Colleen McCullough - Morgan’s Run

The marines dipped their colors, the Governor doffed his hat and complimented them, and the marines marched past with their band. After which the convicts were bidden sit upon the ground. A camp table was set in front of the Governor and two red leather cases were solemnly laid upon it. They were unsealed and opened in sight of all, after which the Judge Advocate read Phillip’s commission aloud, then followed it with the commission for the Court of Judicature.

Richard and his men heard mere snatches: His Excellency the Governor was authorized in the name of His Britannic Majesty George the Third, King of Great Britain, France and Ireland, to have full power and authority in New South Wales, to build castles, fortresses, and towns, erect batteries, as seemed to him necessary… The sun was hot and the Governor’s duties apparently endless. By the time the legal commission was read out, some of the listeners were half-asleep and the ship’s captains, who had all come ashore to listen, were straggling off because no one had provided them with nice shady seats. Captain Duncan Sinclair was the first to go.

Thankful for his straw sailor’s hat, Richard strove to pay attention. Especially when Governor Phillip mounted a little dais and directed an address to the convicts. He had tried! he shouted-yes he had tried! But after these ten days ashore he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that few among them were worthwhile, that most were incorrigible, lazy and not worth feeding, that out of the 600 at work no more than 200 labored at all, and that those who would not work would not be fed.

Most of what he said was audible; out of that spare small frame there issued quite a voice. In future they would be treated with the utmost severity because evidently nothing else was going to have any effect. Theft of a chicken was not punishable by death in England, but here, where every chicken was more precious than a chest of rubies, theft of a chicken would be punishable by death. Every animal was reserved for breeding. The most trifling attempt to pilfer any item belonging to the Government would be a hanging matter-and he meant what he said, every word of it! Any man who tried to get into the women’s tents at night would be fired upon because they had not been brought all this way to fornicate. The only acceptable congress between men and women was through the agency of marriage, else why had they been provided with a chaplain? Justice would be fair but remorseless. Nor should any convict value his labor as equal to an English husbandman’s, for he did not have any wife and family to support on his wages-he was the property of His Britannic Majesty’s Government in New South Wales. Nobody would be worked beyond his ability, but everybody had to contribute to the general well-being. Their first duty would be to erect permanent buildings for the officers, then for the marines, and lastly for themselves. Now go away and think about all of that, because he truly did mean every word he said…

“How lovely it is to be wanted!” sighed Bill Whiting, getting to his feet. “Why did they not simply hang us in England if they intend to hang us here?” He blew a derisive noise. “What piffle! We were not brought all this way to fornicate! What did they think would happen? I joke about sheep, but it is no joke to be shot at for going near my Mary.”

“Mary?” Richard asked.

“Mary Williams off Lady Penrhyn. Old as the hills and ugly as sin, but both halves are mine, all mine! Or at least they were until I learned that I am to be shot at for yielding to a natural impulse. In England the only one could shoot me is her husband.”

“I am right glad to hear of Mary Williams, Bill. That was not the Governor speaking, that was the Reverend Johnson,” said Richard. “The fellow ought to have been a Methodist. I daresay that is why he took this job-he is too radical by far to have appealed to any Church of England bishop.”

“Why did they bring any women convicts out here if we are forbidden to go near them?” Neddy Perrott demanded.

“The Governor wants marriages, Neddy, to keep the Reverend Mr. Johnson happy. Also, I suspect,” Richard said, thinking out loud, “to make this whole expedition seem sanctified by God. The appearance of fornication in the flock looks like Satan’s work.”

“Well, I ain’t marrying my Mary yet a while,” said Bill. “I ain’t long enough out of one set of chains to take on another.”

Which may have been how Bill felt, but they were not feelings shared by all of his fellows. From the following Sunday on, more and more convict couples were married by a delighted chaplain.

Rations werenow issued weekly. How difficult that was! To stay resolute and not wolf down the lot within two days. So very little, especially now they were working. Thanks to Lieutenant Furzer’s abject gratitude they now had good kettles and pots, even if there was not much to put in them.

The hut was finished down to a double layer of saplings for its walls, one lot vertical, the other horizontal, with enough slender slats in the roof to support densely interwoven palm fronds. They were fairly dry even in hard rain, though when the wind rose to a gale it penetrated the spaces between the lattice; to keep it out they covered the outside walls with palm fronds. It had no windows and but one door facing the sandstone boulder. Humble it might be, but it was still a great deal better than the Alexander prison. The smell was of a clean, pungent resin rather than a sickening mixture of oil of tar and decomposition, and the floor was a carpet of soft dead leaves. The group was, besides, unfettered and relatively free from supervision. The marines had their work cut out in keeping an eye on the known rogues, so those who never gave trouble were left to their own devices apart from regular checks to make sure they were at their places of work.

Richard’s place of work was a small, open bark shelter near the series of sawpits being dug behind the marines’ tents, not an easy business with bedrock six inches down. The pits had to be excavated by stone-splitting wedges and picks.

Though the saws had not yet come to light (unloading was a painfully slow business), the axes and hatchets were piling up faster than Richard could put edges on them.

“I could use help, sir,” he said to Major Ross within a day of commencing work. “Give me two men now and by the time the saws need attention I will have one man ready to deal with the axes and hatchets.”

“I see your reasons, dozens of ’em. But why two men?”

“Because there have already been arguments over ownership and I have not the facilities to keep a list. Better than a list would be a lettered helper to gouge the owner’s name on the helve of every axe and hatchet. When the saws come to light, he could do the same to them. ’Twould end in saving marine time, sir.”

The cold pale eyes crinkled up at their corners, though the mouth did not smile. “Aye, Morgan, ye do indeed have a head. I suppose ye know whom ye want?”

“Aye, sir. Two of my own men. Connelly for the lettering and Edmunds to learn to sharpen.”

“I have not yet located your tool box.”

Richard’s grief was genuine. “A pity,” he sighed. “I had some grand tools.”

“Do not despair, I will go on looking.”

February woreon with thunderstorms, an occasional cool sea change and a great deal of stifling, humid weather which always ended in a pile of black clouds in southern or northwestern sky. The southern tempests brought those blessed cool snaps in their wake, whereas the northwestern ones produced hail the size of eggs and continued sultriness.

Save for different kinds of rats and millions of ants, beetles, centipedes, spiders and other inimical insects, life forms anchored to the ground seemed rare. In contrast to the sky and trees, both full of thousands upon thousands of birds, most of them spectacularly beautiful. Of parrots there were more sorts than imagination dreamed existed-huge white ones with striking sulphur-yellow crests, grey ones with cyclamen breasts, black ones, rainbow-hued ones, tiny speckled chartreuse ones, red-and-blue ones, green ones, and dozens more besides. A big brown kingfisher bird killed snakes by breaking their backs on a tree branch, and laughed maniacally; one large ground bird had a tail like a Greek lyre and strutted in the manner of a peacock; there were reports from those who walked in the Governor’s train on his explorations of black swans; eagles had wing spans of up to nine feet, and competed with hawks and falcons for prey. Minute finches and wrens, cheeky and vivid, darted about fearlessly. The whole bird kingdom was gorgeously painted-and vocal to the point of distraction. Some birds sang more exquisitely than any nightingale, some screeched raucously, some chimed like silver bells-and one, a huge black raven, owned the most soul-chilling, desolate cry any Englishman had ever heard. Alas, the saddest fact about these myriads of birds was that none was worth eating.