Prison Ship (19 page)

‘We should go to China,' he said, nursing his third tot of rum. ‘I've seen it on plates. Beautiful blue bridges and buildings, lovely ladies in kimonos, lots of weeping willow trees. I likes the look of China.'

Richard and I had both seen maps of the world. We knew where New South Wales was and we knew where China was. We also knew how long it would take to get there.

‘China is too far to the north,' said Richard. ‘It would take months to sail there, and years to walk – even if you could walk all the way, which you can't.'

‘I've heard it's only a month or so,' said Bell. ‘I'm up for it.'

Barrie had taken in what we had said. ‘These boys know their onions, Mr Bell. I think we should listen to them. But I've heard there's a place maybe three, four hundred miles north up the coast from 'ere – another colony. White people, French, Dutch, I can't remember, but they welcome the likes of us with open arms. We could walk that in a few weeks. They need white people working there, not like these lazy savages.'

I had to suppress a smile. Bell and Barrie were the two laziest people I'd ever met in my life.

‘What about the natives?' I said. ‘Don't they eat the
white people they catch?'

Barrie shook his head. ‘That's all stories to stop us running away, Sam. The only time those savages get violent is when one of our lot does them a mischief.'

We started to argue. Richard and I had never heard of this colony. Bell was growing impatient. ‘So what else is there? You come up with a better idea, and I'll go along with you. I still say we oughta go to China. There's another place on the west coast here, I've heard. Another colony. We could try for that.'

Richard sounded impatient. ‘Come on now. You're not thinking straight. It took our ship a month to sail along the south coast. It'll take, what, a year to walk it? Then what if we get there and find nobody's there?'

‘What about New Zealand, then?' I said. I knew it was several weeks at sea, but we seemed to be running out of options.

‘New Zealand?' snapped Bell. ‘Where've you been? Now that's a place where they
do
eat people. I'm not going there.'

I realised like never before what a good place New South Wales was to build a convict colony. Where the hell were we going to go?

‘We don't have a great deal of choice,' said Richard. ‘So, I suggest we go north and see if we can find this mythical colony of yours. If we stay here, we're all dead men. Tuck will flog you two to death,' he nodded at
Barrie and Bell, ‘and he'll string our guts up to dry on the nearest tree.'

‘We're not too far from the coast. It'll be east of here,' I said. ‘If we follow the sun and the stars to get there, we can go north along the shoreline.' They all nodded, warming to this idea. My confidence grew. ‘And the beach will be easier to walk along than the forest, and we'll have a greater chance of finding food on our way. The natives eat mussels and oysters along the coastal rocks. We should do the same.'

‘North,' we all said, raising our glasses in a toast. Then Richard and I slunk away to bed.

He was uneasy about our plan. ‘After all that excitement, I don't think there is a colony in the north,' he said. ‘Do you?'

‘There's only the flimsiest hope that this colony in the north actually exists,' I said. ‘But that's better than no hope at all, isn't it?' I was trying hard to convince myself we weren't doing something stupid.

Richard shook his head and said nothing. Then, as we lay in the dark, he voiced his worries.

‘Perhaps we should sneak back to Sydney and try to stow away aboard an outbound ship? There are French and American ships that stop off to reprovision or trade. Perhaps one of them will take runaways? I've heard there are American whalers too, whose captains were happy to take skilled seamen.'

‘They'd take us,' I said. ‘But they'd take one look at Bell and Barrie and know they'd be useless
and
trouble.'

Richard gave a mirthless laugh. ‘They'd never agree to that, so it's not even worth raising it. I wish we weren't a package. You and me. Bell and Barrie.'

‘We need them to escape from here, don't we?' I said. ‘I like the idea of trying to get on a ship in Sydney, but it may be weeks or months before one comes in. We can't bet on staying in hiding that long. And even if we did manage to get aboard, the captain might refuse to take us. We'll just have to take our chances with those two.'

Richard let out a long weary sigh and said no more.

I felt unhappy lying down to sleep without my mother's ring around my neck. I was used to having it there, warm against my skin. I had long thought of it as a good luck charm to keep me safe, like Rosie's letters had been on the
Miranda
, and I had hoped to always be able to keep it. It was my one solid link with my family and home.

As I drifted off, a stray thought kept nagging away at the back of my mind. I had heard people talking about this colony of white men somewhere outside Sydney. It came up in conversations I had overheard in the Sailor's Arms. Only I could swear that the place they all talked about was somewhere south of Sydney, not north.

Although I was anxious about trusting him with the ring, Barrie was as good as his word. Charlie Palmer agreed to help, and provided us with weapons and food to see us through the first few days of our escape. Every day we wondered when to go. ‘We need a good moonshiney night,' said Barrie. ‘No good going on a new moon. We might as well put on blindfolds and run away.'

Charlie was to remove our shackles as soon as we were left alone in the evening. We knew that Perrion often stayed awake until midnight playing his piano.
Any disturbance after that would be sure to be detected, especially by Tinker the dog.

On the day of our escape we went to Barrie and Bell's hut an hour after dark. They were both cagey. ‘What if Palmer don't turn up?' Bell kept saying.

The thought of failure in our escape hung over me like a sullen phantom. What could I expect? Flogging, hanging. Even if we got away from the farm we faced starvation, exhaustion, a grisly death at the hands of the natives. No one could be bothered to make small talk. We just sat and listened. Insects chirped. Possums cackled. Fear gripped my insides.

There was a rustle in the grass outside the hut, and we heard Tinker bark in the distance. A round-faced man poked his head through the door. He looked flushed and anxious. He was out of breath and, despite the coolness of the night, sweat dripped down his forehead. Barrie spoke curtly.

‘You took yer time, Charlie.'

‘What a palaver,' he said. ‘I'm not used to this lurking around. There's enough in this bag to get me hung three times over.'

There was too. Hammer, chisel, a pistol, shot and powder, an axe, hunting knives, fish hook and twine, bread, cheese, meat. Charlie Palmer had done his best for us.

Barrie spoke. ‘We'll do the boys first. Mr Bell will sort
you out. He's done this before.'

Charlie handed over his tools. I lay down, face to the ground, the smell of earth sharp in my nostrils. This was the point of no return. Once the shackles were off, I had to escape.

Bell brought the hammer down hard. A sharp pain shot through my ankle and a loud CLANG disturbed the evening quiet.

The shackle fell away. ‘That hurt,' I said, rubbing my bruised ankle. ‘Shut your face,' said Bell, ‘I'm more worried about the bloody noise we're making.'

I had no right to whinge; the blow hadn't even broken the skin. ‘Quick,' said Barrie, ‘let's do the other one and be done with it.'

I lay down again and Bell took the hammer to the other shackle. I winced with pain as the blow came down on the iron cuff round my ankle. Then the shackles were off. I staggered to my feet, feeling as light-footed as a gambolling lamb. I wanted to dash out of the hut and run and run until my chest was bursting. To be able to move without those chains was a joy. But the pleasure was short-lived.

‘This is going to make an awful racket,' said Bell, ‘doing all four of us.'

‘Keep this up and we'll have Perrion down 'ere in no time,' said Barrie.

I listened with mounting anxiety. ‘So what are you
saying? You're not going to take off the other shackles?'

No one said anything. I began to wonder what I was going to say to Perrion in the morning.

Then Barrie's face lit up. ‘What happens about this time every evening?'

We all looked blank.

‘The ducks and geese come over, making one hell of a commotion. That's the time to strike off the shackles.'

We listened intently, eager for the first distant sounds of flapping and honking. The minutes dragged until, at last, we heard them coming and I started to breathe a little easier.

In the midst of this unholy racket, Richard's shackles came off, then Barrie's. Finally, and in some haste, Barrie took the hammer and chisel and began to hack at Bell's ankles before the noise subsided. He made a bad job of it. Bell shot up in agony, as the chisel missed its bolt and the iron bit into his flesh. ‘Hold still, you arse,' said Barrie, and quickly finished the job before the last of the fowl landed in the river.

‘You bleedin' idiot,' said Bell, holding on to his left ankle. Blood was seeping out of a nasty gash.

‘Shut up with yer moaning,' said Barrie. ‘Bone's not broken, is it.'

When they weren't being courteous to each other they bickered like a couple who had been married forty years and hated the sight of each other.

Bell got up. He hobbled with the pain, but he didn't seem too distressed. ‘Not had these off me for three years,' he said. ‘I could run a mile without a pause for breath.'

‘Right,' said Barrie. ‘Job done. Thank you Charlie. Now wish us luck. The next time you see us we might be dangling from a gallows.'

Charlie Palmer crept away. Later in the evening, the piano playing started. First the hymns – that must be Mrs Perrion – then a succession of slow and beautiful melodies. Perrion played from the soul, and the notes floated into the still night air and over the fields and bush that surrounded Green Hills. If they were out there, I wondered what the natives made of such music. Theirs had its own beguiling rhythm and a low throb which seemed to come from the very core of the earth. Would this elegant succession of notes sound as foreign to them as their own music did to me?

The music stopped. We waited until complete stillness descended, then crept out. Richard and me hurried over to our own hut to pick up a few more clothes, a little food we had managed to hoard, a blanket apiece and a mess tin each to cook with. We hoped there would be plenty of fresh water in the streams that would cross our path.

Then we stole away, slowly at first, nervous of any
snapping twig or clumsy stumble. But even Tinker did not stir to signal our escape, and the sound of our feet swishing through the long grass went undetected. The further we got from the farm the faster we ran.

It was past dawn when we stopped to rest. So far, the journey had taken us through lush meadow, and past outlying farms. Pausing to wolf down a slice of bread and a couple of plums, we scanned the horizon behind us for any sign that we were being followed. Ahead lay thicker bush.

‘Once we get to that, they'll never find us,' said Barrie between hurried mouthfuls.

We scurried through enveloping ferns, tangled roots and fallen branches that now marked our every step away from Green Hills. Trees crowded around our heads, their branches blocking the light and heat from the sun.

Every distant noise made me start, and I wondered if we would be able to outrun the search party that would be sent after us. On that first day of our escape we were gripped by a constant anxiety that men and dogs would appear as distant dots behind us, but they never did. Perhaps they had set out looking for us in another direction?

‘Maybe they think we wouldn't be stupid enough to head for that colony in the north?' I said, and immediately wished I hadn't. Almost as soon as we had left I had
started to believe we were on a hiding to nowhere.

‘We agreed this is the best way,' said Barrie angrily, ‘so we're not changing our route now.'

‘Yeah,' said Bell. ‘And don't go thinking you're heading off different from us. I'm not having you two squealing on us when you get caught, or giving up and going back to the farm. I'll snap your necks like a couple of chickens before you do.'

Richard tried to make the peace. ‘Once we get to the coast we'll be sure of something to eat, so let's not waste our time arguing.'

Barrie held up a hand to hush him. ‘What's that ahead?'

There in a clearing we could make out a mouldy old boot, lying flat on the ground. When the wind blew strong in our direction the smell hit us – sickly sweet and cloying. The sound of buzzing flies reached our ears. As we approached the corpse, three sullen crows fluttered away.