The Gold Seekers (13 page)

The Irish maid, Biddy, came in to announce dinner, and Justin ate his meal without appetite. He and Johnny, by mutual consent, avoided the subject of Jessica’s illness, continuing instead to discuss the state of affairs in the country at large. Johnny’s views differed only a little from his own; as a journalist he was perhaps more forward-looking, and, Justin thought proudly, the boy was extremely well read, despite the fact that his education had been acquired in Sydney and he had lacked the benefits of an English public school that many of his contemporaries had enjoyed.

Inevitably their conversation returned to Hargraves and the threat to the present mode of life in New South Wales that a gold rush on the California scale would precipitate.

“And it will not only be here,” Johnny asserted glumly. “Some of the men from the American diggings are aiming to head for Victoria. Hargraves told me that a friend of his—a character he called Happy Jim—intended to try his luck there, as soon as he could find a ship to give him passage to Port Phillip. They’re a determined lot, Dad, and they won’t easily be stopped. If Hargraves or those two lads of his find even one nugget in one of the Macquarie River creeks, there’ll be no silencing him. And you said yourself that you and Uncle Rick found gold in the river at Pengallon. Add that to Old Yorky’s and Count Strzelecki’s and the Reverend Clarke’s and—” He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. “Did Uncle Rick find any more gold up there, do you know?”

“I’m inclined to believe he did,” Justin began. “But like all the others, he kept quiet about it. He—” He was interrupted by Jenny’s entrance.

“Dad,” she announced breathlessly, “Mam wants to see you both … she wants to settle down for the night. And I think she will sleep; she managed to take a whole bowl of broth with only a little persuasion from me. Red’s news has —oh, it’s made her so happy!”

And indeed it had, Justin recognized when, with his son and daughter at his heels, he returned to the sickroom. Jessica’s small, thin face was aglow, her dark eyes brighter than he had seen them for weeks, and she clung to his hand, begging him to stay after Jenny and Johnny had bidden her good night. He seated himself in the chair beside her bed, retaining her hand in his, and since she displayed no sign of wishing to sleep, they talked far into the night, as they had been wont to do in the early days of their marriage, after one of his long absences at sea.

They talked of Red, of course, since his return was the subject uppermost in his mother’s mind, and of the Macquaries, both of them delving back into memories they had long supposed to have faded. Justin told her of Edward Hargraves’s discovery and Johnny’s decision to go to Guyong the next day to investigate his claim, and suddenly Jessica’s expression changed, the glow fading, her eyes brimming with tears.

“Do you remember what your mother said to us as she caught her first glimpse of the land beyond the Blue Mountains?” She hesitated for a moment, as if she were listening to a voice Justin could not hear, and then, her own voice

strong and clear, as it had been in her youth, she went on Thinking of the flocks and herds this land will sustain, the crops it will grow! Look at it, children, for it is your future spread out down there. This is the prosperous land the Governor has told us shall be called Australia … and it is For you to build on!’ “

“I remember it well, my dearest love,” Justin managed hoarsely. “My mam was always quoting Governor Phillips’ promise to me. It was her faith in that promise which dictated her life, and I thank God that she saw it fulfilled. I—”

It was as if Jessica had not heard him. But her fingers tightened about his, and she added in a soft whisper, “But now they will destroy it all in a lustful search for gold! Oh, Justin, I thank God that I shall not be here to see it happen and Governor Phillips’ promise broken.”

She lapsed into silence, and from her quiet, even breathing Justin sensed that she had fallen asleep. He stayed where he was, himself dozing fitfully, to be abruptly jerked back to wakefulness by the sound of her voice.

“Red, dearest son, it is so good that you have come home —so good to see your face again. …”

Her voice trailed off, and in the sudden silence, Justin could no longer hear her breathing. He cried out in pain and pity, as Jessica’s hand slid limply from his clasp and he knew that she had gone.

“I must take issue with you, Commander Broome,” Captain Benjamin Lucas announced aggressively, “on this vexed question of the course you have set. I do not subscribe to the theory of great-circle sailing, sir—damme, I do not!”

They were standing in the gun room of the Galah, Red Broome’s half-finished breakfast still on the long mess table, where Captain Lucas’s unheralded arrival had compelled him to leave it. With the patience the eight-week passage in the engineering captain’s company had taught him. Red controlled his annoyance. Captain Lucas, he had learned, was habitually critical, and more often than not his complaints were voiced with scant courtesy and based more on prejudice than on knowledge.

Lucas was a small, balding man of stout build, and Red was able comfortably to look down on him from his own impressive height. Like his father, Red was three inches over six feet, with a lean, well-muscled body and a skin that was deeply tanned. The red hair from which his nickname derived was a legacy from his paternal grandmother, and few people were aware that his given name was Murdoch, for he had not used it since his childhood.

“Captain Keppel, sir, under whom I had the honor to serve for four years, was a firm believer in the great-circle principle,” he observed politely. “It enabled him to make record passages to the Far East and to Australia.” Captain Lucas made to cut him short, but he ignored the attempted interruption and went on, “It is based on an improvement over the Mercator chart, sir, and navigators have used it to advantage for the past hundred years.”

“I’m aware of the damned theory, devil take it!” Lucas

exclaimed. “It’s how you propose to put it into practice that concerns me.”

Red continued to keep a firm rein on his temper. “I intended to make southing until we attain the forty-eighth degree of south latitude. Then I shall set course for Prince Edward Islands, in forty-six degrees twenty-three minutes of south latitude, and—”

“It will be infernally cold that far south,” Lucas objected sourly.

“We shall save close on five days on passage. If we followed the old track via St. Paul and Amsterdam islands, it would not be appreciably warmer, and the winds would not be so reliable. Captain Keppel, sir, logged runs of between two hundred and seventy and two hundred and ninety miles between the Prince Edward and Kerguelen islands in the Dido,” Red explained with studied patience. “Then, of course, he headed for the Sunda Straits, whereas we shall aim to pick up the prevailing westerly wind in order to make port at Fremantle on the Swan River, and—”

“The sooner Their Lordships abandon sail in favor of steam throughout the Royal Navy, the better it will be from every conceivable angle—speed, efficiency, accuracy, and, yes, damme, comfort!” Captain Lucas asserted. His tone still sour and somewhat hectoring, he added, “Have some thought for the comfort of your passengers, Broome. My wife and her maid are not accustomed to extremes of cold or rough weather, you must realize. In any case, from what I’ve heard of him, your revered Captain Keppel had a reputation for carrying on, no matter what damage his ships suffered or how many spars were carried away.”

Red controlled the impulse to offer an indignant denial. Instead, he answered with restraint, “Captain Keppel is the finest seaman I ever served with, sir. And I dare to suggest that it will be a long time before steam supersedes sail in the service.”

Benjamin Lucas glared at him, his rheumy, red-rimmed eyes bright with malice. “We shall see, Commander Broome, we shall see!” He sneezed, robbed momentarily of the powers of speech by the paroxysm of coughing that followed. “Devil take it!” he managed at last. “It’s already cold enough to cause my lungs to be affected, and there’s always the danger of icebergs in these waters. Have you taken account of that?”

“Yes, sir, I have. I—”

“Then think of my wife. Must she keep to her cabin for the next week or more?”

It was his cabin in which Mrs. Lucas would be confined, Red reflected ruefully. As a matter of courtesy and because Lucas outranked him, he had given up his spacious stern night cabin to his passengers, and Lucas had taken possession also of the day cabin, in which normally Red himself would have taken his meals and entertained his officers, leaving him to mess with them in the cramped gun room on the deck below. Or … He sighed. If he wished to be alone, as the captain of a ship had at times perforce to be, he had to make do with a lieutenant’s berth and his food served on a tray, because there was no headroom for his steward to stand upright to wait on him.

Lucas’s wife, Dora, was in fact his bride. The engineer captain had married only a few weeks before the Galah sailed for Australia. Possibly, Red suspected, his decision to take a wife had been dictated by the nature of the appointment he had been given, which was that of superintendent of the new naval dockyard in Sydney. A house went with the appointment, as Red had learned from his father, who had filled the post temporarily during the dockyard’s construction, and Captain Lucas clearly was anticipating a social need that a bachelor officer would not find easy to fulfill.

Yet … Red eyed the stout, red-faced little man in his ill-fitting uniform with a frown. Lucas was in his fifties, his bride an extremely pretty girl of just eighteen, and, not for the first time, Red found himself wondering what could have induced Dora Lucas to accept as her husband one who could more easily have been her father.

Poverty, perhaps? A desire to better herself? She had hinted at straitened circumstances when she had talked of her home to him, Red recalled, evoking his sympathy when she had mentioned a widowed mother and three sisters of marriageable age who, like herself, lacked dowries and the right social contacts. Lucas must have seemed a good prospect,

and certainly he had indulged his new wife in the matter of clothes and jewels. He had provided her with a maid, who was traveling with them, and in the Galah’s hold were stowed innumerable packing cases and hampers containing furnishings for the official residence they were to occupy when they reached Sydney.

The girl would not lack material advantages from the marriage, but even so, they were an oddly matched pair, and there appeared to be little affection between them. Benjamin Lucas was a domineering fellow; the seamen had already felt the lash of his tongue on several occasions, and he seemed to treat Dora with studied contempt and even with harshness that bordered on cruelty when, as all too frequently happened, the unfortunate girl did anything to displease him. And that, Red thought, was due to ignorance rather than to intent; she had never mixed in naval circles before and was quite unversed in the etiquette. When they had first come on board, she had innocently sought to establish relations with the entire ship’s company, including him and his officers, and had earned a public rebuke from her husband when she had requested that young Lieutenant Francis De Lancey might—as she had put it—“show her round the ship.”

Francis was a chivalrous youngster, and he had later waxed indignant on the bride’s behalf, thereby incurring her husband’s severe disapproval and a rebuke more public than that administered to the girl herself—and certainly as undeserved.

Becoming aware that Lucas was still arguing about his decision to set course for the Prince Edward island group, Red made an effort to appear at least to be listening to the diatribe, though he took little of it in.

There had been many matters on which they had disagreed since the Galah had left Sheerness, he thought wearily; it was wiser not to listen. Their first clash had come when off the west coast of Africa he had gone to the assistance of the Leopard frigate in chase of a slaver. By heading her off, he had enabled the British frigate to bring the chase to a successful conclusion, thus saving the lives of the slaver’s unhappy cargo, but Lucas had accused him of dereliction of duty and, damn his eyes, threatened him with court-martial!

But despite his post rank, the engineer captain had never commanded a ship at sea, least of all a sailing ship. The very nature of his previous training and employment had kept him in dockyards ashore, his sea service restricted to the testing of newly fitted steam engines on paddle-wheelers and steam-screw ships.

He— Red stiffened, hearing the mention of Francis De Lancey’s name. Jolted out of his simulated indifference, he gave Lucas his full attention and heard him say censoriously, “It has come to my notice, Commander Broome, that Lieutenant De Lancey is paying unwelcome attention to my wife.”

“Did I hear you correctly, sir?” Red countered indignantly. “Are you suggesting that Lieutenant De Lancey has given offense to Mrs. Lucas?”

“I am indeed, sir,” Lucas returned icily. “I’m aware that you permit more license to your junior officers than I consider desirable. In this instance, however, I trust that it is not too much to ask that you will point out the error of his ways to Lieutenant De Lancey. See to it, please, that he does not offend again.”

“I’m quite sure, sir, that if Mr. De Lancey has acted in any way improperly, it was unintentional,” Red protested. “I’ll speak to him, of course, but—”

“He is a relative of yours, is he not, Commander?” Lucas asked, the implication deliberately offensive.

“He is a cousin.” Once again Red had to force himself to reply calmly to the taunt.

“And your first lieutenant—Timothy Broome—is also a cousin? He bears the same surname as yourself, so perhaps he is your brother?”

“He is also a cousin, sir. His father is my uncle, Mr. William Broome, who owns a sheep station on the Murray River in Victoria.” Irritated despite his determination not to allow Lucas to provoke him, Red added, “Before you accuse me of nepotism, I should perhaps explain that Their Lordships specifically instructed me to choose my officers from those with Australian connections. My ship, sir, is to remain in