Bryce Courtenay - The Potato Factory

'Has we had enough, then? Enough profanity to last us all the ways to Hobart Town?' He did not wait for their response, but continued. 'Or does we stay another hour and get the rest o' the bile out of our vile hearts?' He paused and this time waited. 'Well?' he finally asked.

'Enough, sir,' Mary said, her eyes suitably downcast and her hands clasped in humility in front of her. The others nodded eagerly. 'We's 'ad enough o' cussin', sir,' Mary repeated. 'Can we step down now, if you please, sir, Mr Potbottom?'

Potbottom squinted up at Mary and, shaking his head slowly, said, 'Oh, I very much hopes so, Mary Habacus, I very much hopes so! You see, Mr Smiles don't take kindly to profanity and me,' he shrugged, 'I is his sharp eyes and his large ears and I must warn you!' He paused and chuckled. 'Me eyes is exceedin' good and… ' he touched one of his ears lightly, '… me ears is even much better'n that!'

From his back pocket he produced a large red silk handkerchief and held it open in front of him, the silk hanging limp from one corner. 'Sailing is Gawd's breath,' he began, as though he were about to give a lecture, which indeed was his intention. 'When the sails lay limp that means Gawd has taken away his breath and we is becalmed.' He glanced at them as though to assure himself of their attention. 'Becalmed, that be an awesome thing. To be upon the ocean without Gawd's breath, to be forsaken by the Almighty.' Potbottom's small body seemed to shudder at the very prospect. 'That be a time for the devil to skip across the flat sea and come aboard.' He waited for the effect of his words to sink in and then, with his free hand, he took up a second corner of the scarf so that it hung square in front of his face, whereupon he blew upon it so that the silk billowed away from him. 'Gawd's gentle and steady breath be everythin' to them what sails upon the oceans wide. It be His gift to us for observin' His ways, ways you lot has long since forsaken!' Potbottom suddenly flapped the scarf furiously and his voice rose in pitch. 'You makes Gawd angry! Terrible angry! And when He be angry, His breath be angry! His angry breath be a storm at sea, a hurricane what takes small ships and drives 'em up high onto the furious waves and dashes them down, and breaks their backs and smashes 'em to tinder, and sends 'em to the bottom o' the ocean!' His voice lowered. 'Planks and carcases and barrels and bilge, spat up later on some distant and forsaken shore!'

Tiberias Potbottom, breathing heavily through his nostrils, crumpled the cloth into his hand and stuffed it angrily back into the pocket of his breeches. He appeared quite overcome, struggling to contain himself.

The women in the cart watched silently. Potbottom swallowed twice, his Adam's apple jumping along his scrawny neck, then he spoke slowly and quietly. 'That's why we talks to Gawd in prayer and meditation, we asks Him for His fair and lovely breath upon our voyage. When we uses profanity, when we take His name in vain, He will take His breath away, or, if He be angry, sufficient enough angry, if the blasphemy be too great, He will blow and blow until we is doomed upon the calamitous waves!'

Potbottom, his hands now once again clasped behind his back and his demeanour recovered, walked around the cart so that the prisoners within it were forced to follow him with their eyes and turn as he moved. The chains of their manacles rattled and clinked. Finally the tiny man came to stand directly in front of Mary.

'Me remarkable ears, Gawd's special gift, can hear a whisper o' profanity in the full face o' the Roarin' Forties! I am Gawd's watchman! When you's spewin' yer heart out in the sea sickness what's soon to come, if one of you so much as moans, "Oh Gawd!" I'll have you on bread 'n water in leg irons.' He looked at each of them in turn and then suddenly shouted, 'We only have Gawd's sweet breath to save us! And with your kind on board we places our lives in great jeopardy! Mr Smiles will not have no whore language, no profanity, no blasphemy on board, does you understand?' His voice lowered and spitting each word out as though it caused a bad taste in his mouth he added, 'Does-I-make-me-self-per-fekly-clear?'

Potbottom did not wait for any of the female convicts to nod but turned and moved around the table to sit down on the chair. Seated, he looked up again and addressed himself to the two turnkeys, who had been standing, eyes downcast, more or less at attention, beside the cart.

'Unshackle!' he instructed, taking up his quill and dipping it into the pot of blacking in front of him. Then he looked back up at the women and jabbed the quill at Mary and then at Ann Gower. 'Them two shall be last!'

Mary brought her hands up and placed them over Ikey's medallion until she felt the comfort of the small gold object in the centre of her flattened palm. The long hard voyage to Van Diemen's Land had begun. Ikey's medallion, his luck, she suddenly knew, was intended for the second great passage of her life. She must survive.

It was three weeks before all the female convicts had arrived from gaols as far away as Scotland, Ireland and Wales. The bright spring weather had turned into a wet, miserable early summer. Many of the convicts arrived with coughs, colds and bronchial infections, and a number of the older women suffered profoundly with the added affliction of rheumatism which often bent them double and made them seem like old crones twice their age. The children's dirty faces were pinched and wet with a constant flow of mucus leaking from their nostrils, and many were consumed by high fevers.

As each cartload, or coach, unloaded, Mary watched from the deck as Tiberias Potbottom met them, hopping and jumping about and, in general, making their arrival as difficult and fearful a prospect as he possibly could.

Upon coming aboard the Destiny II they had been taken directly to Joshua Smiles and his assistant, who had given them a medical examination of a most cursory nature, but carefully documented down as though of the utmost importance. A lifting of the bottom and top eyelids, a probing in the ears, an inspection of the tongue and a tapping of the chest for the almost certain signs of bronchial infections. This was followed with a more thorough inspection a week later which became known on shipboard as 'Bloody Pusover'.

Each week prisoners were examined for blood and pus in the ears, in the mucus, in the eyes, in the nose and mouth, and finally in the cunny for the glim or syphilis. There was little notice taken when an infection was discovered, though, apart from it being written in the surgeon's book with details of a most generously prescribed medication. This medication, though well conceived according to the contemporary dictates of treatment, was never administered.

Upon completion of the very first medical examination Joshua Smiles, in a burst of volubility not to be repeated outside of his prayers, explained the rules to be followed during the voyage. He then launched into a lengthy dissertation which included much comment about the dangers of immoral behaviour, the need for cleanliness and the benefits and rewards of a religious life. He left until last his admonition that profanity and blasphemy would earn the harshest of punishments and warned any female prisoner to bring the name of the Almighty God upon her lips in no other manner but in prayerfulness.

Mary and her intake were divided into two groups, each of which was termed a mess. From each mess a monitor was chosen to speak for all. Mary was elected monitor by the insistence of all in her group. Ann Gower was also selected as monitor in the second mess, which contained six convicts who were from Dublin, they being whores and thus thought to be most compatible to the other members.

The prison uniform consisted of a coarse particoloured cotton shift, two petticoats and two sets of ill-fitting undergarments, a pinny, with a spare, and two mob caps. The women's own clothes were washed by three members of each mess, hung out on the deck to dry then dry packed away in boxes with camphor balls. The idea behind imposing uniformity of dress was to eliminate a natural pecking order derived from the status of possessions – rags or fine gowns, tortoise shell brushes or combs of ox bone, bottles of perfumes or tincture of lavender water, a fine brooch or merely a few bright buttons or a single trinket. These were all placed on the mess inventory and packed away, so that those wearing a silver brooch and fancy outfit could not earn precedence over rags and a simple garnet pin. Upon arriving in Van Diemen's Land their belongings would be handed to the matron of the Female Factory in the presence of their owners to be kept until their release.