Storyland

by Catherine McKinnon

  The lieutenant’s face is drained of colour. I grip the gunwale.

  To the south of us, Dilba and the other Indians stand and begin to wail. The waves lap at their feet, but none dare enter the water. Then, one by one, they leave the beach until only Dilba is left, a lone figure, tall against the shadowy bushes. When the light is almost gone, he too turns and walks into the scrub.

  ‘And it is done,’ the lieutenant says.

  ‘They will not return?’ Mr Bass asks.

  ‘I doubt it,’ the lieutenant says.

  Waves crash onto the shore. One lone gull rides the surf. The beach blackens. The lieutenant, more used to battle, lies down to sleep and is soon snoring. Mr Bass says he cannot sleep. The day has had too much charge. He and I sit in the moonlight, watch the darkened banks, and wait for the change of tide.

  When the moon is part way in the sky, the water calms and the currents are for us. I wake the lieutenant. He sits up with a start, rubs his face then slaps it awake. He and I take up oars. Mr Bass stays at the helm. We pull towards the first of the small islets north of the stream.

  Splish, splash, to dare is to do. Splish, splash, to dare is to do.

  When we are near the closest islet it is clear there is no place to land. Mr Bass and I push the anchor over the side. I look to him. He is smiling, glad to be alive, but I do not feel the same gladness. Every part of me is shaken. If the Indians wanted us dead why did they not throw spears? What was up at the lagoon? Mr Bass says death. But why must we go to the lagoon for death?

  I sit staring at the shore.

  ‘Have some melon,’ says Mr Bass.

  But I have no stomach for it. Splish, splash, to dare is to do.

  ‘We will call this islet after you, Mister Martin,’ says Mr Bass.

  The lieutenant agrees. ‘You handled yourself well today, Will.’

  I look about me. The islet is the kind that might vanish in heavy surf. Splish, splash. I remember the old man patting the earth. There is a question in his action. I remember Dilba’s dark figure standing on the shore. I look up to the stars that shine. All about me there is a vast unknowing. Mr Bass and the lieutenant jabber on. I ache to know what might be the Indians’ purpose. Would they have eaten us? I start to shake. I am not frightened now but I am in awe at the mysteries of this strange world. Sometimes being alive is too much. It is like a new rope-knot that I have never seen before and cannot untie.

  I wish that I were home. At least with Mama and Uncle Hilton adventures into the wild are always fictions shaped for pleasure and death comes with fake swords.

  I put my arms around my head. Mr Bass and the lieutenant continue with their discourse, but their voices are far away. Despite the cold, I fall into a deep slumber.

  Monday, our fifth day. The morning is bright, and the breeze is up. According to the lieutenant, I have faced a foe and survived.

  ‘We left them puzzling our very nature,’ agrees Mr Bass.

  Yesterday is like a dream. My spirit, again hungry for adventure, soars.

  We step the mast and hoist sail, but the breeze soon shifts, blowing one way, then another. The sea becomes a bubbling soup, and the clouds lumpy dumplings.

  We strike the sail and pull for land.

  When the sun is above us, we row through a gap in a reef, enter a shielded bay and haul up on the beach. We climb out of Thumb like old men, our arms sore from pulling and our bodies aching from three nights sleeping on a boat. Yet the sun is warm on my skin, and there are no Indian footprints on the sand.

  Carefully, I help Mr Bass undress. His shirt sticks to his body where his burnt skin has blistered. I ease him free. He runs into the sea, ducks below the waves, shoots up out of the water and bellows. The lieutenant and I look to each other and laugh. We strip off our clothes and race to join him. I dive into the cool water and swim as far as I can, then turn to float on my back.

  Seabirds, flying low, pluck insects from the air. A cool breeze washes over me. Mr Bass swims out and circles me like a shark; the lieutenant paddles his way. When he reaches us, he grins as though pleased to have made it, then dunks me beneath the sea. We three wrestle in the water, like brothers. I have never known such happy abandonment. I stroke my way to shore, run out of the water and bound along the sand to dry off. Then I collect sticks, light a fire beneath a shady tree and boil a soup cake.

  Mr Bass and the lieutenant stay an age in the water. Eventually they wade out. Mr Bass gently rubs his body with a cloth. The lieutenant hops in circles around the fire, his teeth chattering like a child. Mr Bass suggests I rinse the salt from the pork and add the meat to the soup.

  ‘A neat culinary trick,’ he says with relish.

  Mr Bass looks forward to every meal as if it is his last. Food is pleasure. For the lieutenant food should not be savoured, for anything savoured is missed when in short supply. Instead, he suggests, food should only be thought of as necessary sustenance.

  ‘Come, Will, we will search for fresh water,’ says the lieutenant. ‘What we have is good enough, but still a little briny for my liking.’

  Mr Bass watches the soup while the lieutenant and I, naked as the Indians, scramble over slippery rocks. We find a place where water is trickling down from the cliff.

  I tip my head back to taste it. Sweet and clear.

  The lieutenant does the same. ‘This will do,’ he says.

  He leaves me there to fill the barica. Slow drips but I am in no hurry. I spy a gecko run across a rock. A spider drops down on a fine thread of web and dangles before me. Seagulls land on the cliff above, squawking.

  I stroll back to camp happy to have my feet on firm ground. My sad spirit from the night before has withered and a new one has grown in its place.

  Perhaps a man must always ride the waves of turmoil before finding peace. Perhaps it has always been so.

  I make bread the way our cook showed me. The lieutenant scribbles in his journal. Mr Bass fossicks in the scrub, picking up insects and inspecting plants and bones. He stores his collection in the shade.

  We are a pleasant camp, and our spirits are much restored. I dish out soup and we sup.

  ‘How would it be if all they wanted was to show us a river?’ I say, thinking of our trials the day before.

  I dip some bread into my soup but, before I bite into it, I spy Mr Bass and the lieutenant staring at me. They have both stopped eating. I need to explain myself.

  ‘Because what if a larger river ran into the lagoon?’ I say.

  Is this such a strange thought? Surely not? Mr Bass looks to the lieutenant but the lieutenant does not take his eye from me. I am sure that fright crosses his face but then he banishes it.

  ‘Impossible hypothesis,’ the lieutenant says confidently. ‘A river of any strength reveals itself at the coast.’ He turns to Mr Bass. ‘We must make sure the governor realises that too, else he might doubt us for further endeavours.’

  The lieutenant continues eating, but I have unsettled Mr Bass, who sits staring into the fire.

  Later, I walk in the scrub collecting more sticks. The wood is dry and smells of the sea. The sun sets and the dunes take on new shapes. The sand cools. Small animals rustle in the grasses. The stars come out, like lamps in a faraway town.

  I make a vow, yet again, to hold my thoughts, because the lieutenant was not pleased with my river contemplations and I now feel a wedge between us where an hour earlier there had been none. I trail away, further than I mean to and, when I come back to camp, my arms full of sticks, Mr Bass and the lieutenant are at each other.

  ‘The primitive mind,’ Mr Bass says angrily, ‘does not just belong to the primitive but to us all.’

  ‘Yes, my point exactly! Take the French,’ says the lieutenant.

  ‘Take them where?’ Mr Bass snaps.

  ‘Take their inclination to rise against their king.’

  ‘But we must all rise,’ Mr Bass says. ‘Man is like bread. To improve the quality of his mind, he must rise.’

  I feed some stick
s into the fire.

  ‘Progress needs order and order needs hierarchy,’ the lieutenant argues. ‘It is the ladder of civilisation, with a top and a bottom. You cannot climb in disorder, George.’

  Lieutenant Flinders lays out his thoughts, like neat piles of sand.

  ‘If you know where you are placed, top or bottom, king or subject, you know about civilisation,’ he says. ‘These Indians mock us because they have no idea of our superiority. Their ignorance makes them arrogant. They have no understanding of order. The French did a great disservice to their country, trying to rid their society of the order of things. Their revolution proved they were no better than the native.’

  ‘The French have some of the best minds in science and philosophy!’ Mr Bass thumps his hand on the sand. ‘They build the best ships too. Belief in equality is not only mouthed by them but felt in the heart.’

  ‘Equality will never aid progress,’ the lieutenant says. ‘Such a belief dooms humanity as it seeks to elevate it. The French thirst for the destruction of order is primitive.’

  ‘Such arrogance, Matthew! That same destructive force is in the English.’

  ‘But we control it.’

  ‘You talk of top and bottom, Matthew, as if you have no place in it. But what about the middle, you forget the middle, to which you belong.’ Mr Bass is all afire now.

  ‘What concerns me is not the middle, George, but the future. The future into which we are sailing. And how it will be for men of England.’

  Mr Bass shakes his head and stares up at the sky. His hand, in a theatrical gesture, stirs the air.

  ‘Sometimes I look at men and see the flourishing of all that is good,’ he says. ‘But evil exists in the civilised as well as in the savage. We English do not control it, but we do disguise it.’

  Dark waves slurp at the shore. It is all very good, I think, them talking about top and bottom and middle, about good and evil, order and disorder, but think of it as water in a bucket, and what if that bucket has a hole? Then soon there would be no top, bottom and middle. No good or evil. No order or disorder. Only an empty bucket.

  I am about to say this to Mr Bass when he rolls on his side and groans at his blisters. He stands quickly and walks away.

  The lieutenant bends his head towards the firelight and writes in his journal.

  I lie on the soft sand to sleep. The breeze tickles my cheek and despite my disturbed mind I sink into a sweet dream. I am at a theatre where Mama and Uncle Hilton are to perform. They cheer when I walk onto the stage and stoop to admire my gold buttons.

  I awake to the sound of water lap. The sun is in my eye. The sand is the white-blue of early morn. In my dream there was an Indian, covered in crow feathers, sitting by me. The Indian said: Bird from far away, fly home.

  I was so in fright of him that I did fly. But when I was in the air, wind tugging my hair, I recalled how far from home I was and began to fall. Falling woke me.

  I sit up. Mr Bass is cross-legged, staring at the fire. I tell him my dream and then, remembering the talk from the night before, speak of water in a bucket. I tell him this in earnest but to my surprise he shoots dagger eyes at me.

  ‘You know nothing, boy, do not pretend you do.’

  I turn away and begin to prepare our food. Why does Mr Bass disregard me so? It is the sixth day of our sail and have I not shown great courage and faced foes never dreamt of by most men? And did I not warn him of the Indian danger? Never mind it was a warning he took no heed of. I think now that he too often dismisses advice from the less lettered. He did it with our first Tom Thumb and lost that vessel to fairweather friends. I have heard more wisdom in a corn jobber’s speech than in some of Mr Bass’s sermons. And for all their fine sailing, did not he and the lieutenant miss their mark the first day of our journey?

  Mr Bass talks to the lieutenant in a sour voice. ‘The soldier I attended before we embarked had been flogged for stealing peas from the store. His wounds were so deep they needed special care.’

  ‘I am sorry to hear that,’ the lieutenant says, evenly.

  ‘That is what hunger does, Matthew,’ says Mr Bass. ‘It turns us all into savages. The Indian cries out in pain when he sees a flogging. He must turn away from it. But we stand and watch, unflinching. Who then is the savage and who is the civilised?’

  ‘An interesting point, George,’ the lieutenant says. ‘Why not write it up in your book?’

  ‘I just might,’ snaps Mr Bass, and walks off.

  I want to shout at Mr Bass. If so easily he raises up the Indians who might have killed him, why not those men who are with him day and night?

  The wind blows along the beach, tumbling driftwood down to the sea. There is a silence among us three. Us three? The lieutenant’s theory of top and bottom is on my mind. I am thinking, if he is right, then I am not in the middle, as he is, but on the bottom. And it is not a good place to be.

  I stow our provisions into Thumb. Mr Bass sits far away, on a rock.

  ‘The tide is for us, George,’ the lieutenant calls.

  Mr Bass does not deign to reply, but he joins us. We shove Thumb into the water, push across the wave break and climb in. Mr Bass and I pull out through the reef. Swish, swash. Swish, swash. The breeze picks up enough for us to hoist sail. It rustles and flaps and is scooped up by a wily wind.

  As we sail past the point I hear birdsong but see no birds. Not even when I squint my eyes to the thickest bush. The birds here know how to find cover when they need, as if constantly wary of hunters.

  Thumb skims the top of the waves.

  ‘Look there, Barn Cove,’ calls the lieutenant.

  He is being his jolly self, attempting to pull Mr Bass out of his temper, which is much like pulling a dying horse out of thick mud.

  ‘Will, you were there at its naming,’ the lieutenant shouts. ‘You must tell that to your family on your return.’

  I look to the cove that is not really a cove. A falcon hovers above a rocky ledge. Squawking seabirds settle on the sand below. This land is a forever land. Here, the clock ticks to a different time.

  Perhaps, yes perhaps there is something in being at its naming. Perhaps I am rising. Man must rise, was that not what Mr Bass said? And when he writes his book about the colony, as he has promised to do, my own name will be known to the world and men will marvel at our journey.

  The breeze turns, whipping so strong from the north that it blows us about. To escape it, the lieutenant steers through a reef near a headland. Mr Bass and I pull towards the cliff where we will be shielded from the wind. We drop anchor and sit idle in the rocking boat, waiting for the weather to change.

  ‘And there is no river found,’ Mr Bass says, face like a basset hound.

  ‘We may come to it yet.’ The lieutenant starts to repack our stores.

  He has not stopped pretending all in our little boat are merry, hopeful that by the force of his pretence we will become so, and for the first time I see some merit in his strategy. For things without resolve are best left unattended.

  I think back to the lagoon. That sweep of water spied from the stream must have come from somewhere. Yet, if there was a river in that place, we will not be the ones to find it.

  Is this what disturbs Mr Bass? Makes him twist and turn in anguish? Makes him huff and puff and sigh? Or is it his eyeing the vastness about us, of the sea and sky and land? Against which we, in our boat, are like a thimble in a grand house. For such an awareness is more present when sailing in Thumb than on the Reliance where each day is busy with duties.

  Our boat sits low in the water. I stare at the sandy beach and the tall trees that surround it. Waves bump us about. I have voices in my head like a hundred young ones calling. What is to be discovered there on the shore? Maybe a river flows behind the trees? Maybe some other treasure is to be found?

  ‘Mr Bass, may I swim to shore?’ I resent the asking.

  ‘What for, Will?’

  ‘To see what is there.’

  Mr Bass stares at m
e, but I glare back.

  He will not frighten me again. I have seen more than most men twice his age.

  ‘If you wish,’ Mr Bass says eventually, closing his eyes, as if dismissing all around him.

  The lieutenant smiles as though pleased with my spirit. I strip off and dive into the water, swim like a shark until I ache to breathe. Only then do I surface.

  When I reach shore, I stagger out and glance back. Mr Bass and Lieutenant Flinders are dwarfed by the rocky cliff and the swirling sea.

  I tramp the sandy beach. The cliffs at either end are the colour of clay. No bush grows on them yet behind me trees come all the way to the edge of the dunes. I jump over black weed that lies on the beach in thin bands, then paddle in the sea. Boulders, like the tiny islands of an archipelago, are spread through the shallows. Some covered with green slimy seaweed, others with colonies of shells – fan shells, brown and purple; cup-like shells; and small grey button shells. Seagulls rest on the boulders and survey their kingdom, or strut in the shallows, plucking tiny sea creatures from the wet sand.

  There are no other footprints but mine. Only shells and driftwood.

  Halfway along the beach I discover a stream whistling out from the trees. It narrows in places and can easily be jumped. I kneel to drink. The water is fresh.

  If I could name it as I pleased I would name this stream for the new sister Mama wrote me about. A sister who seems more dear to me now than when I first heard the news, for I worried at who the father might be. My own father was a captain who sailed to the Americas and was never heard from again.

  As I spin on the sand I name the bay for Mama, and the cliffs for Uncle Hilton. I wade along the stream that is cooler than the sea, and spy two long-bodied insects hovering. Wings gleaming. If I had wings where would I fly? I follow the insects upstream into the forest, and wade out of the water to rest beneath a giant fig tree with roots so large they curve around my back. With a shell I scratch my name into the bark, WILL MARTIN, then the date, MARCH 29, 1796. My stomach churns with all that has happened and weariness takes hold of me. I settle against the tree and doze. I dream I am running from Indians and when I turn to discover if they are upon me, I am startled to see that Mr Bass is one of them. I wake and yawn and then climb up the tree to the top branch. So many trees in one place! I spy giant fig trees that run in a pattern from the shore all the way up the mountain, their shiny leaves glinting in circles of green like women’s dresses twirling on the dance floor. I think of Mama and her way of gabbling about the world. Always imagining herself into faraway places, places she had never even been. Now I have my own story to jaw, only it is not imagined.