Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

Richard stared at him through eyes misted with tears. “I see neither paradise nor Hell. This is limbo. This is where all the lost souls go,” he said.

From

January

until

October of 1788

N othing very much happened over the next few days except that the seven slow ships turned up surprisingly soon after the Racers; they had been blown by the same winds and kept close enough behind to experience the same weather. Heaving in the restless water, all the ships remained at anchor unloaded, people crowding their rails, anyone with a spyglass peering at shoregoing parties of marines, naval officers and a few convicts, and at many Indians. None of this shore activity appeared significant. Rumor now said that the Governor did not consider Botany Bay an adequate site for this all-important experiment and had gone in a longboat to look at nearby Port Jackson, which Captain Cook had noted on his charts, but had not entered.

Richard’s feelings about Botany Bay were very much like those in every other breast, free or felon: a shocking place, was the universal verdict. It reminded no one of anywhere, even sailors as traveled as Donovan. Flat, bleak, sandy, swampy, inclement and dreary beyond all imagination. To the inhabitants of Alexander’s prison, Botany Bay loomed as a gigantic graveyard.

Orders came that the site of the first settlement was to be Port Jackson, not Botany Bay; they made ready to sail, but the winds were so against and the swell coming across the narrow bar so huge that all thought of leaving had to be abandoned. Then- a miracle! Two very big ships were sighted beating in for harbor.

“ ’Tis as strange a coincidence as two Irish peasants meeting at the court of the Empress of all the Russias,” said Donovan, who had shared a spyglass with Captain Sinclair and Mr. Long.

“They are English, of course,” said Jimmy Price.

“No, they are French. We think the expedition of the Comte de la Pérouse. Third-raters, which is why they are such big ships. One therefore must be La Boussole and the other L’Astrolabe. Though I imagine that we are a greater surprise to them than they to us-la Pérouse left France in 1785, long before our voyage was being talked about. Unless they have learned of us somewhere along their way. La Pérouse was given up as lost a year ago. Now-here he is.”

Another attempt to get out of Botany Bay was made on the morrow, with equal lack of success. The two French ships were not in sight at all, blown away southward and seaward. Toward sunset Supply managed to wriggle through the swell and headed north the ten or eleven miles to Port Jackson, while Governor Phillip’s chicks stayed another night in limbo.

A southeaster in the morning made things better, for the French ships too; La Boussole and L’Astrolabe passed inside Botany Bay as the ten ships of the English fleet hauled anchor and made for that dangerous entrance. Sirius, Alexander, Scarborough, Borrowdale, Fishburn, Golden Grove and Lady Penrhyn all departed gracefully. Then unlucky Friendship could not keep in her stays, drifted perilously close to the rocks, and collided with Prince of Wales. She lost her jib boom and compounded her woes by running into Charlotte’s stern. A considerable part of her decorative galleries destroyed, Charlotte almost went aground.

All this havoc caused much mirth on Alexander, shaking her own sails free to take advantage of the southeaster. The day was hot and fine, the view off the larboard side fascinating. Crescent-shaped yellow beaches foaming with surf alternated with reddish-yellow cliffs which grew ever taller as the miles passed by. A wealth of trees, somewhat greener than those in the distance at Botany Bay, spread inland beyond the beaches, and the smoke of many fires smudged the western sky. Then came two awesome 400-foot bastions, between them an opening about a mile wide. Alexander heeled and sailed into a wonderland.

“This is more like!” said Neddy Perrott.

“If Bristol had such a harbor, it would be the greatest port in Europe,” said Aaron Davis. “It could take a thousand ships of the line in perfect safety from every wind that blows.”

Richard said nothing, albeit his heart felt a little lighter. These trees at least were a kind of green, very tall and numerous, shimmering with a faint blue haze. But very strange trees! They had height and girth of wood, yet were leafed in sparse and ungainly fashion, like shredded flags. Little sandy bays free of surf scalloped the harbor to north and south, though the headlands inside were lower save for one immense bluff exactly opposite the entrance. They sailed to the south of it into what seemed a very long, wide arm, and six miles down in a small cove they found Supply. No need for anchors, at least to begin with. As each ship floated in slowly, it was simply moored to trees on shore, so deep was the water. Still and calm, as clear as ocean water, and full of small fish.

The sun had gone down in a welter of flame the seamen said promised a fine day on the morrow. As usual when things were out of kilter, no one remembered to feed Alexander’s convicts until after darkness fell.

Richard kept his thoughts to himself, understanding that even Will Connelly, the most sophisticated among his little band, was too naive to confide in the way he could with Stephen Donovan. For though he deemed Port Jackson a place of surpassing beauty, he did not think it oozed milk and honey.

They landedon the 28th of January in the midst of chaotic confusion. No one seemed to know what to do with them or where to send them, so they stood with their possessions around their feet and experienced solid land for the first time in over a year. Oh, solid land was hideous! It tossed, it swooped, it refused to stay still; like the rest who had not suffered much from seasickness, Richard was to be constantly nauseated for six weeks after he disembarked. And realized why sailors on terra firma walked with big, wide, slightly drunken footsteps.

The marines were as bewildered as the convicts, who milled about until some marine junior officer yapped at them and pointed them in a direction. Finally, amid the last hundred or so male felons, Richard and his nine satellites were told to go to a fairly flat, sparsely treed area on the eastern side, there to make camp.

“Build yourselves a shelter,” said Second Lieutenant Ralph Clark vaguely, looking blissfully happy to be on dry land.

Using what? Richard wondered as the ten of them staggered across ground tufted with crunchy yellow grass and dotted with occasional rocks to a place he decided was where Clark had indicated. Other groups of convicts were standing about the area in a confusion equal to their own; all Alexander men. How can we make shelters? We have no axes, no saws, no knives, no nails. Then a marine came along carrying a dozen hatchets and thrust one at Taffy Edmunds, who stood holding it limply and looking helplessly at Richard.

I have not divorced them yet. I still have Taffy Edmunds, Job Hollister, Joey Long, Jimmy Price, Bill Whiting, Neddy Perrott, Will Connelly, Johnny Cross and Billy Earl. Most of them rustics, many of them illiterate. Thank God that Tommy Crowder and Aaron Davis have found Bob Jones and Tom Kidner from Bristol-that means they have enough in their circle to fill a hut. If filling a hut is the official intention. Does no one have any idea what we are supposed to do? This is the worst planned expedition in the history of the world. The higher-ups have sat on Sirius for the best part of nine months, but all they have done, I suspect, is drink too much. There is no method, no trace of a system. We should have been kept on board until the clearing was done and shelters erected, even if our tables and benches have been dismantled to expose the big hold hatches. At least at night. The marines do not like being shepherds, they clearly want to be nothing but guards in the narrowest sense. Build ourselves a shelter… Well, we have one hatchet.