Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

“Who can use a hatchet?” he asked.

All of them-for chopping up kindling.

“Who can build a shelter?”

No one, save for watching houses being built of brick, stone, plaster and beams. No hedgerow denizens among his flock.

“Perhaps we should start with a ridge pole and a support for either end,” said Will Connelly after a long silence; he had read Robinson Crusoe on the voyage. “We can make the roof and walls out of palm fronds.”

“We need a ridge pole, but also two other poles for the eaves,” said Richard. “Then we need six forked young trees, two taller than the other four. That will give us a frame. Will and I can begin on those with the hatchet. Taffy and Jimmy, see if ye can find a marine who can donate us a second hatchet, or an axe, or one of the huge knives we saw in Rio. The rest of you, find some palms and see if the fronds come off by pulling on them.”

“We could escape,” said Johnny Cross thoughtfully.

Richard stared at him as if he had grown another head. “Escape to where, Johnny?”

“To Botany Bay and the French ships.”

“They would not offer us asylum any more than the Dutch did Johnny Power in Teneriffe. And how are we to get to Botany Bay? You saw the Indians on shore there. This is a little kinder, so it must have Indians too. We have no idea what they are like-they might be cannibals like those in New Zealand. Certainly they will not welcome the advent of hundreds of alien people.”

“Why?” asked Joey Long, whose mind could not get beyond the fact that Lieutenant Shairp had not yet given him MacGregor.

“Put yourselves in the place of the Indians,” said Richard patiently. “What must they think? This is an excellent cove with a stream of good water-it must surely be popular among them. But we have usurped it. We are, besides, under strict orders not to harm any of them. Therefore, why court them by escaping into places where we will have none of our own English kind? We will stay here and mind our own business. Now do what I asked, please.”

He and Will found plenty of suitable young trees, none more than four or five inches in diameter. Ugly they might be when compared to an elm or chestnut, but they did have the virtue of growing up without low branches. Richard bent and swung the hatchet, made a nick.

“Christ! The wood is like iron and full of sap,” he said. “I need a saw, Will.”

But, lacking a saw, all he could do was chip away. The hatchet was neither sharp nor of good quality, would be useless by the time the three poles and six supports were cut. Tonight he would get out his files and sharpen it. The contractor, he thought, has supplied us with the rubbish the foundries in England could not sell. And he was light-headed and panting after cutting and trimming the ridge pole; all those months of poor food and lack of work were no preparation for this. Will Connelly took the hatchet to attack a second young tree and proved even slower. But in the end they had their ridge pole and their two main forked supports for the roof ridge, and chose four smaller ones for the side supports. By then Taffy and Jimmy had returned with a second hatchet, a mattock and a spade. While Richard and Will went in search of trees to connect their side support poles and complete the framework, Jimmy and Taffy were set to digging holes to plant the six supports in. Having no kind of measuring device, they paced it out as accurately as they could. Digging revealed that six inches down was bedrock.

The others had found plenty of palms, but the fronds were too high off the ground to reach. Then Neddy had a bright idea, climbed a neighboring tree, leaned out dangerously, grabbed the end of a frond, and dropped off his perch to pull the frond away by sheer weight. It worked with the older, browner appendages, but not with anything looking lush.

“Find Jimmy,” said Neddy to Job Hollister, “and change places with him. You dig. I have a better use for nimble Jimmy.”

Jimmy arrived trembling from the unaccustomed effort of digging.

“Have ye a head for heights?” Neddy asked him.

“Aye.”

“Then rest a moment before ye climb yon palm. Ye’re the most agile and smallest of us. Richard sent us the second hatchet, so tuck it in your waistband. Once ye get up the palm, chop down the fronds one at a time.”

The sun was westering, which gave them some means of orienting themselves-south and west of the area where the Governor was going to erect his portable house, a couple of storehouses, and the big round marquee in which Lieutenant Furzer had established himself and the commissariat. They had had the presence of mind to bring their wooden bowls, dippers and spoons, also their blankets, mats and buckets; Richard found the stream and put Bill Whiting to setting up the dripstones, then fetching water. It looked clean and healthy, but he trusted nothing here.

Of all of them, Bill Whiting looked the worst. His face had long since lost its roundness, of course, but now there were black crescents beneath his eyes. The poor fellow trembled as if he had a fever. He had not; his brow was cool. Simple exhaustion.

“It is time to stop,” said Richard, collecting his brood. “Lie down on your mats and rest. Bill, ye need a walk-yes, I know ye do not feel like walking, but come with me to find the commissariat. I have an idea.”

Lieutenant James Furzer was nothing like organized; that was too much to hope for. Richard and Bill entered chaos.

“Ye need more men, sir,” said Richard.

“Volunteering?” asked Furzer, recognizing their faces.

“One of us is,” said Richard, putting an arm around Whiting. “Here is a good man ye can trust, never been in any trouble since I met him in Gloucester Gaol in eighty-five.”

“That’s right, ye were the larboard head man on Alexander, and none of your men gave trouble. Morgan.”

“Aye, Lieutenant Furzer, Morgan. Can ye use Whiting here?”

“I can if he has brain enough to read and write.”

“He does both.”

They walked back to their camp bearing some loaves of hard bread, all the commissariat was able to issue. It had been baked in Cape Town and was very weevily, but it was food.

“We now have a man in the commissariat,” Richard announced, doling out the bread. “Furzer is going to use Bill to help deal with the salt meat. Which we cannot have until the kettles and pots are unloaded because from now on we cook for ourselves.”

Bill Whiting was looking a little better already; he would be working inside a shaded place, no matter how stifling, and doing something easier than clearing, sawing or gardening, which seemed to be what everybody was going to do eventually. “Once Lieutenant Furzer gets himself settled, we are to be issued with a week’s rations at a time,” Bill contributed, grateful for Richard’s perceptiveness. “There is supposed to be a storeship coming on from Cape Town soon, so we have enough provisions to last.”

At nightfall they put bags of clothing down as pillows and used their Alexander mats and blankets as ground cover, their old and tattered great-coats over them. Though it had been such a hot day, the moment the sun went down it grew cold. Their weariness was so great that they slept despite the unmentionable things which crawled everywhere.

Morning brought a sultry, steamy end to darkness’s chill. They went back to building their hut, hampered because they had nothing whatsoever to keep the palm fronds in place except long, strappy palm leaves they tried to turn into twine. The shelter itself seemed strong enough, though it worried Richard and Will, the best engineers, that they had no better foundation than six inches of sandy soil. They piled that soil up around their support posts and began to cut more saplings to lie flat on the ground as anchors, notching their supports and sliding the new poles into the notches.