The Man From Hell

by Barrie Roberts

  How long our journey to the Gates of Hell took I can only surmise. I imagine we were some four months on the voyage but to a child (and I was no more) time is endless. We had, whatever the case, ample time to weigh up our fellow travellers.

  We were boys of all ages from nine years to eighteen, but mostly of one kind. The greater part of us were out of the slums of London and the manufacturing towns of Lancashire and Staffordshire, gutter arabs steeped in the petty villainy of their kind, but few so wicked as to have merited the punishment to which we were being sent. There were indeed some older boys who were hardened to crime and these soon set themselves apart as petty chieftains within our society, preying upon and demanding subservience of their less violent fellows, their operations being ignored by the overseers. The minority of country boys in our number were easy prey for these bullies but the ready and able fists of my foster-brother kept us free of them.

  With the Henrietta’s crew we had little to do. They were merely working seamen who had a cargo to ship from Portsmouth to Port Arthur, caring no more whether we were boys or sacks of grain, and they left us to the tender mercies of our guards. Those who guarded us were, like ourselves, a mixture. Some were not beyond a kind word or gesture, but others were beasts, who took our status as a licence to visit on us every kind of cruel whim. Barely had our first night at sea begun when some of them were amongst us, dragging away small boys for a purpose which I did not then understand but as to which my fellow travellers soon enlightened me. This became a nightly practice and those boys who were chosen and resisted were beaten until they succumbed. Still other boys were so steeped in depravity they offered themselves in return for favours, but even the lowest of the street arabs spoke of these with scorn, calling them ‘hoofs’.

  As day after weary day followed at sea the younger children wept for their lost homes, some of the older boys bragged of their hardness and how well they would survive in Van Diemen’s Land, while others spoke endlessly of escaping.

  To where might we have escaped? We knew nothing of our whereabouts save that we were somewhere on the ocean, battened under gratings except during our brief exercises on deck. My foster-brother warned me to put no hope in escape, not, at the least, until we were landed.

  One bright spot in that long, miserable voyage was the ‘Crossing of the Line’. On that day we were allowed on deck to join the crew in their celebrations and for a short hour or two could almost forget who we were and where we were bound, being briefly children again involved in the comic antics of the sailors.

  Not long after, we touched land at Rio de Janeiro, though we did not know our whereabouts at the time. Here the Henrietta lay for some days to replenish her supplies. The first night in harbour we lay in the stifling heat and reek of our pens below decks while warm air seeped through the gratings, laden with the smell of grass and trees and fruit. On the next afternoon we were allowed on deck and straight away one of our number sprang into the shrouds and leaped into the water. He had made only a few strokes towards the shore when a musket banged and he sank.

  The rest of us were driven below and the hatches replaced. While we remained in port all our guards went armed and we were not permitted on deck but lay, day and night, in sweating misery and gloom, tantalised by the smell of land.

  I learned later from one of the Henrietta’s crew that our poor friend’s corpse was not even recovered from the water, but left to wash like flotsam in the tide of a harbour whose very name he never knew.

  At last, however, this portion of our ordeal ended. Though we had not been allowed on deck to see the last of England we were permitted to witness the Henrietta’s arrival at Cape Raoul. As we filed on deck some of our number cheered to see land so close, but that little enthusiasm died away with a second look.

  The coast that faced us was of towering black cliffs, wreathed in mist. The rock was formed in fantastic flutes that reared up out of a roaring, boiling sea whose spray created the mist. Nowhere else in my travels across the world have I ever seen so formidable a shore.

  Before our vessel turned the entrance into Port Arthur we could see that identical black cliffs formed the other side of the gateway and there must have been in all our minds the memory of that dread soubriquet: The Gates of Hell.

  Once the ship had anchored in Port Arthur we were soon ironed by pairs at the ankle and sent ashore. There we were handed over to the colony’s own guards and marched to our destination, the boys’ reformatory at Point Puer.

  As Port Arthur lies on a peninsula almost separated from the body of Van Diemen’s Land, so Point Puer is a small promontory separate from the men’s barracks at Port Arthur. The land in the area is much covered by fern and gum forest, but on Point Puer little grows for it has no water. If our hearts had sunk at the sight of the Gates of Hell, now they sank farther at the view of this barren area, clothed only with the buildings of the reformatory and surrounded mostly by cliffs as grim as those at Cape Raoul.

  Before our irons had been removed we were paraded before the Commandant, who spoke to us at length, explaining that we should be taught useful trades here and that, if we were amenable to discipline, we should leave Point Puer better than we had come, but we listened with only a part of our attention for each of us was looking down the long vista of the years that we must spend there.

  All, perhaps, except my foster-brother. When at last we had the chance of speech in the dormitory to which we were assigned he rallied me with, ‘Cheer up, Jim. We are on dry land and can begin to think of a way out. From now on we must learn all we can about this place and how it works.’ I had learned through all my short life to trust in him and in the crushing darkness of that first night at Point Puer his words were a little candle to me.

  On the next day all of us new arrivals were marched some miles to a place called Eaglehawk Neck. This was the only way out by land, a long strip of hummocky grassland some one hundred yards wide from sea to sea. We had been taken there to see the futility of any attempt at escape. Stationed on the Neck were twenty-five armed guards but they were largely unnecessary for the way across was closed by a stout fence. On each post of the fence hung a great lantern and beneath each lantern was set a barrel in which was chained a ferocious dog. All the area in front of the fence was cleared of grass and covered in crushed white sea shells, the better to reflect the lanterns’ lights at night. At each end of the fence it was carried out on to platforms over the sea, still within reach of the chained dogs.

  That night I was less disposed to believe in my foster-brother’s plan. ‘There is no way across the Neck,’ I whispered. ‘There is,’ he replied firmly, ‘and we shall take it.’

  Now we were introduced to the daily duty of Point Puer. Each morning we rose at five o’clock, wrapped up our hammocks and assembled for prayers and Bible readings until seven, when we broke our fast. After food, we washed and were inspected, then sent to our classes until noon when we washed again for inspection. At half-past five we were given our last meal and at a quarter-after-six we assembled for two hours of school lessons before we turned in. In between times we were all available to the guards as cleaners, carriers, messengers and general purpose labourers to our own camp and the men’s barracks.

  The classes we attended were meant to fit us for an honest trade when our sentence was done, classes in carpentry, blacksmithing, building and bootmaking. This last class attracted my foster-brother and me because of the slight skills we had learned in Uncle Joseph’s little workshop and we became tolerably good bootmakers.

  Each night we fell exhausted into our hammocks, yet still my foster-brother found the energy at every spare moment to exercise those athletic skills that had been his pleasure at home, urging me to do the same.

  I did not sleep so soundly that I was unaware of activity in the dormitory at night. The vileness that had haunted our nights at sea still went on, but I became aware of something else. Each dormitory at night was watched by an overseer – the ‘night cocky’ as we called him –
and no boy was supposed to leave the room until the morning bell. Nevertheless there were nights when as many as a dozen of the older boys left accompanied by the overseer, who would threaten the rest of us to make no disturbance nor to leave the room. I never stayed awake long enough to know when they returned, but the next morning would find them all in their hammocks and the overseer at his place. I asked my foster-brother if he knew what was taking place but he told me only to ‘wait and see’.

  On one such night I was watching covertly from my hammock when he slid out of his hammock above and shook me. ‘Come with me!’ he commanded, so I followed him and the others. A group of more than a dozen of us trooped silently after the overseer up to a higher floor where he unlocked the door of a store-room.

  Inside he set his candle on the bare floor and all of us squatted around it. Looking at the circle of half-naked youths in the candlelight I saw that this was no prank; their faces were all fixed in earnest expressions and most were looking at me and my foster-brother.

  Now the overseer counted those present and spoke to us. ‘We are here gathered,’ he said, ‘to make two new Brothers,’ and he indicated my foster-brother and me.

  ‘Give them the oath!’ he commanded, and the whole circle joined hands and chanted in unison.

  ‘Hand in hand,

  On earth or in Hell,

  Sick or well,

  On sea or land,

  On the square, ever!

  Stiff or in breath,

  Lagged or free,

  You and me,

  In life or death,

  On the cross, never!

  The last line of each verse was shouted vigorously and, when it was done, my foster-brother and I were commanded to repeat it from memory. After each attempt the group repeated their performance until we could chant it perfectly. Then we were commanded to hold out our arms.

  Immediately we were seized by two boys each and I flinched as something scored the flesh of my forearm but my guards held me firmly. Soon I realised that a pattern was being scratched upon my flesh and, once the initial pain was past, became more interested in working out what was being marked on me. I could not do so until the work was complete, the blood wiped away and a dark substance had been rubbed into the wounds. Then I could see that one arm bore a square with the word ‘EVER’ written within and the other a cross with the word ‘NEVER’ inscribed upon it. I knew that they were to serve as a warning and a reminder of the oath that I had sworn.

  ‘Now, my friends,’ said the overseer when both of us had been tattooed, ‘you are both Brothers of the Ring,’ and the circle round us cheered.

  ___

  Author's notes on this chapter

  Eleven

  BROTHERS OF THE RING

  I remained totally bewildered by the ritual through which I had just passed, but I was soon enlightened. Our erstwhile overseer, now apparently the master of this bizarre Lodge, outlined to us the duties and rights permitted to membership of the Ring.

  The Ring, it seemed, was a secret association of convicts and guards, bound under their oath to act always ‘on the square’ towards a Brother and never to be ‘on the cross’ with one – that is to act or speak against him. We must assist a Brother in all things and conceal a Brother’s secrets. The sanctions behind the oath were two-fold, maiming in a seeming ‘accident’ for minor incursions, death for anything greater, either at the hands of the Brotherhood or by being informed against for another’s capital crime.

  My blood ran cold at his recital, which was so fiercely made it could not be disbelieved. In the scant time I had been at Port Arthur I knew of a number of boys who had been injured or killed in accidents in the timber-gangs, the building works or the smithy and now I did not doubt that some of these had been the Ring’s work.

  Our overseer then pronounced the formal business of the meeting ended and produced a bottle of rum which was soon circulating from hand to hand or rather from mouth to mouth.

  I had never tasted spirits before and the effect of the rum on me was to quench all my doubts and fears about this strange Brotherhood of which I now made one. Soon I was as merry as any in the company, while we sang songs that some of the older boys had brought with them from the mainland of Australia. Ordinarily these were known as ‘treason songs’ and the singing of even a snatch of one merited flogging, but now we sang them at length in chorus. There was ‘Jim Jones’:

  By night and day the irons clang and like poor galley slaves,

  We toil and at our end must fill dishonoured graves,

  But by and by I’ll break my chains, into the bush I’ll go,

  And join the bold bushrangers there, Jack Donahue and Co.

  And some dark night when everyone is sleeping in the town,

  I’ll kill the tyrants one and all and shoot the floggers down,

  I’ll give them all a little shock, remember what I say,

  They’ll yet regret they sent Jim Jones in chains to Botany Bay.

  And there was the song of Donahue himself:

  As Donahue was riding out one summer’s afternoon,

  He had no notion that his death was drawing in so soon,

  A Sergeant of the Horse Police discharged his carabine,

  And called aloud on Donahue to fight or to resign,

  Resign to you, you cowardly scum, is a thing I shall not do,

  But I’ll fight this night with all my might! Cried bold Jack

  Donahue.

  He fought six rounds with the Horse Police until that fatal ball,

  Which pierced his heart and made him start,

  caused Donahue to fall,

  And as he closed his mournful eyes and bade this world adieu,

  He said, Convicts all, both large and small, say prayers for

  Donahue.

  We sang through many such until the candle guttered low and it was time to slip back to our hammocks.

  Next morning I suffered the effects of coarse spirits on the inexperienced, but even so, there returned to my mind the questions that had perplexed me at the Ring’s meeting. If there was something worse than the official cruelty of the System it must surely be this secret Brotherhood of guards and convicts, sworn on their lives to turn their hands against any man except a Brother.

  At our first private moment I questioned my foster-brother why he had led us into such a group.

  ‘You know Hunter, that beastly over-seer?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, for the man was a byword for his drunkenness, brutality and loathsome vice. ‘What of him?’

  ‘He has set his eye upon you,’ said my companion.

  ‘He has asked others if you are not a hoof. He is a Brother himself and now he must not turn his hand against you.’

  My blood froze at the thought of the danger that had threatened me. ‘But is this Ring not a gang of cut-throats?’ I asked.

  ‘So they may be,’ he replied, ‘but they have power, and we need their help if we are to escape from here.’

  ‘When will that be?’ I implored him fervently.

  ‘Soon enough,’ he said, ‘when all my plans are ripe.’

  He did not take me into his plans, believing, no doubt, that I was protected by not knowing, but now I chafed through each weary, toilsome day wondering when we should make our attempt.

  Some weeks passed uneventfully and then we found that the vile Hunter was assigned amongst the overseers of our dormitory. I took little regard of it at first, believing that my membership of the Ring would protect me, but it was not to be.

  The first night he had the duty he summoned me to his table when all the dormitory was asleep.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘they tell me you are a Brother. Show me the marks of a Brother!’

  I put forward my arms to expose the tattoos and he examined them. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it seems you are, so you must know that we Brothers must always do each other’s bidding,’ and there was that look in his bloated features that I had seen on the Judge’s face.


  ‘I swore an oath to help my Brothers and to keep their secrets, not to do all that they wished,’ I said, with as much firmness as I could muster, for this bloated, red-faced man terrified me.

  ‘Then you shall learn what happens to those who will not obey a Brother,’ he hissed and, seizing me by the neck, flung me face down across his table.

  I had scarcely landed on the table before the first blow of the overseer’s cane stung me across my naked shoulders. Even in my extremity of fear and pain I could not cry out, for if my foster-brother woke he would surely kill Hunter.

  So I lay silent under his onslaught while he thrashed my back to ribbons. When his rage had abated he dragged me back to my hammock and flung me to the floor beneath it. I could not climb into the hammock, but dragged down my blanket and spread it on the floor. There, on a blanket stiffened by my own blood, my foster-brother found me at the five o’clock bell. As I had believed, he was for killing Hunter and paying the price, but I persuaded him to defer to the discipline of the Ring.

  This was done, but gave us little satisfaction, for Hunter claimed I had been grossly insubordinate within the earshot of others and that he had been forced to punish me. I understood then that I must submit to Hunter or get away, and from that day on I pressed my foster-brother to complete his arrangements for our escape.

  The wounds of Hunter’s violence had scarcely healed when there came another night when he called me to his table. He leered at me under the watch-lantern and said, ‘Have you now learned your lesson, Brother?’

  I feared that another such beating would be the end of me, but I stood firm and answered him, ‘I should die rather than submit to you!’

  ‘Then so you shall!’ he snarled, and sprang at me with his cane. The agony of the blows he inflicted was greater than before, cutting as they did across my half-healed injuries, but suddenly the attack ceased and I heard Hunter make a strange grunting noise.