Mosquito Creek

by Robert Engwerda

  ‘I have no idea what you are talking about.’

  The sergeant was ready to spill everything he suspected but hesitated a second, that old blood in him telling him to be careful, watch what he said. But then, he might not get another chance. And the blanket he noticed folded over the back of the commissioner’s chair. That pattern with the embroidered ‘M’ – or was it a ‘W’? Where had he seen that before?

  ‘So, if that’s all, Sergeant …’

  ‘And the other matter about Delaney’s farm,’ Niall pushed on, turning back around.

  ‘Whose farm?’

  ‘Delaney’s farm.’

  The commissioner looked him up and down. ‘It is our property now.’

  ‘It’s our property till the epidemic is over. Then we are supposed to return it to Delaney.’

  ‘Sergeant, it is our property now. We have appropriated it and we will keep it for as long as I decide to, which I expect to be for a considerable time.’

  ‘Till the epidemic is over.’

  ‘Until I say so,’ Stanfield said, his lips tighter than ever.

  To Niall, Stanfield still seemed to be wearing the effects of whatever had caused his collapse yesterday. His eyes were flat and distant, his whole appearance dishevelled. He was unsteady on his feet as he prepared to venture outside. And beyond that his anger was rising as he tried getting into his boots.

  ‘And it’s what’s going on there too,’ Niall said forcibly.

  ‘And how do you know what is taking place there? I have put the property off limits to everyone but a small force … Damned boots!’

  ‘The dead there.’

  ‘More rumours, is it? I do not even know what you are referring to!’

  ‘The bodies. Burning bodies to get rid of them.’

  The commissioner finally forced his feet into his boots.

  ‘Do you understand how quickly disease can spread?’ He spoke slowly and deliberately now, acidly, as though to a dullard. ‘Do you understand how quickly this entire goldfield could be annihilated if we do not take decisive action? What would England and my father think of me if I was to simply let everything run to water? What will they already think of me after what happened last night?’

  ‘What’s the circus got to do with it? I’m talking about the way those troopers are getting rid of the bodies at Delaney’s farm.’

  ‘The difference between you and me,’ Stanfield continued pointedly, ‘is where we come from, where we have been educated and what we have learnt. And how we lead men. I was made goldfields commissioner because of who I am and what I know. The government expects me to make decisions as I see fit.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you act without respect to who people are, even when they’re dead.’

  ‘Again, do you know what cholera is?’

  ‘I know what cholera is.’

  ‘You leave me to make the decisions, Sergeant Kennedy. I thought you an ally but I can see now that you are no better than the rest.’

  ‘I do what I’m paid to do and I take my orders. I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me. I don’t know why you’ve taken that Ramage on, though. Or the new troopers.’

  ‘I have made the right decisions. If incompetency on the part of others has led to failure I am not to blame. I cannot be held responsible for the weaknesses of others.’

  Stanfield had already expended most of what little energy he had. He looked tired, wan.

  ‘What happens next, then?’ Niall asked, still smarting. ‘You want me to tell you when I find Phillip Oriente? Or will you be telling me?’

  ‘I will be going to inspect the boat again,’ the commissioner said flatly. ‘At least that will be one thing no one else can ruin.’

  ‘Perhaps I should come along then, too.’

  ‘I will take one of the troopers outside. You’ve other things to do, I’m sure, and there is more than enough chaos on the goldfield today to require your full attention. See if you can keep your mind on the pressing tasks in front of you.’

  Watching Stanfield step out Niall wondered whether he shouldn’t insist on going too and continue his questioning. The commissioner still appeared unsteady and uncertain, even clumsy as he walked. Niall watched him disappear with the other trooper in tow. Although put out by Stanfield’s rebukes and his own inability to nail the commissioner down, he had to admit his parting comments were right. There was plenty to do.

  Over at the main troopers’ hut the mails had come in. Niall wasn’t expecting any personal mail for himself – no one had written to him since he had arrived in Australia – but he’d sent a note to Beechworth on first discovering Oriente was missing in the hope of learning something about him. To make sure he’d receive a speedy reply he had despatched a rider rather than sending his letter by coach mail. And the superintendent of police at Beechworth had read his letter and acted upon it immediately.

  At the simple, rude table in the troopers’ hut Niall prised open the letter from Beechworth, cracking the seal on the back and wrestling the starchy contents free of its envelope.

  He hadn’t expected to learn much and scanning through the letter he wasn’t too surprised or disappointed in that regard. There was little that he could offer, the apologetic superintendent wrote. The miner Oriente had spent several weeks at Beechworth on his way to the Mosquito Creek goldfields. During his brief stay there he had been convicted once of public drunkenness, for which he was detained in the police cells overnight and fined one pound. Notes attached to his conviction indicated Oriente was originally from the county of Sussex, was aged twenty-three and had come to Australia to look for goldmining or other labouring work. The last piece of information the writer offered was that this Oriente journeyed to Australia aboard the ship Whitby about January 1855. The letter was signed Superintendent of Police, Beechworth, Robert O’Hara Burke.

  Not the James Cook, as Oriente’s digging mates had thought, then, but the Whitby. And that blanket he’d just seen at the commissioner’s! He remembered with a jolt that the blanket he’d noticed in Oriente’s tent was identical in pattern to Stanfield’s. ‘W’ for Whitby.

  Niall walked as quickly as he could to the storage hut where Oriente’s possessions were being kept. If there was anything more to be learnt, he thought, it would have to come out of those two packing cases, whether he was happy about breaking into them or not.

  The first was nailed shut and he had to retrieve a poker from one of the other huts to prise the lid from its case, narrow iron nails popping as he forced the metal bar into the lid. It contained nothing more than clothes, however: shirts, underclothing, vests, cravats and trousers of a quality no digger ever wore. His Sunday best, Niall supposed. He rifled through the clothes down into the bottom of the case but nothing was hidden either among the garments or underneath them.

  The second case came with a lock but no key. He hesitated a minute before levering the poker with some force to rip the metal lock away, the timber around it splintering. Inside were more personal items. There was a book of sketches showing head-and-shoulders drawings of people with brief notes written alongside a few. One sketch was of a hastily drawn young man, a caption indicating it was of a cousin, Alby. Another was of an older woman, perhaps Oriente’s mother. The drawing following was of a gentleman with high collar and narrow, slightly upturned nose. His father? Niall wondered. He flicked through the creamy pages to find impressions of places, including a garden wall, a street scene in a small village with a press of houses and bunting hung across the street in celebration of who knew what. More sketches showed young children, a cat asleep. When he turned to the sketchpad’s very last page he found the unmistakeable face of the commissioner staring back at him.

  Niall stood upright to gather his thoughts. He shut the book and then opened it again, thinking perhaps he was mistaken and the sketch poor enough that it could have been of anybody. But his second close look told the same story as his first.

  A cursory frisk of the case’s remaining contents reve
aled nothing more of interest so he pushed both cases back against the wall.

  Here was something that could no longer be avoided, he thought. Only this time he had to make sure Stanfield didn’t shy away from his questions.

  Niall shoved the police superintendent’s letter into his pocket. He would act soon, but he was due to meet Sarah at the stores and so he hurried there now.

  28

  Alec Napier was light-headed and sick with hunger. His stomach hadn’t stopped complaining since he woke this morning. Last night he thought he’d seen a distant winking of light through the trees to the south-east, perhaps a lamp aboard a boat coming to save them, and his hopes soared. He’d shouted and yelled but there was no one, the light blown away through the darkness of forest as he strained in vain for a glimpse of possible rescue. Now he’d come to watch Bill and Kentucky as they dragged their raft away from their camp site.

  ‘You sure you don’t want me to help?’ he asked the pair as they manoeuvred their craft through a patch of light scrub.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Bill said. ‘Another person will only get in the way.’

  The two diggers had torn up most of their tent in lashing stripped branches together, all of which were a long way from straight, Alec saw. A frame of four better lengths of timber, tent poles in most likelihood, held the branches together. In all it wasn’t more than two yards wide by as long. As Bill and Kentucky pulled the raft closer to the water Alec noticed the branches slip out of alignment.

  ‘Watch them bits of wood don’t fall out,’ Kentucky cautioned Bill, who walked ahead of him.

  ‘You reckon that will hold both of you all right?’ Alec wondered aloud.

  ‘It’s wood,’ Bill said. ‘And wood floats don’t it, Ken?’

  ‘And we ain’t got far to go,’ his comrade said.

  ‘That’s the truth. We ain’t got far till we’ll be filling our bellies again.’

  ‘Bring back some for me then,’ Alec joked.

  Bill looked over his shoulder at him.

  ‘Don’t worry. We’re gonner get you off here.’

  ‘But not them other bastards,’ Kentucky said.

  ‘Not them other bastards, all right. They can stew over there till the judgement day comes,’ Bill said.

  At the water’s edge Alec noticed something.

  ‘Hey, do you think the water has gone down a bit? I reckon it has.’

  Bill and Kentucky gently set the raft down flat. Bill peered suspiciously at the great sheet of grey encircling their island. ‘Don’t know. Maybe a bit. But not much.’

  ‘I reckon it’s dropped about six inches,’ Alec said.

  ‘That’s only six inches out of about ten feet,’ Kentucky replied, making a mental calculation. ‘And at six inches a day that’d be a week before it’d all be gone. We ain’t waitin’ that long now, are we Bill?’

  ‘No we ain’t. Which way do we go first, you think?’

  While they discussed the direction they should aim for they retrieved two short branches with great heads of leaves to use as paddles.

  ‘All right then, we go that way,’ Bill decided, pointing in the most immediate line to the river.

  ‘First thing I do when I get over the other side is eat a whole cooked hen,’ Kentucky said.

  ‘I could eat it raw,’ Bill said.

  ‘Cooked or raw, it ain’t makin’ no difference to me. Two cooked hens. I get the axe out, chop off their heads and eat eat eat.’

  ‘Feathers and all?’ Bill laughed.

  ‘It won’t make any difference to me, I’m that hungry. Prob’ly wouldn’t even notice. Let ’em go right through and tickle my arse out the other end.’

  Bill laughed again.

  ‘You fellows watch out now,’ Alec said. ‘Don’t want you going the same way as Ship.’

  ‘There’s two of us,’ Bill said. ‘Two of us to keep us out of trouble. Let’s get going, Ken.’

  And with that they carefully lifted the raft and set it down in the shallow water at the island’s edge, laying their bushy paddles on top of it as they waded out.

  ‘Who gets on first?’ Kentucky asked, as the water rose up to their knees.

  Bill peered around him, making sure he knew exactly which channel he’d need to follow once they were both aboard.

  ‘You go first, Ken. You’re the tallest.’

  The raft moved as each held it tightly on either side, Kentucky swinging one long, lanky leg up over it, holding his foot just above it as he looked to Bill.

  ‘All right?’

  ‘Yep, you’ll be right. I’ll hold it still.’

  ‘All right, then.’

  Kentucky timidly set his foot down, putting more weight on it tentatively. It seemed good.

  ‘Just push us out a bit more,’ he suggested, all his weight on the leg still in the water. ‘I’ll jump on it then to give us a good kick off.’

  ‘I’ll get ready too, then,’ Bill said, pushing the raft into deeper water.

  Water was up between the stripped branches but even with Kentucky setting more weight on it the wood and canvas raft floated well.

  ‘When I say one, two, three, we both jump on,’ Bill said. ‘All right?’

  ‘No worries.’

  ‘See you later,’ Bill said to Alec. ‘Don’t eat all the food while we’re gone.’ He laughed.

  ‘Save some for me too!’ Kentucky sang.

  ‘Go on you blokes,’ Alec said, waving at them. ‘Clear off!’

  They pushed out a little more.

  ‘All right now.’ Bill grinned at Kentucky. ‘I’ll count to three. All right?’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘All right. Here we go. Ready? One … two … three.’

  And as the two men flung themselves sideways, they smacked heads in the middle of the raft, collapsed through the platform and disappeared into the water, spluttering up seconds later amidst a mess of separating branches and strips of canvas.

  Alec laughed despite himself.

  Bill boiled out of the water, snatching a piece of wood and hurling it as far as he could.

  ‘Fucking useless thing! I told you to tie them branches up good,’ he yelled at Kentucky.

  ‘I did!’

  ‘Well not fucking good enough!’ he shouted. ‘And what’s so funny with you?’ he demanded of Alec.

  ‘Sorry. It was just you two falling through into the water,’ Alec said.

  ‘And that’s funny is it?’ Bill asked, gathering up what lengths of their raft he could and flinging them back on land so hard that Alec had to watch himself.

  ‘Don’t go crook at me. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Stupid bloody boat,’ Kentucky railed. ‘Useless bloody wood.’

  ‘Shit!’ Bill spat as he lugged himself out of the water. ‘So much for that rotten idea.’

  ‘Well, you gave it a go,’ Alec said. ‘I reckon the water is falling anyway, so it mightn’t be too long before we get off here.’

  Bill looked behind him at the water.

  ‘Rubbish it is,’ he snapped. ‘Looks as high as ever to me. And now we got no tent as well.’

  ‘Nowhere to sleep,’ Kentucky said.

  ‘And no food,’ Bill added. ‘Nothing at all. And I’m bloody starving.’

  ‘Me too,’ Kentucky agreed.

  ‘And you better watch out too,’ Bill told him. ‘Watch out you don’t end up on the dinner plate after mucking up the raft.’

  His mate looked at him quizzically.

  ‘Something will sort out,’ Alec said. ‘You’ll see.’

  As he spoke he noticed darker cloud had drawn across the island, the temperature falling suddenly as cold rain cut in.

  ‘Get all the wood you can and bring it back to what’s left of the tent,’ Bill ordered Kentucky. ‘See if you can fix anything up. I’m gonner see what I can do to keep our other things dry.’

  ‘I’ll see you later then,’ Alec said, but neither of the men answered as they shambled away through the scrub.


  Back at his tent Alec pulled the canvas flap aside. Merriman was asleep so he came in quietly and lay down on his stretcher.

  ‘I think the water’s going down,’ he said to himself.

  But hunger was eating a hole inside him now. He tried lying on his stomach to quell it, then on his side, then his back, all to no avail.

  To give himself something else to think about he fixed his gaze on a tear in the canvas above him, tried to concentrate on that and nothing else but it didn’t take his mind off his groaning stomach. With it raining again, he was stuck, trapped inside.

  Hours seemed to pass. From time to time the rain seemed to let up before it would commence again. Merriman slept through every noise and disturbance until Alec was sure he heard voices close by.

  ‘Jack, you hear that?’

  He leant over and shrugged the sleeping man’s shoulder, before pushing the tent flap aside, squatting on his heels, his hands just lightly touching the ground in front of him. He glanced left and right, quick gathering looks, taking in whatever he could without stepping from the tent.

  ‘You hear that, Jack?’ he repeated, swinging around on his haunches to make sure his partner was listening.

  ‘I heard nothing,’ Merriman moaned softly. ‘Nothing, nothing, nothing. If I did hear anything it was shearers come to kill everyone on this fucking island.’

  ‘No they won’t. They aren’t going to kill anyone. They can’t.’

  Merriman rolled slowly in his bedding as if he was still at sea on the trip out, seasick and trying to find balance among the ship’s rocking and complaining. He tried sitting and after a while managed it. Though it wasn’t so cold now his bones were rattling and he pulled a blanket around his shoulders. Lifting his head caused searing pain so he stayed hunched over, his shoulders slumped.

  Without moving further Alec peered back into the indifferent light of the tent. Merriman was in a bad way but nothing could be done for him. Until they were rescued and a doctor could be brought to him he’d have to get by as best he could. His bad eye looked worse, if anything. While the bleeding seemed to have stopped, mustard-yellow tears wept stickily from it.

  ‘I’ve got to find something to eat,’ Alec said, but more to himself. ‘There’s got to be something. A dead animal or anything.’ He couldn’t ignore the sharp pain of his hunger any longer, his intestines groaning and gurgling. His stomach contracted in a sharp tightness. ‘Something could have drowned last night. Or come with the water near here.’ He stumbled through his thoughts for what else he might do, staring outside and imagining. ‘I might walk into the water. See if there’s anything floating.’