The Highwayman

by F. M. Parker

  The flogger struck with the cat-o-nine-tails. The doctor returned to his seat without saying a word to the commandant.

  *

  Patrick’s back burned as if a waterfall of flame was pouring upon it. The last of his strength was deserting him while there was still a score of lashes yet to come. He must somehow escape from the agony. If the body was weak, then the mind must be strong. Within the depths of his mind where the true him lived, he shouted out in a great silent command, “Remember England! Remember England and the grand ride you had upon the swift gray horse when it ran free carrying you through the peaceful forest and glades in the late evening. The bony walls of his skull drummed with the commands as he repeated them again and again.

  Memories of that long ago ride upon Culbertson Highway came flooding up from the memory pocket of his mind. Like an opiate they permeated his senses and lessened the pain of the cat. He pulled free from Van Diemen’s Land and soared free, hurtling through space and time, over the Tasman Sea, across the whole watery labyrinth of the South Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean that walled him off thirteen thousand miles from the great city of London.

  Patrick rode astride his magnificent gray horse to the west away from London. He was dressed as a gentleman out on a horseback cantor in the country. He wore corduroy pants tucked into black, knee-high Jackboots, brown linen shirt and a wool jacket. Topping off his outfit was a wool hat with a wide brim set at a rakishly angle on his head. The long tail of his coat hid two cap and ball pistols in holsters on his belt for there was gold and silver to take from the rich travelers in their gilded coaches.

  The horse’s powerful muscles bunched and stretche between his legs as it galloped through the shadows cast by the trees lining the highway. The horse’s step was soft, pleasant, the saddle a rocking chair, and the balmy wind caressed Patrick’s face gentle as a woman’s kiss. Riding horseback gave him a sense of complete freedom.

  He and the horse were one, a union of two animals with one heart and one blood, basking in the joy of the run through the lush evening. He heard the big horse pulling breath, and could feel the same exhilaration as did the beast for his own deep lungs were breathing the same sweet air. He reached and petted the muscular neck and smiled at the velvet smoothness of the horse’s glossy coat. The faithful beast had carried him out of harm’s way many times.

  In the rank of convicts, Popjoy whispered from the corner of his mouth, “That sonofabitch Scanlan is grinnin’ at the cat. I’m going to win your bread.”

  “Shut your trap before you get us in trouble,” Knatchbull hissed.

  “One hundred,” called the Sergeant of Marines.

  The number registered on Patrick’s consciousness and he jerked back to Van Diemen’s Land. The bloody ritual of punishment was ending. The “domino lash”, the last one had arrived.

  The flogger swung. The cat-o-nine-tails, cutting like the blade of a saw, met Patrick’s flesh. He had not cried out with pain during the lashing, but now he almost sobbed from the relief of knowing that this was the final blow his mutilated body would have to bear. He had remained silent and had brought no shame upon himself.

  The commandant rose from his chair and adjusted his coat neatly about himself. He nodded to Major Randall.

  At the signal, the major called out to his men. “Release the convict.”

  Two Marines quickly stepped forward and loosened the chains fastening Patrick to the triangle. He slowly lowered his arms, brought his legs together and pushed away from the triangle. Without the support of the triangle, he almost fell from light headedness and the earth wobbly beneath his feet. He caught himself after only a stagger. Stiffening his tortured body, he stood erect.

  “Prisoner, put on your shirt and stand before me,” ordered the commandant.

  Patrick stooped and retrieved the shirt from the ground where he had dropped it before the whipping began. He clamped his jaws to keep from groaning at the pain from the stretching of his torn flesh. He slid one arm into a sleeve of the garment, and then the second. His bleeding back would have the cloth soaked with red in half a minute. He shivered for now that the flogging had ended, the cold winter wind stung more sharply.

  Patrick’s body was one great hurt, his legs wooden and barely under his control, as he moved sluggishly to the platform. The blood that had run down his legs and filled his shoes, now squished out the tops with each step. Silently he cursed the commandant. Damn you for making me walk in my own blood.

  “Convict, what do you have to say about hitting another convict?” questioned the commandant. His voice was low, soft, confidential.

  Before the punishment had begun, Patrick had considered explaining why he had given the barracks bully his comeuppance. But he couldn’t bring himself to speak the words because they would be taken as begging for mercy. Now that the lashing had been concluded, he would not sing the commandant a ditty of repentance and promises of good behavior in the future.

  “Thank you for my red shirt,” he said in a jocular tone and grinned up at the commandant. “I never did like its yellow color.” That was stupid and dangerous, he told himself. Now keep your mouth shut.

  At Patrick’s words, the commandant’s nostrils flared wide with anger and his teeth showed cruelly white through his short beard. “So you like a red shirt, you insolent bastard. You have been in the Crown’s penal colony for four years and in all that time you have learned nothing. When the authorities in Melbourne transferred you here from the prison ship they told me you were a troublemaker. Well I know how to handle the likes of you. I’ll have the skinner flog you until there’s no meat on your back and the cat polishes your bones.”

  The commandant caught himself. He glanced at the sun, red and swollen as it settled close to the ocean horizon. The winter night was less than an hour away. He didn’t want to spend that time outside in the cold witnessing a second flogging. A warm meal and a soft bed with a willing woman to lie with awaited him in Hobart on the mainland.

  He looked down at Scanlan. The man was whipped to the bone, yet stood there with an arrogant grin on his face. The commandant was not certain he could break the man. He could kill him, yes indeed, but break him? Scanlan had received other floggings in the two years he had been on Van Diemen’s Land. He was as rebellious now as the first day he had arrived.

  Patrick remained silent watching the thoughts race across the commandant’s face. All Patrick had left in the world was his pride in not being broken to a cowering, pathetic wreck of a man like so many others were broken.

  “Major, mark the convict down for ten days solitary confinement in the dumb-cell. And put heavy irons on him. Use the thirty-six pounders.”

  “Yes, sir,” replied the major.

  He turned and motioned at a man dressed in rough civilian clothing who had stood silently off several yards from the platform throughout the punishment. He was a convict who had received his “ticket-of-leave”, a document stating that he had served his term of imprisonment, and who now sold his labor to the Crown. “Put the French irons on Scanlan,”

  The man hastened forward with his toolbox and a leather bag containing the leg irons and knelt at Patrick’s feet. “Sorry about this,” he whispered so that only Patrick could hear. He speedily clamped the basils of the shackles around Patrick’s bloody ankles, inserted the locking rivets and hammered the ends so they were much flared and could not be removed without the proper tools.

  “It’s done,” said the “ticket-of-leave” man and rising to his feet.

  “Send the whole gang of convicts to the wet-quarry for the remainder of the day,” ordered the commandant.

  The doctor spoke quickly. “Commandant, they’ll freeze. The ocean water is ice cold.” The wet quarry was a coral reef in the sea.

  “Silence!” snarled the commandant. He chopped the air between the doctor and himself with the edge of his hand. “Major, do as I ordered. To the wet-quarry with all of them. Then at dark, put Scanlan in the dumb-cell without his supper.”


  “Yes, sir.” The major turned to his subordinate. “Sergeant, take the prisoners to the wet-quarry.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the sergeant. “Scanlan, fall in up ahead.”

  Patrick shuffled to the front of the line of convicts. It was difficult to walk with the heavy manacles around his ankles and the short chains connecting them restricting his steps to but inches. He felt the angry eyes of the other prisoners upon him for bringing the wet-quarry down upon their heads. And he heard their whispered curses as they moved off under the prodding bayonets of the Marines. They had broken no rules and yet because of him were being punished. He would have to watch his back for every one of the angry men was a murderer. Of the convicts, Knatchbull was not only the strongest but also the most violent and therefore the one who would seek revenge first.

  He shuddered at the thought of ten days in the dreaded dumb-cell for he had been there before. It was a small cave chiseled into the solid face of a rock outcrop. The cell had a height of five feet, was seven feet long, and three feet wide. A man couldn’t stand erect and barely had space to stretch out on the floor to sleep on the scrap of rug that was provided. There was but one thin filthy blanket with which to shield oneself against the damp, winter cold. Rations would be a piece of bread the size of his hand and a pint of water each day. Worst of all there would be only total darkness and silence for the entire length of his imprisonment within the rock walled cell. Men had lost their minds there. Men had died there.

  As the convicts and Marine guards drew near the shore, half a hundred sea gulls soaring on the updraft of wind created by the cliff face wheeled in over their heads. Patrick watched the gulls riding the wind so effortlessly. With raucous voices they called down to the men, seemingly jeering at those beings less free than they. God! If only he was so free. Patrick envied the gulls.

  The men reached the edge of the sea cliff and began to descend the rocky path leading down to the sea. Patrick’s weakened and shackled legs made him clumsy and he fell hard skinning his knees. He grabbed hold of a projecting rock to keep from catapulting down the cliff.

  “Get to your Goddamn feet,” The Marine sergeant ordered harshly and prodded Patrick roughly with the barrel of his musket.

  Patrick gritted his teeth and pushed against the rocky earth and struggled to his feet and staggered down the steep slope to the winter sea.

  CHAPTER 3

  On the narrow, black sand beach by the wave tossed Tasman Sea, the sergeant in charge of the Marine guards halted the convicts. He unlocked a huge wooden toolbox bound with two metal bands and issued a pickax and a long iron pry bar to each convict as they filed past. The men silently shouldered their tools. At an order from the sergeant, they sullenly crossed the strip of beach and waded into the frigid water of the sea with their clothes on.

  The cold water cramped Patrick’s chest and his breath came hard. He immediately began to shiver. He had grave doubts that he could last out the remainder of the day, short as it was.

  The men spread out along the top of the ancient coral reef, built millions of years earlier when the land was far to the north in a warmer sea. Patrick halted with the water reaching to his knees and the waves slapping at his waist. He was glad there were no storm waves to splash higher on him. He had seen waves knock men off the reef and into deep water, where some of them drown being unable to swim with their shackles on.

  “Goddamn, it’s cold enough to freeze my balls off,” Popjoy exclaimed. “If I had to piss, I’d not be able to find my cock.” His toothless mouth sucked in giving his face a collapsed look.

  “Shut up, Popjoy,” the nearest Marine ordered. “No talking and you damn well know it.”

  Patrick and the other men began to swing their pickaxes and to pry at the semi-hard surface of the coral reef. The coral wrested from the ocean would be transported to a kiln at Hobart and burned for lime to make mortar to be used for erecting additional buildings of that growing town.

  “Sergeant, may I talk?” Patrick asked.

  “What’n hell do you want now?”

  “My back needs some treatment. Can I soak it in the salt water?”

  “I reckon so. Popjoy, help Scanlan with his sore back.”

  Patrick dropped his tools and sat down in the salt water. It rose to his chin and its frigid embrace constricted his lungs until he could barely breathe. His teeth began to rattle fiercely together. The briny water stung like fire. Still the treatment was necessary for infection could set in if the injuries weren’t tended promptly and the salt brine would be the only salve he would receive. He endured the cold immersion for a couple of minutes with the waves fighting to slop into his mouth. He stood up.

  Popjoy waded to Patrick and circled around behind him. “Hold still,” he said. With rough fingers, he began to press the mangled flesh of Patrick’s back into its original position as near as possible. “One more meal by the cat, and there won’t be enough meat to cover your bones,” Popjoy said. He chuckled with evident pleasure at the thought.

  Patrick stared out over the sea lying cobalt black under the heavy overcast sky and tried to ignore the pain from Popjoy’s rough hands. His obsession to escape from the penal colony welled up like a flame as he studied the wave tossed sea. He had no hope of a pardon and becoming an “emancipist” a man free to take up land. He was a double murderer and thus ranked as the worst of convicts and doubly damned to spend his life in shackles. He could not even become a “ticket-of-leave” man who could choose the master for whom he would toil away his remaining years. He was that one in ten who must always be on a work gang with the King’s Marines ready to beat him, or kill him, as they desired.

  If he could make his way off the peninsula and onto the island proper with its rough terrain of heavily forested mountains and deep gorges, he might elude his pursuers and hide there and remain free. There was but one route by which to accomplish that feat and that was by the wasp-waist Eaglehawk Neck. However, that narrow neck of land was constantly patrolled by Marines day and night. Dogs were kept on platforms neat the beach to alert the sentries. Other dogs were kept chained at intervals in the narrowest section to form a barrier. Even with the gauntlet of dogs and Marines, a few desperate convicts tried to escape. The Marines captured a few, but mostly they shot the convicts as a warning to others who might think of trying that route.

  No. The Almighty had decreed Patrick’s life should be one of heart bursting toil, degradation, and pain. He would forever be harrowed and goaded with inhuman, barbarous brutality. Van Diemen’s Land was worse than the lowest dens of hell. He was truly cast off among men who only waited to die.

  As Popjoy worked to reposition the flesh of Patrick’s back, he leaned close and hissed into his ear. “You’re goin’ to get us froze to death in this ice water. Can’t you keep your damned mouth shut?”

  Patrick turned his head to look down into Popjoy’s angry eyes. He felt no anger at the little man’s harsh words for they were earned. He looked past Popjoy’s cold, pinched face and along the line of convicts. They were pale and thin as starved wading birds. Yes, he had been wrong to shoot off his mouth to the commandant.

  Patrick forced his teeth to stop chattering and spoke. “I’ll try to put a rein on it.”

  “Do it for hell’s sake before we’re all dead.”

  “I said, I’d try.”

  “Just do it, damnit.”

  Patrick’s gambler’s instinct rose to match the danger in the plan he had been devising for many days. He checked the four guards to see if they were watching Popjoy and him. The Marines, their thick woolen coats buttoned tightly to their chins, had gathered together on the beach and were talking among themselves.

  “Popjoy, all of us should take a trip to Sydney.”

  “What? A Sydney Trip?”

  “We’re all lifers. And that means we’re dead men just waiting to die in this Godforsaken hellhole? Any gamble is better that that.”

  “Are you volunteering to be the one of the two mates?”


  “I’ll take my chances same as any others willing to give the trip a try. Listen to me. Sydney is our only hope. Only by having them send us there can we hope to find a way to escape.” Patrick wanted to plant the seed of a Sydney Trip in Popjoy’s mind. The man liked to talk, always going on about something in the barracks in the evening. Sometimes he even made sense in what he said. Maybe Popjoy could convince himself and some others to join in the dangerous plan.

  “You’re crazy as hell and I’ll have nothing to do with it.” Popjoy waded away.

  Patrick knew Popjoy would tell the others what had been suggested. He reached down into the wave tossed water and found his pry bar and began to break chunks of coral loose from the reef and pile them ready to be carried to the beach at the end of the day. He used the “government stroke”, a slow, measured movement that conserved his strength and looked like work, but produced almost nothing.

  The sun slowly sank. The wind increased. The surging waves that splashed upon him came straight from the Antarctic. His body was frozen to its core. Worse yet, there would be no food and the dumb-cell waited for him.