I have to confess that despite his idiosyncrasies, he is a most engaging speaker, for unlike the Rev. Stevens, he is not fearful of the more devilish aspects of my culture. On the contrary, he seeks out the darker corners of my kingdom and, though a little worryingly, takes some secret thrill from the details of debauchery, as well as macabre interest in the practice of cannibalism.
2 February 1835
We are all grateful for this steady wind that blows us east, as many on-board the Caroline long for a glimpse of terra firma, a comfortable cabin becoming no more welcoming than a floating gaol.
The Rev. Thomas seems to have tired in his investigations of Fiji, but I presume he has offices to prepare before his arrival in Port Jackson, where he will take over a parish of convicts. He has been elusive during the afternoons, and noticeably withdrawn from proceedings at the dinner table in the evening. When Rev. Stevens joked with his fellow passengers that they had seen so little of him they considered shouting ‘Man overboard!’ the Rev. Thomas snapped like a tired dog. ‘Writing sermons for the damned, brother Stevens. The condemned men of New Holland need the words of the Lord like a desert does water. Are you mocking my labour with God?’
The wife of Rev. Stevens, usually a woman mild of manner and slow of tongue, defended her husband by sharply retorting that the library study, with its double porthole, may leave the Rev. Thomas more refreshed than being shut away in his gloomy chamber. Rev. Thomas took a mighty breath to utter a ‘Thank you, Mrs Stevens,’ before Rev. Jefferson lightened the mood by saying grace.
4 February 1835
Moderate wind has slowed the Caroline to a crawl, and the midday sun noticeably fags the bodies of the sailors, those who have no choice but to toil as we lounge in the shade. I fear again that our ship will be no more than an ornament on a millpond by morning.
6 February 1835
What a drama today has devised for tomorrow! It began after dinner when I startled the capt. in the library, causing him to flutter like a trapped bird. Once he regained his composure, and had looked into my eyes enough to deem they were true, he confessed that he owned some books ‘not fit for Christian readers, that may have been shelved next to the very words of our Good Lord’.
I quickly eased his conscience by confirming that I had discreetly removed his bawdy books from general perusal, sealing them away in the oak chest that lay behind the door. Alas, when I took the key from inside a scroll on the bottom shelf, assured that on opening the chest the capt. would be relieved, I was shocked to find it empty, the books gone! The capt., usually a man of lofty and stern countenance, blushed like a teenage maiden. ‘But only the reverends and their wives can read!’
When his manner calmed, the capt. placed his hand firmly upon my shoulder and hushed his voice. ‘It would be of great embarrassment if any of the dear brethren, or indeed the ladies with whom I share the dinner table, should come across these illicit pages.’ He then plucked a ring of keys from his waistcoat and dangled them before my eyes. ‘This is every key to every lock on this ship,’ he confirmed before placing the set into my hands. ‘Mr Babbage, as an order from the commander of the vessel which you ride, as a favour to your capt., I implore that during dinner tomorrow, you creep stealthily between the cabins of the passengers and discover the whereabouts of those missing books. And if you do find them, I want you, without so much as a squeak, to replace them in this chest, keeping the entire affair to your strictest person, and thus hiding both the shame of the owner, and borrower.’
With these instructions I returned to my quarters, most anxious about my part in this drama, a game even, with myself as the most likely loser – either caught red-handed rifling my patron’s chambers, or accused of being the original thief of the books!
But it was a solemn oath that I swore to the capt., and find his scurrilous pages I will!
7 February 1834
The day to my drama began as usual: morning service followed by Fijian instruction for Rev. Stevens, before reverie above deck in the afternoon. But then, prior to the evening meal, I feigned a slight stomach ache to keep me from the table – thus free to skulk about the lower decks undisturbed.
Once the clatter of knife and fork commenced from the diners, I deemed it safe to leave my room and undergo the mission. Most of the cabin doors were unlocked, and little more than a silent turn of the knob was needed to enter.
On embarking the Caroline, each guest had been allotted a cabin and a large trunk – which I would now unlock with the master keys of the capt.
Curious, guilty, frightened of capture and the misunderstanding that would no doubt ensue, I searched through the missionaries’ belongings fruitlessly, discovering only possessions regular to all – diaries, bibles, medicines, and articles for use of the women only.
Where the other cabins gleamed with the polish and keep of a feminine hand, the room of Rev. Thomas lay as fetid and dank as a rat’s nest. I lifted and peered beneath his belongings with little care of replacing them as I had found, doubting the rev. himself would be able to recollect where they had been discarded. Once I was sure no books rested beneath his reeking undergarments and yellowing bed sheets, I took the final key from the ring and inserted it into the chest.
But where the other locks had fallen open, this one snagged the key and stuck fast.
Hearing chair legs scrape across the dining-room floor above, I was sweating through my breeches as I tugged at the key in an effort to work it free. Footfalls creaked their way along the corridor outside, and I realised I was trapped! If I was caught in the quarters of my patrons, and the capt. shied of revealing his intentions of my search, I would be shamed and flogged in the manner of the miserable cheese thief!
When the rev. turned the doorknob, and I stood up from the chest, I had not a reason in my head to offer why I was in his quarters.
But the capt. came to the rescue, a man of his word. Just as the door swung open he called the missionaries and wives above deck, insisting that they observe a particularly starry night sky. In the time he had them march on deck to be disappointed by a hazy vista, I wiggled the key loose from the lock, along with a knot of cloth that had been purposefully jammed in the mechanism! Without knowledge of this sabotage, a stuck key would foil anyone attempting to open the chest. It was not an obstacle that had occurred by mishap, and only the cunning of Rev. Thomas could have arranged it so.
Questions why only multiplied as I made my escape and ducked back to my room.
My brain races with this mystery, but I should try and sleep now, glad that I was not caught, tied to the mast and whipped!
8February 1835
On opening the library door this morning I immediately sensed the scroll had been moved. I took the key from its hiding place and opened the chest that a day before had been empty. When I lifted the lid it was as though the books had never been removed!
The capt., grinning as I told him of the miraculously returned books, did not seem to care that a culprit had not been discovered, just that he had been spared of shame before the reverends and their wives. When I ventured that the ‘borrower’ must have been one of them, the capt. winked, patted my shoulder and said, ‘Fear God not Mr Babbage, for He knows well the weakness of a man without a wife.’
Then he walked away, my judge, jury, and jailer, certain he had found his fornicator of pages!
I spent the day musing on this brief but dramatic episode, wondering how the books had been so conveniently returned, and whether the Rev. Thomas had prior knowledge of the search.
9 February 1835
The more I consider the Rev. Thomas, the more I understand what a fine messenger of God he is. And, ashamedly, as these acknowledgements of his better character increase, so does my guilt at assassinating his person in these very pages. His direct manner is a most effective tool of conversation, revealing the heart of subjects rather than dancing around them.
As we will part company in New Holland, when he takes his position with the convict church
in Port Jackson, and I continue on with the Rev. Stevens to Fiji, I shall pray to the Lord above that we may have the time to become better acquainted.
10 February 1835
Now it is I who has laid a trap! Once the books had made their fantastic return to where they had vanished, I was in no doubt that the Rev. Thomas had sabotaged the lock himself. But how had he known I was to search his quarters that very evening?
Between the words of this journal I have had the same sensation as stepping on to a jungle path near enemy villages. Though the leaves and trees are still, eyes watch my every move from the hidden dark – just as those of the Rev. Thomas have raced across these very pages. I have long suspected his changing moods – temperamental as the sea herself – to be connected to my very words, and this afternoon, after the false accolades of his person had been put to paper, I returned my journal to its usual place on the shelf. But this time, before taking my reverie above deck, I wet a strand of hair and pasted it across the closed pages. Whilst pretending to snooze on a sack of wheat, I opened my eyes wide enough to watch Rev. Thomas slip below, no doubt pausing at the hatch to look left and right for a witness, much in the manner of a fox raiding a burrow.
Following dinner, and the most gracious and cordial reception from the Rev. Thomas, no doubt his mood lightened on reading what a fine gentleman I had now declared him, I returned to my cabin to find the journal unmoved – but the hair gone!
And I can write this in confidence now, sure that the eyes of the Rev. Thomas will not read my words, because the key for the chest in which this journal is stored hangs about my neck!
11 February 1835
Though the Rev. Thomas did not express outward disappointment that my jottings were now unavailable, I did discern a focus of inquisition during our exchange this morning. Our conversation was that of a mighty, slow moving river, its surface of glass betraying the swirling eddies beneath.
It is strange indeed that this journal, which I began as though a task set by a schoolmaster, should form such an attachment to my being that I recoiled with feelings of invasion when realising my private words had become public.
Have I become more Englander than Islander? Judging the inner world more important than the outer?
12 February 1835
I fear the unusual sea conditions are causing the capt. much concern. Though we have but a murmur of wind, the sea billows beneath our bows like a silken curtain. Not a wave even ripples, and this effect of riding aquatic dunes is quite unnerving.
The capt., not about to distress his passengers with prophecies of doom, will not be drawn to speculate on the approaching weather.
Alas, it is apparent to us all, that we are sailing towards stormy seas.
13 February 1835
A humid and heated night has passed, with little change to our conditions but a stronger breeze now riffling the previously smooth surface.
This afternoon the sailors were employed in fastening loose articles to the deck, binding, nailing, and roping any object not already fixed to the Caroline. I dare say Mrs Stevens, the entire voyage suffering from acute seasickness, would also benefit from being firmly attached to the vessel!
I am now returned to my cabin after running on deck to investigate the cheering and calling of the crew. As I appeared from the hatch I was slapped about the jaw, almost to the deck by the surprise and force of my attacker. Fists clenched and ready to fight, I saw that my enemy was an immense shoal of flying fish, rising up and over the Caroline like a flock of silver birds. While some whizzed and glittered past our ears, others struck the sails and masts and dropped to the deck, beating and flaring their gills in suffocation. The sea foamed with their multitude, all thrashing winged-fins fleeing from invisible predators, for no birds dived on them from above. The sailors, some puzzled and some afraid, others jumping on the fish run aground on the deck, forgot their labours entirely.
Then when the sea quietened, and the last of the flyers skipped away, we were left with an eerie hush, again that rolling landscape of billowing waves. The silence was broken by a call of ‘Land ahoy!’ from the crow’s nest.
Capt. Drinkwater bellowed, ‘Impossible!’ before the midshipman called again.
‘Land, captain! And hills, mountains that touch the sky!’
The capt. extended his telescope and scanned the horizon. All on-board saw his Adam’s apple genuflect when he gulped.
The floating range was a storm, the clouds smoked up so black and tall it seemed the sea had extinguished the sun. We all gathered at the prow of the Caroline, felt the wind cooling, saw the whitecaps flare on the crests of waves and watched the darkness grow.
We are but insects clinging to a strip of bark.
14 February 1835
Dear Father who art in Heaven, deliver us from this tempest so we may preach your name and your love to those who do not yet know it is you who allows them to live. In your oceans we understand that we are all but miserable sinners ready to be drowned at thy command. Know that with each giant wave that breaks upon the Caroline our love and obedience to your power only strengthens. Amen.
16 February 1835
When dawn broke this morning, and our good Caroline glowed in the rising sun, bruised and battered but floating, we first gave a solemn prayer to those we had lost, taken by the sea in the midst of her rage, swallowed by the depths, but now, we pray, at peace with the Lord above.
I have written nothing for two days but a shaky prayer, as I feared each wave that crashed over my head was the end of my bodily life. In that violent gale we seemed no more than a blow- away kite snapped from its line, the labour of the men in the masts a feeble resistance.
On the first morning of the storm, the sky was as black as night, the only torch to our plight veins of lightning streaking from cloud to sea, splitting and illuminating, shattering white beneath the waves like trees of ice. The claps of thunder were loud enough to blow the glass from the portholes.
When I felt brave enough to face my great tormentor, I unfastened the hatch to lift my head above deck. The rain pelted my face like buckshot. The sky was sea. We faced a wave so huge that we were like Noah, running aground on the peak of Ararat. But just as I believed my soul would be washed from my body, for the summit of sea was poised to crush our raft into splinters, we sailed those slopes as though the Lord himself were raising us that little closer to Heaven, so we may know He can transform oceans into mountains.
Then again the valley, bottomed in the gloom, walls of water towering over the ship, each time seemingly the last. But the good Caroline rode the tempest, and in this predicament of doom there was God, an exaltation of peace, sacred moments of trust in His care and love.
And it is this love we need to guide us through tragedy.
The Rev. Jefferson, on seeing terror possess the faces of his flock, called a meeting of group prayer in the dining room. As the waves rained down and the lightning flashed, we joined hands and begged for His mercy. There was comfort in this union, though when the motion of the room is of a shaken box, the stomachs of those within are soon loosened. Mrs Stevens, much embarrassed by her nausea, insisted on leaving for fresher air. The Rev. Stevens accompanied her, and I too, considering her previous seasickness dementia.
Water had breached the quarterdeck hatch, and as the Rev. Stevens stepped after his wife, he lost his footing on the greasy boards, clutching at me as he fell and crashing us both to the floor. It was a mighty effort to rise, as each time we stood the Caroline tossed us back to the planks. But Mrs Stevens had already grabbed the handrail of the steps, and in her desperation to breathe fresh air, did not wait for her husband.
When we climbed on to the deck, Mrs Stevens was standing at the side as though it were a fine day for viewing. Both the rev. and I called out for her to return, but she was fixed to the railing in fear, riveted by the rise and fall of those monstrous seas. The Rev. Stevens shook himself free of my grip and ran across the slanting deck. The ship tilted so far over that the spa
rs dipped in the sea, and the rev. almost shot clean overboard, his wife clutching out at her beloved husband. When the Caroline righted herself, bobbing on the swell like a cork in a stream, they were almost flung into the sky by the force of motion.
Then the Caroline sat bolt upright in the storm, defiant against the bludgeoning, a respite long enough for the rev. and his wife to embrace as a single soul, her delicate head in his hands of David, before a wave dashed them clean from the deck.
I took a coil of rope and ran to the rail, ready to cast out a lifeline and haul them from death. But there was nothing save those turbulent and boiling depths, and I prayed hard and loud to my dear Lord that He might find a seat for two more servants in His Kingdom of Heaven.
23 February 1835
Abated the rough seas may be, the memory of those raging waters and the souls it swept asunder remains. For the last week we have sailed upon a vessel in mourning. The flag at half-mast has been a memorial to those we have lost – the Rev. Stevens and his wife, along with four other crewmembers washed from the decks in the midst of the tempest.
Indeed, this sabbath was a solemn occasion, with the gloomy skies as leaden as our moods. The Rev. Jefferson gave a service in memory of ‘those swallowed by the stormy seas’, calling upon the Lord ‘to raise those just and dedicated souls into thy eternal care, and know that they perished on a crusade in the name of Jesus Christ’.
25 February 1835
Again the sun blazes on our billowing sails, and the Caroline, repaired and ready once more to race down the wind, makes a rapid advance on the shores of New Holland.
Soul and body we are strengthened by this fair weather, and our resolve to carry the torch of the Lord once more returned.
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