“What happens when I get to the support beam?” Blackall asked.
“Ye get help to shift the whole log farther down, which is fairly easy to do once the wedges come off. Then ye wedge it again to keep the sawn section together. And by the time this becomes too hard, ye finish the cut by splitting the rest of the log with a steel wedge and hammer—’tis as straight as a die.”
A good man, Nat Lucas, was Richard’s verdict, patiently filing.
Lucas, who used a hand saw to cut the inch-thick sheets of timber into ten-inch-wide planks and trim the rounded edges off the outside boards, had set himself up with his saw horses beneath the shade of a pine on the margin of the clearing, and was supervising a large number of other men doing the same thing, including Johnny Livingstone and a dozen off Golden Grove. Lieutenant King’s orders were that every possible available person was to lend a hand until Golden Grove’s holds were full, and that made the sawpit the center of all activity for the following fourteen days.
Fourteen days during which Richard saw very little beyond saws, files and the sawdust-smothered figure of the bottom man. At first he had hoped to take a turn on the saw itself, but the pace of work meant that he was always sharpening, hand saws as well as pit saws. How, he wondered, was this relative handful of saws to last until more came from England? Every time a tooth was filed, it lost some of its substance.
He had worked until dusk on that first day, when Joey came to find him and tell him there was food. They all ate around a big fire of pine offcuts, for the moment the sun went down a chill greater than that in Port Jackson at this time of year descended. They were served salt meat and fresh-baked bread (it was only six days old—Norfolk Island had been given no hard bread, only flour) and—wonder of wonders!—uncooked green beans and lettuce. Richard ate ravenously, noticing that the loaves of bread were larger and the portions of salt meat less shriveled than what he would have been served in Port Jackson.
“The Commandant is very fair,” Eddy Garth explained, “so we get the full ration. In Port Jackson the marines short cut the convicts to give themselves more to eat. As on Scarborough.”
“And Alexander.” Richard heaved a sigh of happiness. “I had heard, however, that there were no vegetables here—that the grubs had eaten every last leaf and shoot.”
Garth put an arm around his wife, who leaned against him with obvious content. “ ’Tis true that the grubs eat a great deal, but not everything. The Commandant keeps the women in the patches all day picking the grubs off, and poisons the rats with his port bottles ground to powder in oatmeal—handy for the parrots too.” He put a finger to the side of his nose and grinned. “A great port bibber, Mr. King. Gets through several bottles in a day, so we are never short of ground glass. And the grubs come and go. Here a month or six weeks, gone a month or six weeks. There are two sorts. One likes wet conditions, one likes dry conditions. So whatever the weather does, we have grubs. Malign creatures.” He cleared his throat. “I do not suppose ye have any books?” he asked casually.
“I do indeed, and ye’re welcome to borrow them provided that ye look after them and return them,” said Richard. “I wonder how my belly will take greens after so long? Where are the privies?”
“Quite a distance away, so do not leave your run too late. Mr. King is fussy, insisted they be dug where they cannot contaminate the ground water. Our drinking water comes from up the vale, and it is perfect. No one is allowed to wash in it above the spot from which the water is taken, and the penalty for urinating in the stream is a dozen lashes.”
“Why should one need to urinate in it? There are trees.”
Joey Long, who had eaten earlier because he had to introduce MacGregor to Delphinia, came to show Richard to the privies and then lead him to their house, all by the light of a short piece of pine which ended in a thick knot: the ideal torch.
Richard stared at the interior of the house in amazement.
“It is all ours, yours and mine,” said Joey contentedly. “See? It has a window at either end that can be closed by a shutter. See? The wood is pegged into place. But we only put these shutters up if there is a blow—Nat says it is rare for rain to beat in from east or west. Most rain comes from the north.”
The floor was a carpet of peculiar—twigs? leaves? They looked for all the world like scaly tails about twelve or fifteen inches long, and felt firm yet yielding underfoot. Beneath them was a thin layer of sand, beneath that was bedrock. Against the windowless wall facing the lagoon stood two low wooden double beds furnished with fat mattresses and fat pillows.
“A double bed all to myself, Joey?” Richard lifted the fat mattress to discover that the bed had a lattice of rope supporting it, then realized that both mattress and pillows were stuffed with feathers. “Feathers!” he exclaimed, laughing. “I have died and gone to heaven.”
“This is the sawyer’s house,” Joey explained, delighted to be the fount of knowledge. “The sawyer was a seaman off Sirius and he shared this house with another seaman off Sirius. They were both drowned in the same accident on the reef almost three months ago, so Nat said. As free men they had the time to go out to the little island and kill some sort of bird to stuff their bedding—it takes a thousand birds to fill one mattress and two pillows, so Nat said. We have inherited the house and the beds.” Suddenly he looked downcast. “Though Nat did say that we would have to give them up to Mr. Donovan and Mr. Livingstone as soon as a house is built for Mr. Donovan and Mr. Livingstone. That will happen after Golden Grove sails. For the time being they are staying with Mr. King in Government House. This one is only ten by eight, but Mr. Donovan’s house is to be ten by fifteen. Nat has been the head carpenter, but he is a convict, so Mr. Livingstone will be the head carpenter from now on.”
“I care not if I have this mattress and pillows for one night,” said Richard, “I intend to enjoy them. But first I am going down to the beach to bathe the sweat away. Come on, Joey, you too.”
But Joey dug his heels in and refused to budge, terrified at the idea of venturing even knee-deep into water full of invisible monsters waiting to devour him and MacGregor. Richard went alone.
The sky was cloudless, the stars fantastic. Clothes left on the sand, Richard walked into surprisingly cold water and stood enchanted; every ripple he made created shimmers and tremors of light, so that it seemed he bathed in liquid silver. Oh, what a sea! How many wonders did it hold? On fire from within, for what reason he had no idea. All he could do was enjoy it, watch the water slide off his arms in luminous runnels, shake his hair free of glittering droplets. Beautiful! So beautiful. He felt filled with strength, as if this living sea transmitted its energies into his body through a natural magic.
When he turned to emerge he saw that the island was deceptively low from out in the roads; now that he was on it, its hills reared steeply behind this flat saucer of seashore, and everywhere against the starry sky their contours were outlined in spiky pines. Thousands upon thousands of them.
Once dried off and the sticking sand brushed away, he returned to his house and that big feather bed. Where he lay sybaritically, so comfortable that he could not sleep for many hours. Such still air, so few sounds—a sighing rustle, the occasional squealing cry of a sea bird, the soft whoosh of waves advancing and retreating on the reef. Joey did not snore, nor did MacGregor; at this time just over four years ago he had entered the Bristol Newgate, and not a night since had passed without a symphony of snores, even when he had lain alone with Lizzie Lock, for the snores of the men next door penetrated the sapling wall as if through paper. Until tonight. And he could not sleep for the sheer pleasure of it.
