Mosquito Creek

by Robert Engwerda

  Outside, an assembly of troopers stood by the police compound fence. The lanky, fair-haired Lightbody was with them, swapping jokes with another through a babble of voices, while Smales stood back watching as one stroked an imaginary oar to impress a crowd quietly building on the other side of the fence. At the sight of the commissioner emerging from his hut, more people wandered over to see what the commotion was all about.

  What wind there was had virtually died but the morning was overcast and cool, the last few days’ weather disappearing to the east. As he took in the view across the diggings the commissioner saw that much less than usual was going on. One of the troopers mentioned that another hundred or so diggers were waiting by the boat ready to see it out on the water. He felt only hollowness now.

  The commissioner moved slowly as he led the troopers from the compound. Diggers wearing faintly damp shirts from wash day marched behind the troopers and strode with the purposeful air of being with those who knew what they were doing. The stranded miners, whoever they were, were going to be taken off the island at last and now it was just a matter of getting the boat into the water and ferrying them back across the river. A red-headed boy sporting a cabbage-tree hat miles too big for him led another lad in a race across the diggings, holding one hand on his headwear to prevent it from flying away. Every second tree stump became a finishing post as the boys jack-knifed among the claims.

  At the head of the column Charles Stanfield thought of the reports the Bendigo newspapers would write and how the Age would weave in their own eyewitness accounts. Word of the rescue would eventually reach Home; something like this would be sure to capture everyone’s imagination. There would be redemption and every other lie drowned out or forgotten.

  Smales sauntered up alongside Lightbody and the two of them fell into an easy stride, content to let the throng ahead surge towards the boat.

  ‘How do you think she’ll go?’ Smales asked.

  His fellow trooper considered it.

  ‘It looks solid enough to me. A fair bit of it’s red gum and that should sit in the water all right.’ His eyes searched in the direction the crowd was heading. ‘But then, I don’t know anything about boats.’

  ‘It looks like it’ll float.’

  ‘I reckon that part of it’ll be fine. How it manages the current will be the interesting bit. I wonder who they’re going to get to row it.’

  ‘You’d reckon the water would be down by now, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘You would,’ Lightbody agreed.

  ‘One in a hundred someone said.’

  ‘Except people haven’t even been here a hundred years.’

  ‘And where’s the sergeant?’ Smales wondered. ‘He should be here for this.’

  ‘Don’t know. He’s up on the escarpment somewhere, someone said.’

  The river was out there swallowed by the flood and taking its own good time to retreat, searching and investigating every square mile of the floodplain as it fanned out to the edges of homesteads and lapped at haysheds, leaving plodding cattle to find any high ground they could. From the viewpoint of the diggings the two troopers could only guess the extent of the floodwaters.

  They could, however, see a crowd gathering by the boat when they began getting closer. Up in front other troopers carried oars pointing skyward over their shoulders. Ahead further again, still leading the procession, was Commissioner Stanfield.

  And all the time the commissioner’s entourage was growing, with claims temporarily abandoned and shops left with Closed signs hanging wonkily from doors.

  But once the massing party reached the boat there was a moment when no one was sure what to do next.

  The Victory, black with pitch, seemed awkward and heavier than any of them had thought, as a group of diggers worked industriously at spading the last earth away from around it. One man worked ahead of the rest on each side of the vessel, breaking the earth with lusty swings of a pickaxe, the rest clearing debris away to expose the outside bottom planks of the bulky hull. The sealing pitch had set hard as sap on trees, in places trickling to a stop in black tears. Whoever had done the last of the sealing had painted a black cross, his own signature, down near the stern of the boat. A crudely painted white ‘V’ rode higher on the bow.

  Stanfield looked it up and down.

  ‘Let’s move things along quickly,’ he sighed, glancing to the heavens, though even the prospect of rain wouldn’t be enough now to halt the boat’s progress to the water.

  The troopers brought the oars and laid them lengthways inside the boat. Lightbody and Smales took up positions close to the excavations to make sure spectators kept some distance and didn’t slow the work.

  ‘It’s the weight of the boat that will keep it steady through the worst of the current,’ the commissioner remarked to no one in particular. ‘It will sit deeply enough in the water to maintain its stability.’

  Stanfield stood only a minute more before wandering off to keep his own company and peer across the water for the direction he might take.

  Meanwhile the workers clearing the earth away from the boat became conscious that it was them holding up the vessel’s launch and they stepped into their labours with renewed vigour. Mud flew in all directions as one of the oarsmen retrieved his oar from the boat, holding it out horizontally in front of him and squinting down its length as if sizing up the straightness of a gun barrel.

  Smales leant with his rifle butt resting on the ground and the barrel against his chest, as Lightbody took in the crowd.

  It was mostly the usual diggers and Lightbody recognised many among them chattering away. Every child on the diggings must have been there too. Also assembled were local identities: a minister, several of the wealthier storekeepers dressed in their best for the occasion, the district magistrate, and newspapermen from Beechworth keen to record all the colour and flavour of the moment. There was no sign of Alfred Row or the troopers Stanfield had taken in, a steady stream of men leaving the diggings since first light. Where the circus tent had been there was now only the collapsed remains of burnt timber and shrunken canvas.

  But there were still things to be decided and the commissioner brushed away any interruption. It was trooper Lightbody who provided the next move, climbing onto a stump and drawing himself up.

  ‘Any volunteers to carry the boat?’

  A sea of hands were raised, all eagerly waving and calling for attention.

  Smales pushed in ahead and, with Lightbody, selected the strongest-looking men to lift the Victory from the remains of its bed and away into the water.

  The biggest of the volunteers took positions at the front of the boat, trying to raise and budge it from the groove it had eaten into the soft earth. At the back they pushed and strained, changing positions to set their backs flush up against it, using their legs for more power. Where there were gaps between the men others brought themselves forward.

  ‘Inch by inch makes it a cinch,’ one man urged through gritted teeth, and the rest laughed and momentarily released their grip.

  Gradually they were able to lift the boat away from the mud. Those carrying it could feel nails that hadn’t been properly hammered in and the burr and splinters of wood through the sticky smearings of pitch.

  The Victory slid down from the mound and then rose unsteadily on the arms and backs of men, occasionally the bow end falling, sometimes the stern. Now that it was clear, its size was impressive and the workers laboured beneath its weight.

  Although it was mostly downhill to the water and there was little more than a hundred yards to cross, their advance was intractably slow. The press of people around the boat proved to be more of a hindrance than a help and where the ground dipped and was choked with stumps they were unable to pick a clear path forward. Progress was further hampered by the fusillade of advice coming from beneath the Victory as to which general direction the party should be heading in. Some said a little left, some a little right. Others wanted to set the whole bloody thing down a minute so t
hey could see where the hell it was they were going. They edged backward, forward, sideways and then sideways again as they worked their way around obstacles.

  But the vessel finally seemed to be moving of its own accord and navigating a course for the river. To those at the back of the throng it was sailing on the shoulders of those at the front, rolling and falling with the current as it floated towards the last remaining stand of ironbark on the diggings. Dampening ground under their feet was one sure sign they were nearer to the river.

  Pushing around the forlorn stand of ironbark the party were soon at a small rise where floodwaters lapped shallowly at the goldfield.

  The shortest man the commissioner had ever seen, wearing the reddest beard he had ever seen, passed them going the other way nearly toppling under the weight of a bundle of black, gnarled branches retrieved from the water. If the boat had been Noah’s Ark he wouldn’t have been any more interested in it.

  It was the first time the commissioner had taken a proper look at the moving torrent from this point and he stood a moment, collecting his thoughts and breath while taking in the vista before him: the shallows at his feet, the spreading grey ahead through the trees and a denser line of red gum that marked one boundary of the river’s normal course. Everywhere he looked was water.

  When he and Terence were boating on the Swale with their grandfather, the surface of the water could be still as winter ice, nothing like this, sailing boats skating like insects on a pond. He thought of the colour of their sails, all vivid reds and blues flapping against white when the wind came up.

  ‘In the first instance,’ the commissioner said to Lightbody, almost as an aside, ‘I hadn’t planned on leading the crew out across the waters. But now I am certain I must.’

  ‘There’s an awful lot of river out there,’ the trooper said.

  However many times he saw it, Lightbody couldn’t help but feel awed by the weight and power of the flood.

  ‘We have the right boat,’ Stanfield said. ‘This is the moment.’ He turned to the trooper. ‘Have you seen Sergeant Kennedy? I was intending he come with me.’

  Lightbody shook his head.

  ‘Don’t think he’ll make it. Stuck up on the escarpment somewhere.’

  What might be on Kennedy’s mind, the commissioner thought, that this rescue wasn’t important to him? What slithering around, what asking of questions might be going on as the sergeant did his worst to undermine him?

  The boat was set down in the water and slid forward a few yards, whereupon those manoeuvring it paused again.

  ‘Are we going to sail it or what?’ one asked impatiently.

  ‘Yes, we will sail her,’ the commissioner assured him. ‘We will sail her to China if need be. Do we have everyone ready? And you Mr Lightbody, I want you to take an oar.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Yes, you will have to take the place vacated by Mr Kennedy.’ Leaf litter blew in over their heads. Darker cloud was coming from the south, carried on gustier winds. A spatter of rain began falling. ‘I think we had best be going.’

  Again his mind turned to the Swale, sailing with his grandfather and Terence. On those waters the weather could turn in an instant, as it had that day when the water turned rough.

  As a team of men held the boat steady the troopers slung themselves in one by one, three on each side of the boat with Stanfield the last to ease himself in, taking a position at the back on a three-legged stool the carpenter had remembered to nail in.

  The troopers were clumsy with their oars, knocking each other and the boat as they set their blades where they’d be able to stroke cleanly at the water. The last trooper settling himself rocked the vessel so violently the others clutched at the sides to hold themselves steady.

  ‘Take charge, Mr Lightbody,’ the commissioner ordered.

  The trooper stared at him.

  ‘But I don’t know —’

  ‘Keep everyone in time. Steady, even strokes.’

  Lightbody nodded and drew a deep breath.

  ‘Everyone, push us out a bit more!’ he ordered the diggers around the Victory, as he assumed the role of crew leader.

  The water was still too shallow for the boat to sit upright by itself and the oarsmen felt the knock of ground at the end of their oars. By the edge of the water latecomers were splashing to catch the rescue before they were too late. A muddy line was gouged behind the boat.

  Stanfield was only vaguely conscious of freezing rain stinging his face. He could picture his grandfather grappling with the anchor line, tugging and twisting it every which way without it budging an inch, not willing to cut it for fear of losing the anchor. As spray came in over the side, around them all the other sailing boats were swinging for shore.

  Advice and compliments were coming thick and fast as the Victory found its way into a foot and then two feet of depth. Here as elsewhere the land rollicked gently down to the river’s natural course and everyone helping get the boat in was conscious of the shafts that could be under water anywhere around them.

  ‘Get ready!’ Lightbody called to his crew as they felt the floodwaters grow deeper under them, the retinue alongside thinning to leave only a handful of diggers steadying the boat.

  Smales, up to his ankles in water and feeling the rain come in stronger, watched the commissioner sitting rigid in the boat.

  ‘Still some more!’ Lightbody ordered again and there was a great cheer from the spectators as the boat broke free while the troopers crashed their oars in a brief show of panic and excitement as they realised that movement of the boat was now entirely dependent on them.

  Their blades felt leaden. Beneath the Victory they could still feel ground when their oars went straight down or crossed over an incline. They grinned uncertainly at each other with the first shallow and uneven strokes as the boat slunk out in slow, chopping yards.

  Lightbody looked past heads behind him and into the face of his commissioner, who had his feet apart on the bottom of the boat, staring down at a trickle of water forming there beneath his seat.

  ‘It’s holding up pretty good!’ Lightbody exclaimed, firing glances at the woodwork everywhere. ‘She’ll hold up pretty good, sir!’

  Stanfield nodded briefly in response and then looked again at his feet before staring across the water. He remembered the wind blowing hard on his face, rain spearing in violently, their boat alive with water and his brother cowering at the stern in terror of all that might happen to him.

  The Victory gradually left the diggings crowd behind as its oarsmen quickly learnt to row if not in unison then in something close to it. Lightbody led the stroke – ‘Row! Row!’ – and the troopers larked at how good it felt to be doing this.

  They made ten yards, fifteen yards further and the ground only knocked against their oars occasionally and soon not at all.

  ‘So far, so good!’

  The boat felt sound and balanced to Lightbody, its timbers sagging only a little in the grey water.

  The commissioner felt panic rising in him as he recalled he and his grandfather clinging to the upturned boat, and realising Terence was there one second and gone the next, his father standing on the shore for days afterward, his face set hard as stone.

  Ten minutes later and with the crowd still waving and calling well behind them, the Victory awkwardly worked its way among the river red gums fringing the river.

  ‘Look at that!’ one of the oarsmen exclaimed, as they took in the enormity of the broad reach of water they would have to cross.

  The river was more swollen, angry, than any of them had imagined. There were whole wide streams of current running alongside each other, fighting and wrestling in fierce whirlpools and eddies where they met. The stiff carcass of something dead slewed away from them at speed closer to the inside of the river. Out where they thought the island should be, a towering gum a hundred feet tall cracked and splintered, lurching forward to hit the water with all the noise and roar of cannon fire.

  The course they had set
for the far line of trees was straight and clean, but another twenty yards out they were hit by the first of the strong currents, the boat jerking sideways.

  ‘More back into it now, lads!’ Lightbody shouted.

  The commissioner was lost, thinking of his grandfather broken at the end, unshaven and hollow, spittle dribbling down the cleft of his chin.

  The Victory’s crew glanced backward at the diggings but those still there were nothing more than receding glimpses of colour between the trees.

  37

  That last night with the escapees Jefferson and Badger, Niall had watched the sick man lie down beside the fire he’d made as darkness crept through the forest. Jefferson cursed all the while at Badger for holding them up. They found nothing besides a few grubs to eat that were slippery and nutty but not unpleasant, though they did little to quell the hunger in their stomachs.

  Through the early evening Niall made small talk with Jefferson, bragging of his plan for making an animal trap in the morning, not wanting the convict to be on his guard when Niall made good his plan to clear out. Badger slept even with Jefferson trying to slap him awake. Once the sick man rolled onto his stomach and with his face in the dirt retched till he cried, nothing coming out of his mouth but dirt from the ground he’d gulped in with air.

  Niall had dragged him upright to see if that would make him feel easier but Badger was all but unconscious afterward.

  Later Niall yawned and complained of his tiredness until Jefferson began dozing in agreement, the convict’s greasy head eventually nodding and tipping down in sleep, his entire body soon folding over the uneven ground by the fire. Niall watched him for some minutes before he was certain he wouldn’t wake.

  He glanced around their camp, the damp breeze blowing around their fire. It was black, inhospitable country but he only had to walk himself fifteen minutes away from here to never be found again. And he had the flints in his boot.

  He slowly raised himself taller, his eyes on Jefferson the whole time, alert to any sign of movement from the other man. There was a rock beside him that he stooped to pick up. If Jefferson were to move, stir in any way, he would be on him in an instant. But the brute was as gone to the world as a corpse in a cemetery, beginning to snore as he fell deeper into sleep.