IRA THORNTON
Traders and General Merchants
Beneath it another sign, this one hand-painted.
OPEN
‘Take a look inside, shall we?’ Thornton said.
The interior smelt of sawn timber and paint. Workmen hurried everywhere, the sound of boots and raised voices echoing through the shell of the empty building.
A rabbit hutch of an office had been patched together just inside the entrance. It was a temporary construction of rough laths, the floor was bare and covered in dust, but it contained a desk at which a young man was seated, surrounded by piles of paper.
He stood up as the two men came in. He was tall and thin, with chewed nails and a spotty complexion.
‘Good morning, Mr Thornton. Good morning, sir.’
‘Get on with thy work, lad. We be just havin’ a look round.’
They went out again. Through the open framework on the other side of the building, Jonathan could see the sunlight glinting on the shifting waters of the cove.
‘Deep water there,’ Thornton explained. ‘Lighters will be able to lie right alongside and offload straight into the warehouse.’
‘When will it be finished?’
‘Another ten days, I reckon.’
Jonathan frowned. ‘Impossible!’
Thornton’s laugh creaked like a rusty saw. ‘Any later, I’ll be havin’ someone’s head.’ He looked about him with satisfaction, drawing the resin-scented air deep into his lungs. ‘This be prime position on whole waterfront. There’s more trade coming, lots of it, and we be right on t’ spot to take best advantage.’ He looked at Jonathan. ‘This be ourn, lad. Tha understands that? Only reason thy name’s not up there alongside mine is because of this damn fool Home Office ruling. Which reminds me. What be tha doing about getting that changed?’
Thornton watched him, the concern on his face cloaking the secret smile in his heart. He knew the Home Office ruling would not be changed. He had taken care of that. It was what gave him his power. Jonathan Hagwood would never have become so closely involved with him, an ex-convict, if he had been free to trade on his own account. That had been part of the deal he had arranged with the governor. Leave the Home Office ruling alone. The longer it remained in force, the more money it would make for the pair of them.
Oh yes, he thought. Thee’s made a smart deal, George Crabbe. A pardon in exchange for a share of profits … A right smart deal. For both of us.
‘Tha should have a word wi’ t’ governor, lad,’ he said. ‘Get him to write to Henry Dundas in London. Persuade yon lunkhead to see reason.’ He nudged Jonathan in the ribs. ‘Tha’ll never make thy fortune, else.’
He watched Jonathan’s face, saw him struggling to hide his resentment at the familiarity, and gloated secretly. I knows what thee thinks o’ me, Jonathan, old friend. Thee thinks I’m dirt. Well, happen tha’s got to put up wi’ me for now, dirt or no dirt.
*
Two days later, early in the morning, Ira Thornton walked through the shell of his new building, checking on the work that was going on all around him.
The thunderous cacophony of the construction half-deafened him and the air was filled with dust, yet Ira was here by choice. Being on the spot meant he could keep an eye on the builders, but far more important was simply to be here, to watch his new headquarters taking shape about him.
He walked slowly through the half-completed rooms, touching the walls with his hands, looking out through the open cargo bays at the empty waters of the cove outside. He could see the jetties crowded with lighters, smell the cargo as it passed through the great doors of the building – the wheat and corn, sandalwood and spices, wool, meat and fresh vegetables, drums of oil and barrels of liquor, bolts of cloth, fine furniture from Europe, tools for the farm and for the town – all passing through his hands, increasing his wealth, increasing his power, increasing every day the distance between what he had been and what he was determined to become.
Ira stood, hand on the pillar of the unfinished cargo bay breathing the dusty air, teams of workmen scurrying to and fro around him. He looked out across the newly constructed wharf at the shifting pattern of sunlit water beyond.
He had shut his childhood away from him. His life in the slums of Manchester he remembered only as a pit filled with biting cold, remorseless poverty and degradation, harsh and without hope. From the first he had known that the only way out of the pit was for him to be equally cold, equally remorseless, equally harsh to everything and everyone that stood in his way. It had not been difficult – it was his nature – yet his first attempts to escape had brought him here in irons. He did not regret it but was determined never to be caught again. He had learned how important it was to cover his tracks.
There were plenty who disapproved of him. His lip curled. Let them. He had no time to be gentlemanly about things. Besides, he had never claimed to be a gentleman. He left that to people like Jonathan Hagwood. He was thirty-two years old and had a fortune to make. Everyone existed to be used, from the governor himself to a slattern like Cuddy Marshall.
His eyes glowered resentfully as he thought of the girl and how the Tremains had taken her away from him. Arrogant bastards. As though he, Ira Thornton, a free man with a pardon signed by the governor and already one of the richest men in the colony, was of no account at all. He’d not forget that, by God.
Caused him trouble, that episode had. Lost him a bit of face. It had taken some harsh words and a couple of broken heads to bring the lads into line afterwards. Unconsciously, his grip tightened on the pillar. He wouldn’t forget either of them. He was proud of the fact that he never overlooked an opportunity nor forgot an injury. He destroyed his enemies and had no friends. Cuddy and the Tremains had trouble coming, by God. He would see to that.
He already had a couple of things he could use. Jack – there was the weakness. He’d tried to make use of yon doxy Jack had met on the transport. It would have been a neat plan, using her to incriminate their sailing partner. It hadn’t worked – that Reilly was someone else he wouldn’t forget – and now she was on Norfolk, out of his reach. Never mind, there was another arrow to his bow. Jack thought no one knew about his little ways. He was wrong there, by gum. Very useful to have that sort of knowledge tucked away.
He turned and walked back to the makeshift office, the resinous scent of sawn timber all about him. His lanky clerk was out on an errand and the office was empty. He had barely sat down at the desk when there was a knock on the door. He looked up. The dapper figure of Captain Jones stood in the doorway.
‘Told I would find you here, Mr Thornton.’
Thornton nodded to him. ‘Tha was told right, then. What can I do for thee, Captain?’
‘You said something about making me an offer for my cargo.’
EIGHTEEN
The jagged black cliffs of the island rose like fangs from the turbulent waves.
Cash stood at Pelican’s rail and watched the seas pounding the iron-bound coast. Breakers exploded in bursts of spray against the gleaming ledges of rock. Even here, half a mile offshore, he could sense the cliffs quaking beneath the onslaught of the sea. Over everything was the smell of kelp, the crying of the gulls.
‘There you go, mister.’ Wilkes Doggett stood at his shoulder, eyes screwed up against the spray that ran in salty tears down his weathered face. ‘Our first happy hunting ground.’
Cash licked his lips, tasting the salt on them. He had to shout to make himself heard above the tumult of the sea, the keening of the wind in the rigging. ‘I don’t see any seals.’
Doggett pointed to a headland half a mile distant, its rock face rising vertically a hundred feet or more above the waves. ‘Inlet beyond the point. Sheltered water. Holding ground there, of a sort.’ He grinned at Cash, showing uneven brown teeth. ‘Plenty of seal, or should be. Then we’ll see what sort of a man you really are.’
The two men had spent a good deal of time together since Doggett had begun to teach Cash the rudiments
of navigation. In both of them was the dawning of respect. Doggett was as hard and remorseless as the iron coasts around which he spent his life but he was a fine seaman, as anyone whose living depended on sailing and surviving in such waters needed to be. Cash already knew he would have no hesitation in sailing anywhere Doggett chose to lead him. Cash, on the other hand, had shown an aptitude and willingness to learn that had fired Doggett’s reluctant respect. Not that he had admitted it, or ever would, but the derision had gone from his voice and they both knew it.
Doggett shouted an order and Pelican came about, sails shaking, and settled to her new course. She ran parallel to the coast until the rocky headland was abeam. Seabirds swirled like driven spume above the smooth wet cliffs. The ship rounded the head and was at once in quieter water. The wind was still strong enough to fill the sails but its shrill keening died as they came into the shelter of the land.
Reefs showed their teeth through the water. The coastline was riven by a succession of caves, the sea surging white into their gaping mouths. Beyond them, the cliffs gave way to a long beach of black sand. They were the only colours, black and white and grey – cliffs black, foam white about the rocks, sea and sky grey. On the sand, seals lay in their thousands.
Doggett sighed noisily. ‘Still there, then.’
‘Did you think they might not be?’
‘Last time we was here, we killed five thousand of them. If the survivors decided to leave, what’s to stop them? Yet it looks like there’s more of them than ever.’
‘What do we do?’
‘Do, mister?’ Doggett stared at him. ‘We kill ’em, of course. We go ashore and we kill ’em.’
‘Won’t they swim away when they see us coming?’
‘No.’
Cash was incredulous. ‘They just lie there?’
‘You’ll see for yourself.’
Doggett went forward, conning the ship from the bows and instructing the helmsman by shouts and flourishes of his hand. Slowly Pelican nosed her way into the inlet. Cash had no function to perform in the ticklish task of bringing the ship into her anchorage but he watched closely as she twisted and turned her way through the reefs, the sails slatting and banging overhead in a wind growing fitful as they crept ever further into the shelter of the high cliffs.
Within, the tumult of the open sea was replaced by a sullen calm, the only noise the wash of waves in the cave mouths, the intermittent litany of the birds. The air was damp and cold and still.
In the bow of the ship, Doggett waved his hands abruptly over his head. ‘Let go!’
The anchor cable roared in the hawse pipe. Aloft there was a burst of frenzied activity as the men strung out along the yards furled and secured the sails. The vessel drifted until the anchor bit, then came up into the light breeze that was all they could now feel of the wind blowing outside. In the sudden silence, Cash heard the honking and groaning of the seals sprawled like black slugs along the steeply shelving beach. Their choking stench came intermittently on the breeze.
Doggett’s voice was loud in the stillness, shouting orders as he hurried aft. Everywhere there was activity. The two small boats that Pelican carried were being put into the water and loaded with gear whose purpose Cash did not know – large metal pots that looked like boilers, bundles of long-bladed knives, and heavy wooden billets four feet long and smooth with one end knobbed and shod with iron. Members of the crew scrambled down into the boats as they tossed against Pelican’s side in the backwash from the cliffs.
Doggett turned, a sardonic smile on his face. ‘If you’re ready, Mr Tremain …’
Cash found a place between two of the crew. The men at the oars bent their backs. The boat clawed its way slowly across fifty yards of foam-swirled water to the beach.
Doggett had been right. The animals began to bellow as the men appeared, the sound echoing mournfully off the cliffs, but they did not move. The boat ran grating up the black sand and the crew disembarked, moving with the confidence of men who had done the same thing many times before. Two or three of the older crew members began to unload the equipment and carry it up the coarse, yielding sand to a level section near the cliff face, beyond the reach of the tide. Half a dozen of the younger men picked up wooden billets and walked straight into the ranks of seals who bellowed, showing long yellow teeth, and shifted uneasily on their huge bodies, but still made no attempt to escape.
The men moved into the lines of seals like reapers going into a field of corn. The heavy wooden battens were clubs, Cash now realised, and they rose and fell in a rhythmic pattern of controlled violence. The men brought the metal-shod ends down with all their strength on the heads of the helpless animals who roared their terror and protest but who still, still, did nothing to save themselves but instead lay helpless before their executioners.
The systematic slaughter was made more horrible by the way the seals accepted their fate. The mournful bellowing was the only indication they cared about what was happening. The sea was not ten yards away yet they lay still as the club-wielding men moved among them.
The other boat had come ashore at the far end of the beach. Cash could see the clubs rising and falling as the men began to work their way along the black sand towards him.
Doggett stopped at his side.
‘Good start,’ he said, his eye calculating numbers.
‘Why kill them like this? Why not use knives or guns?’
‘Mustn’t damage the pelts. No one will buy a skin with a bullet hole in it.’
It was horrible, but fascinating, too – Cash found he could not take his eyes off the slaughter.
Another group of men was crouched among the corpses, the red-bladed flensing knives stabbing and sweeping as they began the task of skinning the dead beasts.
‘Planning on standing there all day?’ Doggett picked up a club and pushed it into Cash’s hand. ‘Your pa wants you to learn sealing? That’s where it all is. Get at it, boy.’
Doggett was right. It was what he was here for. Cash took the club and swung it experimentally, feeling its weight. He knew he was as much under test now as he had ever been poring over the charts on the navigation table. He gritted his teeth and took a firm grip on the club. ‘Right.’
He stepped between the corpses of the seals that had already been killed and joined the line of men. They made room for him without comment, not lifting their eyes from their work. Cash could hear the faint gasp of breath as each man lifted the club, the swish as it descended, the thud as it struck home. The seals bellowed, their huge lash-fringed eyes looking up at the men.
Cash closed his own eyes and struck out. The thud jarred to his shoulder. There was a bellow – he had missed his aim. He struck again, watching this time, lips drawn back over his teeth. The metal-shod end struck the animal on the nose. A squirt of blood and the creature collapsed.
He took a step, did it again. Again. Again. Again. The stench of the animals, the stench of the men, was all about him. He could smell himself, the sweat rancid under his arms.
Thud. Step. Bellow. Thud. Step. Bellow. Thud.
He had got his rhythm now. A gasp of breath as the club was raised, the faint whistle as he exhaled, bringing the club crashing down. Again. Again. Again. Shoulders aching. Arms aching. Thud. Bellow. Thud.
He hated them, the way they accepted death. Why didn’t they fight? Why didn’t they try to escape? That way there would at least be the raised temperature of fear, of excitement. That way the blood would be pounding hot through his body.
The shuffling step, the pause, knees slightly bent to set himself. Bellow. Gasp. Whistle. Thud.
He lost all sense of time, of anything in the world beyond the sand grating beneath his feet, the raucous requiem of the huge beasts, now dying in their scores, eyes reproachful in the whiskered heads.
Step. Gasp. Whistle. Thud. Step. Gasp …
The man at his side had to catch his arm before he realised that they had worked their way through the animals and were face to face with the
line of men that had advanced from the other end of the beach. He lowered his arm. The club fell from fingers suddenly nerveless. The dead seals were piled up all around them, one or two still moving feebly. Men armed with clubs were dispatching the survivors.
The man beside him grinned, a cocky, bright smile on his dirty face. ‘Yer soon gets used to it.’
Cash turned away. He was emptied, beyond thought or feeling. Doggett picked his way across the beach towards him.
‘Right, mister, let’s get busy.’
Cash stared at him. ‘What do we do now?’
‘We make camp.’
‘Camp?’
‘Of course camp. Those caves will be full of seal. More than you can count. It’ll take weeks to work through them. We’ll leave a party here while the rest of us go on in Pelican.’ He raised his voice as he shouted at the rest of the men. ‘Let’s get moving. I want to get out of here before dusk.’
It was as well they had brought supplies of timber from Sydney Cove. There was only driftwood on the beach and no way that Cash could see of scaling the precipitous cliffs. They had also brought enough stores to keep the men going and an empty cask to fill from the rivulet of fresh water that ran out across the beach, a hundred yards from the landing.
They assembled a couple of rough huts while the flensing gang continued their work. The skins were beginning to pile up. Puddles and streaks of blood patterned the black sand. Seabirds in their thousands squabbled and screamed in greedy cacophony over the flayed corpses.
The light was going before the crew left the shore party and went back on board. The sails were unfurled to the breeze, the anchor raised. Slowly, Doggett once again conning from the bow, Pelican put to sea.
*
For weeks, months, there had been nothing at all. The daily routine, clearing the land, putting up fences, ploughing the fields, all the time thinking nothing yet, and hoping, praying, that this time the devil had finally left him.
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