Sara Dane

by Catherine Gaskin

  ‘Marry you? Oh, Andrew …!’

  He brought his hand down with an impatient slap on the bulwark. ‘Don’t pretend you haven’t guessed that I’m in love with you! The whole ship must know it by this time.’

  ‘In love with me … perhaps. But have you forgotten that I’m on this ship as a convict?’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten that ‒ of course I haven’t. But these things can be arranged. If I ask permission to marry you, I don’t see any difficulty about Governor Phillip granting you a pardon. He has the power to do it, and, if he doesn’t ‒ I’ll marry you just the same, and then he’ll be forced to assign you to me as a housekeeper until your sentence expires.’

  She turned her eyes away from him, looking across the brilliant stretch of water. She said slowly, ‘It can’t be as simple as you make it sound.’

  ‘It’s completely simple! We have to take our chance ‒ we have to do what hasn’t been done before. I’m going to marry you, Sara. I’m going to make you free!’

  She made no answer.

  ‘Well?’ he said, finally.

  She shook her head. ‘But I don’t see how …’

  ‘You don’t see how!’ The words broke from him with an undertone of irritation. ‘I’ve told you how it can be managed. All we have to do is to be firm about it. Everything will fall into place. When we’re married we can settle all the difficulties.’

  Turning, she answered him heatedly. ‘But it’s when we’re married that the difficulties arise. Don’t you see that? Just try to think of the future, Andrew ‒ with an ex-convict wife. And your children …’ Her voice dropped. ‘My dear,’ she said patiently, ‘see it sensibly. It wouldn’t work …’

  He took a deep breath. ‘But this is a new country we’re going to ‒ it’s a whole new world! There’ll be ways of settling the conventions to suit ourselves. Forget about the rules of society that apply in England. In the colony there are none ‒ or very few. In a new country we make the rules ourselves. It’s been like that with America ‒ why not New South Wales?’

  He grew excited; his face sharpened with eagerness. ‘It’s an adventure, Sara! It’s something to fix your whole mind and heart to. If I had you with me, there’s nothing I couldn’t do. Nothing! Are you worried that I’d fail? I have some money invested in the East India Company ‒ I’ll withdraw it, and that will be enough to start us. It’s not a fortune, certainly ‒ but it’s a beginning. What do you say, Sara?’ he said earnestly. ‘Will you chance it with me? There could be wealth at the end of it ‒ perhaps for our children. There’s the excitement of a new country, and a new life for both of us.

  ‘You’ll share everything I have. It’s not a great deal I offer you. I’m a plain man ‒ a sailor, a farmer, and something of a gambler. Is that enough? Will you have me?’

  She answered wildly, ‘If it were just a question of this year ‒ of next year ‒ I’d say “yes”. But marriage is for the rest of our lives. What about the time when that adventuring blood of yours has cooled down, and you’ve farmed as many acres of this new land as you can count, and you’ve achieved everything you ever dreamed of achieving? Are you going to look at me then and tell yourself that I’m the one thing in your bright world that doesn’t fit? Whatever pardon I might get from Governor Phillip, I’ll always be known as an ex-convict. When you make your fortune, can you stomach my past along with it?’

  Suddenly he smiled, and an expression of tenderness and joy came into his face. ‘My darling Sara, I’ll stomach it all! Your past, and your future as well. I’ll make you the most envied ex-convict in the world! You’ll be so gloriously happy, so much a queen in your own home, that every other woman will wish she were an ex-convict as well!’

  A hot flush sprang to her cheeks. ‘You’re laughing at me, Andrew!’

  ‘Sweet Sara, I’m not laughing! I’m merely telling you how foolish you are. Doesn’t it tempt you to consider that I could give you back all that empty respectability your heart’s yearned after ever since you ran away from your blasted rectory?’

  She said, in a low voice, ‘I’d rather stay a convict than have you look at me ten years from now, and know that you regretted marrying me.’

  ‘Sweetheart!’ he said gently. ‘Give me the ten years, and let me show you what I’ll make of them. Will you?’

  ‘I … I don’t know.’

  He frowned. ‘Haven’t I the right to something more positive than that?’

  ‘Andrew …’ she said hesitantly. ‘Wait until we reach Botany Bay. You’ll have had time to think about it more than once by then. Perhaps you’ll find the idea of a convict wife isn’t so attractive to you.’

  She swung round, making to leave him, but he reached out and caught her hand, bowing over it slightly, and pressing it to his lips.

  ‘It’s a very long voyage to Botany Bay,’ he murmured. ‘Before we’re half-way there, I’ll have you seeing all this as I do.’

  He let her go then, watching, as she made her way, with her erect, even walk, across the deck to the companion-way. His face was taut with excitement and passion. The cries of the animals and the shouts of the men below seemed to swell to an unbearable tumult. He straightened himself, and turned to face the stares of the men who had witnessed the scene.

  After leaving Andrew on the deck, Sara went below immediately to the Ryders’ cabin. Julia turned expectantly as she entered.

  ‘What is it, Sara?’

  For the moment Sara didn’t answer. She closed the door behind her, and stood with her back pressed firmly against it. She was breathing quickly and Julia couldn’t tell whether it was with excitement or anger.

  ‘Andrew Maclay has asked me to marry him,’ she said at last.

  Julia drew in a sharp breath. So, she thought, it had finally come, this situation for which she had waited. And not altogether in the way she had expected.

  ‘And what answer did you give him?’ she asked quietly.

  Sara lifted her chin higher. ‘I told him to consider it until we reach Botany Bay. He’ll know by then if he still wants a convict as a wife.’

  ‘And if he has changed his mind?’ Julia questioned.

  Sara shrugged her shoulders slightly. ‘In that case, he’ll go off to the East when the ship sails again. If he’s still of the same opinion, he’ll stay where he is and take up farming.’

  Julia regarded the other sharply. She didn’t like it when Sara assumed this air of unconcern in a matter of such importance to her.

  ‘Sara, you’re not fooling me any more than you’re fooling yourself!’ she cried. ‘This is what you wanted. You’ve worked for this. You’ve no intention of letting him go ‒ so why, in heaven’s name, can’t you give him a proper answer?’

  Sara took a step forward. She had dropped her defiance, and now looked unsure of herself. Her face was troubled.

  ‘I will let Andrew go, if he doesn’t want to go through with it. I won’t hold him, if I find he’s changed his mind.’

  ‘He won’t try to back out,’ Julia said. ‘He’s in love with you ‒ everyone knows that. And if he has asked you to marry him, he means to go through with it.’

  Sara flared into life again. ‘But it’s an impossible marriage! I’m a convict ‒ and he doesn’t seem to realize what that means. He has all sorts of high-flown notions of making his own rules of convention in the colony. He thinks I’ll fit in. He thinks he can make me acceptable!’ She was passionate in her outburst.

  Julia turned away. She sat down at the dressing-table, and let her hands rest idly in her lap. There was enough of an element of trouble in this situation to make a cautious woman draw back ‒ but Julia was beginning to realize, with a mild feeling of astonishment, that, after all these years of placid married life, at heart she had never been a cautious woman. She considered the two young people. Andrew Maclay was nobody’s fool, and Sara could match him in spirit and shrewdness, one not out-reaching the other. Supposing she encouraged this marriage? If she were openly to show her trust and respect for Sa
ra, it could be made much easier for Governor Phillip to grant her a pardon. It might be a dangerous thing to do ‒ interfering in the lives of two people who must make their own strange decision. Yet the idea excited her. She saw this marriage as a desperate adventure ‒ it was bold and daring, and it appealed strongly to her. She leaned forward, tilting the mirror so that she might see Sara’s reflection. They would be a good pair for a new country, she decided.

  She swung around and rose to her feet.

  ‘Sara, I think you must accept Andrew’s offer. He doesn’t think it’s an impossible proposition, and I don’t either.’

  For a while neither spoke; but Julia, watching Sara’s face, saw it soften, and then the excitement came back into her eyes. For the first time, also, she fancied she saw the beginning of tears there.

  Chapter Five

  Since rounding the tip of Van Diemen’s Land, whose mountains had risen coldly out of the southern ocean, the Georgette had followed the eastern edge of the new continent for some six or seven hundred miles. This was the Terra Australis of the early navigators’ maps ‒ the coast which Cook had charted, the cliffs and inlets that were the fringe of an unknown world. At sunset on the first of October, 1792, the look-out sighted the giant headlands, a mile apart, at the entrance to Port Jackson. The Georgette hove to, and waited for the morning light before she attempted the passage through the channel of deep water between them.

  All on board, the crew, the convicts, the four passengers, had endured an experience of utter isolation; they had survived, and were now trying to forget it. The weather, almost from the time of leaving the Cape, had been vile. They headed directly south, nearing the Antarctic Circle, then steering a course sharply east to round the promontory of Van Diemen’s Land. Few of them escaped sickness; they were all cold, suffering in this last sting of the Southern winter. Supplies of fresh food were consumed too rapidly, and they faced the deadly round of meals of salt pork. The livestock fared badly; some of it died. They had seen whales, and giant albatrosses that circled the ship steadily, dropping below the bulwark and appearing again as the Georgette rose and fell in the heavy seas. Their belongings had been soaked by the waves breaking inboard, and with the convicts’ quarters awash there was no way of stemming the constant streams of cursing and abuse. There was a good deal of drinking among the officers, and they quarrelled frequently, bickering over petty affairs, gambling listlessly and complaining of each other. The strain grew worse as the journey lengthened, and rations of food and water grew smaller. But somehow, through all this, they managed the unvarying routine of running the ship, keeping her on a course that was always farther south and farther east, plodding on into unknown seas, constantly touched by the knowledge and dread of their isolation. Fear, as tangible and real as the foul weather itself, hung over them; no one spoke of it ‒ it declared itself in their indulgence in drink, and their stupid, meaningless quarrels.

  But there was one incident of the voyage which they would not forget. The Georgette was two weeks out of the Bay when the first faint rumour of mutiny among the convicts ran through her, like some soft and eerie piping. An Irishman, Patrick Reilly, transported for life, was the informer; he gave the information to Roberts when he was brought before him, threatened with punishment for insubordination. Reilly’s warning was ominous; none knew, nor could guess, what desperate courage and daring the convicts might have gained from their misery and wretchedness. A thorough search for weapons revealed nothing more than a few knives. Yet the unease refused to die. Common sense told the ship’s officers that these men, weakened from bad food and confinement, with disease and the threat of scurvy among them, could achieve little in the way of effective mutiny ‒ but the fear persisted. Privately, each wondered if perhaps it might be he who would have the watch when the outbreak occurred, if it might be he who was to feel the sudden stab of the knife, hear the helmsman’s warning cry. It was obvious to all that a rebellion on board must necessarily be short-lived, but even that knowledge was of little help. They each felt that he himself would be the one to die as a gesture to mark its beginning.

  The sense of crisis oppressed the ship for a week before the climax. It came when the nerves of every man in the Georgette were taut with waiting, and even the faintest stir, which might be considered out of the ordinary, was enough to cause a mad and hot-headed panic. It occurred because one of the prisoners, sullenly fighting the pain of dysentery, was gripped in his sleep with hysterical nightmare. He screamed, and continued to scream ‒ the piercing sounds shattered the silence of the watchful, darkened ship. The unnerved guards took this as the signal for the mutiny; they fired without aim into the blackness of the convict quarters. There was shouting and confusion and the glaring flash of shot. Four men were cut down before reason told the guards to halt.

  Three of these were dead by the morning; the fourth lingered a day longer. They were dropped overside in their canvas swathing without the usual line-up of convicts to witness the ceremony, and if mutiny had ever been planned aboard the Georgette, its spirit died with them. The guards were punished as a token of discipline, though the feeling running through the entire company was that these two had been the unfortunate instruments of the wider, deeper fear which possessed the rest.

  But other thoughts claimed them when the peaks of the mountains of Van Diemen’s Land thrust themselves out of the ocean. The Georgette turned north again, and the breezes grew warmer; at times the spring sunshine was hot. They watched the coastline of the continent warily. It revealed nothing beyond long, curving beaches, and vegetation of grey and indefinite greens. Those who had not seen it before ‒ that was everyone except Brooks ‒ reserved judgement. The ship’s company had hailed the sight with relief, reckoning among themselves how soon now they would be free of their troublesome cargo, and sailing again towards more congenial trade with India and China.

  II

  In the wardroom Andrew stacked the cards and leaned back in his chair. His glance flicked briefly over the other three men, Harding, Brooks and Wilder, who sat with him.

  ‘Well, gentlemen, I’m afraid I’ll have to withdraw. I’m on watch in fifteen minutes.’

  They said nothing; Wilder shifted in his chair and half-stifled a yawn; Harding fidgeted with his cigar. Watching them, the ghost of a smile touched Andrew’s lips.

  ‘A lively lot, you are!’ he remarked, to no one in particular. ‘Are none of you going to wish me well? This is the last watch I shall stand at sea in the Georgette ‒ it’s the end of my commission with the East India Company.’

  Still no one spoke, and the silence grew noticeably heavy. As Andrew looked at each in turn, their eyes avoided his.

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I see you think it’s wiser to say nothing, when you believe a man is about to ruin his life in one mad act of folly.’ He shrugged. ‘Perhaps you’re right. A madman never listens to advice.’

  Then he bent over the score. The silence continued while he made his calculations.

  Finally he straightened, passing the slip of paper to Harding.

  The first officer noted the total with a resigned air; his lips moved visibly as he checked Andrew’s figures. At last he nodded slowly, handing on the paper to Brooks, who sat on his left.

  ‘Your run of luck never seems to come to an end, Maclay,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m afraid this game leaves me still considerably in your debt.’

  Brooks made no comment; he merely nodded and passed the paper on to Wilder. The other took it disinterestedly, then frowned and sat up abruptly as he saw the total.

  ‘I can’t owe you as much as this, Maclay!’

  ‘It’s not all from tonight’s game,’ Andrew said. ‘You don’t forget that you’ve had steady bad luck since we left the Cape? That’s the total amount you owe me.’

  ‘And you expect me to pay this before we leave Port Jackson?’

  ‘Naturally.’ Andrew turned from Wilder to include the other two. ‘I’ve enjoyed your company and your play, gentlemen ‒ but t
his is undoubtedly the end of it. Within the next few days I’ll be leaving the ship, and staying on in New South Wales. You all continue the voyage. None of us can say when, if ever, we’ll meet again.’

  Wilder said, ‘But damn it ‒ you know I can’t pay as much as this immediately! I’ve put all the money I could spare into cargo to sell here and in the East.’

  Andrew’s expression didn’t alter as he listened to Wilder. He flicked the cards between his fingers, appearing not to take any notice of the others. He knew they were each waiting for him to answer, but he was in no hurry to come to terms with Wilder ‒ let him have a few moments longer to consider his position, and to wonder how he was going to find the money. Andrew saw that a frown of impatience was beginning to gather on Harding’s forehead. He stopped playing with the cards, and turned to Wilder.

  ‘Part of your cargo is in livestock, isn’t it? I seem to remember three cows and eight hogs.’

  ‘Yes,’ Wilder said.

  ‘Then,’ Andrew said quietly, ‘I’ll accept the livestock in payment for the debt.’

  ‘Oh, no!’ Wilder answered quickly. ‘I can’t agree to that. I may get a better price from the Commissary than the value of this debt.’

  Andrew shrugged. ‘That is, of course, your own risk. You may also be offered a lower price for them.’

  He drew a fresh sheet of paper towards him, and made some quick calculations on it. When he was finished he pushed it across the table to Wilder.

  ‘The last record we have of prices in the colony is a year out of date. But, reckoning on those prices, the value of your livestock falls short of the debt.’

  Wilder sat staring at the figures in silence. Harding was leaning forward in his chair now, watching the faces of both the younger men.

  Andrew said, ‘As it stands, you’re the gainer on the transaction, Wilder. But when we get into Port Jackson tomorrow, you may find that the market value of the livestock has gone up ‒ in which case you’re the loser.’

  Abruptly he banged the table with his closed fist. ‘Will you gamble on it? I may as well warn you now that once I leave this table tonight I’ll expect repayment of the debt in full ‒ even if I have to take part of your cargo for the East as well.’