Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Robert Jefferies from Devizes died that day of pneumonia; the blankets had come far too late for many men.

Once through the Needles at the western end of the Isle of Wight, which happened on that same day, Alexander grew more frisky than at any time on the slow sail from Tilbury to Portsmouth. She rolled a lot and pitched a little, which sent most of the convicts to their cots in the throes of sickness. Richard became conscious of nausea, but not to a degree beyond controlling, and it passed within three hours after a single dry heave. Maybe sea legs grew automatically on Bristolians? The other Bristolians-Connelly, Perrott, Davis, Crowder, Martin and Morris-were in similar case to himself. It was the country boys seemed the worst, though none was as bad as Ike Rogers.

The next day Lieutenant Shairp and Surgeon Balmain came down the after hatch more awkwardly than in still water, but with sufficient dignity to look impressive. The two privates with them collected the body of Robert Jefferies while Shairp and Balmain negotiated the heaving aisle by hanging on to platform edges, Shairp very careful not to put his hand on anyone’s vomit. The order was the same: get out and clean your deck, get out and empty your night bucket, get out and clean your cot, I do not care how sick you think you are. If you have puked on your blanket, wash it. If you have puked on your matting, wash it. If you have puked on yourself, wash yourself.

“If they do that every day the place will stay clean,” said Connelly. “Oh, I do hope!”

“Do not hope,” said Richard. “This is Balmain’s doing, not Shairp’s, but Balmain is not a methodical man. Luckily the food has already been puked up, so the worst we will have to cope with is shit. They will just lie there and shit themselves, and half of them at least have never had a wash in their lives. If we are clean and our cleanliness is spreading, it is because of my cousin James and the fact that I badger all within hailing distance so much that they fear me more than they do a wash.” He grinned. “Once they get used to washing, they start to like being clean.”

“You,” said Will Connelly, “are a very strange man, Richard. Deny it as much as ye like, but ye’re definitely the head man on the larboard side.” He closed his eyes and concentrated upon his internal mechanisms. “I feel well, so I am going to try to read.” He sat on the bench along the central table right under the open hatch with the three volumes of Robinson Crusoe, found his place in the first and was soon absorbed in it, apparently quite oblivious to the ship’s motion.

Richard joined him with his gazetteer of the world; the coats of whitewash had made all the difference.

By the time Alexander passed well to the south of Plymouth most of the men had found their sea legs, though Ike Rogers and a handful of others had not. It was even possible to walk the aisles once a man got used to the way the deck rose to meet his feet, then fell away from beneath them. And thus it was that Richard, exercising, made the acquaintance of John Power, the forward head man.

Power was a fine-looking young fellow, lithe and supple as a cat, with a fierce look in his dark eyes and a curious habit of making highly expressive gestures with his hands as he talked. Very Frog, very Italian, not at all English, Dutch or German. He had an air of someone under pressure, not with anxiety or ill temper but rather with colossal energies and enthusiasms. And his eyes said that he liked to take risks.

“Richard Morgan!” he said as Richard passed by his cot, the top corner one where the forward bulkhead met the starboard hull. “I bid ye welcome to enemy territory.”

“I am not your enemy, John Power. I am a quiet man who minds his own business.”

“Which is the larboard side. Very neat and clean and tidy, I am told. Bristol fashion, real shipshape.”

“I am indeed a Bristol man, but visit us and see for yourself. ’Tis true we keep ourselves to ourselves-but then, we none of us speak the flash lingo.”

“My men like to talk flash, though I do not much care for it myself-sailors hate it.” Power slipped off his cot and joined Richard. “Ye’re an old man, Morgan, now I see ye close up.”

“Eight-and-thirty last September, though so far I have not felt my years overmuch, Power. My strength is a little diminished after nigh five months of Alexander, but we did get some work to do in Portsmouth, which was a help. They always put Bristolians on bilge duty-our noses are immune to the foulest airs. Did ye go to the lighter, The Firm or Fortunee?”

“The lighter. I get on well with Alexander’s crew, so my men never experienced Portsmouth’s hulks.” He heaved a great sigh, hands signaling exultation. “As soon as maybe I intend to work on Alexander as a seaman. Mr. Bones-he is third mate-promised. Then I will get my strength back.”

“I had thought we would be below deck for the whole voyage.”

“Not if Mr. Bones is right. Governor Phillip says we are not to be allowed to waste away, he needs us fit enough to work when we reach Botany Bay.”

They reached the starboard bulkhead barrel of sea-water and turned to walk forward. Power glanced sideways at Will Connelly hunched over Mr. Daniel Defoe. “Do all of ye read?” he asked with a tinge of envy.

“Six of us do, and five of us are Bristolians-Crowder, Davis, Connelly there, Perrott and me. The odd man out is Bill Whiting,” said Richard. “Bristol is full of charity schools.”

“London has almost no charity schools. Though I always thought it a waste of time to read books when the signs above any sort of shop tell a man what is inside.” The hands waggled wryly. “Now I think it would be good to read books. It passes the time.”

“When ye’re aloft ’twill not seem so dreadful. Are ye married?”

“Not I!” Power turned his thumbs down. “Women are poison.”

“Nay, they are just like us-some good, some bad, and some indifferent.”

“How many of each kind have ye known?” asked Power, smiling to reveal strong white teeth-not a boozer, then.

“More good than bad, and none indifferent.”

“And wives?”

“Two, according to my records.”

“And of records, Lieutenant Johnstone tells me, there are none!” Power clenched his fists in glee. “Can ye imagine that? The Home Office never got around to sending Phillip a list of us, so no one knows what our crimes are, nor how long we have to serve. I intend to take advantage of that, Morgan, the moment I reach Botany Bay.”

“The Home Office sounds as efficient as the Bristol Excise Office,” said Richard as they reached Power’s cot and he climbed into it without seeming to move at all. As graceful as Stephen Donovan, whose company Richard was missing now that they were below. A Miss Molly he might be, but he was well read and not a convict, so could talk of something other than prison.

Richard walked back to his own cot in a thoughtful mood. An interesting snippet, that no one in authority had any idea of the nature of convict offenses, the time each still had to serve… It might work as Power confidently expected it would, but there was also the possibility that the Governor might make an arbitrary decision to the effect that all convicts were to serve fourteen years. No one would want hordes of convicts claiming to have served their time within six months or a year of arriving. Which thought told Richard why they had been searched in Portsmouth. It cost money to buy passage home on a ship; they all knew that a return fare was not a part of the Parliament’s plan. Someone in Phillip’s retinue was shrewd enough to guess that there might be quite a lot of men and women concealing a nest egg aimed at buying passage home. Ye should have done a Mr. Sykes, Major Ross! But that brutish ye’re not, for all ye must have known. I have read ye aright: a man with a code of honor, a fierce partisan and protector of your men, a Scotch pessimist, violent-tempered, salty-tongued, not hugely ambitious, and prone to seasickness.