Major Ross arrived at Richard’s house in the aftermath of the rumstealing disaster, face even grimmer than usual.

This task is killing him, thought Richard, ushering the Major to a chair; he has aged ten years since arriving here.

“Mr. Donovan,” Ross announced, “imparted some interesting facts about ye to me, Morgan. He says ye can distill rum.”

“Aye, sir—given the equipment and the ingredients. Though I cannot promise that it will taste any better than the stuff produced in Rio de Janeiro, from reports of that. Like all spirits, rum should be aged in the cask before being drunk, but if ye want what I think ye want, there is not the time. The results will be raw and nasty.”

“Beggars cannot be choosers.” Ross snapped his fingers at the dog, which bustled over to be patted. “How are ye, MacTavish?”

MacTavish wagged his undocked tail and looked adorable.

“I was a victualler in Bristol, sir, among other things,” said Richard, throwing a log onto his fire, “so I understand better than most how big are the horns of this dilemma. Men who are used to rum or gin every day cannot live happily without it. That can be as true of women. Only the Law Martial and lack of equipment has prevented construction of a still here already. I will gladly build ye the still and work it, but. . . .”

Hands out to the fire, Ross grunted. “I know what ye’re implying. The moment ’tis known a still exists, there will be those who will not be content with a half-pint a day and others who will see profit in it.”

“Aye, sir.”

“Ye have a fine crop of sugar cane, as does the Government.”

Richard grinned. “I thought it might come in handy.”

“Are ye a drinker yourself these days, Morgan?”

“Nay. On that I give you my word, Major Ross.”

“I have one abstemious officer, Lieutenant Clark, so to him I will apportion supervision of this project. And tear my ranks apart looking for privates. Stanfield, Hayes and James Redman I can trust neither to imbibe nor to sell, and Captain Hunter”—his face twisted, was disciplined—“recommends his quarter gunner Drummond, his bosun’s mate Mitchell, and his seaman Hibbs. That gives ye a total of six men and one officer.”

“Ye cannot site it in the vale, sir,” said Richard strongly.

“I agree. Have ye any suggestions?”

“Nay, sir. I travel only as far afield as my sawpits.”

“Let me think about it, Morgan,” said Ross, rising with some reluctance. “In the meantime, have Lawrell cut your sugar cane.”

“Aye, sir. But I will tell him that ye’ve ordered me to start refining sugar to sweeten the officers’ tea.”

Off went the Major, nodding in satisfaction, to supervise the final installation of his grindstone. When the wheat came in, hand querns would not cope with it. Therefore the full-sized millstone would have to be turned by the only labor he had, that of men. A useful adjunct to floggings, which Ross tolerated but privately detested—not because of scruples, rather because the lash only deterred crime when it was administered in very large doses, and those rendered the victims partially crippled for the rest of their lives. To chain a man to the grindstone for a week or a month and make him push it like a sailor a capstan was good punishment, hideous but not ruinous.

The roads to Ball Bay and Cascade were finished. Hacking a road westward to Anson Bay began at the beginning of June, and yielded a delightful surprise; about a hundred acres of rolling hills and vales halfway between Sydney Town and Anson Bay were discovered utterly free of pine forest—for what reason, no one could fathom. Accepting this as a gift like unto the manna of the Mt. Pitt bird, Major Ross immediately decided to establish a new settlement there. The ground he had cleared at the middle of the Cascade road was intended as a place of banishment for the Sirius sailors; Phillipburgh, at the Cascade end of the road, was still trying to turn flax into canvas.

The settlement in the direction of Anson Bay was called after Her Majesty Queen Charlotte—Charlotte Field. Why was Richard not surprised when none other than Lieutenant Ralph Clark was deputed to establish Charlotte Field? In company with Privates Stanfield, Hayes and James Redman? The still would be tucked somewhere along the way between Sydney Town and Charlotte Field, he was sure of it.

Rightly so. Soon after, he was summoned to walk out in that direction to site a new sawpit for Charlotte Field. A nice area. The pineless ground was densely covered with a creeper Clark fancied resembled English cow-itch; the creeper came out of the ground easily and was found useful in the construction of fences when mixed with a bush sporting thorns two inches long—not a fence a pig would tackle, enterprising though pigs were.

Major Ross had chosen a site for the distillery down a track off the Anson Bay road well before Charlotte Field; a stream arose from a spring below the crest and flowed down with other tributaries to join a creek which entered Sydney Bay not far from its western promontory, Point Ross. On additional pay, the three marines and three sailors set to with a will to clear enough ground for a small wooden building and a woodheap of white oak, the same local tree which fueled both the salt house and the lime kiln because it burned to scant ash. The stone blocks which would make the hearth and furnace were hauled by convicts from Sydney Town, ostensibly destined for Charlotte Field later on; Richard and his six men took them from the road to the distillery themselves after dark. They also had to erect the shed. Ross furnished copper kettles, a few stopcocks and valves, copper pipe and vats made from barrels sawn in half. Richard managed the welding and assembling himself. Secrecy was maintained, rather to his surprise; the cut cane and some ears of Indian corn simply vanished to presses and hand querns at the distillery.

Four weeks later he was able to produce his first distillate. The Lieutenant-Governor sipped at it cautiously, grimaced, had another sip, then drank the rest of his quarter-pint down; he liked his rum as much as any other man.

“It tastes dreadful, Morgan, but it has the right effect,” he said, actually smiling. “Ye may well have saved us from mutiny and murder. ’Twould be much smoother if it were aged, but that is for the future. Who knows? We may yet supply Port Jackson with rum as well as lime and timber.”

“An it please ye, sir, I would now appreciate it if I could return to my sawpits,” said Richard, to whom the sight of a still brought no happy memories. “ ’Tis necessary to keep up the mash and the fire, not to mention the water, but I do not see the need to be here myself. Stanfield can take one shift and Drummond the other. If ye’ve any drop of good rum in store, we can put a bit of the raw distillate in an oak cask with a mite of the good stuff and see how it goes.”

“Ye can share the task of supervision with Lieutenant Clark, Morgan, but ’tis a waste of your talents to keep ye here feeding the apparatus and the furnace, ye’re right about that.” He strolled off, smacking his lips, obviously permeated with a feeling of well-being. “Walk with me back to Sydney Town.” Then he remembered the rest of the team, and paused to clap each man on the shoulder. “Guard and tend this well, boys,” he said with startling affability, still smiling. “ ’Twill earn each of ye an extra twenty pounds a year.”

The road through the pines followed the crest down across the top of Mount George, where the views were glorious—the ocean, the whole of Sydney Town and its lagoons, the surf, Phillip and Neapean Islands. Stopping to gaze, Major Ross spoke.

“I have it in mind, Morgan, to free ye,” he said. “I cannot give ye an absolute pardon, but I can give a conditional one until time and altered circumstances make it possible for me to petition a full pardon from His Excellency in Port Jackson. I think ye’ve earned a better status as a free man than simple emancipation by virtue of having served out your sentence—which, as I remember, ye said expires in March of ninety-two?”