Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

The gentle, cultivated little governor knew some of his people very well indeed, particularly Lieutenant Philip Gidley King, who had served with him on Ariadne and Europe before joining Sirius for the voyage to New South Wales. Every time Supply returned to Port Jackson she bore despatches from King, all of which reinforced His Excellency’s reservations about leaving King to govern a populace suddenly numerous enough to render most faces anonymous. King was a patriarch, wildly devoted to his son by Ann Innet- Norfolk! Really! If that name did not indicate King’s innate romanticism, nothing could. And Norfolk Island was about to become a place ill suited to government by a romantic.

His Excellency had other considerations besides, principally two: one, that Major Robert Ross was a carping Scotch thorn in his side; the other, that he desperately needed to send someone he could trust-a romantic someone-back to England in a tearing hurry. This envoy would have to find out what had gone wrong, and eloquently persuade whoever was in power that New South Wales had enormous potential, yet could not possibly realize that potential unless a little capital was invested in it. Less than £50,000 was ridiculous considering that the Honourable East India Company spent more than that per annum in bribes. King the Governor trusted, Ross he did not. Nor, for that matter, did he trust Captain John Hunter of Sirius, another possible candidate-and another Scotchman, croaking harbingers of doom that all Scotchmen were. Ross and Hunter were sour about New South Wales, saw no potential in it whatsoever, and were more likely to recommend to the Crown that the whole experiment be forthwith canceled. Therefore Phillip knew he could not send either Ross or Hunter to England as his envoy. He knew his judgment was correct. New South Wales would thrive. But not yet. It needed time and money.

So when Supply sailed for Norfolk Island with the complement of convicts which would bring its population up to 149, she bore a letter for Lieutenant King commanding him to return to Port Jackson with Mistress Innet and Master Norfolk King, there to be drilled in the details of his vital mission to England. To take his place at Norfolk Island, Phillip would send a full Lieutenant-Governor rather than a mere Commandant-Major Robert Ross. Thus killing lots of birds with the same stone, for with Sirius going on from Norfolk Island to Cathay, he would also be rid of Captain John Hunter for months. And there would be 424 people at Norfolk Island, leaving only 591 people in Port Jackson.

Sirius andSupply arrived together on Saturday the 13th of March, 1790. Landing on Norfolk Island had to commence on the leeward side at Cascade; after that wet, storm-tossed summer, the equinoctial gales and rains had arrived with a vengeance. The track across the island was hideous enough, but at Cascade itself matters were even worse, as the hills plunged straight into the ocean. The only way up to the crest of them was through a precipitous valley adjacent to the landing rock. This cleft ascended over 200 feet so steeply that the women convicts could not climb it without assistance, especially with water tumbling down it and the ground slippery as ice from mud.

Sawyers and carpenters excepted, every convict was sent across the island to help get the new arrivals and the baggage up the cleft to the top and then across the island to Sydney Town, Major Ross in the vanguard.

“I felt exceeding sorry for the poor bastard,” said Stephen to Richard over a lunch of cold, unsweetened rice pudding mixed with a morsel of salt pork and a handful of parsley. They were sitting together in Richard’s house watching the rain pelt down through the unshuttered lee window. Stephen had contributed the flour and the salt pork, Richard the rice and parsley.

“Major Ross, you mean?”

“Aye, the same. He and Hunter loathe each other, so Hunter made sure he sent Ross off Sirius in a longboat loaded to the gunwales with chickens, turkeys, crates, kegs-Ross’s calf muscles were so cramped that he had terrible trouble jumping from the boat to the landing rock, couldn’t stand when he got there. And no one helped him-Hunter’s men to the core. I think they fancied the sight of the Major swimming for his life, but he ain’t Major Ross for naught, fucked ’em good by getting ashore as dry as the rain permitted. They ought by rights to have sent his stuff off with him, but ’tis still on Sirius and no doubt will be the last cargo unloaded. I met him and tried to help him up that deathly haul to the top, but would he let me? Not he! Marched up it soaked to the skin with his chin in the air and his mouth the double of a staple. And marched straight across the island on that horror of a track with me floundering in his wake like a seal on a beach. The image of a horse’s rear end he might be, but ah, he is a lovely man!”

Richard was grinning from ear to ear by the end of this tale, but got up without comment to put the dishes outside the door in the rain, then tidied the table. Of course the whole community had known within hours of Supply’s last visit that Lieutenant King was to go and Major Ross was to come, news greeted wellnigh universally with groans and curses. The holiday had come to an end, Major Ross would see to that. To the Dyers and Francises, an awful prospect. But to Richard Morgan, a not unattractive prospect. Oh, Lieutenant King had been a good commandant, but even 149 people were too many for his style. All King could do was pluck at his wig and set men to cutting timber, sawing it, and building huts out of it. Norfolk Island was less than ten thousand acres in extent, but surely Sydney Town was not the only spot where this enormous new influx of people could be accommodated? Phillipburgh and the flax was King’s only attempt at putting people elsewhere; the truth was that he liked to see the members of his extended family all gathered in the tiny sea-level shelf around Sydney Town. When Robert Webb and Beth Henderson emigrated along the track to Cascade, King had been quite distracted; Richard Phillimore off Scarborough was anxious to be gone around the eastern corner of the far beach to farm a small valley he fancied, but King did not want to let him go.

Whereas Richard thought the most sensible thing to do with Norfolk Island was to open it up, settle people anywhere in it that they fancied. What he dreaded was to see the Sydney Town settlement advance up to the head of Arthur’s Vale, where he enjoyed the fact that there were no abodes near him, and could call the privy he had dug into the hillside entirely his own. His bath lay along the stream in the midst of the fern tree forest, a by-water he had cut and dug out so that his body did not foul the main course of water-if a healthy body could, which he doubted. But under King, he could see the day coming when Sydney Town would reach him. Not that he hoped for more wisdom from Major Ross; only that Ross was a very different kind of man and might therefore have different solutions for this relatively monstrous and sudden growth in population.

“I take it, then, that the Major is already drying his coat in Government House?” Richard asked as they walked, heedless of the rain, back down the stream toward the pond and dam.

“Oh, nothing surer. Poor Mr. King! Half of him is in raptures over this huge mission he is to undertake for the Governor, while the other half is beside itself at the thought of what Major Ross will do to Norfolk Island.”

Private Wigfall, who had lunched with some of the new marines-among them were several of his Port Jackson friends-saw Richard coming and dashed for the pit. They were halfway through a 30-foot log and down to the heartwood-scantling time, after which would come beams. Stephen Donovan continued in the direction of the first of his dozen gangs, engaged in making sluices for the dam wall of basalt boulders, pounded limestone and piled earth. Even in this rain the dam was holding, which had surprised everybody; the rain had been drumming down for days and days.