Rations were being doled out daily again; no one could keep a week’s rations on hand without their being stolen, even after a desperate Governor Phillip hanged a seventeen-year-old boy for stealing food. Sickly babies and children died; the miracle was that any survived at all, yet some did. Orphans became common, deprived of both convict parents; these the Reverend Mr. Johnson gathered in, cared for, fed, and rejoiced that their depraved parents were dead. Depraved beyond redemption they definitely were—why, otherwise, would God have visited Port Jackson with an earthquake and the reek of sulphur for a day afterward?
The natives were becoming steadily more aggressive and took to stealing goats. Apparently they did not fancy sheep, perhaps not sure what lay beneath all that wool. Goat hide resembled the hide of a kangaroo.
A goat, in fact, was the source of the only trouble Richard’s men got into. When one of the Stores workers, Anthony Rope, married Elizabeth Pulley, Johnny Cross stumbled upon a dead goat, which he appropriated with delight and presented to the newlyweds as the basis for a wedding feast. They made a sea-pye out of its meat, nesting it in a crust of bread for want of pastry. The whole group was arrested and tried for killing the goat rather than for eating it. Amazingly, the military court believed the convicts’ frantic oaths that the goat was already dead; all of them were acquitted, including Johnny Cross and Jimmy Price.
The ships save for Fishburn and Golden Grove had sailed, but Richard wrote no letters. He had taken to copying excerpts out of books to keep his handwriting steady, but write letters home he would not. As if, did he not, the pain would stay buried.
At the end of August spring arrived with a cessation of the rains and typical equinoctial winds. Flowers bloomed everywhere. Undistinguished small trees and bushes suddenly produced brilliant, fluffy yellow balls, spiky crimson pendants that resembled bottle brushes, spidery-looking pink and fawn and orange tufts. Even the tallest trees nodded with masses of cream-lashed eyes and produced young foliage of an exquisite pink. The mode of flowering was mostly of this brushy, wispy kind than English or American petaled blossoms. For petals they had to look among the grasses, where little shrubs were laden with cyclamen flowers like miniature tulips. The clean, sweetly resinous air was filled with a thousand perfumes, some subtle, some suffocating.
And on the 5th of September came a night sky the like of which few had ever seen, and that never with such structure as this huge display of celestial fireworks. The vault glowed and shimmered with fabulously draped curtains and arches dripping luminous fringes in greenish-yellow, crimson and violet; great steely-indigo beams shot from all horizons to the zenith, moving as fast as lightning or eerily still and radiant. There had been an aurora in England in 1750, but no one remembered it as more than a cloudy, colorful glow. This was, the sailors assured people the next day, more wondrous by far than any Northern Lights.
Spirits picked up, even though there had been no real winter, nor any dramatic increase in warmth. But sheep were lambing, goats kidding, hens hatching eggs. None of which could be touched, yet at least augured well for some vague future. If anybody lived to see it; rations did not improve.
Lizzie applied for and received more seeds, and set to in the garden again with renewed enthusiasm. Oh, for a seed potato! Still, if the carrots and turnips came up they would eat something having substance, real belly-filling nourishment. Greens might be good for the scurvy, but they were not filling.
Governor Phillip had decided to send Sirius to Cape Town for more provisions; storeship Guardian was just too distant a prospect to cherish hopes of survival without something to go on with. She was to sail east for Cape Horn on her way there; the decision as to whether she would return around Van Diemen’s Land or Cape Horn was left to Captain Hunter. And Golden Grove would leave Port Jackson with her because the liquor store was almost finished. She would sail first to Norfolk Island bearing the first consignment of convicts under Phillip’s scheme to add to the tiny settlement and subtract from the big and overburdened one.
When Major Ross sent for him on the last day of September, Richard knew what he was going to say. He had not long turned forty years old and every birthday since his thirty-sixth had been spent in a different place—Gloucester Gaol, Ceres hulk, Alexander and New South Wales. He would go somewhere else before he turned one-and-forty, though this was sooner than he had expected. In a few weeks he would be at Norfolk Island. Nothing surer.
“Ye’ve worked wonders with Private Stanfield, Morgan,” said the Lieutenant-Governor, “and ye’ve left us with two trained saw sharpeners as well. I had thought of sending Stanfield to Norfolk Island, but he is concerned for the welfare of Mistress Harmsworth and her children, and I am obliged to consider not only my marines, but also their wives, widows and dependents. Stanfield will stay here and continue with the muskets. Ye’ll go to Norfolk Island as a sawyer, saw sharpener and gunsmith. Lieutenant King has informed His Excellency that his only skilled sawyer has drowned. While ye’re not a skilled sawyer, Morgan, I have no doubt ye’ll soon pick up the art. Ye’re that sort of man. I have told Lieutenant King in my own despatches that ye’ll be an asset to Norfolk Island.” The thin lips stretched in a sour smile. “As well that some who go will be assets.”
“May I take my wife, sir?” Richard asked.
“I am afraid not. There are no vacant berths for women—His Excellency has given me a list of the women who will be going. I have Blackall from Alexander in mind as another sawyer because I suspect ye’ll have a lot of sharpening to do. Our building timber for Port Jackson is coming from Norfolk Island until we can find a proper source of limestone to use stone or brick. The local timber is impossible, whereas the beams and planks Supply has brought back with her are ideal. Supply had a very rough voyage and has to be laid up, which is why Golden Grove has been commissioned to drop ye off at Norfolk Island.”
“May I take my tools with me?”
Ross looked offended. “His Majesty’s Government of New South Wales is not empowered to deprive ye of a single nail or stocking,” he said stiffly. “Take all that belongs to ye, that is an order. I am sorry about your wife, but that is not in my command. Private Stanfield will manage on Government issue now that he knows how to make emery paper and files. Go and get your things together. Ye board tomorrow afternoon at four. Be waiting at the east jetty—and do not bring a great company to farewell ye, hear?”
Private Daniel Stanfield was absorbed in a Brown Bess, did not look up when Richard entered the tent.
“Mr. Stanfield,” Richard said.
That made him jump. “Ah! Ye’re to Norfolk Island.”
“Aye, and have been ordered to take every tool and item I own, for which I am sorry. Major Ross assures me that ye’ll be able to continue out of Government issue.”
“Indeed I will,” said Stanfield cheerfully. He got to his feet and held out his hand. “I thank ye, Richard, for your generosity and time. And I am sorry it has to be you who goes. If it were not for poor Mistress Harmsworth, I would welcome the change.”
Richard shook the hand warmly. “I hope we meet again, Daniel.”
“Oh, I fancy that we will. I am not of a mind to go home in a hurry. Nor is Mistress Harmsworth. Sooner or later there will be plenty of food, we both believe that. As a private of marines I would be lucky to end my career as a sergeant, so life in England upon retirement would be hard. Whereas here I have the opportunity to be a landowner once my three years are expired, and I can farm. Looking twenty years into the future, I believe I will be better off in New South Wales than in England,” said Daniel Stanfield. He began to help Richard pack his tool chest. “When does your sentence end?”
