befallen a male convict ship there would have been some person skilled in the use of the whip. But flogging was exceptionally rare on female convict ships, and no such expert existed on the Destiny II.

While Potbottom gleefully held on to the whip handle with both hands, he was not himself sure quite how it should be used for maximum effect, so he slapped it down upon the deck at his feet to get the hang and angle of its correct use.

Meanwhile Joshua Smiles produced from the pockets of his top coat the two small knee cushions, 'Jesus' and 'Saves', which he had carefully strapped to his legs so that the two words embroidered in red against a white canvas background might be clearly seen by all. With his back turned to Mary and his eyes fastened upon the topgallant sail, he kneeled upon the deck, having first respectfully removed his top hat and placed it beside him.

Potbottom, the awkward whip in hand, observing the surgeon-superintendent to clasp his hands in prayer and then, no doubt by pre-arrangement, to briefly nod, brought the lash up above his shoulders and hard down upon Mary's back.

'Oh merciful God forgive this poor wretch her transgressions,' Joshua Smiles loudly intoned, his voice directed upwards at the topgallant sail.

He paused after delivering this single sentiment, then once more nodded. Whereupon Potbottom again wielded the lash.

'Oh Lord Jesus may she repent her sins and accept your merciful forgiveness!'

Pause, nod and Potbottom's lash came down a third time. Thin welts like the beginnings of a spider's web now began to rise on Mary's back.

Thus the prayers, the nods and the whipping continued until the twenty-five strokes were completed. Mary's back was now bleeding profusely and covered with ugly welts, much to the satisfaction of Potbottom.

Many of the convict women were weeping as Mary was lifted to her feet and the gag removed from her lips. Sobbing and sniffing, both her eyes still ringed purple from the beating she'd taken, her clawed and withered hands clasped to her trembling breast, Mary was in all appearance a most forlorn and heart-rending sight.

Witnessing her misery and dejection the convicts increased the volume of their weeping. Mary was pushed back on to her knees and the prison matron stepped up to her and commenced to crop Mary's hair close to her scalp. The soft, pale hair fell to the deck, where a sudden zephyr blew it about and then carried it out to sea.

When this initial cropping was completed a bowl of soapy water was produced by one of the prison assistants, who proceeded to lather the hair remaining on Mary's head. The matron then exchanged her scissors for a cut-throat razor and shaved Mary's head, the uncaring blade removing the crusted scabs where her hair had been previously yanked out from her scalp, so that the blood, turned pink with the foamy lather, ran down Mary's face and neck.

The howling of the convict women increased in intensity and, while prison guards drew closer with their truncheons at the ready, Potbottom jumped and skipped beside them, bringing the lash down upon the deck as a gleeful warning to any who would promote a further mischief.

Mary was taken to the hospital and made to wash. Her uniform was stripped from her and she was given an old and tattered garment to wear. It had been washed soft, ready to be used as a rag, and so brought some comfort to her burning back. When her bloodstained uniform was returned to the mess a quarrel broke out among the whores, each of whom wanted to wash and repair it. Mary was then taken to the coal hole, the darkest and gloomiest part of the ship, where she was locked up with the supply of coal used in the vessel's kitchens.

There is nothing as destructive to the mind as complete darkness and silence. If there be a hell then eternal fire would come but a poor second to an eternity filled with complete solitude, for humans are gregarious creatures, in the main, and not designed to be alone. Soon the will to live breaks down and the mind ceases to see things rational and coherent; instead, nightmares grow out of a darkness populated with beasts and demons and hob-goblins with sharpened teeth and long treacherous claws.

It was most fortunate therefore that a prison guard, bringing Mary's ration of water and ship's biscuit, took pity on her and agreed to bring her abacus to her. Had it not been for this, the week spent in the coal hole might well have robbed Mary of her sanity. In the pitch darkness she would work the beads until her fingers were raw. Her mind grew to memorise the numbers of red and black upon the wire rails, and she spent hours making the most bizarre calculations to keep her mental condition sharp. She knew the height and width and circumference of the dome of St Paul's, and worked out the number of bricks it would have taken to build it. She knew the width and the length of the Mall and estimated the size of a single cobblestone, whereupon she worked out the number of these contained in the entirety of this regal way. It was with this kind of foolishness that she remained fully possessed of her wits in the darkness and silence of the dreadful hole into which she had been cast.

Sometimes Mary's hands became too painful and she was forced to leave her abacus alone. When she did so, her mind became filled with the spectre of Tiberias Pot-bottom, who now possessed her luck.

Mary was philosophical about the fifteen gold sovereigns he had stolen from her, but this was not the case with the medal. Potbottom's wearing of Ikey's talisman was an abomination. The usurping of her future luck was not a robbery but a snatching of her very soul. The legend inscribed upon it, 'I shall never surrender', was a determination she now regarded as endowed to her along with the luck it possessed. Mary told herself that without this talisman, her life upon the Fatal Shore was most surely doomed. She had convinced herself that without the determination it engendered and the luck it brought as a consequence she would be helpless. It also concerned her that in wearing the medal, Potbottom's own determination, the very power and potency of his evil, was greatly enhanced.

Mary truly believed that what had befallen her on board ship was simply a continuation of her previous life. The Destiny II was still in her mind English territory, thus resulting in English circumstance. The luck Ikey's talisman contained was hers for a foreign land and remained Ikey's until she reached her destination. Lying in the darkness of the coal hole, Mary became obsessed with the urgency of retrieving the medal, for while Potbottom wore it about his neck, Ikey, wherever he might be, went unprotected. Furthermore, if she arrived in Hobart without the blessing of the golden charm, she would have no reason to live, her dreadful fate having been already sealed.

Mary had a naturally observant nature and now as she lay in the dark she tried to think of all the daily movements of Potbottom about the ship. She earnestly contemplated his habits, those small things which appeared consistent in his daily routine. Alas, she found that, in contrast to his master, he was most gregarious, seldom alone or still for one minute at a time and not at all consistent. At muster, in the hospital or during bloody pusover he was always amidst a group and the centre of attention. Into this daily routine Mary silently followed Potbottom in her mind, but never could she discover a time when he was on his own.

And then she remembered that during her two days in the prison hospital the hatch was unlocked an hour earlier than that of the prison itself to allow Potbottom to enter. It was his habit to send the convict night assistant and the hospital assistant up on board while, on behalf of the surgeon-superintendent, he made an inventory of the medication in the small dispensary.

In fact, although this could not be known to Mary, what he was occupied in doing each morning was removing and packing the physic and medication prescribed and written in the ledger at the previous day's sick call or at the weekly bloody pusover. He would carefully remove from the dispensary the amounts prescribed for each treatment in the surgeon's ledger, packing the unused medicine into a small leather portmanteau. Then he would repair to his cabin where the contents of the case would be added, each medication to its own type, to the stock already accumulated on the voyage.

This contraband medicine, intended for the sick on board, would eventually be sold for a most handsome profit when the ship berthed in Rio de Janeiro. Potbottom also saw to it that some small part of the profit was paid to the hospital matron, a professed Christian, who had a most remarkable propensity to see no evil when to be blind was to her benefit.

It was a foolproof method, for when the medical supplies remaining were checked by the authorities in Hobart Town against the surgeon-superintendent's prescription ledger and subtracted from the amount placed on board at the port of embarkation, the amounts would tally perfectly. If any convict should complain to the authorities that she had not received medication for an illness, the hospital matron would swear that this was a lie. Furthermore, if a member of the crew or prison staff required attention while on board they would be treated most generously with whatever physic was required, so that they would readily testify to the probity of the ship's surgeon and the diligence of its hospital matron.

The dispensary was situated in a small cabin behind a bulkhead at the end of the hospital and Mary, while recovering from the attack on her in the prison, had observed that Potbottom entered it alone each morning, leaving the door slightly ajar. He worked there unobserved and, at the same time, allowed sufficient air into the tiny room which lacked a porthole of its own.

Mary tried to recall every detail of Potbottom's early morning entry. He had never spoken, which was unusual, for his busy cackle was as much a part of him as his quick, nervous movements. He was a prattler of exceptional talent. Yet he would enter the hospital silently and, Mary now realised, in a most agitated state fumble the key into the lock of the dispensary as though he were on a most urgent mission.

However, when some time later he emerged he would be his usual vile self, cackling and quick-tongued, small cruel eyes sparkling as he stood at her berth to say something unpleasant. He would leave the hospital in a fine mood, delighted with himself, eager to embrace the task of making those around him afraid of the consequences of doing anything which might displease him.

Mary's berth had been almost beside the door of the dispensary and on the second morning in hospital Potbottom had entered in an even more agitated state than usual. His arms were clasped tightly across his chest and he shivered as though he were very cold. His tiny claws scratched with great irritation at the topmost part of his arms. Mary observed that his lips were cracked and without colour, a thin line of white spit bubbles stretching the length of his mouth. Feigning sleep, she watched as his hands fumbled to unlock the door to the dispensary. In his haste to enter he left the door somewhat more ajar than usual, and by craning her neck Mary could see into the tiny cupboard-sized cabin.

Potbottom, his hands trembling, quickly mixed an amount of raw opium in a small glass container into which he poured what looked to be a syrup from its distinctive blue bottle. Mary was most familiar with opium, it having come close in the past to taking her life. The syrup she took to be laudanum, a mixture of opium dissolved in alcohol, used by prostitutes on the way down. Only those most heavily addicted would think to use more opium in their laudanum, as she herself had done in that darkest time of her life.

Mary watched as the surgeon's assistant hastily swallowed the liquid and then waited, with eyes closed, for it to hit. She knew exactly how he felt. The jangled nerves suddenly straightened, the tension relaxed and his mind and thoughts once more collected. The muscles of his arms and legs no longer jumped and as his craving body received the devil's tonic the dreadful itching under his skin mercifully melted away.

Mary knew at once that Tiberias Potbottom was a helpless victim of the oriental poppy and, judging from the amount of opium grains he'd mixed with the laudanum, he was greatly dependent upon its effects and well accustomed to its constant use.

As Mary lay in the darkness of the coal hole a plan slowly began to emerge in her mind. She prayed that some small part of all her future luck, the golden luck which now dangled around the little monkey's scrawny neck, might be granted to her on credit. Her prayers were directed at whomsoever cared to hear them, whether God or the devil, she didn't much care.

After her flogging and the week spent in isolation, Mary became the subject of great admiration among the convict women. They had greatly missed Mary reading to them in the hot afternoons and the wry and cryptic comments she made about many of the morally uplifting books the Quakers had so generously supplied. Mary's readings of faraway places and of great journeys undertaken allowed for pictures to grow in their minds. And when she read of the lives of great men, for there were no biographies of women, the prisoners felt as though they too were a part of the grand story of the human race and not merely the scum and sweepings of a society which had rejected them. The children on board would clamour around her the moment she was free from her work, plucking at her skirt. 'Please, Mistress Mary, a story!' they would beg, pestering her until she would relent and gather them around her in a corner of the deck and read to them from Gulliver's Travels or from the books left for children by the Quakers.

Mary would also sometimes talk of the great journey they were themselves making. She would recount it, not as though it were themselves taking part, but as if it had happened to a group of intrepid adventurers cast adrift and sailing at the merciless whim of the winds to the outer reaches of the universe. Mary's story filled them with pride and hope at their own resolve, and told how the women in this strange and magnificent adventure would one day tame a wild land. Their eyes would shine as she envisaged how they would make this wild frontier a safe place for their sons and daughters, who would be free men and women possessed of handsome looks, sturdy of body and mind, prosperous in every circumstance.

Mary had also taken on the task of running the school for those who wished to learn to read and write, and her pupils, including the eleven children on board, had missed her greatly. For while Mary was a strict task mistress, they had almost all progressed and took great confidence from the new light which was beginning to shine within their minds.

Potbottom insisted that Mary still be allocated the most menial of tasks for her morning duties. She persuaded the matron of the prison hospital to allow her to be a cleaner, this being in return for reading religious tracts to the patients for half an hour each day. The matron, Mrs Barnett, readily agreed, as Mary had been prepared to accept the most onerous of tasks, to clean out the water closets and to act as the laundry maid.

Mrs Barnett had no cause to be suspicious as Mary's request was a common one, given that rations for the sick were greatly superior to the food served to the other prisoners and included preserved tinned vegetables and rice. Those prisoners who were fortunate enough to work in the prison hospital would sometimes benefit from the scraps and scrapings left in the pots or on the plates. Or, on a propitious day they might come upon half a mug of beefy broth with golden gobbets of fat swimming on its surface, or a portion of food left by a patient who was too poorly disposed to eat. In contrast to their usual fare, which consisted of salted beef or pork, or a helping of plum pudding, all of which was served with a portion of weevily ship's biscuit, the heavenly taste of an ounce of tender preserved beef, a mouthful of peas or a spoonful of rice gathered a few grains at a time from several plates, was well worth the lowliest task required in the hospital.

Mary soon ingratiated herself with Mrs Barnett, who mistook her beautiful readings of the religious tracts to mean that Mary had seen the light and had herself embraced the Lord. Such was the tenderness of her rendering of the gospel that often those who lay sick in the hospital would weep openly for their sins and beg to be granted God's forgiveness. Mary, who could see no harm in it, would happily grant salvation to those who so earnestly sought it. But when one of her redeemed souls passed away from bronchial pneumonia she worried that her credentials as a Salvationist might not be acceptable at the heavenly portals, and that the poor woman might be sent elsewhere.

Matron Barnett, impressed with Mary's sanctity and often enough herself brought to tears by the readings, soon came to see her in an entirely new light. Mary was taken off cleaning the hospital closets, excused from laundry duties and made a convict assistant to the matron. It required only one small step for Mary to be allowed to be the convict assistant who slept in the prison hospital at night, and this privilege was soon enough granted her by the redoubtable Mrs Barnett. Mary had managed, in the space of four weeks and on the eve of the ship's arrival at the port of Rio, to find herself exactly where she needed to be when Potbottom entered the prison hospital each morning. All she now needed was a few moments access to the dispensary.

The ship lay anchored at sea and then sailed into Rio harbour with the evening tide as the sun set over the magnificent mountains that rose above the bay. The prisoners were allowed a brief glimpse of this paradise before they were sent below, the hatches closed while the jack tars stood with the hawsers and the capstans.

They would stay a week to make repairs and take fresh supplies on board. Of this land of church bells and beautiful dark-skinned people, of bright parrots and macaws and baskets laden with exotic fruit, the hapless convict women would see nothing. They would spend the entire time in the convict prison with the hatches closed.

Fortunately they benefited from excellent beef and fresh vegetables and fruit, in fact all the fruit they could eat, so that Rio became for them a place of fruit. They tasted the exotic mango and the pink-fleshed guava, supped on melons with tiny jet-black pips set into blood-red meat and gorged on papaya, a fruit with a soft, sweet orange flesh that proved most calming and efficacious to constipation and agreeable to the digestion.

At night, across the water, they could hear the drums beating out a rhythm that sent the blood racing and sometimes, if they lay awake late at night, a lone troubadour would come to the dockside and with an instrument resembling a mandolin play love songs in the strange, haunting language of the Portuguese. Playing to the silent ship, his brown naked chest, dark hair and seductive smile, all glimpsed in the moonlight by those who were fortunate enough to have a porthole facing the dockside above their berth, invited them to indulge with him in hot, tropical lovemaking. The convict women allowed that Mary should take her position at the porthole closest to the singer so that she might tell of him in future days, and weave his songs, laughter and the soft, sensuous swinging of his hips into her stories as they journeyed onwards to the hell of Van Diemen's Land. Rio would always remain in Mary's mind as a place of exotic fruit, love songs and of a young man of giant stature and ebony beauty.

On the evening of the final night in Rio, for the Destiny II would sail on the morning tide, the captain and surgeon-superintendent were dining ashore with the British consul when the police brought to the ship a cartload of seven sailors who had been gathered from the premises of a notorious brothel on the Rua do Ouvidor. They had been in a fight and from all appearances had received the worst part of it. Their blouses were red with blood from multiple lacerations to their bodies. Potbottom had also gone ashore, ostensibly to sell the prisoners' quilts and handiwork, and was not yet returned to the ship. The only medical authority on board was Mrs Barnett, who was summoned by the officer of the watch and instructed to make the hospital ready. Mrs Barnett called at once for all assistance, which included the convicts who worked in the hospital, and so Mary was called to duty.

The men were in an advanced state of drunkenness having consumed greatly of the local firewater, the deadly aguardiente, and had not yet come to their senses or seen how badly lacerated and beaten they were. Great confusion reigned in the hospital as the matron tried to clean away the blood and stitch and dress the stab wounds. Mary too was kept busy as several of the jack tars started to vomit. She was on her hands and knees cleaning up beside the dispensary door when she observed it to be open. Mrs Barnett had rushed in to fetch medication, and in her haste to get back to the injured sailors had left the door ajar.

Mary glanced quickly around to see the whereabouts of the matron and her assistants and, observing that they all had their backs to her, she hurriedly entered the dispensary. The candle the matron had earlier lit was still glowing so she lifted it and quickly found what she wanted, the blue bottle she'd seen Potbottom use. She sniffed it and established immediately that it was laudanum. Mary soon found the pewter box from which the surgeon's assistant had obtained the opium, and she transferred a sufficient quantity into the bottle of laudanum to make a most powerful mixture, in fact twice the strength she'd observed Potbottom make for himself. No more than a minute had elapsed before she was back on her knees cleaning the hospital decking some distance from the dispensary door, only to see Mrs Barnett enter the dispensary, blow out the candle and lock the door. Should the matron's life depend on it, she would have sworn that no person but herself had entered the dispensary.

It took several hours to attend to the wounded men before they were dispatched back to their own apartments on the ship. Mrs Barnett and her hospital assistants were in a state of extreme fatigue and when Mary had made them a cup of tea she bade them goodnight and returned to the prison. The hospital contained no prisoners at that time, as none had been poorly disposed with the ship's arrival in Rio. This meant Mary could not sleep in the hospital, and she dared not ask Mrs Barnett for fear that she might refuse or, worse still, agree and then remember later that Mary had been the only one within the hospital when Potbottom arrived in the morning.

Mary wondered desperately how she might be at hand when Potbottom arrived without causing any suspicion, but could think of no way to bring this about as the prison hatches were opened a full hour after those of the hospital. The solution she chose was simple enough, but fraught with the danger of discovery. She climbed the stairs leading to the hatchway, making sure that the sound of her footsteps on the ladder was clearly audible. At the open hatchway she sat upon the topmost step and quickly removed her boots, whereupon she climbed silently downwards again and into the hospital, concealing herself under one of the berths adjacent to the stairway. After a short while Mary saw the feet of the weary women pass and heard them climb towards the hatchway. Shortly afterward she heard the bolt slide behind them. In the dark she removed her prisoner's purse from its snug hiding place and took from it the four brass talons which she now fitted, two to each hand. It was nearly dawn and she would have less than two hours to wait until Potbottom arrived at seven to attend to his urgent need for the fruit of the Chinese poppy.

Mary must have dozed off for she awoke to the sound of the bolt being pulled back, and then she heard the slight creak of the hinges as the hatch was pulled upwards. Her heart was suddenly beating so hard that she felt sure Potbottom must hear it as one might a drum on the dockside at Rio de Janeiro. His tiny feet soon scuttled past where she lay and she could hear though not see him fumbling with the key as he unlocked the door to the dispensary. She hadn't long to wait, perhaps no more than two or three minutes, when she heard what sounded like a loud gasp followed shortly thereafter by a dull thud as Potbottom hit the deck.

Mary crawled out from under the berth and crept silently to the dispensary door. Potbottom lay with the top half of his body outside the small room, as though he had turned to leave just as the effects of the opium hit. Mary bent over him and peeled back his eyelids, observing that his pupils had constricted and his dark eyes showed no movement. She shook him several times but he was as limp as a wet mop. Potbottom was unconscious.

Mary rolled Potbottom onto his stomach, being careful to place his head to the side so that he could continue to breathe. Then she removed the talons from her left hand and, lifting his head slightly, she took the chain and medallion from around his neck and clasped it to her bosom. The feel of the precious medallion in her hand was too much to bear, and tears ran from Mary's eyes.

There is something perverse in the nature of humans, stubborn and quite nonsensical to the intelligence, where we will do something impulsive which may culminate in the most dire consequences, but which, at the time, we cannot seem to prevent. It is an action of the heart which temporarily overpowers any recourse to the head.

Mary, her luck restored to her in the form of the Waterloo medallion, had need only to make her escape. Should Potbottom regain consciousness he would have no cause to be suspicious, or even, in the unlikely circumstances that he should be, would have no way of proving that the dosage had been tampered with, without revealing his own addiction. Mary had committed the perfect crime, providing she could escape from the prison hospital unobserved, and conceal herself until morning muster where she could simply join the other women prisoners on deck.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and was about to remove the brass talons from her right hand when she looked down again at Potbottom's unconscious form. All the anger and humiliation he had caused her suddenly coalesced within her breast as though it were a great fist which squeezed her heart. Mary took the remaining talons from her right hand and placed them on the deck beside the body where she'd left the others. Now she rolled Potbottom onto his back, quickly unbuttoned the front of his worn and greasy frock coat and opened it wide, whereupon she rolled him back onto his stomach. She then stripped the sleeves from his limp arms and pulled off the jacket. Mary was panting loudly, both from the effort of manhandling him and from her tremendous fury. She laid the coat aside and pulled the dirty blouse he wore from the top of his breeches and lifted it high over his back and the back of his head. This action completely exposed his back and with it the hump which now seemed larger than when it was concealed beneath his coat. Mary was whimpering as she replaced the talons onto her left hand, and with them she drew a long deep stroke across Potbottom's back, weeping afresh with a volatile mixture of anger, spite and despair. She was doing to someone else what had been so often done to her. Coldly, precisely, she carved twenty-five lines across the surgeon-assistant's hairy back, in a random criss-cross fashion, sparing not even the ugly hump.

'That be your twenty-five lashes back, Tiberias Potbottom! Gawd is not mocked, you 'ear?' Mary laughed, though somewhat hysterically, for she felt no humour in it. 'That be one stroke for every whore aboard and one for me, you cruel bastard! That be our Botany Bay dozen! Panting with the emotional effort, Mary began to weep softly as the anger left, completely spent by her revenge.

After a few moments Mary ceased crying, sensing her own imminent danger. She sniffed and wiped her nose on the sleeve of her smock. She now felt strangely calm and pulled Potbottom's blouse down over his back, tucking the ends neatly into his broad leather belt. Bright crimson designs of a random pattern seeped through the dirty cloth.

Mary could feel the ship moving as she lifted Potbottom to a seated position so that he was propped against a berth. She then calmly returned his jacket to his person, buttoning it up as before and adjusting his neckerchief, whereupon she laid him back with his broken little buckled boots placed within the door of the dispensary. The remainder of his body was lying within the main cabin of the hospital. Then she took the bottle in which she'd mixed the opium and the laudanum and emptied what remained of its contents in the slop bucket and, stepping over her victim, returned it to the shelf in the dispensary. Mary then quickly checked that Potbottom was still breathing and, gathering up the two remaining talons, left by climbing up through the open hatchway onto the deck, where she threw the vicious brass claws over the side.

The rising sun caught the small brass objects and for a moment the wicked claws winked and then fell into the trough of a wave. It was a small enough thing to do and some might say Mary was simply destroying the evidence of her perfidy, but this was not the case. With the dreaded hooks went the past, that hard dark passage' of time which was not of Mary's making. Ahead lay another life. And though Mary would enter her new land in captivity, she felt herself to be free at last.

The Destiny II had reached the entrance to the harbour between Fort San Juan and Fort Santa Cruz, so that the crew's attention was to the foredeck looking out to sea. With the prisoners still below decks, there was no one to observe her as she moved aft.

Mary moved rapidly to the stern of the vessel and up onto the poop deck where, as soon as the vessel was safely out to sea, morning muster would take place. She squeezed behind two barrels lashed to the deck and crouched there. High above her a flock of macaw parrots flew across from the headland, their brilliant plumage flashing in the early morning sun. Mary could see the high peak of the Sugar Loaf above the sweep of the bay and the dark green jungle which grew upon its slopes and almost to the pinnacle of the great mountain. She would always remember the immense height of the tropical sky and its infinite blueness so much sharper, brighter, fiercer than the English sky.

Potbottom was not missed at morning muster, for it was not unknown for him to be absent. But he would always surface later when sick call was made directly after muster, and those prisoners hoping to escape for a few days of improved rations remained behind on the poop deck endeavouring to persuade Mrs Barnett, or even the ship's surgeon, that they were right poorly disposed.

On the morning of sailing from Rio, Joshua Smiles had himself attended the sick call, and it had been assumed that Potbottom must have returned from ashore in the early hours of the morning and was still abed. But when the surgeon-superintendent asked for him a guard was sent to rouse him from his cabin.

However, before the guard could return one of the hospital assistants came up to the poop deck and from her demeanour she was seen to be most distressed. She went directly to Mrs Barnett, but because the surgeon was busy with his ear to the chest of one of the convict women the matron hushed her attempt to talk by placing a finger to her lips. When Joshua Smiles withdrew his ear the assistant, a rather fat young girl with an ugly pock-marked face, was wringing her hands and blurted out.

'Mr Smiles, excuse I, sir, Mr Potbottom be dead on 'ospital floor!'

It took several hours before Tiberias Potbottom regained consciousness. In truth he had been conscious a full hour before he allowed that this be known. By which time he was aware both from the pain and from the talk about him, of the mutilated condition of his back.

Joshua Smiles, more pale than usual and in a state of considerable distress, sat beside him praying, imploring the Lord Jesus to save his precious and diligent servant. By the time Potbottom was prepared to squeeze the hand of his mentor, to indicate his return to life, he had well grasped the nature of his own dilemma, and had concocted a story which explained his situation in the dispensary. This took several hours to emerge and came out in half-coherent snatches, whether due to his latent condition or a deliberate ploy is not known. By the end of that day he told a story of having been given some strange draught. 'In one o' them bodegas what they's got and where I stopped to partake o' a bowl o' the strong black coffee what they serves with the juice o' the cane plant.'

'Mescaline!' Joshua Smiles announced triumphantly. 'The juice from cacti, a most stupefying narcotic. They put mescaline in your coffee!'

'That be dead right, Mr Smiles, sir!' Potbottom exclaimed, delighted to have a name to add to his plot. 'Mescaleen eh? That be for sure as I were not aware o' what befell me after, save to know that me purse be stolen and a valuable gold chain and medal were taken from about me neck. Though how this came about I truly cannot say, I awoke in me own cabin in the early part o' the mornin' not knowing how I got to the ship and with me head poundin' something horrible and feelin' in every part a great discomfort.'

'And the lacerations to your back, can you perchance venture as to how they happened?' the surgeon asked.

'That I can't, sir. How it come about I haven't the slightest knowledge of,' Potbottom replied and then continued where he'd left off. 'But I looks at me watch what I had the good sense to leave aboard and sees it be time for me to attend dispensary.' Potbottom looked up beguilingly. 'As is o' course me daily duty and one which I takes most conscientiously.'

'Indeed, we are all most grateful for your diligence, Mr Potbottom,' Mrs Barnett said.

Potbottom ignored her remark and continued. 'I makes me way to the hospital when I perceived me back were hurtin' somethin' horrible, so I goes to make a physic of anodyne for the pain, like.' He looked soulful. 'That be all I remembers, nothin' more till I feels your blessed hand in mine,' Potbottom choked back a tear, 'and hears your generous prayers to the Almighty for me safe recovery, sir.'

'God has been good, Mr Potbottom. He has restored you to us to continue your good works among the heathen and the rapscallions.' Joshua Smiles paused and slowly shook his head and a small smile played upon his lips. 'We are all mightily blessed by His glory and compassion.'

He clasped his hands together and, looking up at the bulkhead as though the Almighty could be clearly seen seated upon its heavy cross beam, commenced to pray loudly and fervently, giving thanks for the recovery of God's most precious child, Tiberias Potbottom.

Mary's luck had held. Potbottom, whatever he thought, could make no open enquiries as to his misadventure for fear that his addiction to opium be discovered. While he subjected Mary to a great deal more persecution, confiscating her twice weekly ration of port and sending her back to work in the prison closets and to scrubbing and holystoning the interior of the prison and the decks, he could find no way of proving that she was the one who had brought about his undoing.

At each subsequent bloody pusover he had subjected Mary to the indignity of a front and rear inspection, though he was unable to discover the whereabouts of the chain and medallion. Once, when he had undertaken a surprise medical inspection, he had found her prisoner's purse and confiscated it only to find it disappointingly empty.

In fact, Mary had removed the sole of her boot, hollowed it out and placed her precious luck within it. She wore her boots all day and at night, as was the habit of the prisoners, she tied them about her neck so that they would not be stolen.

Weeks of great tedium passed as the Destiny II neared her destination, the tiny ship often climbing to the crest of waves that saw it half a hundred feet above the level of the ocean, and then sinking into the trough of a great wave where the ocean rose to the height of the topmast. The great swells of the Indian Ocean caused many to return to their previous sea sickness, but they were fortunate that they did not encounter a great storm at sea. Of the trip, it can be said that it was not remarkable but typical of any other transport carrying female convicts. Two prisoners had died, an aged woman who was said to have a condition of the heart and an infant only just weaned, who had come aboard with bronchial pneumonia. They were most ceremoniously buried at sea with a consideration they had not known in their mortal lives.

Perhaps the one thing that might be said to have been remarkable about the voyage was the schooling Mary had given during the hot afternoons. Though schooling was encouraged on convict ships, it was usually conducted by an educated free passenger or the surgeon-superintendent. It achieved good, though often somewhat dubious, results, for the art of reading was often construed as having been achieved when a prisoner could recite a psalm while holding the Bible and appearing to be reading from it.

Mary's teaching was different, for she taught the rudiments of writing as well as reading, insisting on phonetics until her pupils could identify each letter with a sound and connect them with another to make a word. By the time they had reached their destination, fifty-five of the one hundred and twenty-six female prisoners who had come on board without a knowledge of reading would disembark with an ability to read individual words from a page and connect them aloud and continuously to make sense. Though this was done slowly and often with great movement of their lips and expostulations of breath, it was nevertheless the precious gift of the printed word.

Thus Mary, though the surgeon's report would place her in a most reprehensible light, was regarded by the female prisoners as a person of goodness, the best most of them had encountered in all of their unfortunate lives, while the children openly loved her. She was not the sort of pious personage they had been accustomed to regard as a saint, some creature whom they might have seen within the configurations of a stained glass window, with an aura about her head, clad in a diaphanous gown with her feet floating above the ground. Or some curate's daughter who saw her cunny only as an affliction and a shame and not as a delight. Nor did she resemble, in the least, the Quakers of the Ladies' Committee.

Mary was like themselves, hardened by the vicissitudes of a poverty-stricken life, though unlike themselves, not beaten by it. She was a woman who spoke her mind, had a tongue as harsh and foul as many, but who could not be easily led and who intuitively knew her own mind at all times. She could laugh and cry with the best of them and, most importantly of all, she showed that she believed in them.

Mary had demanded their attention at learning and had done so with a mixture of patience, encouragement, mockery, harsh words and foul language. The stories she read to them over the long, hot afternoons had opened their minds. And her great spoken story of their own voyage across the seas to the furthest ends of the earth had given them hope for the future. The women would be eternally grateful to Mary for bringing light into their lives where before there was only ignorance and darkness.

On their last night at sea Ann Gower called all to attention in the prison. 'We 'as one last duty to perform afore we goes ashore termorra, ladies!' Ann Gower shouted. 'Would ya be kind enough to be upstandin', then!' The women climbed from their berths and stood jam packed within the corridor, smiling and nudging each other for what they knew was about to happen.

'Afore we goes to Gawd knows where in the mornin' we 'as a crownin' to do!' Ann Gower then produced a crown made from paper mashed with flour, covered most decorously in cloth sewn about with small, diamond-shaped patches for the rich jewels. It was embroidered with tiny flowers, bluebells and crocus, daisy and honeysuckle, garlands of cottage roses and all the flowers of England. Many loving hands had worked on the crown in secrecy and with great skill to fashion it quite perfectly.

Ann Gower held the beautiful crown high above her head for all to see and they sighed with the pleasure of their own creation.

'Mary Abacus, we crowns ya 'er Royal 'Ighness, Queen Mary, Queen o' Van Diemen's Land!'

There was much clapping and laughter as Ann Gower placed the crown upon Mary's head. 'Blimey, it don't 'arf grow fast do it?' she said, pointing to Mary's scraggy fair hair, now two inches grown about her head and a most unsightly thing to behold. 'Soon be able to braid that ya will, honest!'

She looked about her and shouted once again, 'Never were a crown what was better deserved to an 'ead!' There was a roar of approval from the prisoners and Ann Gower waited for it to die down before addressing Mary.

'One question please, yer most gracious majesty! 'Ow come Potbottom got twenty-five beautiful, deep an' permanent stripes upon 'is back? Be it a coincidence that it be the same number as there is whores on board plus countin' yer good self?'

There was a loud gasp from the surrounding women, and then an excited murmur.

'Shush!' Ann Gower called and waited for the excitement of this new speculation to die down. 'Be it also a coincidence that you was called from the prison to do duty in the 'ospital that very night and that we knows about yer talons o' brass?'

There was a hush as everyone waited for Mary to answer. She was silent for a good while, the beautiful crown resting on her head. Then she looked up and her lovely green eyes seemed to dance with the mischief of her thoughts. 'I can't say as I knows and I can't say as I doesn't know, it be a secret, Ann Gower.' She paused and then gave a little laugh. 'A royal secret what's treason to tell about!'

There was much laughter and banter at this reply and Mary had never felt as loved or wanted. She knew herself to be a leader and now she also knew she had the courage to demand from life more than she had hitherto been given. She looked at the women surrounding her; like them, she was going into a new life and fate would play its hand, but she was different from them too. She would make her own luck, for she had seen the distant shore not as a place of servitude, but as a conquest, a place to be taken with a full heart, where the shadows of the past were leached out by a brighter sun. She would live under a higher sky washed a more brilliant blue, a heaven against which green parrots flashed like emeralds. She could make something of this place. Tomorrow, when the Destiny II sailed the last leg of the voyage up the Derwent River and she went ashore in irons with Ann Gower, she would wear Ikey's Waterloo medallion about her neck. For she knew, whatever happened to her, she would survive, the words 'I shall never surrender' inscribed not only on Ikey's medal, but forever on her heart. They would bring Mary Abacus to a new and astonishing beginning upon the Fatal Shore.