One of King’s original party, Ned Westlake, had sawn with the drowned Westbrook, so there were two teams to spell each other: Blackall and Marriner, Westlake and Humphreys. The record to date, said Westlake, was 898 superficial feet* of timber in five days, but there had been only the one team to saw. Though he was not a free man like the drowned Westbrook, Richard had—mostly by residence in the sawyer’s house, saved for Westbrook’s replacement (whom King had assumed would be another free man)—become the head sawyer. His first decision was not popular, but was obeyed; he refused to allow the two teams their elected preference, which was that each team should saw on alternate days.
*In square, not linear or cubic measure. Thus it represented 30 x 30 feet of cut timber.
“If ye do that your muscles will seize up and the pain will be worse,” he said. “Bill Blackall and Will Marriner in the mornings, Ned Westlake and Harry Humphreys in the afternoons. Five hours in any one day are enough in a sawpit. Each of the four of ye will take turns to sharpen with me. In time that will give us all a chance to saw and all a chance to sharpen. Whoever is not sharpening or sawing will take an axe and help Joey strip the bark off the logs. The better we get and the faster we get better, the more privileges we will enjoy. To have a craft or trade is far preferable to being at the beck and call of general labor. If I read Lieutenant King aright, on your days off ye’ll be allowed to saw timber to put up your own houses. Think of that pleasure! A roof and walls ye can call your own.”
By the end of the third day of sawing the pace began to build; by the end of the first week they were sawing 500 superficial feet in a single day, and by the end of the second week that figure had crept to 750. Joey Long was the permanent hand stripping the bark off the logs.
“Well done, everybody!” said Lieutenant King cheerfully to the sawyer teams after Golden Grove sailed on the 28th. “Now we get on and build more houses, as I am informed there will be a great many more people here soon. Sixty at the moment, two hundred by the end of next year—and many more the year after that. His Excellency wants Norfolk Island and Port Jackson to be of equal size.”
King paced from one end of the sawpit to the other, then back to the six assembled men. “I owe ye time off. On Norfolk Island we work Monday to Friday for the Government. Saturdays ye work for yourselves, Sundays ye rest—after divine service, which I take and is compulsory for every last soul here, is that understood? While Golden Grove was loading ye’ve worked for the Government on two Saturdays and two Sundays. Today being Tuesday, no one will work for the Government until next Monday. I advise ye to use some of this time to saw for your own houses—just continue the row eastward. The land behind each house down to the swamp the occupants of that house will use as private vegetable gardens. Cresses grow wonderful well in the swampier bits and the worms cannot eat it, so grow cress, no matter what else ye fancy growing and Stores can give ye.”
His eye lighted on Richard, his head sawyer who was not a free man. “Morgan, I need a report. Walk with me, an ye please.”
He really does have good manners, thought Richard as he strode alongside the Commandant down the pathway which led from the sawpit to Government House and the storage sheds, one of which, he noted, held the coble and an even smaller boat made from the pieces of the old coble which had foundered on the reef and drowned four men. Willy Dring, Joe Robinson, Neddy Smith and Tom Watson—the four young, strong, unattached, sea-mad men—were to man the coble to fish whenever possible.
“I discovered that my house is not situate in the deep soil that abounds here, so I was able to excavate a sort of soft bedrock and make a nice dry cellar. I did the same under Surgeon Jamison’s house, which is now a storehouse—I have shifted him into the vale. The nature of the shore accounts for the fact that all the houses straggle east on this rocky eminence between the straight beach and the swamp—we could fix the support posts in rock,” said Lieutenant King as they passed Government House. “D’ye like fish?” he asked, changing the subject with one of those tangential shifts of thought Richard fancied typical of him.
“Aye, sir.”
“Ye’d think the buggers would be right glad of fresh fish in lieu of salt meat, but most resent it when I issue fresh fish or turtle instead of salt meat. Baffles me, it really does.” He gave a shrug. “So if they are too obstreperous, I lash ’em. Sounds as if I’ll not be lashing you, Morgan.”
Richard grinned. “I would far rather fish than cat, sir. I have not so far been lashed since I was convicted.”
“Aye, that is true of many of ye, I have noted it. Ye did well with the division of labor. One team of sawyers was not enough. What size logs d’ye think the best, given what tools we have?”
“Six-foot diameter at the most, sir, until we are provided with longer pit saws. ’Twould be a help to have a cross cut saw big enough to need two men on it, so I am turning our only eight-foot rip saw into something that will cut across the grain better than the pit saws,” said Richard, very comfortable with this man.
He is as different from Major Ross as chalk is from cheese, yet I managed to get on well with Major Ross too. This man is very paternal and regards us as his family, and that is not in the Major’s nature. But coming to Norfolk Island has served to show me how much the marines in Port Jackson reduced our rations to supplement their own. For which I cannot blame them. The marines are hungry too. Neither Governor Phillip nor Major Ross ever witnessed what Furzer did in Stores, which only goes to show that the bigger Government is, the less Government knows what goes on at the bottom.
Lieutenant King is scrupulous, keeps the weights himself and checks their weight against his standard set. We have had a meal of fresh turtle and several meals of the most delicious fish I have ever tasted. After the first meal of fresh flesh we all felt a thousand times better. Not to mention that there are always greens to eat. No scurvy in Norfolk Island, despite the grubs and the rats. But I can understand the aversion of some men to marine meals—they did not grow up eating fish and deem meat the only acceptable diet. There is also the need in us for salt. According to Cousin James-the-druggist, the more a man sweats, the more he needs salt.
Yes, I am very content to be here. It is kinder than Port Jackson, and there are no natives to fear if one ventures into the wilds. Though the stories around the camp-fire say that the growth of trees and vines is so dense that even Lieutenant King has been hopelessly lost.
“What have ye to report, Morgan?” King asked as they set off across the swamp on a rickety bridge mounted on piers above felled pine logs sunk into the morass, evidently not a very deep morass.
“Only that the sawpit needs a shelter to keep the sawyers out of the sun as well as the rain, and that if ye want to build something needs longer beams than twelve feet without joining, ye’ll have to dig a second pit and make it longer, Mr. King.”
“There was a shelter over the sawpit, but it blew down in a winter gale—they are fierce, I can tell ye. I used its relics to shore up the cellar under my house, but I do realize that we will have to build a new shelter, and quickly. The strength in the sun grows every day.”
They had crossed the swamp to the far shore of a small stream which seemed to terminate in the swamp rather than run through it; King turned left and began to walk up a path through a meandering valley wider in its bottom than any of the clefts between the steep hills coming down to what King had named Sydney Town.
