Others were building around them with varying degrees of success. No one had any real enthusiasm for the task, but it was easy to see by the middle of that second day ashore which groups were either well led or had a mind for construction, and those owning neither. Tommy Crowder’s lot had started to wall their hut with a palisade of very thin saplings, an idea Richard resolved to imitate. Education and broader experience definitely showed; the Londoner Crowder had had a very checkered career and was besides a clever man.
There were a few marines around and about now, checking progress and counting heads; some convicts had absconded into the forest, including a woman named Ann Smith. Probably headed for Botany Bay and the French ships, which gossip said were staying a few days.
“Christ, what a place for ants and spiders!” said Jimmy Price, sucking at the edge of his hand. “That bugger of an ant bit me, and it hurts. Look at the size of the things! They are half an inch long and ye can see their nippers.” He cast a splendid, white-skinned tree a glance of loathing. “And what is it that deafens us with its—its croaking? My ears are ringing.”
His complaints about the croaking were as justified as about the ants; it was a good year for cicadas.
Billy Earl came through the trees white-faced and shaking. “I just saw a snake!” he gasped. “Christ, the thing was taller than Ike Rogers in his boots! Thick around as my arm! And there are huge fierce alligators on the other side of the cove, so Tommy Crowder told me. Oh, I hate this place!”
“We will get used to the creatures,” Richard soothed. “I’ve not heard that anybody has been bitten or eaten by anything bigger than an ant, even if the ant is the size of a beetle. The alligators are giant lizards, I saw one run up a tree.”
The house was finished by mid afternoon of that humid, torrid day full of surprises and terrors. The sun went in and the clouds began to pile up in the skies to the south of them. Black and dark blue, with faint flickers of lightning. They had built the hut in the lee of a large sandstone rock that had a little pocket in its under side, as if scooped out by a spoon.
“I think,” said Richard, looking at the approaching storm, “that we ought to put our belongings under our rock just in case. These palm fronds will not keep rain out.”
The tempest arrived an hour later with greater ferocity than that one at sea off Cape Dromedary, and more terrifying by far; every one of its colossal, brilliant bolts came straight to earth amid the trees. No wonder so many of them were split and blackened! Lightning. Not thirty feet in front of where they huddled, a huge tree with a satiny vermilion skin exploded in a cataclysm of blinding blue fire, sparks and thunder; it literally disintegrated, then burned fiercely. But not for long. The rain came in a cold, howling wind to put it out and wreck their palm-frond thatching within a single minute. The ground turned to a sea and the thick, hurtful rods pelted down, soaked them to the point of drowning. That night they slept amid the frame of their hut with chattering teeth, their only consolation the fact that their belongings were safe and dry under the rock ledge.
“We have to have better tools and something to hold our house together,” said Will Connelly in the morning, close to tears.
Time, thought Richard, to seek a higher authority than Furzer, who could not organize himself to save himself. I do not care if convicts are forbidden to approach those in authority—I am going to do just that.
He walked off in the cool air, pleased to see that the ground was so sandy it was incapable of turning to mud. When he reached the stream at the place where the marines had put three stones across it as a ford, he caught a glimpse of naked black bodies farther up the brook, smelled a strong odor of rotting fish. Not his imagination, then; he had been told that the Indians stank of a fish oil quite the equal of Bristol mud. When they came no closer he skipped across the stepping stones and turned to walk into the bigger settlement on the western side of the cove, where most of the male convicts were already encamped and all the female convicts would be located (the women were still being landed, a few at a time). There also stood the hospital tent, the marines’ tents, the marquees of the marine officers, and Major Ross’s marquee. On this side of the cove, he noted, the convicts lived in tents. Which simply meant that not enough tents had been put on the ships. Thus he and the rest of the last 100 male convicts had been relegated to the eastern side under whatever kind of shelter they could manufacture, out of sight and out of mind.
“May I see Major Ross?” he asked the marine sentry on duty outside the big round marquee.
The marine, a stranger to Richard, looked him up and down in contempt. “No,” he said.
“It is a matter of some urgency,” Richard persisted.
“The Lieutenant-Governor is too busy to see the likes of you.”
“Then may I wait until he has a free moment?”
“No. Now piss off—what’s your name?”
“Richard Morgan, number two-ought-three, Alexander.”
“Send him in,” said a voice from inside.
Richard entered a space fairly well lighted by open flaps on all sides, and having a wooden plank floor. An interior curtain divided it into an office and what were probably the Major’s living quarters. He was there at a folding table which served him as a desk and, typically, alone. Ross despised his subordinate officers quite as much as he did his enlisted men, yet defended the rights, entitlements and dignity of the Marine Corps against all Royal Navy comers. He considered Governor Arthur Phillip an impractical fool and deplored lenience.
“What is it, Morgan?”
“I am on the east side, sir, and would discuss that with ye.”
“A complaint, is it?”
“Nay, sir, merely a few requests,” said Richard, looking him straight in the eye and conscious that he must be one of the very few persons at Port Jackson who rather liked the picturesque Major.
“What requests?”
“We have nothing to build our shelters with, sir, apart from a few hatchets. Most of us have managed to get up some sort of frame, but we cannot thatch with palm fronds unless we have twine to tie them down. We would happily dispense with nails, but we have no instruments to bore holes, or saw, or hammer. The work would go faster if we had at least some tools.”
The Major rose to his feet. “I need a walk. Come with me,” he said curtly. “Ye have,” he went on as he preceded Richard out of the marquee, “a level head, I noted it in the matter of Alexander’s pumps and bilges. Ye’re a no-nonsense man and ye don’t pity yourself one wee bit. If we had more like ye and less like the scum of every Newgate in England, this settlement might have worked.”
From which Richard gathered, walking at the Major’s rapid pace, that the Lieutenant-Governor had no faith in this experiment. They passed the bachelor marine encampment and approached the four round marquees in which the marine officers dwelled. Lieutenant Shairp was sitting in the shade of an awning outside Captain James Meredith’s dwelling in the company of the Captain, drinking tea out of a fine china cup. On sight of the Major they rose to their feet, but in a manner which suggested that they actively disliked their outspoken, salty commandant. Well, everybody knew that, including the felons; fueled by rum and port, the divisions in the ranks of the officers led to quarrels, courts martial and, always, opposition to Ross. Who had his supporters in some circumstances, however.
“Are the sawpits under construction?” asked the Major frostily.
Meredith waved in a direction behind him. “Yes, sir.”
“When did ye last inspect, Captain-Lieutenant?”
“I am about to. After I have finished my breakfast.”
“Of rum rather than tea, I note. Ye drink too much, Captain-Lieutenant, and ye’re quarrelsome. Do not quarrel with me.”
Shairp had saluted and disappeared, returning a moment later with MacGregor in one hand. “Here, Morgan, take him. ’Twas one of your men won him, so I am told.” He giggled. “Cannot quite seem to remember, myself.”
Wanting to sink into t
he ground, Richard took the joyous scrap from Shairp and followed Major Ross down to the ford.
“D’ye mean to carry that thing to the commissary?”
“Not if I can find one of my men, sir. Our camp is on the way,” said Richard with a tranquillity he did not feel; he always seemed to be there when the Major had hard words to say to people.
“Well, ’tis time I visited the surplus. Lead the way, Morgan.”
Richard led the way, hanging on to the struggling MacGregor.
“He will survive by ratting,” said Major Ross as they arrived at the dozen or so shelters dispersed among the trees. “The place has as many rats as London.”
“Give this to Joey Long,” said Richard, thrusting MacGregor at a startled Johnny Cross. “As ye see, sir, we managed to get up a fair sort of frame, but I think convict Crowder has the best idea for walls. The trouble is that without tools and materials the work proceeds at a snail’s pace.”
“I did not know that there was so much ingeniousness among the English” was Ross’s comment, touring thoroughly. “Once ye’re done here, ye can start building another camp between where ye are and the Governor’s farm, which is being cleared and laid out already. If we get no fresh vegetables the scurvy will kill us all. There are too many women all together over on the western side. I will divide them, send some over here. Which does not mean congress, Morgan, understand?”
“I understand, sir.”
They proceeded to the commissariat, where confusion still reigned. The horses, cattle and other livestock had come off and were confined inside hastily erected barricades of piled branches, looking as miserable as everybody else.
“Furzer,” said the Lieutenant-Governor, erupting into the big marquee, “ye’re a typical fucken Irishman. Have ye never heard of method? What d’ye think ye’re going to do with those animals unless ye get them into grazing? Eat them? There is no corn left and very little hay. Ye’re not a quartermaster’s arsehole! Since there is nothing for the carpenters to do until they have some timber, get them onto building pens for the animals right now! Find someone who knows good grazing when he sees it and build the pens there. The cattle will have to be shepherded and the horses hobbled—and God help ye if they get away! Now where are your lists of what was on what ship, if it has come off, and where it is now?”
Lieutenant Furzer could produce no lists worth mentioning, had little idea of whereabouts anything landed had been stored; the only storehouses up were temporary canvas ones.
“I had thought to list things when they went into permanent storage, sir,” he faltered.
“Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Furzer, ye’re a cretin!”
The quartermaster swallowed and stuck his chin out. “I cannot do it all with the men I have, Major Ross, and that is honest!”
“Then I suggest ye conscript more convicts. Morgan, have ye any ideas as to suitable men? Ye’re a convict, ye must know some.”
“I do, sir. Any amount. Commencing with Thomas Crowder and Aaron Davis. Bristol men and fond of clerking. Villains, but too clever to bite the hand gives them clerical work, so they’ll not steal. Threaten to put them to chopping down trees at the rate of a dozen a day and they will behave perfectly.”
“What about yourself?”
“I can be of more benefit elsewhere, sir,” Richard said.
“Doing what?”
“Sharpening saws, axes, hatchets and anything else in need of a keen edge. I can also set a saw’s teeth, which is a craft. I have some tools with me now and if my tool box was put on a ship, I will have everything I need.” He cleared his throat. “I do not mean to cast aspersions on those who are in command, sir, but the axes and hatchets are sadly inferior. So too the spades, shovels and mattocks.”
“I have noticed that for myself,” said Major Ross grimly. “We have been diddled by experts, Morgan, from the penny-pinching Admiralty officials to the contractor and the transport captains, some of whom are busy selling slops and better clothing already—including, I have reason to believe, personal possessions of the convicts.” He prepared to leave. “But I will make it my business to see if there is a tool box for one Richard Morgan. In the meantime, get what ye need from Furzer here, be it awls, nails, hammers or wire.” He nodded and marched out, clapping his cocked hat on his head. Always neat as a bandbox, Major Ross, no matter what the weather.
“Get me Crowder and Davis and ye can have whatever ye want,” said Lieutenant Furzer, beyond mortification.
Richard got him Crowder and Davis, and collected sufficient tools and materials to finish their own shelters and start on more for the women convicts.
Women convicts had suddenly become the focus of all attention as male convicts and single marines attempted to rid themselves of passions and urges largely unfulfilled for a year and more. The comings and goings after dark were so many that not ten times the number of marines on duty could have prevented them, even if the marines on duty had not been equally determined upon sexual relief. Complicated by the fact that there were not nearly enough women to go around, and further complicated by the fact that not all the women were interested in providing sexual relief for starved men. Luckily some women accepted their lot and cheerfully obliged all comers, while others would do so for a mug of rum or a man’s shirt. The rarity of rape lay somewhere between some women’s willingness to serve multiples of men and most men’s scruples about forcing themselves on unwilling women.
From the Governor to the Reverend Richard Johnson, however, those in command were horrified at the comings and goings in the women’s camp, viewing them as depraved, licentious, utterly immoral. Naturally this stemmed from their own access to women, be she Mrs. Deborah Brooks or Mrs. Mary Johnson. Something had to be done!
Richard’s group sneaked off after dark, of course. Except for himself, Taffy Edmunds and Joey Long. For Joey, having MacGregor was apparently enough. Taffy was a different breed, a loner with misogynistic tendencies that the sudden proximity of women actually reinforced. He was odd, that was all. Singing did it for Taffy. Of his own reasons for eschewing the women’s camp Richard was not sure, except that there was some Taffy in him, it seemed; the prospect of succeeding in having a woman after two years away from their company and more than three years since Annemarie Latour was not one he could face. Since Annemarie Latour his penis had not stirred, and why that was he did not know. Not extinction of the life force. More perhaps a terrible shame and guilt, coming as it had in the midst of William Henry and on the heels of so many other losses. But he did not know and did not want to know. Only that a part of him had died and another part of him had passed into a dreamless sleep. Whatever had happened inside his mind had banished sex. Whether that was confinement or liberation he did not know. He did not know. More importantly, it was not a grief to him.
On the 7th of February there was to be a big ceremony, the first the convicts were commanded to attend. At eleven in the morning they were marshaled, male separated from female, on the southeastern point of the cove amid ground cleared for the vegetable garden; carrying muskets and properly dressed for parade, every marine marched in to the music of fifes and drums, colors and pendants flying. His Excellency Governor Phillip arrived shortly thereafter, accompanied by the blond giant Captain David Collins, his Judge Advocate; Lieutenant-Governor Major Robert Ross; the Surveyor-General, Augustus Alt; the Surgeon-General, John White; and the chaplain, the Reverend Richard Johnson.
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, Kin
g 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. . . .