Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Some of the convicts had managed to obtain rum as well, and Scarborough was selling Dutch gin she had picked up floating at sea off the Scilly Isles. To English palates, very harsh and bitter; English gin was as sweet as rum, the main reason why so many men (and women) had rotten teeth. Tommy Crowder, Aaron Davis and the rest in the cot below were snoring on rum they had bought from Sergeant Knight; in fact, the snores which emanated from the Alexander prison were louder than they had been since embarkation. On Friday only those like Richard who preferred to keep their money for more important things were on deck at all, and on Friday night the ship’s timbers reverberated.

They were five hours into Saturday morning’s daylight when the very haughty and superior first mate, William Aston Long, came looking for John Power.

The faces turned to him blankly were patently innocent; Mr. Long departed looking grim.

Several marine privates, stupid from drink, began yelling that they had better get their fucken arses on deck, and look lively! Startled, the convicts tumbled out of their cots or from around the tables; they were expecting to be fed at any moment.

Captain Duncan Sinclair emerged from his roundhouse, his face pouting in extreme displeasure.

“My dad had a sow looked just like Captain Sinclair,” said Bill Whiting audibly enough for the thirty-odd men around him to hear. “Don’t know why all the huntsmen talk about wild boars-I never knew a wild boar or a bull could hold a candle to that awful old bitch. She ruled the yard, the barn, the coops, the pond, the animals and us. Evil! Satan would have given her a wide berth and God did not want her either. She would charge at the drop of a hat and she ate her piglets just to spite us. The boar near died of fright when he had to service her. Name was Esmeralda.”

From that day on Captain Duncan Sinclair was known to the entire complement of Alexander as “Esmeralda.”

Heads aching, tempers ruined, those marines not ashore were put to turning the prison inside out, and when it yielded nothing, to turning every other place inside out. Even rolled sails on spars were searched for John Power, who had disappeared. So, when someone thought to look, had Alexander’s jollyboat.

Major Ross came aboard during the afternoon, by which time the hapless marines had managed to look as if they were halfway sober. Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp had been summarily ordered back from Lady Penrhyn, where they were in the habit of dining with marine captain James Campbell and his two lieutenants. Because of the “grog rebellion” Ross was in no mood to suffer more trouble from this most troublesome of the fleet’s eleven ships. The convicts kept dying, the marines were the worst assortment of malcontents the Major had ever encountered, and Duncan Sinclair was the bastard son of a Glasgow bitch.

“Find the man, Sinclair,” he said to that worthy, “else your purse will be the lighter of forty pounds. I have reported this matter to the Governor, who is not pleased. Find him! ”

They did, but not until after dawn on Sunday morning, with the fleet ready to sail. Enquiries aboard the Dutch East Indiaman had revealed that Power had arrived alone in the Alexander jollyboat and begged for work as a seaman on the voyage to Holland. As he was wearing the same kind of clothes as the many English convicts the Dutch captain had seen on the English ships, he was courteously refused and told to be on his way. Not before someone, moved at the sight of his terrible grief, had given him a mug of gin.

It was the jollyboat the search parties from Alexander and Supply found first, tied by its painter to a rock in a deserted cove; Power, sound asleep thanks to sorrow and Dutch gin, was curled up behind a pile of stones, and came quietly. Sinclair and Long wanted him given 200 lashes, but the Governor sent word that he was to be put into double irons and stapled to the deck. The stapling was to last for twenty-four hours, the irons were to remain on at the Governor’s pleasure.

Alexander put out to sea. Chips, the ship’s carpenter, stapled John Power to the deck by screwing down his manacles and fetters, thus pinning him prone and face down. The orders were that nobody was to go near him on pain of the cat, but as soon as night enfolded the ship Mr. Bones crept to give him water, which he lapped like a dog.

The weather was fine, sunny and gently windy the moment the fleet extricated itself from Teneriffe’s morning overcast. This time sight of the island stayed with them for a full three days, a vision that late afternoon rendered unforgettable. Pico de Teide reared up 12,000 feet clear from the ocean, its jagged tip shining starkly white with snow, its waist encircled by a band of grey-hued cloud. Then in the setting sun the snow glowed rose-pink, the cloud crimsoned, and what looked in the ruddiness like molten lava poured down one flank all the way to the sea, some flow of ancient rock whose uniqueness had never been obliterated by sun, wind or blasts of sand from the far off African deserts. So beautiful!

On the morrow it was still there, just farther away, and on the third day out, with the wind freshening and the sea getting up, it looked as if the straight and steady hand which had drawn the horizon had been suddenly jarred to produce a tiny fang. Teneriffe was 100 miles away when the horizon became perfect again.

On the15th of June they crossed the Tropic of Cancer, an event marked by much ceremony. Every soul on board who had not been south of this imaginary line was obliged to stand trial before none other than Father Neptune himself. The scene on deck was set with shells, nets, seaweed and a huge copper tub filled with sea-water. Two sailors blew on conches while a fearsome individual was carried from the forecastle on a throne made from a barrel; it took a hard look to recognize Stephen Donovan. His head was crowned with seaweed and a jagged brass ring, his beard was seaweed, his face, bare chest and arms were blue, and from the waist down he was clad in the tail of a swordfish caught the previous day, flesh and guts scooped out to accommodate his legs. In one hand he bore his trident, which was actually Alexander’s grains-a three-pronged, barbed instrument the sailors successfully used to spear big fish. Each man was brought forward by two blue-painted, seaweed-draped sailors, asked if he had crossed the line, and if he said no, was thrust into the copper of sea-water. After which Father Neptune slapped a bit of blue paint on him and let him go. The best fun for the audience was watching Lieutenants Johnstone and Shairp get dunked, though both knew enough about the ceremony to wear slops.

Rum was issued-and continued to be issued-to all hands, including the convicts; someone produced a penny whistle and the sailors fell to dancing in their strange way, bobbing up and down with arms folded, jigging in circles, teetering from one foot to the other. From that they passed to chanties, after which the convicts-the crew heard them singing often-were begged for a song or two. Richard and Taffy sang a lay by Thomas Tallis, passed into “Greensleeves,” and brought the rest into it to sing tavern ballads and popular ditties. Everybody was served a brimming bowl of Mr. Kelly’s swordfish chowder, which soaked up the hard bread and actually made it seem tasty. On nightfall lamps were lit and the singing continued until after ten o’clock, when Captain Sinclair sent a message through Trimmings, his steward, that all hands except the Watch were to go to fucken bed.

They pickedup the northeast trades, which carried them on south and west at a goodly rate. No square-rigged ship could sit with the wind directly behind her sails; it had to blow on the leading edge of the sail, which meant more to the side or beam. An ideal wind blew from abaft the beam, somewhere between the stern and the midships. As the natural tendency of winds and currents pushed ships toward Brazil and away from Africa as they went down the Atlantic, everyone was aware that sooner or later the fleet must arrive at Rio de Janeiro. The vexed question was, when? Though every water tun was full when they left Teneriffe, Governor Phillip thought it prudent to top up the casks again in the Cape Verde Islands, owned by Portugal and positioned almost directly west of Dakar.