Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

At first he stilled absolutely, then looked up at her with a face transfigured by joy. Leaping to his feet, he whirled her off the ground and kissed her and kissed her. “Oh, Kitty! My love, my angel!” The exaltation faded, he looked afraid. “Ye’re sure?”

“Olivia says I have fallen, though I was already sure.”

“When?

“Late February or early March, we think. Olivia says that you quickened me at once, just like Nat. She says that means we will be fruitful, that there will be as many children as we wish.”

He took her hand and kissed it reverently. “Ye’re well?”

“Very, all considered. I have had no courses since you took me. I am a little sick sometimes, but nothing like being at sea.”

“Are ye pleased, Kitty? It is very soon.”

“Oh, Richard, it is a dream! I am”-she found a new word-“ecstatic. Truly ecstatic! My own baby!”

On Mondaymorning Richard heard through the grapevine that Major Robert Ross was gravely ill. On Tuesday morning he was summoned by Private Bailey to wait upon the Major at once.

Ross had been put upstairs in the large room he usually used as a study because one floor up insulated him from importunate visitors. When Richard followed Mrs. Richard Morgan-very anxious and subdued-up the stairs and entered the room, he was shocked. The Major’s face was greyer than his eyes, sunken glazed into black sockets; he lay as rigid as a board with his arms by his sides, their hands curiously expectant.

“Sir?”

“Morgan? Good. Stand where I can see ye. Mrs. Morgan, ye can go. Surgeon Callam will be here soon,” Ross said steadily.

Suddenly his body spasmed dreadfully and his lips drew back in a rictus from his teeth; fight though he did to remain silent, he emitted a groan that Richard knew in any other man would have emerged a scream. He suffered through the bout, groaning, hands clenched into the counterpane like claws; this was what they had expected, must be ready for. Richard waited quietly, understanding that Ross wanted neither sympathy nor assistance. Finally his agony retreated to leave his face drenched in sweat.

“Better for a while,” he said then. “’Tis a kidney stone, Callam says. Wentworth agrees. Considen and Jamison disagree.”

“I would believe Callam and Wentworth, sir.”

“Aye, I do. Jamison could not castrate a cat and Considen is a wonder at drawing teeth.”

“Do not waste your energies, sir. What can I do?”

“Be aware that I may die. Callam is giving me something he says relaxes the tube between kidney and bladder in the hope that I may pass the stone. To do so is my only salvation.”

“I will pray for ye, sir,” said Richard, meaning it.

“’Twill help more than Callam’s medicaments, I suspect.”

Another spasm came on, was endured.

“If I die before a ship comes,” he said when it was over, “this place will be in parlous condition. Captain Hill is a fucken fool and Ralph Clark is mentally about the same age as my son. Faddy is a simpleton as well as a child. War will break out between my marines and the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps, with every felon villain from Francis to Peck enlisting with Hill. It will be a bloodbath, which is why I intend to pass this fucken stone no matter what. No matter what.”

“Ye’ll pass it, sir. The stone does not exist can break you, ” said Richard with a smile. “Is there anything else I can do?”

“Aye. I have already seen Mr. Donovan and some others, and authorized the issue of muskets. Ye’ll be given one too, Morgan. At least the marine muskets fire, thanks to ye. The New South Wales Corps take no care of their weapons and I have not volunteered your services to Hill. Keep in touch with Donovan-and do not trust Andrew Hume, who has sided with Hill and participates in his felonies. Hume is a fraud, Morgan, he knows no more about flax processing than I do, but he sits there in Phillipsburgh like a spider fancying that between himself and Hill, they control half of this island.”

“Concentrate upon passing your stone, sir. We will not let Hill and his New South Wales Corps take over.”

“Oh, here it comes again! Go, Morgan, and stay wide awake.”

Mind whirling, Richard stood outside on the landing trying to visualize Norfolk Island without Major Ross. It was boiling already, thanks to marine private Henry Wright. Wright had been caught in the act of raping Elizabeth Gregory, a ten-year-old Queensborough girl. To make matters worse, this was Wright’s second offense; he had been sentenced to death in Port Jackson two years earlier for raping a nine-year-old girl, but His Excellency had reprieved him on the condition that he spend the rest of his life at Norfolk Island. Thereby transferring his problem to Major Ross. Wright’s wife and toddling daughter had come with him, but in the aftermath of Elizabeth Gregory the wife had petitioned to take her daughter back to Port Jackson on the next ship. Ross had agreed. He had sentenced Wright to run the gauntlet three times: first at Sydney Town, then at Queensborough, and then at Phillipsburgh. The Sydney Town gauntlet had happened the very day Major Ross fell ill; stripped to breeches, Wright had been made to run between two lines of people from all walks, thirsting for his blood and armed with hoes, hatchets, cudgels, whips.

The child rape had destroyed the reputation of the marines, even among many of the law-abiding convicts, though the whole of the old Norfolk Island community was equally angered by Governor Phillip’s developing tendency to rid himself of his troublemakers at Norfolk Island’s expense.

Ross was absolutely right, Richard thought. If he dies, there will be war.

But, being Major Ross, he did not die. His life hung in the balance for a week during which Richard, Stephen and their cohorts prowled regularly, then the pain began to diminish. Whether he had passed the stone or whether it had retreated back into the kidney Surgeon Callam had no idea, for the pain did not lift in an instant; it dwindled away gradually. Two weeks after the onslaught he was able to go downstairs, and a week after that he was the same brisk, snarling, caustic Major Ross everybody knew and either loved or feared or loathed.

The balancetipped more in favor of the New South Wales Corps when Mary Ann arrived midway through August of 1791, the first ship since Supply in April, and the first transport in a year. She brought 11 more soldiers with 3 wives and 9 children belonging to the New South Wales Corps, and 133 felons-131 men, a woman and a child. By the time she had unloaded her human cargo, the population of Norfolk Island had risen to 875. Mary Ann was supposed to have nine months’ supplies aboard for the contingent she brought, but, as usual, whoever determined how much the newcomers would eat had grossly erred. Five months’ supplies, more like.

The fresh influx consisted of 32 intractables who had long plagued Governor Phillip and 99 sick, half-starved wretches off another ship which had arrived in Port Jackson, Matilda. Matilda and Mary Ann were the first two of ten ships sailed from England around the end of March, which meant that vessels were making the journey faster with fewer and shorter ports of call along the way. Matilda had made the run in four months and five days without stopping at all, Mary Ann almost as swiftly. The brevity of the passage was what saved the convicts they carried, for the same slave contractors had victualled 1791’s transports: Messrs. Camden, Calvert & King. Only the Royal Navy storeship, Gorgon, would be delayed by a long port of call; she was to stay in Cape Town and buy as many animals as possible. As Gorgon carried most of the mail and parcels, the old inhabitants of Norfolk Island settled in with a sigh to wait several more months for news. Oh, the frustration of never knowing what was happening in the rest of the world! Added to which, Mary Ann’s captain, Mark Monroe, was so ignorant of world events that he could contribute nothing.