Jack was sitting behind the piles of papers usual in port for a captain who was also his own purser, but his stern expression changed to a smile when the door opened and he said, ‘Why, there you are, Stephen How glad I am to see you we had not looked for you until tomorrow. I hope you had a pleasant trip?’
‘Very pleasant, I thank you: Blaxland did everything that was kind and hospitable – he desires his best compliments, by the way – and we saw the emu, various kinds of kangaroo, the echidna – good Lord, the echidnal – the small fat grey animal that sleeps high up in gum-trees and that very absurdly claims to be a bear, a great many of the parrot tribe, a nameless monitory lizard, all that we had hoped to see and more, except for the platypus.’
‘An agreeable countryside, however, upon the whole?’
‘Why, as for that, it is of the first interest to the botanist, and its animals fill one with joy and amazement: the economy of the echidna is scarcely to be believed. But as for countryside, I do not think I have seen anything so dismal or more like my idea of the plains of Purgatory. Perhaps it may improve with rain: at present everything is parched.
Even the stream between Botany Bay and here was dry. But Jack, you look angerly.’
‘I am angerly. I am in fact so exceedingly out of temper that
I can scarcely command my mind and keep it steady to its
paper-work,’ said Jack, and Stephen, with a sinking heart, saw
that he was if anything understating the case. ‘When Tom and
I were away looking at some timber with Chips a party of
soldiers came down with two officers: they said there was an
escaped convict aboard and they insisted on looking for him at once, without waiting for my return. They had a magistrate’s warrant. Most of our people were on shore-leave or away in the boats, bringing stores: the party was strong, and headed by a captain. West, who was in charge, no longer holds a commission as you know, so what with that and with the likelihood of our being made to look ridiculous if we resisted, he confined himself to making the strongest possible protest, uttered before witnesses, and walked off the ship.
They searched her. They had some old Sydney Cove hands with them and they found the man almost at once: they marched him away, sobbing fit to break your heart, said little
Reade, who met them as he was coming down from the town. You could recognize the man by the raw bloody places about his ankles, where the irons had been.’
‘Was he a friend of some of our people?’
‘I am sure he was, but of which there is no telling. No one is going to get himself or his shipmates into trouble, and if you ask questions you will only get that “Don’t know, sir” with a glassy look to one side of your head I have heard aboard every ship I ever served in.
But think of it, Stephen – to search a King’s ship without her captain’s permission: it is monstrous!’
‘It is indeed extraordinarily offensive.’
‘And then they tried to justify themselves by some miserable quibbling over the Surprise’s status; but I told them that they were as ignorant of naval law as they were of good manners, that a ship hired by His Majesty and commanded by one of his officers had all the rights of a man-of-war on the establishment, and I named the instances of Ariadne, Beaver, Hecate and Fly, which clapped a stopper over all.’
‘Jack, I hope and trust you did not commit yourself?’
‘No. Like King Charles, I do not want to go on my travels again – Lord, they were bitter travels, Stephen – and I kept as cool as a judge. Or as cool as a judge ought to be,’ he said, remembering a malignant rambling red-faced ranting old fool at Guildhall in a judge’s wig and gown.
‘When you say they, do you mean the soldiers?’
‘No. It is the civilians, the people who have been in the
colony a long while and who are well entrenched, together with their allies. They are called the Macarthur clan, and they can make Colonel MacPherson sign any paper they put in front of him. The young fellow I sent away just now brought a note saying that to prevent any further unfortunate incident the authorities intended placing sentries at the brows – a note MacPherson had had to put his name to and the unfortunate lieutenant had to bring.
This is one of the reasons we are about to cast off fore and aft and warp out into the cove again. I am damned if I walk in and out of my own ship between a couple of redcoats. But there is another reason too,’ he went on in a lower tone. ‘That young fool Hopkins, maintopman, starboard watch, smuggled a girl aboard last night, a ticket-of-leave barmaid.
By a great stroke of luck West happened to hear her giggling in the cable-tier and we smuggled her ashore again in double-quick time, unseen. Hopkins is in irons, and I shall have the hide off him as soon as we are warped out.’
‘Oh no, Jack; no more flogging in this horrible place, I beseech you.’
‘Eh? Well, no; perhaps not: I see what you mean. Come in,’ he cried.
Reade, very grave, said, ‘Captain Pullings’ duty, sir, and all is laid along.’
‘Thank you, Mr Reade,’ said Jack. ‘My compliments to Captain Pullings, and I desire he will carry on.’
A moment later nautical cries broke out on the quarterdeck with the due responses fore and aft, the whole interspersed with the sound of bosun’s calls, now sharp and cutting,
now an eerie wail: the complex process of getting a ship under way, with all its rituals.
Jack’s attention was fixed on the sequence of events and during this time Stephen considered his face:
the whites of his eyes were yellowish; his stern expression had not softened at all at the sight of Reade, as it usually did; and although he had spoken with a good deal of anger it was clear that there was a great deal more as yet unexpressed. Even more than most sailors Jack resented any hint of disrespect to the service: this had been very gross, and it came in an atmosphere of evident ill-will.
The bars of the capstan had been shipped long since, and now it began turning, but with no great exertion, no fife or fiddle, only the sound of bare feet. The wharf slid gently aft, dwindling in size; the view from the scuttle opposite Stephen increased until Government House was within its frame; then the frigate turned eight points to starboard and there was Government House once more, together with much of the settlement, in the broad sweep of the stern window.
‘I shall be glad to be out in the cove,’ said Jack. ‘It makes much more work, carrying and fetching, but even so .
Stephen, you would not believe how stupid, reckless and wanton seamen can be. Here is Hopkins with his wench immediately after that wretched business with the soldiers, when a moment’s reflexion would have told him that in the first place it was criminal on his part to bring her aboard at all and secondly that it would put us all in the wrong. And I have little doubt that if we had stayed tied up to the side some other young fool would have been at it again. Or half a dozen fools, young or old. You would not believe it.’
None of this was news to Stephen. He knew the consequences of a stay in port rather better than Jack and the extraordinary lengths to which men would go to satisfy their desires. He knew that this urge was concentrated by months at sea and perhaps by the injudicious diet – six pounds of meat a week, however indifferently preserved, was far too much -and even on the quarterdeck, where some degree of education might be expected to soften manners and inculcate restraint he had known officers risk a truly happy marriage in stupid, reckless and wanton fornication. This was no time to impart his knowledge to Jack, however: it was not even a time to ask him to put out his tongue and give an account of his entrails.
After a while he said, ‘By the way, how are the little girls? I hope they have given you no trouble.’
‘They are very well indeed, I believe; and no trouble at all. I have seen nothing of them, almost. They never come on deck until after dark for fear of being seized, but I hear them singing down below.’
‘And what of Paulton? Did you have any news of him while we were away?’