The Gallant (16 page)

printed on the jacket coma garb he hated. But …

He fell into step with the line of men ahead of him, his tanned and bony face devoid of expression.

Educated prisoners and those classed as gentlemen offenders were permitted to wear gray uniforms, and they were given tasks suited to their intellect, such as school teaching, gardening, or light work on the farms.

Many sang in the church choir and earned privileges in consequence; but because John Price had given him a bad record, his own plea for a change of category had been rejected by Commandant Boyd.

“Prove yourself, Wexford,” James Boyd had urged him. “Earn privileges by good

behavior-that is the only way here. You’ve come from Norfolk Island classed as incorrigible, so that six months in the chain gang is mandatory. But I shall watch you, and if you can show a willingness to cooperate and reform, I shall see to it that you are rewarded.”

Commandant Boyd was a fair man, Michael reflected; stern but never harsh or sadistic, as Price had been, and the convicts respected and, to a large extent, trusted him, for it was said that if he gave his word, he always kept it.

In his own case, however, the process of reformation had been fraught with difficulty. To the overseers-once convicts themselves-and the superintendents he was a marked man, regarded as dangerous because of his physical size and strength, and seen as the incorrigible Price had claimed him to be because of the scars on his back, with their outward and visible signs of past punishment with the lash.

Work as he might in quarry or timber yard, his zeal went unrecorded; let there be any breach of discipline in his gang and he was blamed for it. The Port Arthur commandant seldom resorted to flogging; the punishments he ordered were periods in solitary confinement and prolongation of

the time

to

be served in one of the chain gangs. He himself had passed almost a year now, laboring in heavy irons, and had only today completed a week in solitary because an overseer had charged him with failing to obey an order… . Michael drew a long, sighing breath, as he waited, without impatience, for the door of his cell to be opened.

He was back in his own cell, on the ground floor of the penitentiary, but was still required to eat his meals there, instead of in the dining hall with the rest. He entered, in obedience to the turnkey’s jerked head, and stood looking about him as the key rasped in the lock.

The cell was small-four and a half by nine feet-with a small window in the front wall that admitted a little light. The door had a peephole in it, to enable the patrolling constables to observe the cell’s interior, plus a trapdoor, through which food could be passed.

It was lime-washed and scrupulously clean and, like all the other cells in this wing, was furnished with a stool and three shelves, which accommodated a water cask, eating utensils, and a rolled hammock.

Only when the bell rang for lights out was it permitted to sling and occupy the hammock, and even in the coldest weather the two blankets with which each prisoner was supplied had to remain, during the hours of daylight, neatly folded on the allotted shelf.

But at least, Michael thought, there were books-a luxury he had not enjoyed on Norfolk Island.

The Port Arthur Penitentiary had a large and well-stocked library, and prisoners were encouraged to make use of it. Apart from the obligatory Bibie, with which each cell was supplied, he had half a dozen bound volumes whose pages, until he had taken them out, had never been opened. Which was scarcely surprising, since one, by Charles Darwin, was entitled

Journal of Researches into the Geology and Natural History of the Various Countries Visited by H.m.s. Beagle 1832-36,

and the remainder were wordy legal tomes that no one but a lawyer would comprehend.

William Stuart Long

Michael’s smile returned. He had read law at the University of Dublin after quitting the Royal Navy, and the law-or the practice of it-had never quite lost its appeal, although, he reminded himself sourly, the fact that he was a qualified attorney had been of singularly little help to him at his parody of a trial. Mr.

Justice Lurgan had, from the start, been strongly prejudiced against him and had preferred the evidence of partisan and perjured witnesses to that which he had offered in his own defense.

In particular, the hatchet-faced old judge had given undue weight to the claims made by Captain Septimus Leonard of Her Majesty’s

Wicklow Rifles, without seemingly being aware that the captain had lost a considerable sum of money to him at the gaming tables. The charges themselves had been outrageous, and the suggestion that he had been one of the leaders of a rebel Ribbonist sect-made only by Leonard-had never been investigated, much less proven. He-An eye appeared at the peephole in his cell door, and Michael stiffened.

“Your grub,” the turnkey told him, and a wooden plate containing two hunks of bread and-because it was Sunday and the last day of his spell of solitary-a bowl of soup were pushed through the hatch at the foot of the door with such force that soup slopped over the lip of the bowl. “It’s back to the jetty gang tomorrow for you, Nine-four-six-seven,” the warder added, with a certain malice. “Seems as Superintendent Delaney’s asked for you special “cause they’re loadin” timber at Cascades an’ he wants an ox to do a bit o’ heavin’ for “im. See you’re ready to set off in an hour.”

Michael offered no acknowledgment, but his spirits lifted. He knew the geography of the penal settlement on the Tasman Peninsula very well by now, having tramped the length and breadth of it in the course of his work with various chain gangs.

Cascades, which took its name from a spectacular waterfall nearby, was the main timber-felling convict outstation, with a steam-driven mill and a jetty from which ships were loaded with the mill’s produce. The station employed upward of three hundred men, but the hardest toil fell to the chain gang, who carried the heavy tree trunks from forest to mill, without any form of mechanical aid since the closing of the single-track railway, five or six years ago, on economic grounds and at the instigation of Governor Denison.

Michael pulled over his stool, picked up the meager meal the turnkey had brought him, sat down, and proceeded to demolish it. The soup was tepid, but it contained potatoes and some stringy scraps of meat, and he ate hungrily, dipping the dry hunks of bread in the greasy liquid to render it more palatable. He would need all his strength, he told himself, if the escape he had been planning for so long were to succeed.

His plan required that the attempt be made from some point near the narrow strip of land known as Eaglehawk Neck, which formed the only land access to Forestier Peninsula and East Bay Neck and thence to the mainland. Cascades, an inlet from Norfolk Bay, would be near enough for his purpose. It lay to the westward of Eaglehawk, but the going, following the line of the disused railroad, would be comparatively easy, even in darkness.

Eaglehawk Neck, however, presented an almost insuperable obstacle to any would-be absconder. It was a flat, 450-yard-wide strip of sand and rock, which was closely guarded, since it was the only way out of the prison settlement, and Michael was well aware that many had attempted to cross it to freedom but very few had ever done so successfully.

In addition to a guardhouse and armed military sentries, there were kerosene lamps positioned at intervals and lit at dusk, and savage watchdogs were chained in front of the lamps, to give warning of the approach of any intruder. Each animal, as he had seen for himself, was housed in a kennel constructed from a disused wooden barrel and remained there day and night, with three more on platforms built out into the sea, to cut off any attempt to wade round the line.

Yet for all that … He sighed and, his scanty meal finished, pushed plate and bowl out through the trapdoor. After pausing for a moment to listen, he took one of the books from the shelf. Concealed inside it was a metal file. He had made it himself in secret, and in secret had painstakingly filed away at his leg-irons so that, when the time came, a few blows with a heavy stone would shatter the weakened metal-a very necessary prelude to

Will mm Stuart Long

his attempt at escape, since if anything went wrong and the guards or the dogs discovered him, he would have to swim to elude them.

He was a strong swimmer. Since his childhood, he had enjoyed the sport, and there had been two occasions, during his naval service, when his prowess as a swimmer had been the means of saving life-his own, on the second occasion. There was talk of sharks in Eaglehawk Bay and in the open sea on the eastern side of the neck, but …

Michael’s lips compressed into a thin, hard line.

If all else failed, he would have to risk the sharks, just as Cash had. Better that than to submit to arrest and the inevitable punishment that would follow. And all else might

not

fail, if God had mercy on him and the plan to which he had given so much thought were to succeed.

True, he had not anticipated being assigned to the Cascades again quite so soon, but it made no difference-he was as ready now to put his plan into operation as he would ever be. In any event, it would be a lone escape; he wanted no companions when he made his bid for freedom, for there would be a long distance to cover if-when—

he contrived to cross the Eaglehawk Neck and the isthmus beyond, which was known as East Bay Neck. The Forestier Peninsula lay between the two and was an area of wild bush country hemmed in by precipitous cliffs, in which the pounding sea had worn treacherous inroads and deep caverns. But once its perils had been overcome, the rest would be comparatively easy, for the East Bay Neck was said to be lightly guarded, and beyond was the mainland-sparsely settled, according to rumor among the convicts.

Sparse settlements meant sheep runs and shepherds” isolated huts… . Michael finished his careful work with the file. He slipped the precious length of metal into the top of his heavy boot and stood up, easing it round his sock to prevent it from chafing.

Food-and more important, water-undoubtedly presented a problem, but he had made plans to solve that, too, based on what Cash had told him. He smiled, remembering. Martin Cash was a fellow countryman, born at Enniscorthy in County Wexford, and when he had been sent to Norfolk Island, he had talked freely of his exploits as absconder and bushranger, taking great pride in both.

Some eight or nine years before, he had made a successful escape from the Port Arthur prison with two companions-both members of the Ring and participants in the mutiny in Major Child’s day-Lawrence O’Reilly and George James.

The escape was still talked about for its daring and for the fact that the three of them had evaded capture for months by robbing shepherds’ huts and holding settlers to ransom.

“We had a rare fine time while it lasted,”

Cash had said, laughing with genuine amusement. “The small settlements are far apart, and often “tis only a man and his wife and children with a few sheep, and maybe a cow or two. Robbing them is child’s play, so it is, for they’re easily scared and offer no resistance. And the shepherds are ticket-of-leave men, who’ll not lift a finger, as a rule. But-was His laughter had faded, Michael recalled, and he had added wryly, “Sure, I might have been bushranging yet but for the one fellow who proved an exception to the rule. He loosed off two charges of buckshot into me and then another brace into poor old Lawrie. We were hurt so sorely that we’d no choice save to give ourselves up, and that was the end of it. The dastardly rogue earned himself a fifty-pound reward … and for us ‘twas life sentences on this infernal island, from where it truly is

impossible to escape. But if it had been Port Arthur now, I swear I could have done it again, for I tell you there are no sharks in Eaglehawk Bay, and I’m the living proof of it!”

Curiously enough, on Norfolk Island the formidable Cash had become a model prisoner.

Approaching his middle forties and sobered by the hanging of Lawrence O’Reilly following the mutiny, he had ceased to defy authority. Commandant Price had first broken him and had then shown him favors. When the commandant had left Norfolk early in “53, Cash had left with him, granted a conditional pardon and the promise of employment in Hobart as a free man. It was said that he was working in Hobart’s botanical gardens, but in convict circles at Port Arthur his name was still a legend, spoken with awe.

Booted footsteps woke echoes from the long corridor outside, and anticipating the summons, Michael was standing by the door of his cell when it was jerked open and a stout, blue-uniformed prison officer put his head inside.

William Stuart Long

“Ready to take a walk, Wexford?” he asked briskly. “Gear packed up?”

Michael indicated his rolled blanket and, at a nod from the gray-haired officer, hefted it onto his shoulder. John Staveley was one of the more popular of the prison staff, an ex-sergeant wounded in the war between settlers and Maoris in New Zealand ten years earlier. He was known and respected for his fairness, and although a punctilious disciplinarian, he was one who, when out of the hearing of his superiors, was often willing to permit the prisoners to converse with him.

Cheered by the realization that Staveley was to be his escort on the journey to the Cascades station, Michael followed him with something approaching alacrity. But his momentary elation faded when, in the yard outside, he saw that half a dozen men, in chains like himself, were being mustered preparatory to departure. Four were strangers-newly arrived, judging by their apprehensive expressions and the awkward manner in which they handled their leg-irons-but the other two were well known to him.

Will Haines and Joshua Simmons had been on Norfolk Island during his time there, both capital respites, Michael remembered, and he remembered also, with disgust, their reputation as sodomists and the fact that Haines had been convicted for the brutal murder of a child in the Victoria goldfields.

He said nothing, but evidently his expression betrayed him, for Staveley observed in a low voice, “Not the company you’d have chosen, Big Michael, eh? Not the best of fellows to share a hut with, are they, those two?”