Prison Ship

by Paul Dowswell

Was this even the right spot? I was so exhausted I couldn’t think straight. Then I heard the tinkle of water from the nearby stream and felt sure it was here that Barrie had tried to kill me.

  I looked around for a cave or crop of rocks, somewhere he might have hidden. The bush around the clearing was so thick he could have crawled into that and be lying only a few feet away. Then I thought of the water again. I was desperate to drink. I went to the stream and knelt down, my knees wet in the soggy moss that grew beside it. The water twinkled in the afternoon light. I could wait no longer and thrust my face into the cool, clear stream. I gulped and gulped, feeling the strength flow back into my limbs and aching head. All I could hear was the sound of my own frantic drinking and the water running down the stream.

  There was a sharp crack behind me, the sound of footfall on dry branches. I turned around at once, dreading the thought of another fight. It was Barrie – who else could it be? He was some twenty yards away from me, but I knew at once he would be no threat. His face looked dreadfully haggard, as if he had seen the very fires of hell. Although his eyes looked straight at me, I was sure he couldn’t see me.

  He staggered then lurched into a thick patch of vegetation and fell forward. His body twisted on the ground. Then he lay still, face up to the sky.

  I watched fearfully from a distance. His legs trembled occasionally, then he made no movement at all. I crept carefully forward and stood awhile watching him for any sign of life. When a fly landed on his unblinking eyelid I knew for sure he must be dead.

  Leaning closer to take a final look, I saw a familiar silk cord around his neck. Fearfully, I knelt down and pulled on it, expecting him to flicker back to life at any second. Out popped the ring I had given him to trade with Charlie Palmer for our freedom. He had always kept his shirt buttoned to the top – now I knew why. The sly goat! He had traded something of his own and kept what I had given him. I felt a strong urge to give him a good kick in the guts. Pulling out my knife, I cut the cord and took back my treasure. I left his body to the insects and carrion birds, and walked away.

  Chapter 16

  Adam and Eve

  When I told Richard what had just happened he shrugged. I knew how he felt. It was all I could do to gather a few dry sticks for a fire. ‘We’ve got to get something to eat soon, before we die,’ said Richard. We both looked like a couple of starving beggars. I kept thinking I should go and bathe and wash my clothes down by the river, but I didn’t have the strength to do so. That evening, as we stared into the flickering flames, Richard said, ‘I’m so hungry. If Barrie wasn’t full of snake poison, I’d eat him.’

  Next day we gathered up anything of Bell and Barrie’s we thought we could use, like their blankets and weapons and the sparking kit to make a fire. Then we moved on, staggering through the morning, drinking whenever we could. We had obviously misjudged how long it would take us to reach the coast, but heading there still seemed the best thing to do. The bush stretched out before us, an endless green horizon. Richard and I bickered constantly, but we both knew it was our exhaustion that made us so quarrelsome.

  That afternoon we found a bush with black and white fruit which reminded me of raspberries. Richard crushed one in his hand and smelled the juice. ‘It’s sweet,’ he said and tasted it with the tip of his tongue. ‘Tastes good.’

  We ate what we could find. When he found a particularly big one, he gave it to me. ‘That’s for being an old grouch,’ he said. Even these small berries changed our mood and made us feel better.

  We slept out in the open. We both had an extra blanket now, which helped keep out the cold. There was nothing else to do but press on. And now I had something else to worry about – the wound on my ankle from the belt Barrie had used to tie me up was beginning to fester.

  That evening I landed a couple of fish. When we cooked them, they tasted a bit like salmon. We ate one then and there, and kept the other for breakfast. We made our camp under a jutting rock and woke the next day feeling hopeful. After breakfast we headed on with something approaching a spring in our step.

  Although the sky stayed blue the wind blew cold. There was no more food for that day or the next, and although we always had enough to drink we were growing desperately weak.

  In the evening we found a shallow sandstone cave near to a small stream and made our camp. In the morning, hollow eyed and restless, neither of us spoke for a while. When Richard tried to stand up, he fell down again. I got up and felt my legs giving way beneath me, but I steadied myself and went over to him.

  ‘I don’t think we’ll be going very far today,’ he said, his voice barely more than a hoarse croak. ‘Let’s stay here and look for food and when we feel strong let’s press on. It’s not as if anyone is following us.’

  The idea made sense. ‘You rest and I’ll go looking,’ I said. But soon after setting off, my ankle began to ache badly. It was beginning to resemble the injury that had so fatally hindered William Bell. The skin around the weeping wound was turning yellowy green. Without medical help it would continue to fester and I feared some dreadful infection could set in. I knew this was a painful way to die and the only remedy was amputation. But who was going to do that out here? Richard? With one of our knives or the axe? Besides, how would I even begin to survive out here with only one foot?

  Soon after noon I stopped by the river to bathe my injured leg, and the cold water brought temporary relief from the constant ache. I hoped Richard might have got up and been more successful in his search for food, but when I returned to our camp he was still fast sleep.

  That night neither of us had the strength to gather firewood. We shivered through till dawn. Only when the warm morning sun shone down did we fall into a deeper slumber. I woke again, mid-morning, almost too weak to move. Richard was still asleep, so I lay in my blankets and dozed. Was this how we were going to die? Slowly fading away in our fusty blankets. I wondered how long it would take.

  When I saw two figures staring down at us I thought I must be dreaming. They had the sun behind them and a halo of light around their lean bodies.

  One of them was very tall and carried a long spear. The other was much smaller and at first I thought it must be a child. But as my vision cleared I could see it was a young woman. I noticed with a jolt that both of them were quite naked. His skin was a dark brown and he had a long, white beard that reached half way down his chest. Her skin was as black as coal.

  I stared at them, they stared at me. None of us moved. Then I whispered to Richard, ‘Wake up.’

  He sat up slowly. The staring continued. I lifted my hand and waved in a friendly way. The two figures stayed motionless.

  ‘Good day,’ I said hoarsely, barely able to speak. ‘Please can you help us? We have not eaten for many days and we are very weak.’

  They looked at each other and nodded. Then the tall one spoke in a slow, halting manner. His words stunned me into silence, not least because he had a Scottish accent.

  ‘My – name – is – Thomas – Ferring. What – are – you – going – here?’

  Now I had heard him speak, I could make more sense of his appearance. Beneath the beard and the deep brown skin his features were European. By the look of him, he was forty-five or fifty years of age.

  They came closer. He spoke to the girl, who picked up my mess tin and went to the stream to fetch us water. After we drank, the man gave us a few seeds to chew. As soon as we felt strong enough to talk our story poured out. He took in our tale unblinking and expressionless, but kept saying, ‘Slow round’. Perhaps this was some Scottish expression.

  Then he spoke again. ‘You are not marine or Navy?’

  I knew at once what he was getting at. ‘No, we’ve escaped. Are you a convict too?’

  He nodded. ‘I tell in good time. First, eat more.’

  His strange manner of speech puzzled me. I suppose he hadn’t spoken English for a long time, and had forgotten many words.

  His companion maintained her silence, but Thomas introduced
her to us as Tirrike. She smiled warily, her white teeth gleaming against her black skin.

  Thomas said, ‘You stay, we come back.’

  They were gone so long I began to think our encounter had been a figment of my imagination. But eventually they returned with two large watermelons. Thomas sliced them into quarters with a knife and we ate greedily. The sweet flesh soothed our parched throats and gave us the strength to get up on our feet. But what we really craved was meat.

  ‘Follow,’ Thomas said.

  They walked ahead. I was mesmerised by the sight of Tirrike’s swaying hips. The few native women we had seen around Sydney were naked or half-clothed too, but they were usually older and more stout and hefty. And they stank of rancid fish oil. I was told the oil kept away the flies which plagued everyone in high summer. This girl didn’t smell of fish oil. Maybe it wasn’t so necessary in the winter?

  After an hour we came to a small clearing by a sandstone cave. The entrance was partly hidden by a cluster of large rocks. It was a fine hideaway.

  Tirrike set about lighting a fire and Thomas bade us sit down in the sunshine outside the cave. He pointed at my injured foot and said, ‘Bad tune.’ It took several attempts, with him becoming increasingly irritated, before I understood he meant ‘Bad wound’.

  When the fire caught Thomas brought two dead lizards from the cave and sat down to skin and gut them. He gave us a stick apiece to cook them on the fire. The meat was leathery and tasted a little of both chicken and fish. Then Tirrike brought us a handful of seeds. She told us a word, which I took to be the name of the plant they came from. The seeds tasted bitter, but not so you would want to spit them out.

  Thomas spoke brusquely. ‘We trade? Food for you. Tin for me.’

  Richard and I carried a mess tin apiece. It seemed a fair exchange that we should give them one of ours. I nodded and handed mine over. At once Thomas set off into the bush, returning minutes later with a small handful of white roots. ‘Good haste. Haste like arsenit.’

  My father once told me the best way to talk to children who were learning how to speak was not to correct their words, but to simply repeat what they had said in the correct way, as part of a normal conversation. ‘You’ll make them anxious about speaking if you’re constantly correcting them,’ he had said.

  ‘Tastes like parsnips?’ I said. ‘Wonderful. I’ve not had parsnips since I joined the Navy.’

  Thomas went to the stream again, came back with the tin full of water and proceeded to boil up the roots. We ate them and they were good. I asked him if he could show me which plant he had picked. We were fed a succession of small portions and the more we ate the hungrier I became.

  ‘Wait. Give you more later,’ said Thomas. ‘Too much now, and …’ he made the actions of a man holding his stomach and being sick.

  Tirrike came and sat next to Thomas. She seemed unconcerned by her nakedness. I tried not to stare but I blushed hotly. Perhaps Thomas noticed my reaction, for he put a protective arm around her and they had an animated conversation in a strange tongue. She pointed at my ankle. Thomas nodded and she disappeared into the bush.

  I had never heard a white man speak in the natives’ own language. I wondered how long he had lived out here, and asked him.

  ‘Tell me first,’ he said. ‘Tell me again why you’re here, and talk slow, so I understand.’

  We told our story again, from transportation to our escape with Barrie and Bell, and how we were hoping to reach the white colony four hundred miles to the north. The more we spoke the more confident Thomas became in his own conversation. Several times he asked us the meaning of a particular word, but hearing us speak his own tongue brought his language flooding back.

  ‘I came here on the Royal Admiral in October 1792. Didn’t like it in Port Jackson. When they had me down for a whipping, I took to the bush. Me and three others. We were heading for China. More fool us. And while I’m about it, there’s no colony in the north. That’s just a story.’

  I stopped listening at that point. There was no colony in the north? Then what were we going to do? Go back and face a flogging? We’d be due for a hundred lashes each, at least, and an iron gang for seven years. Maybe we’d be hanged. Going back was not a possibility, but then what else was there to do, other than live out here in the wilderness?

  Thomas picked up a small pebble and threw it at me. ‘You’re not listening.’

  I mumbled an apology, then sought to explain myself. ‘But what can we do if there’s no point going north?’

  ‘Stay a few days, and we’ll think about it,’ he said. ‘There’s room in the cave for you to sleep. Now, listen to my story.’

  Thomas enjoyed talking in his own language. Only occasionally would he stop and grope for a word. He had an extraordinary tale to tell. When they escaped, two of his companions quickly gave up and returned to face punishment. He and his friend James pressed on for a month. Then James fell ill.

  ‘I stayed with him and did the best I could,’ said Thomas, ‘but you have to keep moving through the forest if you’re going to eat. One night we noticed some natives had lit a fire nearby and I went to look. There were only two, and I ran into their little camp screaming and waving my arms. They fled like a couple of frightened sheep. There was a carcass on the fire, so I brought it back to share with James. Next morning we woke up surrounded by ’em. Long spears they all had. I thought they were going to kill us on the spot, but instead they came up to us and started to feel us all over, like they couldn’t believe we were real. Everything we had, our blankets, our knives, our tinder box, our mess cans, our clothes, they took off us. James was so terrified he threw up and soiled himself, and they recoiled from him like he was some sort of evil spirit.

  ‘They marched me off, and left him there to die. At least I thought they did. They took me to a cove where a whole lot of them had gathered, and they lit a big fire and began chanting and dancing. I thought they were going to kill and eat me. Then a woman came up and started to shriek and tear at her hair and her skin. She took me off and gave me food to eat and all these other people kept coming to see me, and poke at me and shriek and tear at their hair. I was terrified.

  ‘But they didn’t kill me, they just kept on bringing me food. And that night the woman who had picked me out lay with me as though we were man and wife. So I stayed with them. I learned how to hunt and find food and I picked up their customs and their language. I fathered two children with my new “wife” – Illoura was her name – both tall and handsome girls they are. They treated me well, and when I could talk their tongue I discovered why. Illoura was certain I was the ghost of her warrior husband. She recognised me at once, she said. They believe their dead warriors come back as white people. So that’s what saved me.’

  ‘So why didn’t you stay?’

  He let out a heart-rending sigh. ‘I ask myself that question every day. But they’re strange people, these natives. They can be very kind. They share everything, and they’re very clever when it comes to knowing how to live out here. My friend James, I found out, they visited him every day with food and water until he died. I wish I’d known at the time, because I spent months feeling sick with guilt, leaving him there.

  ‘But they’ve got another side to them too. Now and then they like to fight with other tribes. Make a big song and dance about it. I didn’t want to have anything to do with that, but they expected me to go with them. I was one of their great warriors after all. I’ve been a bad man in my time, but I was brought up a Christian and I’m not one to kill another man I’ve got no quarrel with –’ He had been waiting years to tell this tale and all his fears and frustrations came tumbling out. ‘And their tongue is only spoken by a few of them. I spent years learning how to talk to them but if you walk twenty miles in any direction, they speak a different language. Not even the same words for the sun and the moon. They’re not simple these people, they’ve even got a word for the Milky Way. Don’t ever go thinking they’re simple. If you want to get on with
them you just have to start thinking like they think. There’s a poetry in their language. Their word for island, “booroowang” – it’s the same word for boat. That makes sense to me.

  ‘But their life – day to day, it just brought me to despair. You know, they have no words for yesterday and tomorrow. Hunt, fish, sleep, drink. Hunt, fish, sleep, drink. They have their ceremonies, but their significance is lost to me, so I didn’t get any pleasure out of them. I just had to get away from it, even if it meant cutting myself off completely.’

  ‘So you ran away from them too?’ said Richard.

  ‘I did.’ Here he paused. ‘I did, and I still don’t know if I’ve done right or wrong. Me and Tirrike, we’ve been living out here three years now. You’re the first white people we’ve spoken to. I’ve met them before – small groups of bolters, but they run off terrified as soon as they see me. The natives here, we keep out of their way unless there are only one or two. And I’d never bring them back here. Sometimes, they speak with us, sometimes we can’t understand each other.’

  ‘And Tirrike, is she one of that tribe too?’

  ‘She was the wife of one of the warriors. Banjura his name was. She’s a beauty, isn’t she? They never had children, and he was forever beating her because of that. Made him look less of a man, he said. So when I went she came with me. We ran until we dropped. I’d be dead without her. She could find food in a desert. As far as she’s concerned this forest is one big larder.’

  ‘So what are you going to do next?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ He shook his head in despair. ‘Banjura and Illoura would kill me if we returned to the tribe. I suppose I could go back to the settlement. It’s been ten years or more since I ran away. They might have forgotten who I am? Maybe I could tell them I was shipwrecked, maybe I could say I walked all the way from China …’ He trailed off. He would be in for a flogging too, just like us.

  I said, ‘You’d be taking a risk going back, but you might find they’d be pleased to see you. Someone who knows the natives as well as you do. Someone who can interpret their language.’