Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Four weeks later he was able to produce his first distillate. The Lieutenant-Governor sipped at it cautiously, grimaced, had another sip, then drank the rest of his quarter-pint down; he liked his rum as much as any other man.

“It tastes dreadful, Morgan, but it has the right effect,” he said, actually smiling. “Ye may well have saved us from mutiny and murder. ’Twould be much smoother if it were aged, but that is for the future. Who knows? We may yet supply Port Jackson with rum as well as lime and timber.”

“An it please ye, sir, I would now appreciate it if I could return to my sawpits,” said Richard, to whom the sight of a still brought no happy memories. “ ’Tis necessary to keep up the mash and the fire, not to mention the water, but I do not see the need to be here myself. Stanfield can take one shift and Drummond the other. If ye’ve any drop of good rum in store, we can put a bit of the raw distillate in an oak cask with a mite of the good stuff and see how it goes.”

“Ye can share the task of supervision with Lieutenant Clark, Morgan, but ’tis a waste of your talents to keep ye here feeding the apparatus and the furnace, ye’re right about that.” He strolled off, smacking his lips, obviously permeated with a feeling of well-being. “Walk with me back to Sydney Town.” Then he remembered the rest of the team, and paused to clap each man on the shoulder. “Guard and tend this well, boys,” he said with startling affability, still smiling. “ ’Twill earn each of ye an extra twenty pounds a year.”

The road through the pines followed the crest down across the top of Mount George, where the views were glorious-the ocean, the whole of Sydney Town and its lagoons, the surf, Phillip and Neapean Islands. Stopping to gaze, Major Ross spoke.

“I have it in mind, Morgan, to free ye,” he said. “I cannot give ye an absolute pardon, but I can give a conditional one until time and altered circumstances make it possible for me to petition a full pardon from His Excellency in Port Jackson. I think ye’ve earned a better status as a free man than simple emancipation by virtue of having served out your sentence-which, as I remember, ye said expires in March of ninety-two?”

Richard’s throat worked convulsively, his eyes overflowed with tears; he tried to speak, could not, nodded as he brushed at the torrent with his palms. Free. Free.

The Major continued to stare at Phillip Island. “There are others I am freeing as well-Lucas, Phillimore, Rice, the elder Mortimer, et cetera. Ye should all have the chance to take up land and make something of yourselves, for all of ye have behaved like decent men for as long as I have known ye. ’Tis thanks to your sort that Norfolk Island has managed to survive and I have been able to govern-not to mention Lieutenant King before me. As of now, Morgan, ye’re a free man, which means that as supervisor of sawyers ye’ll be paid a wage of twenty-five pounds a year. I will also pay ye an emolument for supervising the distillery-five pounds a year-and a sum of twenty for building it. None can be paid in coin of the realm-that His Majesty’s Government did not give us. ’Twill be accorded to ye in notes of hand which will be properly entered in the Government’s accounts. Ye can use it to transact business with the Stores or with private vendors. On the subject of the distillery I want complete silence, and I warn ye that I may close it down-this is an experiment only, which I am performing because I do not want to see any naval individuals go into the distilling business for themselves. My conscience gnaws, I suffer doubts,” he ended, mood flattening. “Lieutenant Clark I can trust not to breathe a word, even to his journal. Its contents-as he well knows-must reflect not only his virtues, but mine also. Oh, I acquit him of the desire to publish, but sometimes journals fall into the wrong hands.”

The speech was long enough to allow Richard to compose himself. “I am your man, Major Ross. That is the only way I can thank ye for all your many kindnesses.” A smile lit his eyes, turning them very blue. “Though I have a favor to ask. Would ye let me make my first act as a free man the honor of shaking your hand?”

Ross extended his hand willingly. “I am for town,” he said, “but I am afraid, Morgan, that ye must return to the distillery and fetch me enough of that horrible brew to water down my little remaining good stuff at dinner this evening.” He grimaced. “I am as tired of Mt. Pitt bird as the next man, but I doubt there will be any complaints if there is a jug of spirits to wash it down.”

Free! He was free! And pardoned free, which meant everything. All men were free once their sentences expired, but they were mere emancipists. A pardoned man had a reference. He was vindicated.

On the4th of August a sail was sighted from Sydney Town; the entire community forgot work, discipline, illness, good sense. Lieutenant Clark and Captain George Johnston ascended Mount George and verified that the sail was real, but the ship passed serenely onward. Landing at Sydney Bay was impossible in the teeth of a strong southerly gale, so Captain Johnston and Captain Hunter walked to Cascade in the expectation of a landing there, where the water was as quiet as a millpond. But the ship passed serenely on, and by dusk she had disappeared northward. The mood that night in the town and vale, even in Charlotte Field and Phillipburgh, was despairing. To see a ship and be ignored! Oh, what worse disappointment could there be?

The next day Major Ross sent a party to the top of Mt. Pitt to watch, but in vain; the ship was definitely gone.

Then on the 7th of August people in Sydney Town were woken at dawn by screams of a ship on the far southern horizon.

The wind against her, she had not worked much farther in by late afternoon, but she had been joined by a second set of sails. This time it was real, this time they would not be ignored!

Unable to make contact with the first of the two sighted ships, Lieutenant Clark in the coble headed for the second one and managed to board her. She was Surprize, captained out of London by Nicholas Anstis, who had been first mate on Lady Penrhyn and had an interest in the slaving business. Surprize, he informed Clark, carried 204 convicts-but very few stores-for Norfolk Island. Before Clark could have a conniption fit, Anstis added that the other ship was Justinian, carrying no convicts but lots of provisions. Port Jackson no longer starved, and nor would Norfolk Island, where less than three weeks’ rations of salt meat and flour remained.

“Which vessel was it ignored our signals?” Clark demanded.

“Lady Juliana. She carried a cargo of women felons to Port Jackson, but was leaking so badly that she sailed straight for Wampoa empty. She is to pick up a cargo of tea there, but first she needs dry docking,” said Anstis. “Justinian and I are going on to Wampoa as soon as we have dropped our loads here.”

Even men like Len Dyer and William Francis worked energetically to pile Surprize and Justinian longboats with vegetables for the greens-starved crews; neither was able to land any cargo, human or food. Letters came ashore from England and Port Jackson, together with some ships’ officers of a mind to stretch their legs. Unloading would have to wait, happen if necessary at Cascade. The delighted Lieutenant Clark received no less than four fulsome missives from his beloved Betsy, learned that she and baby Ralphie were very well, and felt less anxious.

Governor Phillip explained to Major Ross on paper that Supply had been sent to Batavia, there to pick up whatever food her tiny holds could carry, if possible charter a Dutch vessel to follow her back to Port Jackson with more food, and drop off Lieutenant Philip Gidley King; His Excellency hoped that King would be able to board a Dutch East Indiaman from Batavia at least as far as Cape Town on his long journey of petition to London. As soon as Supply had returned to Port Jackson and was shipshape, she would be sent to Norfolk Island to pick up Captain John Hunter and his Sirius sailors-an event Phillip did not think likely to happen until well into 1791. But, said Phillip firmly, now that sufficient provisions had arrived, Major Ross had no excuse to continue governing under the Law Martial. That would have to be repealed immediately. Oh, bugger ye, King! thought the Major savagely. This is your doing, no one else’s. How am I to get any work out of Hunter’s sailors if I cannot hang them?