The Gallant (13 page)

“In three days’ time, God be praised, I shall quit this accursed island for Hobart Town on board the

Lady Franklin.

So also will the civil commandant-that archfiend in human form, Mr. John Price, with his wife and family, of whose sadistic cruelty this diary is, in part, a record.

“I have served my sentence and, by a miracle, I have survived. When I land in Hobart, it will be as a free man, but Overseer Bolton told me that we shall all be searched before we are permitted to board the ship. I dare not attempt to take this journal with me, for if it were to be found on my person, Mr.

Price would see to it that my release was indefinitely suspended-if he did not flay me alive.

“Therefore I must hide it, before Bolton comes back to strike off my fetters. I can only pray to the good Lord that one day it will be found and the awful truth concerning John Giles Price revealed.”

His hand not quite steady, Johnny passed across the table the yellowing page from which he had been reading.

“See for yourself, Red,” he invited grimly.

“It’s a pretty damning indictment of Price, by heaven it is!”

Red glanced at the cramped scrawl and frowned.

This had been written hurriedly, words and lines running into each other, but it was clear enough, the writer evidently taken by surprise at the overseer’s announcement and fearful of discovery-a more than adequate reason for his having hidden the diary, even though Commandant Price’s rule on Norfolk Island had come to an end.

William Stuart Long

“Let us see what the fellow has revealed, Johnny,” he suggested. “Look, this is one of the earlier pages-it’s dated two years earlier, March fifteenth, 1851.” In a flat, controlled voice, Red went on:

“Big Michael is again in Mr. Price’s black books. He had scarce served his three weeks in solitary, and for all he was weak as a kitten from the bread-and-water diet, the commandant ordered him to the quarry gang, to work in irons.

During inspection, he complained that his overseer-a brute named Silas Jones-was giving him only corncracker and water, and that the water was filthy and contaminated with slime. Price had the water changed but ordered Big Michael fifty lashes for making his complaint insolently, and doubled the sentence when Michael laughed at him.

“They flogged him, with a dozen others, this evening.

He took the flogging without making a sound, and then spat at Price’s feet when they cut him down.

Price put his damned eyeglass in his eye and shouted, “Give him the gag!” And then put him back in solitary for ten days. The constables hauled him off and beat him with their clubs, in the commandant’s plain view, but he did not reprimand them.”

Red drew a deep, angry breath. “God, Price was a sadist all right! You would never think so to meet him, though. I supposed him to be something of a martinet but no worse, until Chaplain Rogers opened my eyes.”

Johnny swore under his breath, continuing to search among the pages of the diary. “This is barely legible,” he observed, selecting one at random.

“It is dated thirteen October, 1846: “Twelve of the fourteen prisoners condemned to death as ringleaders of the mutiny in July, when Major Childs was in command, were today hanged.

We watched them led from the cells in the Old Gaol, six at a time, with Chaplain Rogers and Father Bond attending them to the foot of the gallows.

Thank God, it was swiftly done. Each man was pinioned, the noose put around his neck, and the bolt pulled. They protested their innocence right up to the last-Kenyon and

Kavanagh shouting it as they were turned off. There were the usual awful struggles, but not a man among the watchers broke silence. There was a strong guard of soldiers, of course, in case of trouble and-

“There are two lines I can’t read,” Johnny put in, “but it goes on:

“The bodies were piled into wooden coffins and hauled off in a bullock cart to the old sawpit outside the cemetery, where on Price’s orders a communal grave had been prepared. The Reverend Rogers had gone to change into his vestments, ready to read the burial service, but when he reached the sawpit, the bodies had already been interred.

“He told me himself, a few days afterward, when he visited me in the hospital, that it was on Commandant Price’s instructions that Christian burial was denied the condemned mutineers. Murderers and mutineers, in the civil commandant’s book, are seemingly beyond even heavenly forgiveness and should be treated like carrion. Whilst it is true that the men they hanged were all what we call Old Hands of the Ring-the gang leaders and capital respites-only two took part in the killings and three in the initial attack on the two constables. Jacky-Jackey Westwood bludgeoned Constables Quion and Saxton, and he led the attack on Overseer Smith, but most of the others were condemned because it was claimed they had blood on their clothing. They were members of the Ring, however, and Commandant Price was determined to break the Ring, and he did not care how he did it.”

“It was a pretty bloody affair, the mutiny,”

Red offered. “From all accounts”

“But that doesn’t justify the denial of Christian burial, when the wretched men had paid the penalty for what they did,” Johnny objected.

“They hanged them, didn’t they? And they were men-human beings, not animals.”

“Perhaps our diarist is prejudiced,” Red returned, with faint sarcasm. “Though I suppose he has reason to be.”

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“I think he undoubtedly has. Listen to this-it’s dated April 1847:

“The civil commandant seems determined to rid himself of every official who shows pity for the unfortunates imprisoned here. He has abolished the office of stipendiary magistrate and Mr. Barrow is to go.

Mr. Gilbert Robertson, the agricultural superintendent, has been dismissed for showing indulgence to his assigned servants, and the Reverend Rogers was packed off to Hobart last month. We are left with those who dance to Price’s tune, with convict informers made overseers and constables.

“And the punishments grow more merciless and barbarously inhumane. Compassion is not permitted. Men are brutally flogged and sent back to their labor gangs next day, with no dressing for their lacerated backs save a wet cloth or a banana leaf. Each day, at least a score are sentenced to the lash, and the ground on which the last few stand at the triangles is saturated with blood.

“But there are worse punishments than the lash.

Solitary confinement for six to fourteen days; imprisonment in a cell called the Nunnery, which measures six feet by twelve and sometimes houses a dozen men, with neither light nor adequate ventilation, whatever the outside temperature. The bridle and bit, used as a gag; the spread-eagle torture, with the unhappy prisoner secured to ring-bolts by hand and foot and placed against a wall.

Even in the hospital, men are frequently strapped to the beds, unable to move and gagged to prevent them from crying out.

“These penalties for such trivial breaches of discipline-a few minutes late at muster, for example-can earn a prisoner fourteen days in solitary. An attempt to abscond could mean three

months

and a hundred lashes in addition. I know this to be exactly true, for I have suffered it, and my taste of freedom in the bush was a scant two days and nights!”

From the deck above came the faint sound of a boat being hailed, and Red started to get to his feet.

“I must go, Johnny,” he apologized. “That will be the whaleboat, with our fresh provisions and-was “Cannot your officer of the watch deal with it?”

Johnny said impatiently. “This is important, Red. For the Lord’s sake, your Mr.

Dixon is efficient, isn’t he?”

“He is very efficient. But Francis will be bringing instructions for the embarkation tomorrow, and it’s always a tricky job negotiating the reef with fully laden boats, as you must realize by this time.” Red turned to peer through the stern window. The whaleboat, with Francis De Lancey, his first lieutenant, at the tiller, had come through the narrow channel without mishap, and the oarsmen were pulling clear of the pounding surf. The boat, however, was exceedingly low in the water; Francis must have crammed more than he should have into her, the young idiot, but … He turned back to his brother. “All right, Johnny, what have you found?”

“More about the fellow whom the diarist mentioned before, Big Michael. The poor devil who seems to have been the object of Commandant Price’s particular venom. And it’s given me-well, let’s say an idea. Listen, will you?”

Red resumed his seat at the chart table. “Very well, I’m listening. But make it short, will you please? I have to have a word with Francis about receiving the convicts. We have to accommodate fifty of them, in addition to Henry Day and his family and ten of his redcoats-not to mention the Cadogans. I shall have to give up my night cabin to Mrs. Day and her children, so my gear will have to be shifted this evening. And I may have to ask your Lady Kitty to double up with them.”

Johnny smiled thinly but offered no comment. He spread out two sheets of the diary in front of him, so that the faded handwriting caught the light from the stern window.

“It’s a mite hard to make out, but I’ll do my best, Red. The entry is dated November fourteenth, 1850:

“Arrived the

Lady Franklin

from Hobart with an ensign and twenty men of the Ninety-ninth Foot and sixty-seven convicts, classed as capital respites and incorrigibles.

One of these caused quite a stir, so much so that Commandant Price had him brought ashore ahead of the rest and heavily

William Stuart Long

ironed. I chanced to see him, as I was with the unloading gang on the jetty. He is a big, striking-looking fellow, with the manner and appearance of a gentleman-and he is taller, by several inches, than Price, who boasts that he stands all of six feet in height himself.

“I was reliably informed that the new addition to our thrice-damned ranks is a special-category prisoner, condemned to transportation for life for high treason. He goes by the name of Michael Wexford, which is not his real name, and rumor has it that he is titled and once served in the Royal Navy as a midshipman. Needless, perhaps, to add that he is Irish and that he hails from rebel country in the South.

“The commandant has singled him out for special treatment-that is to say that, although he has committed no breach of discipline since disembarking from the Franklin,

he has been put into the gaol gang, to work in chains. They say that his colonial conviction and present sentence to this godforsaken island was for bushranging, after absconding from his assigned place of work.”

Johnny paused, glancing across the table expectantly. “Well?” he challenged. “What does all that put you in mind of, Red?”

Red returned his stare, brows knit in a pensive furrow as he took in the

significance of the extract his brother had just read to him. The young Cadogans hailed from County Wexford-the surname the man known as Big Michael had adopted-they, too, were titled, and their home was in what the unknown diarist had called the “rebel country in the South.” And Michael had been condemned for high treason, a charge all too often leveled against those of Irish birth when they rose in revolt against British rule.

“We cannot be sure, Johnny,” he began. “Not on this evidence, for God’s sake!”

Johnny did not pretend to misunderstand him.

“I reckon we can,” he said firmly. “It all fits, doesn’t it? The Cadogans came here hoping perhaps that Big Michael was still on the island-or, God help them, to find out from the records whether or not he is still alive. They don’t know and they dare

not risk asking too many questions. But here, with Patrick’s supposed book as their excuse and Henry Day on terms of friendship, they could easily find out what they’re searching for, could they not?”

“I suppose they could.

If that

is what they are after. But-was

Johnny’s clenched fist came down on the chart table with a thud, scattering the flimsy pages of the diary. He retrieved them, murmuring an apology.

“Probably they were looking for this,” he suggested.

“The diary? But how could they know of its existence?”

Johnny considered the question. “I don’t know.

Except that -Red, whoever kept this diary had served his sentence. He says so, on the first page, doesn’t he?” He searched among the scattered sheets and, finding the one he wanted, read aloud: was “When I land in Hobart, it will be as a free man, but Overseer Bolton told me that we shall all be searched before we are permitted to board the ship. I dare not attempt to take this journal with me… dis’He says he hid it, but it’s evident that he hopes it will be found and … ‘the awful truth concerning John Giles Price revealed.” Well, he could have left Australia and gone back to England. Or … damn it, Ireland! Why should he not have sought out Michael’s family, told them about the diabolical treatment Price meted out to him, and-yes, told them about the diary, too! Red, this fellow’s diary could be the material for Patrick’s book …

and, if it were published, it would do Price’s reputation no good. It might ruin him. Perhaps that is what Michael wants, and Kitty and Patrick are trying to bring it about.”

“That is rather a farfetched notion, Johnny,” Red argued. “You’ve really nothing on which to base such a supposition, have you? I grant you that the poor devil the diarist refers to as Big Michael might

be related to the Cadogans, but I’m not convinced of it, not by a long chalk. You-was There was a knock on the cabin door, and he broke off. “Yes? Who is it?”

“Midshipman of the watch, sir.” Cap correctly tucked under his arm, the boy entered.

“First lieutenant’s respects, sir,” he added breathlessly. “And I’m to tell you that he has the lists of passengers and convicts ready for your attention when-that is, when it’s convenient, sir.”

William Stuart Long

“Very good, Mr. Appleby,” Red acknowledged.

“Tell the first lieutenant I’ll be with him right away.” When the youngster had gone, Red turned to his brother with a wry smile. “Take the bull by the horns, Johnny,” he advised. “Show the diary to the Cadogans.”