Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

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 hadbroken 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.