Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Richard studied Stephen’s face with an affection bordering on love. That he felt he could not call what he experienced “love” was not because of its lack of a sexual element; it was because “love” was an emotion he associated with William Henry, with little Mary, with Peg. Whom he had kept below the level of all thought for what had piled up into years.

Yet now their names fell inside his mind as clear and limpid as the brook farther up across a pattern of stones, as distant as the stars, as close as MacTavish on his lap. It was Stephen, it was calling Stephen by his name. The other names came rushing up, rang on a peal of memories not all the time and all the things that had happened to him could tarnish, diminish, expunge. William Henry, little Mary, Peg… Gone forever, yet not gone at all. I am a vessel filled with their light, and somewhere, sometime, I will know that love again. Not in an after life. Here. Here in Norfolk Island. I am awake again. I am alive. So alive! I will not waste my essence in a thankless exile. I will not belong to that segment of this place who would ruin it for sheer spite. Peg, little Mary, William Henry. They are here. They are waiting to be with me. And they will be with me.

This had occurred in the silence between two beats of a heart, yet Stephen understood that some enormous change in Richard had just come about. As if he had sloughed off a skin and stood forth in all the splendor of new raiment. What did I say? What brought it to pass? And why did the privilege of seeing it fall to me?

Richard answered Stephen’s question about the sows. “That is easy,” he said. “Len Dyer.”

“Why Len Dyer?”

“He fancies Mary Gamble, who will not give herself to anyone. When he solicited her attentions, he did so as any weasel would-without respect or acknowledgment of her humanity. You know what I mean: ‘Hey, Gamble, how about a fuck?’ So she told him in no uncertain terms what he could do with his tossle- if he could find it. In front of his cronies.” Richard looked grim. “He is a weasel, and needs to be revenged. Mary threw an axe at a boar and was almost lashed for it. So why not attack some of the swine? Mary is bound to be blamed.”

“Not now she will not be.” Stephen got to his feet and blew Richard an impudent kiss. “I know how to deal with Dyer. Call me Stephen again, please.”

“Stephen,” said Richard, laughing. “Now leave me to get on with my polishing.”

Lieutenant Kinghad discovered an easily quarried rock underlying all the land between the old garden hillock and Point Hunter at the far end of Turtle Bay, and also found that it burned to make excellent lime, though his primary purpose had been to use it for stone chimneys and ovens.

When Supply arrived in December with enough convicts to bring the population up to 132, she bore orders from Governor Phillip that rations were to go down to two-thirds, as they were already at Port Jackson. For the growing Norfolk Island this news was not so calamitous; though the millions of grubs had eaten every leafed thing they crawled on, the wheat crop off eleven acres came in splendidly and the rain held off right through its harvesting. The Indian corn did even better, the pigs were multiplying quickly-as were the ducks and chickens-and it was banana season. For those who would eat fish, there was fish.

Endurance and tenacity had turned Richard Morgan into one of the more privileged convicts, for no other reasons than that he gave absolutely no trouble, worked indefatigably and was never sick. So to Richard went enough of this new stone and mortar to build himself a decent chimney. All the sawpits were sawing flat out-what more could a commandant ask of his supervisor of sawyers? Luckily more saws arrived from Port Jackson on Supply; Governor Phillip, planning to more than triple Norfolk Island’s population, had decided that Port Jackson needed saws less than Norfolk Island did. A decision he would find reinforced when Supply returned bearing the first consignment of splendid clean lime.

When Supply also brought more women than Lieutenant King could find a use for, Richard had a brilliant inspiration: he put six of them to sharpening saws. It was, he admitted to himself ruefully, an alternative he should have thought of long before. The work suited females of a certain temperament-it could be done sitting down in the shade, it was not exhausting, it required fine attention to detail and yet could be pursued in a spirit of camaraderie. As one woman was needed at each pit to touch up the saws halfway through each cut and yet more women were put to stripping logs of bark, romances developed between those who were unattached. Though a woman soon learned that Richard Morgan was married already and not interested in amorous intrigues.

Two-thirdsrations were a symptom of the fact that two years had gone by without a single ship from England; the long-awaited Guardian storeship which carried so much marine private property as well as tons of flour, salt meat, other provisions and animals had never arrived, and no one knew why. Every day on top of South Head at the entrance to Port Jackson the sentinel on watch gazed out to sea with painful urgency, had been doing so for a year; a whale spout was a sail, a water spout was a sail, a little low white cloud was a sail. But none of them was a sail. The foods that Sirius had fetched back from the Cape of Good Hope in May of 1789 were running out, and still no ship came. The only ray of hope Governor Phillip had was Norfolk Island, where at least some things grew, other things could be caught, and there were no marauding natives to worry about.

Conditions in Port Jackson were appalling, the latest arrivals off Supply vowed; people there were literally starving to death, looked like skeletons. Rose Hill showed some promise, as did other areas to the north and west of Port Jackson like Toongabbe and the Boundary Farms, but though they were now producing a few vegetables, a decent crop of grain was still years off.

Nothing for it, Governor Phillip decided after Supply returned to Port Jackson with lime and timber; he would have to send Sirius somewhere to obtain food in vast quantities. The Cape of Good Hope, he realized now, was simply not a large enough community to furnish adequate flour and salt meat, nor even sufficient animals. It sold its surpluses to the Dutch, English and other East Indiamen making port there, a matter of provisions for crews between 20 and 50 in number. To feed a thousand-plus mouths even for a mere twelvemonth was not in Cape Town’s power; Sirius had returned half-empty.

Therefore Sirius would have to sail to Cathay, where rice and smoked meats were abundant-not to mention tea and sugar, both of which would sweeten a convict’s lot, albeit the nourishment in them was slight. In Wampoa the Governor also hoped to purchase rum off the European emporiums. 1790 was off to a worse start than 1789, though he had not thought that possible.

And in the night marches Phillip wondered if perhaps there had been a massive political upheaval in England-if Mr. Pitt had tumbled-if a Royal decision had been made not to continue with the Botany Bay experiment-and just forget about those already at Botany Bay. Not knowing was terrible, especially as the months dragged by with his nightmares still unappeased. It really did begin to look as if they were as marooned as Robinson Crusoe.

Before Sirius could be readied for a long sea voyage, Supply had time to make yet another round trip to Norfolk Island with more convicts, swelling its population to 149 all told. The Governor then planned that Sirius (on her way to the Orient) and Supply would sail together to Norfolk Island, bearing 116 male convicts, 67 female convicts, 28 children, 8 marine officers and 56 troops. Which would inflate the island’s population overnight to 424 souls-tripled within a month, quadrupled within four months.