Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Only that the sawpit needs a shelter to keep the sawyers out of the sun as well as the rain, and that if ye want to build something needs longer beams than twelve feet without joining, ye’ll have to dig a second pit and make it longer, Mr. King.”

“There was a shelter over the sawpit, but it blew down in a winter gale-they are fierce, I can tell ye. I used its relics to shore up the cellar under my house, but I do realize that we will have to build a new shelter, and quickly. The strength in the sun grows every day.”

They had crossed the swamp to the far shore of a small stream which seemed to terminate in the swamp rather than run through it; King turned left and began to walk up a path through a meandering valley wider in its bottom than any of the clefts between the steep hills coming down to what King had named Sydney Town.

“What of the saws?” King asked.

“I came just in time,” said Richard simply.

“Hmmm. Better then that Major Ross sent you rather than a true sawyer. There was no one here knew more than the rudiments of sharpening. ’Tis cheering to know that ye can convert the eight-footer into a cross cut saw. That will further increase the supply of logs-I note ye’ve gone through the logs already hauled to the pit.”

He stopped just before the vale took a little turn around a bluff coming down from the north. “I call this Arthur’s Vale, for His Excellency’s Christian name. The big island to the south bears his surname-Phillip Island. Cultivation of plants is gradually being shifted from Sydney Town to here because here affords some protection from the south and west winds, and I hope from the east wind as well on the far side of this bluff. Yon hill to the south between Arthur’s Vale and the sea is Mount George, and we are slowly clearing it to plant grain, as also on the hills to the north. We have some wheat and Indian corn in already, and there is barley in the bottom. The new sawpit should go up hereabouts. The present one is too far away, but it can continue to handle twelve-foot logs taken from the hills behind and within Sydney Town itself.”

They had rounded the bluff and looked more or less westward; the ground of the vale descended about twenty feet abruptly, the stream tumbling in a thin cascade down the slope. The Commandant pointed to it. “I intend to dam the stream on that incline, Morgan. There is enough hollow ground above the slope to make a capacious pond of water which we can let out through a sluice to irrigate the Government gardens, which will lie not far below it. One day I hope to install a water-wheel on my dam. At the moment we are confined to hand querns for grinding our grain, but we do possess a proper millstone against the day when we have the power to turn it. Did we have oxen or mules we could turn it now. We could also use men to turn it, but of men we have not sufficient either. One day, one day!” He laughed, waved his arms about. “The granary, as ye saw, is just about finished, but I plan to build a big barn and a yard for the animals here on the south bank of the stream. The salt winds, Morgan, the salt winds! They stunt every sort of living thing save pines, flax and the local trees which grow in their lee. I did find the flax-those fools in Port Jackson did not describe the plant properly, was all. It makes excellent thatch, but we have not managed to make canvas out of it.”

He laughed again, went back to discussing Arthur’s Vale. “Yes, the salt winds. We have to find a better place for the vegetables than a mound looking straight at Phillip Island. I have tried fences to shelter the plants, but they don’t help a bit. Therefore the vegetables will be moved into the vale.”

Then off he went upon some urgent business apparently suddenly recollected, leaving Richard alone halfway up Arthur’s Vale.

The weather was thick and rain threatened; much though he yearned to walk farther up and explore, Richard decided that it was probably prudent to walk back to Sydney Town. In the nick of time: he had no sooner entered his house than it began to pour. Joey came in from their garden in a rush, MacGregor at his heels, and Richard wondered for the first time how he would pass the hours on rainy days until the sawpit received a new roof. Reading was all very well, yet he was getting enough food now to want to expend physical energy. But the rain was warm; he abandoned the hut to Joey, perfectly content to lie on his bed, cuddle the dog and hum tunelessly.

He walked along the hard strand, shoes on-he had been warned that the rock rubble was as sharp as a razor, and had lamed many. The half-circle of Turtle Bay looked as alluring in the rain as it did in the sun, its bottom pure sand, its water crystal, the pines pressing down as far as nurture permitted. He peeled off his drenched clothes and went in to swim, finding the water much warmer in the rain than it was in the sun. Finished, he donned his canvas trowsers together with his shoes, slung his shirt around his shoulders and turned to see if there was any place he might shelter to watch the sea, getting up.

Stephen Donovan had had the same idea; Richard found him in the lee of an outcrop on Point Hunter, where few pines grew, looking down the length of the reef toward the distant out-thrust of Point Ross in the west.

“Did you ever see anything so beautiful?” Stephen asked.

Richard put his shirt on the rock as a cushion and sat with his arms linked about his knees. The rain had cleared for the moment and the wind had veered northward. A great surf thundered in upon the reef, its waves curling over like satin candy rolled around a stick before exploding into walls of white foam. And the wind, blowing briskly in the counter direction, caught the spume and sent it flying backward across the waves in trailing plumes and veils.

“Nay, I do not think I ever have,” he said.

“I keep watching to see Aphrodite born.”

The sky cleared in the south and west just enough to let the sinking sun turn those drifts of spume to gold, then the rain fell again, but gently.

“I am ravished by this place,” said Stephen, sighing.

“Whereas I have spent my time in the bottom of the sawpit with a saw across my knees,” said Richard wryly. “How goes it with you?”

“As superintendent of convict labor, ye mean?”

“Aye.”

“ ’Tis not a wonderful job, Richard. D’ye remember Len Dyer?”

“How could I forget that weasel?”

“He brought things to a head three days ago when he informed me that he was not about to take orders from a shirt-lifting Rome mort turd pusher, and that when he took over the island I would be the first man he would kill. Next to go would be my fancy blond doll, Miss Molly Livingstone. He likes the sound of ‘Rome mort’ best, it seems-he used it more often than he did ‘Miss Molly.’ ”

“He is a Londoner, ’tis the phrase they use most.” Richard turned to stare at him, but Donovan gazed straight ahead. “What happened next, Mr. Donovan?”

“Oh, I wish ye’d call me Stephen! The only one who does is Johnny.” The shoulders lifted, his head hunched into them. “I ordered forty-eight lashes and made Private Heritage lay it on. Luckily for me, Dyer had not endeared himself to Heritage either, so he laid it on hard with the meanest cat. There were mutters from Francis, Peck, Pickett and a few others, but after they saw Dyer’s back they shut up.” His eyes finally slewed to look at Richard, their expression hard. “Ye’d think they would realize a man’s preferring his own gender does not indicate that he is soft or timid, would ye not? But no! Well, I have survived over fifteen years at sea and gained respect, so I am not about to take cheek from the likes of a Len Dyer. As he now understands.”

“I would watch my back if I were you,” said Richard. “The pity of it is that I scarcely know what is going on among those not concerned with the sawpit, but Golden Grove told me that there was something ominous in the air. Just what, I do not know. Nothing was said or done in my vicinity, since I’d kicked them in the cods. Perhaps Dyer was testing the temperature of the water in your vicinity when he spoke insolently. If that was the case, then he now has ye down in his book as”-Richard grinned-“no simpering Rome mort. Sincerely, watch your back.”