The Far Horizon (6 page)

In the adjoining cabin the uproar continued, Pritchard shouting to Joseph Bigg to fetch his own servants, then roaring at George to
‘Come back here Jarvis!
I told you, I must
NOT be left alone!
’

Lachlan sighed. ‘Everyone else, perhaps, but his temper will not faze George.’

Both listened as the captain's voice barked on through the thin wood-panel of wall that divided them.

‘No, Jarvis, I don't
want
any medicine! Put it down! And to hell with your cursed calmness! I've been watching you for weeks, my lad! You have the manner of someone above your true station! Dressed like a gentleman you may be, but you're nothing more than a brown-skinned galley slave!’

‘We are all mere puppets of our heavenly master.’ George's voice sounded amused.

‘Damnation, Jarvis! Are you
always
so calm? Do you
never
get vexed or befuddled?’

‘What we shall be is written, and we are so.’

‘Well, drot! Is that what your great prophet Mohammed says, eh?’

‘No, Captain, those are the words of a Persian Poet who lived six hundred years ago. Omar Khayaam.’

‘There you go again! As cool as a whore's heart! I don't know why or how Macquarie tolerates you.’

‘In life as on ship,’ George's voice sounded resigned, ‘we must tolerate those we must tolerate.’

Lachlan frowned at Elizabeth. ‘I don't merely tolerate him.’

‘George knows that.’ She let out a gentle breath and lay back on the pillows. ‘But tonight we are
all
tolerating the captain.’

The hurricane lamp on the wall threw its usual shadows around the room, moving slightly from side to side with the ship's gentle motion. A black streak of shadow had fallen on her bronze hair, reminding him of the skin of an Indian tiger cub.

He bent down and kissed her.

*

They awoke in the morning to the blissful sound of silence.

‘I suppose,’ Lachlan said as he dressed, ‘I should go in and enquire of our neighbour.’

‘If you must.’ Elizabeth looked at him tiredly. ‘But if he starts his shouting again I will go in and box his ears, I will.’

Lachlan gently tapped on the adjoining door, and then gingerly opened it, but the bird had flown. The cabin was empty.

Up on deck, the ship's first lieutenant wearily explained what had happened. ‘As soon as your people had left him, General, he sent for us and insisted upon being transported back to his own cabin.’

Lachlan couldn’t believe it. ‘So all that moving him in the night was for nothing?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’

‘Is his condition any better?’

‘His condition is the same, sir, but his temper is much worse.’

Lachlan blinked. ‘Worse? Is that possible?’

The lieutenant sighed apologetically. ‘I'm sorry, General Macquarie, but the captain is always unwell when we spend too long in an unscheduled port. He rarely enjoys the sight of land, except when it's Portsmouth. Like the rest of us, his world is the open sea.’

‘Will his health recover once we set sail again?’

‘Oh, certainly.’

And so it proved, three days later, when the almost-recovered soldiers had been evacuated from the hospital in St Sebastian and returned to their ship.

As soon as he heard they were ready to sail, Captain Pritchard rushed directly to the quarterdeck where he dressed himself while giving orders to his first-lieutenant, which were then repeated over the ship through the lieutenant's trumpet.

‘
Stand by on the capstan!’

Captain Pritchard pulled on his seagoing coat.

‘Hands aloft! Loose Tops'ils!’

Seeing General and Mrs Macquarie watching him, Captain Pritchard touched his hat cheerfully to them, his personality transformed.

‘
Man the braces!’

Elizabeth was smiling with relief. ‘There appears to be nothing wrong with his legs or his health now!’

George Jarvis frowned. ‘No, not his physical health, but I am still not sure about his
mind
. There is a word for it, when a man has two personalities …’

‘Mad!’ Elizabeth decided, linking her arm in George’s and giving him a loving squeeze.

The three of them stood together at the rail, looking back at Rio de Janeiro as the ship swung away from her. The Sugar Loaf began to dwindle into a smudge and before them lay miles upon miles of open sea.

*

Upon reaching Cape Town, Lachlan left Elizabeth in the entertaining care of the British Consul and his wife, allowing himself and George Jarvis no time to spare on socialising. It took four days of hard work to load a ship with fresh water and supplies, but that was Captain Pritchard's concern. Lachlan was more preoccupied with obtaining supplies for New South Wales.

‘If the Government storehouses in Sydney are empty,’ he said to George, ‘then they must be refilled, and as soon as possible.’

He hired a large trading vessel and had it loaded with six thousand pounds of flour, one hundred tons of grain, and all other essential supplies that the Cape could provide.

His final purchase – which he entrusted to George, Jarvis, aided by six soldiers, was to purchase every pair of men’s regular shoes in every size available, eventually filling six crates; followed by the purchase of ten bales of red broadcloth and ten bales of white linen.

Captain John Antill, Lachlan’s military aide, was surprised by this final purchase.

‘The regiment is well kitted-out, sir, and we have our own supplies of shoes and broadcloth on board.’

Lachlan nodded, ‘
We
may be well supplied, Captain, but the soldiers of the New South Wales Corps are going to be sent back home in disgrace because of the mutinous behaviour of their senior officers, so the least I can do for them is to make sure they arrive back in England looking as good as when they left it, as well-dressed soldiers of His Majesty’s 46
th
Regiment.’

When Captain Antill made no reply, Lachlan looked at him questioningly. ‘Would
you
wish to arrive back in England barefoot and in rags, Captain? After three years of service on the other side of the world, would
you
wish your family and neighbours to see you in such a state?’

Captain Antill’s young face flushed crimson at the very thought of such an embarrassment. ‘No, sir.’

‘Nor I, nor any one of my soldiers in the 73rd,’ Lachlan replied tersely.

Antill flushed again. ‘My apologies, sir.’

A short time later Lachlan returned to the waterfront where the crates were still being hauled aboard the trading vessel with the help of ropes.

As soon as she was fully loaded and ready, the ship’s captain was instructed to weigh anchor and set sail with all possible speed for New South Wales.

Three days later, the
Dromedary
and the
Hindostan,
carrying the 73
rd
Regiment, set their sails and left the port of Cape Town heading towards the same destination of New South Wales.

Chapter Seven

Week after week they saw nothing but an immense empty ocean without even a bird to keep them company, without even a sight of another ship, until it seemed as if the
Dromedary
and the
Hindustan
had the whole world to themselves, a world without other humans, a watery world without end.

Elizabeth's mood had completely changed. The
Dromedary
no longer felt like a familiar home to her now, but a prison.

The mornings which she usually spent in her cabin reading books and writing letters in a social manner had now lost all their joy. In Cape Town, Lachlan had bought her a quill-pen with a new-fashioned steel nib, and she used it now lethargically:

We are all very tired of living at sea. The motion of the ship has given me a confounded fuzz in my head, which makes me feel very much out of sorts; I can't enjoy anything, I feel very cross –

Elizabeth found Lachlan at the desk in his cabin, frowning as he carefully studied his papers on New South Wales, lists upon lists of convicted prisoners and the reason for their transportation.

‘Lachlan, we have been at sea for seven months now.’

‘So?’ he answered, not taking his eyes from the papers.

‘Do you think,’ she asked him seriously, ‘that Captain Pritchard has got his charts wrong and we are not only lost, but lost within that triangle from which ships never emerge?’

He looked up at her vaguely. ‘What triangle?’

‘I've heard the seamen speak of it,' she told him gravely. ‘A lost triangle of ocean that is walled by thick mists of fog, and any ship that loses its way and mistakenly slips through the fog into the triangle never finds it way out again, never. “
The Sailors Eternity”
they call it.’

He laid down his papers and looked at her, and now that she had achieved his full attention she voiced her worst suspicion of all.

‘Do you remember that blanket of fog we encountered a few weeks ago? It lasted all through the night, a thick cloud of fog, but in the morning it had cleared. And since then we've not seen even a bird...’

‘Elizabeth, don’t be silly.’

‘What!’

Lachlan spoke quietly. ‘Elizabeth, are you still suffering from confusion in your head?’

‘No – and what has my head got to do with it?’

‘I know that we have been at sea a long time,’ he replied, ‘and it can lead to disorientation. But I assure you, we are not lost in any mythical “Sailors Eternity,” we are right on course, heading for the Bass Strait.’

She turned and left him without a word, feeling very cross at his accusation that she was being silly. She went on deck and met Mrs Ovens who was shaking her head slowly.

‘It's all too silent for me,’ said Mrs Ovens fearfully. ‘Oh, Mrs Macquarie, m'dear, I fear we may be lost and no one is telling us.’

‘Nonsense!' said Elizabeth, tapping the cook's plump hand reprovingly as she would to a silly child. ‘I assure you, Mrs Ovens, we are not lost at all, but right on course, heading for the Bass Strait.’

‘And where might that be?’

Elizabeth drew in a deep breath of sea air. ‘Oh, not very far from our destination of New Holland.’

Mrs Ovens looked pleased, although – as she said to Joseph Bigg later – she was surprised when Mrs Macquarie had said that, about New Holland – because she had always understood they were going to New South Wales.

Joseph Bigg looked down his nose at the fat little cook and said condescendingly, ‘It's in New 'Olland, is New Souf Wales.’

‘Is it? Well no one told
me
that!’

‘Well now
I'm
telling you, ain't I? New Souf Wales is in the continent of New 'Olland. Right slap bang in the middle of it!’

‘Then how comes they say we'll be there as soon as the ship docks? A ship can't dock in the middle of a continent. Even I knows that.’

Joseph Bigg disregarded her question entirely and returned his eyes to the open sea.

*

In his cabin, Lachlan was still engrossed in his papers on New South Wales, and still frowning. While studying the records of his future charges, he had been utterly astonished at the number of crimes which had been marked down by the British magistrates as indicating "inherent evil" in the culprits, and which had resulted in transportation to the other side of the world.

A young girl of ten had filched a pie; another had stolen a lady's lace handkerchief; another a pair of stockings; another a strip of lace from her mistress's sewing-box.

Boys who had stolen carp out of someone else's pond or snatched fish out of private rivers; cooking a rabbit in the open after sundown. The list of young men and women who had married secretly, without the permission of their masters, was endless, and the sentence unduly severe – fourteen years in Botany Bay.

‘Look,’ he said to Elizabeth later, ‘look at these lists of hardened and vicious criminals! Some are no more than children! Look at this one – a young girl of twelve, of a good family, who foolishly borrowed and rode a neighbour's pony in a schoolgirl frolic – sentenced to seven years in Botany Bay! That neighbour must have been the Devil himself.’

Elizabeth was also appalled as she read through the lists. There were vicious criminals there to be sure, but most were young adults who had committed various offences, none of any great calamity, but amongst them were scores upon scores of children whose crime would be considered as little more than a misdemeanour by any rational person.

‘And look here,’ said Lachlan. ‘An English soldier wounded on the battlefields of Europe and left crippled in one leg – seven years in Botany Bay for stealing a broom! A
broom
, for God's sake! He probably wanted to use it as a crutch.’

He returned to the records and read on through the lists of hardened criminals awaiting the iron hand of his rule.

In the past year alone, five girls of eleven years had been transported; seven girls of twelve years; thirty-two of fourteen years; sixty-five of fifteen years. The numbers for boys were even higher. All filchers of some little thing or another, and all sentenced to seven years in Botany Bay. He shook his head slowly. How on earth was he going to deal with such dangerous criminals?

They were both still studying the lists when George Jarvis called to them excitedly to come up on deck—a seal had surfaced near the ship.

‘A seal?’ Lachlan smiled at Elizabeth. ‘The appearance of a seal usually means that land is not too far away.’

Later they saw a number of whales. One came quite close to the ship, a big playful old thing that bobbled alongside, spurting water at them.

They were in the Bass Strait. Every day their eyes were distanced on the far horizon, until they finally glimpsed land, then watched it draw closer and closer until the white cliffs of New South Wales stood outlined under a vivid blue sky.

*

Eight months after leaving England, the
Dromedary
and
Hindustan
lay at anchor in Sydney harbour. The vessel that Lachlan had hired and filled with provisions at the Cape of Good Hope had arrived only two days before them, and now had unloaded all her cargo to the delight of the hungry population of Sydney.

The harbour was already filling with people hoping to catch an early glimpse of the new Governor, but the
Dromedary
was standing too far out for them to see anything more than a number of shadowy figures scuttling up and down the masts as she dropped all her canvas.

On their last night on board ship, a double ration of grog was served to both soldiers and sailors, speeches of gratitude were made to the captain and crew, and later music and singing could be heard drifting over the water.

In the darkness Lachlan, Elizabeth and George stood on deck and looked across the glistening sheet of black water at the lights of Sydney twinkling from the various levels of the town.

‘It looks so small,’ George said, and Lachlan agreed. ‘As small as the harbour of Tobermory … maybe it will look different in daylight.’

Elizabeth said nothing as she stared at the distant lights, because for the first time she felt a desperate wave of homesickness, realising that she was now totally separated from her own country by two oceans and twelve thousand miles, and was now even on a different half of the globe.

She could not help wondering, with some apprehension, what lay ahead of them.