In the fading light a small cutter picked its way through the fleet. A lone man stood and furled the sail as the craft glided up against the
Crest of the Wave.
A cloth bundle flew over the bulwarks. Onto the deck stepped the solid figure of the lightship master, Captain Fuhrman.
Poor Tommy helped him aboard and asked him if he’d seen the
Vision.
Fuhrman looked about him in surprise and said he had not. Then, ignoring Tommy, he wiped his brow with a damp forearm and picked up the bundle, showing it to Maggie.
‘Papers,’ he said, pointing over his shoulder, back towards the beacon atop the lightship.
Maggie Porter fetched a towel and returned to find Fuhrman still standing in his puddle, Alice splashing at his feet.
‘I am raining,’ he said, shaking his head, and Alice looked up laughing. ‘But perhaps these are not wet,’
and he unwrapped the inner leather bundle to reveal tightly folded volumes of newsprint.
‘Captain Fuhrman! You came all that way now with some old newspapers?’ asked Tommy.
Maggie took Fuhrman into the cabin, where Captain Porter paced the floor. When Porter saw Fuhrman he went straight to the glass and tapped it.
‘Have you seen this?’ he said.
The cabin was dim and Fuhrman leant forward. Maggie was sure he was about to announce that it was a barometer.
Porter said, ‘Twenty-nine point six inches. Twenty-nine point six!’
‘Mine is twenty-nine point six-five,’ said Fuhrman.
‘When was that?’
‘An hour ago.’
‘I was hoping it was stuck,’ said Porter, taking another look at it.
‘Is it that bad?’ said Maggie.
‘It’s not good,’ Porter said, and then to Fuhrman, ‘What the devil are you doing here? It’s almost dark.’
‘I came to deliver some newspapers, and to offer Mrs Porter and your child a berth on the lightship.’
‘What?’ said Maggie. ‘Certainly not.’ Alice clung to her skirt. ‘We’re quite all right, aren’t we, William?’
Porter looked at the glass again. ‘Well…’
‘The lightship, as you know, is well grounded,’ said Fuhrman, ‘chained to the seabed. We do not move.’ He glanced at Maggie, but said to Captain Porter, ‘Should
it become rough, the lightship is the safest vessel in the area. It is a simple fact. The hull is steel and watertight. And we have a spare and comfortable cabin.’
Porter nodded and said, ‘Maggie—’
‘No.’
‘The lightship has better ground tackle,’ said Porter. ‘In a hurricane…’ but he trailed off.
‘Hurricane?’ The schooner rocked beneath her. The rigging creaked, and there were footsteps on the deck, sounds of activity.
‘You must decide now,’ said Fuhrman, bowing his head slightly. ‘I must leave in the cutter immediately.’ He looked at Captain Porter for the final word, and it would have been the thought of Maggie and Alice travelling across the bay in the cutter, a danger in itself, sure to get wet, that decided it for Porter.
‘No,’ Porter told Fuhrman, shaking his hand. ‘But thank you. We’ll batten down here. We’re sheltered well enough under the cape.’
Fuhrman nodded, and turned to Maggie. ‘I had to offer, you understand?’
‘Yes, of course. It’s very kind of you. But not a hurricane, surely.’
‘The barometer does not lie. But how strong the wind? Perhaps hurricane, perhaps not.’
Out on deck, a strange golden twilight had settled over the bay.
Fuhrman waved as he shoved off, his sails snapping in the variable winds within the bay, pushing the cutter
through the fleet and into the channel, where it vanished into the opaque curtain behind which the lightship beacon blinked.
Poor Tommy appeared at Maggie’s side. ‘Mrs Porter, I’ve been thinking,’ he said. ‘What if Joe Harry has deserted?’
She stared at him. ‘Tommy, are you aware that a hurricane’s coming?’
‘Mrs Porter! I’ve been running around this last hour putting the main hatches on. I just hope it doesn’t play havoc with my lists.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Some of the luggers haven’t unloaded yet. I hope they’re still in one piece tomorrow, that’s all.’
Around them, the luggers were lighting lanterns and although there was less activity on the decks, there was still music and subdued singing, and the smoke from cooking fires. No one was abandoning the carnival yet.
Maggie Porter, with growing anxiety, put Alice to bed in her cabin. Within minutes Alice was rocked asleep.
Maggie went down the corridor to the sick bay. The Japanese diver was asleep in his hammock and she went over to him. He shook, but perhaps he would live.
Back in the main cabin, she sat at the table, lit the lamp that hung above it, and took out a sheet of paper, ink and a pen.
Above her, on deck, men talked in low tones, and she heard footsteps. A sudden squall made the rigging whine, the
Crest of the Wave
creaked as the anchor took the strain and the vessel swung a little, and then all was calm again.
A white light suddenly filled the cabin and was gone in an instant. There was a sense of the world holding its breath, and then a low boom rolled over the water.
The next gust hit the schooner and the lantern swung in a circle as the boat yawed. Another burst of lightning in the open doorway and Maggie saw a steady light rain, almost a mist. She picked up her pen and began writing.
She wrote:
4/3/99 at Bathurst Bay
My dearest Father,
A storm is coming…
The wind brought the smell of rain, as Jack Kenny, Walter Roth and the four native troopers rode towards Barrow Point.
The bleak stretch of beach met a tobacco-coloured sea on its same bleak terms so that what, under other circumstances, might have been a noble meeting of elements produced a weakly defined foreshore slapped by sharp waves.
‘What are we looking for?’ said Roth, his voice faint, carried away by the wind.
‘A dinghy. Or wreckage. Or tracks. People. Anything that might tell us where our man came ashore.’
‘And how far to Barrow Point?’
Kenny pointed far ahead to a small headland of orange rock. Over the beach a lone black cloud passed beneath the thick yellow sky and sped inland.
The wind threw foam and strings of seaweed at the horses, and Kenny’s horse Sydney kept changing its stride to shake the weed off its hocks. The horse was in
a foul mood and tried to bite its rider, and Kenny felt a wild urge to dismount and punch it.
The sky was low, the wind hard against Kenny’s back. Drops formed under the brim of his hat to be blown away as they fell.
‘It’ll be a wet night,’ he said aloud, with a little grim pleasure.
‘I suppose we should stay in then and play whist,’ said Roth.
Euro stopped his horse and waited for Kenny to ride up. He pointed down the beach, but Kenny could see nothing.
‘Men there.’
‘Let’s not scare them away.’
‘Already gone bush.’
Kenny had no heart for a chase. ‘We’ll take a look anyway.’
The wind came steadily across the sea and Kenny thought he heard a rumble of thunder. Out to sea, through the haze, it was impossible to find any island or sail, or even the horizon. He had the impression that he was looking through a curtain billowing into night.
There had been no tracks or signs of dinghies or even people the length of the miserable stretch of coast, and Kenny had begun to suspect the man at the Cooktown hospital had been lying. If he wasn’t, then he could only have landed here in Bowen Bay, or at Ninian Bay, beyond the rocky ridge of Barrow Point, which loomed ahead.
Tomorrow would be the last chance to find evidence of the spearing. If he’d been sent on a wild goose chase, he’d return to Cooktown and put a few more holes in Mr Thomas himself.
The horses tossed their heads and picked up their pace as they left behind the grey beach and its hard chocolate waves.
Above the beach was a deserted Aboriginal camp. The bark shelters were still leaning against trees. The fires were cold, but the grass all around remained flattened and worn.
‘Where is everyone?’ asked Roth.
‘They go to the inland camps,’ replied Kenny, ‘at this time of the year. Away from the sea.’
‘I’d have thought,’ said Roth, ‘that in summer it’d be cooler here than it would be inland.’
‘I wouldn’t want to camp here in summer. Mosquitoes. Crocodiles. Fishermen.’
‘Troopers,’ added Roth. ‘I see what you mean.’
The ground was flat and firm.
‘Where are
we
going to camp?’
Kenny pointed through the scrub to the top of a sand ridge. They rode through the camp, where there was no sign of any living soul, and as the rain came they pushed the horses up to the top of the dune, a struggle as the sand collapsed under their hooves.
Jack Kenny and Euro were at the head of the patrol. Euro had removed his rifle from its leather and Kenny had his revolver in one hand. They emerged at the top of the ridge into a clearing of sorts.
The rain was still light, but it had soaked through Kenny’s shirt. He dismounted and found his oilskin in a saddlebag. The other troopers emerged from the trees with the wet cloth beneath their white peaked caps sticking to their necks.
The sand ridge ran north to south. Behind it, the trees were thicker and the bush closed in. It dropped down to a swamp. The only flat ground was at the top.
‘We’ll camp here.’ There was little choice. The light was fading fast.
The wind came in gusts and the rain tapped at Kenny’s hat. He stood out of the wind behind his horses and unstrapped the tent and pegs. Each trooper had done this so many times before that they worked mechanically, quickly, and soon two tents had been pitched on the ridge, their openings facing north-west away from the wind and towards the black mountains that ran down the spine of the cape.
There was no sunset. The light had gone from yellow to grey to an indeterminate twilight that fused the sky and earth.
Corporal Bruce told Pompey to build a fire behind a wide tall tree, but the attempt proved to be futile and Kenny dismissed the men to their tent with biscuits and tinned meat.
The horses had been hobbled and fed oats, and they now stood miserably with their backs to the wind, heads down. Euro stood in front of them, as shelter, for the first watch and became a grey statue in his waterproof cape.
It was a bleak and barren place and the wind in the trees made Kenny feel even more uneasy. He checked the revolver and kept it dry beneath his coat.
Roth settled into the tent amongst the packs. The wind came with a regular rumble of thunder now. ‘Thunder storms don’t usually come in from the sea, do they?’ he asked.
‘Sometimes.’
Roth was quiet for a moment. The candle sputtered. Kenny sat at the opening of the tent, peering through the flap, wondering if he should stand Euro down. An attack seemed unlikely, but he couldn’t shake the feeling of dread.
‘What would the local natives do in a tempest, I wonder,’ pondered Roth aloud.
‘Head for the hills if they’re not already there.’
‘Perhaps that’s what we should do.’
Kenny had thought the same thing. The problem was that if that’s where the blacks were, it wouldn’t be safe. The natives would have a lethal advantage if they wanted to use it, and if they’d been spearing people lately it would be foolish to go up there.
‘We’ll be safer down here,’ but even as he said it Kenny felt nowhere was safe.
The rain came in sheets now, but the canvas side of the tent was so taut that he could hear the thud of each drop.
Kenny looked out of the flap. The trees wept, the horses and Euro were hunched and withdrawn. He heard Roth behind him unscrew his hipflash.
‘Euro said the Wind is coming,’ said Kenny.
‘It’s already windy.’ The trees were shaking themselves and sprayed the tent with large hard drops and leaves.
‘
The
Wind, a very cheeky wind. A local legend. He lives in the Cliff Islands and gets cranky. Sometimes he blows everyone away.’
‘I know the feeling,’ said Roth.
Kenny pointed to the rocky slopes of the mountains, now just a black outline against a darkening western sky.
‘Climb that hill. Find a cave,’ he said aloud to himself. The troopers, even more than Kenny, hated the rain. ‘I wonder.’
‘What about the horses?’
‘We could take one and leave the rest.’
‘One?’
‘We can’t eat more than one.’
But the wind roared through the trees at that moment and there was nothing for it, but to stay put and see what happened. Roth passed the flask.
John Douglas’s clock stopped.
Beyond his faith he was not a superstitious man, but the absence of its ticking made it clear that all other life in the house had now gone, and that he was truly alone. His family, Maggie, Hope, gone. Even the cook. And now the clock had stopped.
It had been Hope’s habit to wind the clock.
There was no sound.
He put down his pen and gazed at a tiny moth that fluttered around the lamp. Its wings beat silently against the lampshade, raising motes of dust. Nothing.
The window framed a hibiscus bush that should have been buried by the dark but had been illuminated these past few nights by the pulse of the distant lightning. A red flower now twitched silently like the heart of a freshly killed bullock against liver-coloured leaves, ghastly, and then gone. A short time later some
huge distant lantern sputtered to life again, exposing the flowers unnaturally in the night.
He suddenly wondered if he had gone deaf.
His wife, who loved her music, had long ago asked him to knock her on the head if she went deaf.
He, on the other hand, had a greater fear of losing his sight. It had never occurred to him that she would go mad and
he
might go deaf.
The lightning flickered. The red flowers pulsed.
What if the hands of the clock were still moving? He dared not look in case it was true. But would it be such a bad thing?
No more sordid cases, no more obscene language in court. A blessing it would be not to be goaded into saying things he regretted, to have them repeated.
He’d miss his conversations with Maggie. And Hope. He’d miss the sound of the Torres Strait pigeon, and the hoot and bellow of steamers.
He’d not miss the leghorns.
He could still write to his children.
He picked up his pen and held it above the desk. Blessed or cursed? he wondered, and dropped it.
It clattered on the table top, loud enough to make him flinch, sending an arc of ink over his letter.
‘Oh damn,’ he heard himself say, clearly enough.
He grabbed the sheet, crumpled it into a ball and dropped it into the basket by his desk. He picked up a fresh sheet.
My dear Maggie
,I have your letter, which arrived by steamer today. I cannot tell you what joy it is to hear your news. I do see now why it was you had to leave so abruptly, although I would like to think that you might have confided in me before you left. But you felt you should tell your husband first, of course. No matter, I am not upset, and now that I learn I am to be a grandfather again it is as if you’ve given me a new lease on an old life.
I have told no one and destroyed the letter, as you requested. I can imagine Captain Porter’s joy and wish him more of it.
Maggie, I confess that I am worried about this storm. By the time you receive this, it will of course have passed and you will believe that I am a foolish old man. I know you think me unreasonable about you joining your husband in the fleet, but as you know I have never completely trusted boats, especially when it comes to young children.
The page lit up under his hand as a particularly powerful burst of far-away lightning filled the room. He waited for the thunder in vain, again.
Beach was right; it was absurd to worry for Maggie, to imagine the worst. Even if the storm approached the fleet, the well-equipped schooners and the best nautical minds were in company and would anticipate and prepare. For all their faults, the pearling masters prepared their schooners well with the latest equipment, the best ground tackle. He had no doubts
about Porter’s expertise as a sailor. Or of Maggie’s courage. Too much courage for a woman, perhaps. Hope and Maggie had that in common.
He held the pen above a new page, and then wrote…
My dear Maggie, it is very difficult for an old man who has spent his life building a reputation based on integrity and justice, on truth, to admit to a grave lapse in judgement.
He stopped, read what he’d written, and then balled this page up as well.
It was quite mad, the whole thing. He had hoped that with Hope gone, his guilt would have gone too, but the distance hadn’t really helped. Like the lightning, her presence haunted him from afar.
He never really had to convince anyone that Hope was white. The simple truth, that her mother had died in childbirth, was never questioned. He had never lied, but then again, the truth had been concealed. Perhaps it was inevitable then that Hope should see the documents that Dr Roth had sent him before Christmas.
She had been cleaning his table and thought the letter was about some other Hope Douglas. She had presented him with the letter, astonished that this woman was the daughter of a Cape Aboriginal servant that Douglas had once employed, but how quaint that she had named her daughter Hope as well, and that the daughter had taken the name Douglas. The wretched
father was unknown, of course. She should like to meet her namesake. Where was she now, Hope wondered?
Hope was not stupid, and Douglas realised that she would eventually see the truth, and so he told her. She didn’t speak to him for a week and then she packed her bags.
She had gone to Cooktown for
his
sake. Dr Roth concurred.
He looked out of the window. All he wished for now was some peace for his conscience.
John Douglas pushed his chair back and stood, stiffly, leaning heavily on the table. Were his legs now betraying him? He went to the kitchen for a glass and passed the clock. It showed a quarter past seven and had indeed stopped ticking. He took out his pocket watch, opened the clock’s face and found the key, re-set the hands, and rewound it, and then closed the face. The ticking commenced, but it was no comfort.
He found a tumbler, poured some whisky and went out onto the verandah. The lightning appeared to be closer. Like the whisky, it offered a false perspective.
Whoever was beneath the lightning had more immediate troubles. He said a silent prayer for Hope and for Maggie. And for his grandchildren, present and future.