Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Now that Richard lived on Morgan’s Run, he and Stephen had taken to fishing from the rocks near a small, sandy beach between Sydney Bay’s landing place and its western headland, Point Ross. The walk was no longer than that to Point Hunter, the eastern headland, and having poles to fish with greatly helped their chances of kingfish and other large denizens of surface waters.

“What d’ye think of these rumors that a huge revolution has happened in France?” Stephen asked as they cleaned a six-foot kingfish under the shade of an overhanging rock.

“It happened in the American colonies, so why not? I wish that Mary Ann or Salamander had carried gazettes from London, but I think we will have to wait until Gorgon arrives in Port Jackson before we find out what actually has happened. Gorgon will also carry more than personal letters from wives to men like Ross and Ralphie darling.”

“Have ye ever written home, Richard?”

“Nay, never. I want to have something to say before I do.”

Stephen gazed at him in wonder. Something to say? What was Alexander? What was Port Jackson? What was Norfolk Island?

“I see no point in writing sad letters,” Richard explained. “When I write, I want to be able to tell my family and friends in England that I have survived and even prospered a little. That my life in the Antipodes is not an empty vessel.”

“Yes, I understand. Then ye’ll be writing soon. If, that is, ye have not forgotten how to form the alphabet.”

“I do that as well as ever. I do not write letters, but if I am not too tired, I transcribe notes upon whatever I am reading.”

They walked back to Morgan’s Run the long way to give some of the magnificently meaty fish to Olivia Lucas, met D’arcy in town and gave him some, then waded upstream past Richard’s old house and climbed the cleft.

Kitty was beginning to look a little pregnant, and had shown that she was an ideal wife for a Norfolk Island settler by learning to ply a hammer, cope with minor emergencies like one of Augusta’s daughters in the vegetable patch, sand and polish interior walls as Richard put them up, chop down quite large trees, deal with the firewood, carry water, wash, cook, clean, and sew. In her spare time, she informed Richard gravely, she was unraveling some linen cloth and weaving the strands into what she hoped would form wicks. Then she would make tallow out of the hard back fat when Richard killed a pig, and dip candles. That way they would not have to purchase tallow candles from Stores, which charged a penny each.

“Ye’re doing too much,” Stephen chided her as they sat to eat the kingfish, baked in the oven wrapped in plantain leaves.

“Stephen, do not start!” she said dangerously, eating with gusto all the while. “Richard is always at me about it. Truly I am well, strong and full of vim. And I have discovered that I am happiest when doing things. Especially because this is my house, I have been with Richard since before its beginning.”

“When I find a man I can trust, Kitty, I will pay the Government for his labors and put him to the tasks ye’ll not be able to do once ye become heavy.”

“That is where George Guest went wrong,” said Stephen. “If he had waited until he was out of his sentence and then come to an arrangement with Major Ross about hiring two laborers, neither he nor they would have been flogged.”

“George is a good fellow, but too keen to get on. He thought to get the work done cheaper by hiring two marines directly rather than paying the Government to hire on his behalf. That is not how English government works. I deplore English government, but I see no sense in trying to hoodwink it. I will get my man for ten pounds a year, which I can afford. After, that is,” he said with a smile, “I have paid my debts.”

“Ye work too hard yourself, Richard.”

“I do not believe so. Rock fishing on a Saturday morning is a wonderful rest, so is gardening and mucking out the pigsty after Sunday service. Luckily the Major’s objections to Sunday activities do not extend to things which might eventually arrive in the Stores. His shibboleths are limited to drinking and gambling.”

“On the subject of drinking, the New South Wales Corps men have set up a very nice still with Francis Mee and Elias Bishop.”

“Well, that had to happen, especially after the Major grew so religious. Besides, he shipped a good deal of what we made to Port Jackson on Supply last February. ’Tis amazing how the total soars when ye have a humble little pair of kettles going day and night- and on Sundays,” Richard said, laughing.

After Stephen left, Richard and Kitty worked side by side in the garden until supper time, eaten just before night fell. The small citrus trees had survived transplanting, as had almost everything. The year had been a fairly grubless one and dry enough that the Government wheat in Arthur’s Vale and the Government corn at Queensborough looked like yielding bumper crops. Of course there had been salt winds galore, but luckily most had been accompanied by squally showers, which reduced their blighting effect. There had been just enough rain to keep the grain coming on. Even with 1,115 inhabitants, Norfolk Island seemed likely to provide its own bread and surplus pork to salt for Port Jackson.

In SydneyTown, Queensborough and Phillipsburgh the same old squabbles recurred between industrious convict gardeners and lazy marines and soldiers. There were now a great many very sick convicts who literally could not work; some died, and some were subject to the kind of thing rife in Port Jackson-the strong robbed the weak of sustenance and clothing. Those upon whom devolved the burden of feeding the indigent-through-illness men grew sour about having to do so. Especially if they were not yet pardoned or emancipated, and therefore free to keep what they grew on their own blocks or sell to Stores.

Hunger still stalked on the Phillipsburgh-Cascade side of the island; only three miles away by road, it may as well have been as far as Port Jackson, so isolated was it. Phillipsburgh grew less edibles in order to cultivate flax, and importation of edibles from the south side of the island was the responsibility of Mr. Andrew Hume, the superintendent. He did a brisk trade in the acquisition of convict slops and constantly incurred Major Ross’s wrath by short-rationing his workers in order to sell to the New South Wales Corps soldiers, living somewhat closer than the middle of the Cascade road. As almost all the Lieutenant-Governor’s troops were now New South Wales Corps soldiers, Ross found it impossible to police Phillipsburgh and the alliance between Hume and Captain Hill. One starving flax worker ate a forest plant he mistook for cabbage, and died; even then Hume continued in his peculations and frauds, abetted by Hill and his soldiers.

The growing evil was the act of growing food, and the chasm between those who grew plenty and ate well and those who grew nothing widened every day to the whistles and screams of floggings, floggings, floggings. A surgeon was required to witness the application of the cat, so Callum, Wentworth, Considen and Jamison entered into a conspiracy; whichever one was deputed to watch would call a halt after somewhere between 15 and 50 of the total number had been laid on, then make sure that the next installment was not administered before healing was complete. It could take a long time for a convict to receive all 200 lashes, and what usually happened was that Major Ross forgave the culprit the rest before too much damage had been done.

Courts martial also increased as the differences of opinion and resentments arising out of rank and precedence rubbed rawly at abraded military feelings, real or (all too often) imagined. Most of the marines and soldiers, including their officers, were uneducated, narrow, impressionable, hottempered, appallingly immature, and prone to believe whatever they were told. A fancied slight became inflated into an unpardonable insult before it had finished traveling the gossip grapevine, as efficient and widespread among the free as among the felon.