The Gold Seekers (53 page)

Red crossed to the rail and took out his own glass. With its aid, he studied the occupants of the approaching boat. There were six, apart from the men at the oars; five were in the familiar red coats and buff facings of the 40th Regiment, and the sixth appeared to be a civilian. All, as Francis De Lancey had suggested, looked like men recently discharged from the hospital, for they had their arms in slings or bandages about their heads.

“Casualties, I suppose, from poor Wise’s company,” he agreed. “Be so good as to see that they are suitably received if you please, Mr. De Lancey. And pass the word for the surgeon’s mate—he’ll have to get the sick bay ready in a hurry.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” Francis acknowledged. He gave the necessary orders crisply and, after another inspection of the boat’s occupants, called up a party to rig a bo’sun’s chair. “Look lively, my lads! And have a care when you haul those men inboard.”

Marriage and fatherhood, Red reflected, had undoubtedly had a salutary effect on his once rebellious young brother-in-law. Francis was shaping well, ready to take responsibility, conscientious in the performance of his duties, and popular with the seamen. Magdalen had pleaded her brother’s cause when Francis and Dora had returned to Sydney, and, Red recalled, he had listened, unable to refuse her anything … although he could have no regrets on Francis’s account. And their child, his and Dora’s, a winsome little creature with an exotic name, had won all hearts with beguiling ease.

The boat came alongside, and the wounded men were hoisted in turn to the Galah’s deck, the surgeon’s mate in anxious attendance. Last to appear was the young fellow in civilian clothes, who stepped from the bo’sun’s chair spryly enough and then reached for the crutch one of the seamen was holding out. He was about to follow the little procession of soldiers below when, on impulse, Red strode across to speak to him.

“You’re not a soldier, lad?” he questioned.

“No, sir. I was serving with the mounted police. I was given my discharge, on medical grounds, sir, and permission to return to Sydney.” The boy spoke well, with a slight accent that Red could not place.

As if guessing the question he had not voiced, the onetime police trooper added, “I come from America originally, sir —from the Sacramento Valley. My folks are farmers there, and I worked my passage from San Francisco to Sydney on board a clipper schooner, the Dolphin. Maybe you will have seen her in Port Jackson Harbor. She—”

“Good Lord, yes, of course I have!” Red exclaimed, warming to his new passenger. “And I know Captain Van Buren well. We were boys together, and I was at his wedding. He married—” He broke off, remembering Claus Van Buren’s wedding, which, however fortuitously, had led to his own. Memory stirred; suddenly recalling the thin young man in the borrowed clothes who had given Claus’s bride away, he shook his head, wondering at his lack of perception. “My dear fellow, how stupid of me—I know who you are perfectly well! Your sister Mercy is Claus’s wife, and I saw you at the wedding! You had come, I believe, from the Tempests’ at Pengallon, and your name is Luke. Luke Bradshaw? Or is it Bancroft?”

“Murphy, sir,” Luke corrected, reddening. “I—”

“It is indeed a small world, Luke,” Red put in quickly, sensing his embarrassment.

Luke’s smile was warm, as if in gratitude. “Yes, sir, it is.” He added, “I met members of your family, I believe, sir, at Pengallon. Your father, Captain Justin Broome, and—”

“And my brother and sister,” Red finished for him. “Yes, they mentioned it.” He held out his hand. “Well met, Luke, in person this time. You—what about that leg of yours? Were you wounded in the recent troubles at Ballarat?”

“Yes, sir,” Luke confirmed. “Like the soldiers, at the Eureka field. But they say my leg will mend after a while, and I’ll be as good as new. I reckon I was lucky not to lose it.”

“Sir—” Francis De Lancey was again at Red’s elbow. “First lieutenant’s boat has put off, sir. And the others are loading now.”

“Very well, Mr. De Lancey,” Red acknowledged. He watched Luke Murphy’s slow, careful descent to the lower deck, a thoughtful frown creasing his brow. The lad looked thin and pale, and the leg was obviously paining him, but it was to be hoped that it would mend, as the surgeons had predicted.

Then Tim’s boat came alongside, and Red went to welcome him, as the soldiers started to ascend the accommodation ladder and Captain Thomas, their commander, claimed his attention.

It was well into the afternoon before the Galah put to sea and a strong southeasterly wind sent her on her way. It rose close to gale force by nightfall, and during the first two days and nights of the passage Red was continuously on deck. But his heart was singing to the music of the slashing breeze and the thunder of his ship’s tautly stretched canvas, the creaking of her sturdy timbers and the pounding seas. He was going home, he thought—home to Sydney and to Magdalen —and, God willing, that was where he would stay, even if it meant resigning his commission in order that he might do so.

The sick men remained below in the care of the surgeon’s mate. The troops and their officers made few appearances on deck, and the storm did not abate until a few hours before the Port Jackson Heads loomed in sight, half obscured by pitch-black rain clouds. But, miraculously, the rain cleared and the wind dropped, and the great harbor was bathed in warm golden sunshine as the Galah shed her storm canvas and made her stately way, under fore and topsails, toward the familiar anchorage.

Red had his glass to his eye as the ship came to anchor. He had started negotiations for the purchase of the small white-painted stone cottage his mother and father had once occupied, and his spirits rose when he trained his glass on it and saw, to his delight, that Magdalen was standing in the little garden, a flimsy white handkerchief in her hand, waving a welcome.

So, he remembered from his boyhood, his mother had stood, waiting for her menfolk to come back from the sea. Magdalen, thinking to please him, must have concluded the purchase of Cove Cottage in his absence and moved in there to await his return. He blessed her silently for the love and understanding that had prompted her action and, doffing his cap, raised it above his head in salute.

It would, he knew, be several hours before he could land his passengers and leave the ship, but his wife was waiting and, Red told himself, he had come home.

It was five seemingly endless weeks, however, before Luke was told by the surgeons that he might soon expect to leave their care. Mercy and Claus did their best to lessen the frustration of the prolonged stay in the hospital and the treatment he had to endure, and he was deeply grateful for their kindness and concern and the regularity of the visits they both paid to him.

Mercy had come alone at first, offering the explanation that Claus was occupied with the fitting out of the Dolphin for another trading voyage to the Pacific, but Luke suspected that her real reason had been the fear of what he might tell her concerning the culmination of his search for Jasper Morgan—information that, of necessity, must be for her ears, not her husband’s.

Thankfully, he was able to put her fears at rest. “Morgan is dead, Mercy,” he told her. “Not at my hands, although I was ready to kill him. You see, he had joined the diggers’ revolt.

He had even been elected to their reform league committee, and he betrayed them. One of them shot him from the stockade, at the Eureka, before I could catch up with him. I—I saw him die, with my name on his lips. And I reckon Dan and the other lads can rest easy now. He was given his just deserts. A life for a life, Mercy, that’s what the Holy Bible teaches. Morgan has paid with his life, and I suppose I have paid as well for what I intended to do.” He looked gloomily at his plastered leg.

“But you didn’t take his life,” Mercy said, anxious to give him comfort. She had hesitated, Luke recalled, then had asked finally, “Can I tell Claus that your quest is over? He wants to offer you employment, I know, and would do anything in his power to assist you. I’ll bring him with me next time I visit you.”

They had come together the following day, their happiness in their marriage and in each other evident in their smiling faces and in virtually every word they said. And Claus had offered him employment… . Luke sighed, remembering the generosity of that offer.

“You’ve the makings of a seaman, Luke,” Claus had insisted. “And I’d gladly teach you navigation, so that, in time, you could take command of one of my trading vessels. We are increasing our trade with New Zealand—with the settlers there, and with quite a few of the Maori tribes—and there’s every prospect of considerable expansion. The two Yates lads—Simon and Robert—have had their fill of gold-seeking. They are coming back with us on this voyage and are to act as my agents on North Island. Come with us yourself, why don’t you? You could recoup your health and strength on the passage, and Mercy will give you every care, I promise you. Work for me, Luke, and your future will be assured “

But he had refused, Luke reminded himself, on the plea of a promise he had made, which, for all his present uncertainties, he meant to keep. He had let the Dolphin sail without him, and after Claus and Mercy had gone, he had tried a dozen times, without success, to pen a letter to Elizabeth Tempest, telling her of his return.

He could not put his love and his hopes into words. He had no skill with the pen, and each letter had seemed to him clumsy and inadequate. He must, he decided, go in person, as soon as the surgeons permitted him to depart.

They did so at last, with the warning that he must consider himself still convalescing. Luke took the coach to Bathurst, not daring to ride with his injured leg; but emboldened by the realization that his limp was barely perceptible and that the jolting of the coach had caused him no discomfort, he decided to go the rest of the way to Pengallon on foot.

It was dusk when he glimpsed the red roof of the farmhouse and its cluster of outbuildings and cottages through the screening trees, and he came to a halt, suddenly doubting the welcome he might expect.

It was then, as he stood there uncertainly, half tempted to retrace his steps, that he heard a voice calling his name. It was the one voice he wanted to hear.

“Luke! Luke, is it really you? Oh, Luke, have you come back at last?”

Instinct, Luke thought, his heart thudding, must have brought Elizabeth to meet him, for she could not have known the hour of his coming. He had sent no word… . Choking back the surge of unmanly tears that suddenly ached in his throat, he managed to answer her, in a voice he could hardly recognize as his own.

“Yes,” he answered. “I’ve come back, Elizabeth. To … you.”

She pulled up beside him and slipped from her horse, to stand looking at him, her heart in her eyes.

“I waited for you,” she told him shyly. “As you asked, in that note Dickon gave me. But it was so long ago—I wasn’t sure if you meant what you said. Or if you would come back, Luke. I—”

“I meant it, Elizabeth,” Luke said. “I meant it with all my heart.”

The memory of Jasper Morgan faded at last; even the memory of Dan’s dead face faded with it as Luke took her into his arms. She was smiling now, he saw, and he held her close.

“I love you, Elizabeth,” he whispered. “And I was always coming back.”

The first shocking news of events in the Crimea reached Sydney via the new telegraphic link with India, and the appalling casualty list, dated October 25, 1854, was published soon afterward in the colony’s newspapers, on pages edged with black.

Accounts of the tragically misdirected charge by the British Light Cavalry Brigade on the Russian guns in Balaclava’s North Valley received similar treatment. Most of the editorials, however, stressed the heroism and the superb discipline of those who had taken part, while expressing horror at the terrible price their splendid regiments had been called upon to pay for what, clearly, had been an inexplicable misunderstanding of the commander in chief’s order.

The Morning Herald stated:

Out of a total of 673 officers and men who mustered in the Light Cavalry Brigade on the morning of October 25, over 300 were killed, wounded, or taken prisoner. Among them, we learn with deep regret, was Captain William De Lancey of Her Majesty’s 11th Hussars, elder son of His Honor Judge George De Lancey, well known in the colony, who himself fought with distinction at the Battle of Waterloo.

Jenny Broome had read this report with deep and abiding sadness, and when her brother Johnny brought her a letter, delivered belatedly with the English mail, her heart sank as she made out the address at its head: British Cavalry Division Camp, before Sebastopol, 24 October 1854. It was from William De Lancey, and her eyes misted with tears as she read it, taking in little of the description he had given, so painstakingly, of the situation in which he had found himself the night before the fateful battle.

But the final words of the letter—written, as if at the last moment, crisscrossing the lines of lengthy description—set her weeping uncontrollably.

“I love you, Jenny,” William had written. “I love you with all my heart. Wait for me, I beg you, for I have had my fill of war and soldiering. When this is over, I’ll come home. Please wait until I come to you.”

But William, Jenny thought, remembering the dream that had haunted her, William was dead. The report in the Herald had confirmed all the fears she had felt for him, all the horrors her nightmare had forecast. “Among them,” meant, surely, that he was among the casualties … or was there a faint hope that, perhaps, he had been wounded, not killed by the fearsome horsemen in fur caps, whom she had seen in her dreams?

“I did not realize, Jenny my dear—”

Her brother came to put his arm about her. She had forgotten his presence, had been oblivious of everything save her own bitter distress, but now, grateful for his sympathy, Jenny leaned against him, hiding her tear-wet face against his shoulder.

“You never talked of him, not even when the news came through about that ghastly charge. But it’s Will De Lancey you care for, isn’t it, little sister? It’s on his account that you’ve been a shadow of yourself these past weeks?”