Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

The cheers for King were louder than those for the King, and their King stood dazed, beaming, immensely gratified. For a minute he actually loved Major Ross.

“I now require that every last one of ye pass beneath the Union and bow the head as affirmation of your oath of loyalty!”

The crowd filed past, awed into fearful solemnity.

Though Richard stood at the head of his sawyers and closer to the Union than the new convict arrivals, he had spotted many faces he knew, some with delight: Will Connelly, Neddy Perrott and Taffy Edmunds; Tommy Kidner, Aaron Davis, Mikey Dennison, Steve Martin, George Guest and his boon companion, Ed Risby; George Whitacre. Among the new marines he saw his gunsmith apprentice, Daniel Stanfield, and two privates from Alexander days, Elias Bishop and Joe McCaldren. No doubt the convicts would come rushing to greet him-how to explain that Major Ross meant every word he said, and would not appreciate his head sawyer dallying to chat with old friends? Then Major Ross solved his dilemma by shouting his name.

“Yes, sir?” he asked as the crowd melted away.

“I will depute Private Stanfield to find Edmunds. Will ye be at the third sawpit?”

“Aye, sir.”

“I am sending ye John Lawrell to live with ye and do whatever ye require of him. A good enough fellow, but a little slow in the noggin. Have him tend your garden. For the first six weeks Tom Crowder will collect everything as it ripens, after that he will take only two-thirds.”

“Aye, sir,” said Richard, saluted and departed in haste. John Lawrell… He had been at Norfolk Island for a year and Richard knew him slightly; a good-natured, rather shambling Cornishman off Dunkirk hulk and Scarborough, and part of the general labor pool operated by Stephen. What was Major Ross up to? In effect, he had just endowed Richard with a servant to tend his unofficial block.

By the time he reached the third sawpit to find Sam Hussey and Harry Humphreys sawing, he had seen the Major’s reason: with so many new people on the island, those old residents who owned good vegetable gardens were at risk of losing their produce to thieves, Law Martial or no Law Martial. Ross had given him a guard to make sure his produce was not pilfered, and he would be doing the same to all those with decent gardens. And trust Ross to select guards from among the ranks of the unoffending dimwitted. Stifling a sigh, Richard vowed that during his time off he would be sawing to build Lawrell his own hut. The thought of sharing a house was far more repugnant than the thought of too little food.

“I am off to see to the new pits, Billy,” he said to Private Wigfall, whom he counted a good friend. He winked, laughed. “And make sure we don’t get any fucken Williams as sawyers.” He thought of something else. “If a Welshman named Taffy Edmunds reports in, sit him down in the shade-not with the women!-and tell him to wait until I get back. He will be our master sharpener. A pity he does not like women, but he will have to learn to.”

Three of the new pits lay beyond the limits of Sydney Town to the east, where the hillsides were still heavily forested. Somehow Ross had already managed to find time to think out what he wanted, and issued instructions that trees were to be felled in a strip twenty feet wide from Turtle Bay to Ball Bay as the start of a proper road. Those on the slopes leading to Turtle Bay would be laid lengthwise and slid downhill; once the tilt switched to Ball Bay, another sawpit would be dug at Ball Bay to deal with that timber. It was going to be impossible for one man to keep an eye on so many pits so far apart, which meant that he would have to make sure he picked a head sawyer for each pit who would not slacken the pace because the supervisor was elsewhere. Nor was this the only road: a strip twenty feet wide was to be cleared to Cascade, and a third, the longest, westward to Anson Bay. Sawpits and more sawpits, those were the Major’s orders.

On the way back he skirted the unnamed beach which seemed to act as a net to catch any pines which tumbled down the cliffs into the water, piling them up while the sea pushed them inland to form a raft of logs so ancient that they had turned to a kind of stone. And there, washing back and forth in the water-the wind was too far west to lash up a heavy surf-was a convoluted heap of canvas sail off Sirius. Useful, he understood immediately, quickening his pace. The tide was just beginning to come in, so it was unlikely that the sail would wash out to sea again, but he thought the find too important to risk losing by dawdling.

The first man in authority he saw was Stephen, deputed to the stone quarry these days.

Wreathed in smiles, Stephen promptly abandoned his workers. “Plague take this huge influx! I’ve hardly seen ye in a week.” His face changed. “Oh, Richard, the shame of it!” he cried. “To lose Sirius-what evil forces are conniving against us?”

“I know not. Nor do I think I want to know.”

“What brings ye down here?”

“New sawpits, what else? With Major Ross as commandant, we are to go from the idealism of Marcus Aurelius to the pragmatism of Augustus. I do not say the Major will leave Norfolk Island marble, as he did not find it brick, but he will certainly give it roads-a hint, I am sure, that he is going to send people elsewhere than Sydney Town.” He looked brisk. “Can ye spare some time and men?”

“If the reason be good enough. What’s amiss?”

“Nothing for a change,” grinned Richard. “In fact, I am the bearer of good news. There is a huge mass of Sirius’s sail lying in the far beach, and more may come around the point with the tide on the flood. It will serve as canopies for those untented. Once people are properly housed it can be cut into hammocks, sheets for the officers’ beds-a thousand and one things. I imagine that quite a lot of the officers’ property will be spirited away by the likes of Francis and Peck.”

“God bless ye, Richard!” Stephen ran off, shouting and waving to his men.

That evening,armed with a pine-knot torch to find his way back up the vale in the darkness (curfew was set for eight o’clock), Richard ventured into Sydney Town in search of the faces he had seen amid the assembly. Tents were pitched behind the row of huts on the beachfront, but many of the convicts were doomed to sleep in the open, Sirius’s crew taking precedence in the matter of tents. By tomorrow, he hoped, Sirius’s sails would roof them over.

A big fire of pine scraps burned where the shelterless would lie down their heads. Though he had been on the island for sixteen months, it still amazed Richard how suddenly the air chilled once the sun went down, no matter how hot the day had been; only when humidity descended did this cooling off not happen, and so far 1790 had not been at all sultry. A sign, he thought, that the weather this year would be drier, though how he came to that conclusion he did not know. Instinct arising from some Druid ancestor?

About a hundred people were huddled together around the tall blaze, belongings strewn about them. Unlike the marines and their officers, the convicts had been disembarked together with all they owned, including their precious blankets and buckets. Feet were universally bare; shoes had run out months ago, nor did Norfolk Island have any. He prayed that it would not rain that night; much of the island’s rain fell at night, and out of what had been a clear sky moments before. The convicts had all been landed in downpours, had not had sufficient fine weather yet to dry out completely. There would be an epidemic of chills and fevers, and perhaps the island’s record would be broken: not one person in it had died of natural causes or disease since Lieutenant King and his original 23 companions had come ashore over two years ago. Whatever else Norfolk Island might or might not be, its climate engendered splendid health.