Two of the men went ahead while the others waited with Cash. By the time the men came back dusk was falling. They talked together for a while before they all began to run once more. It was almost dark when they finally reached a clearing in the centre of which stood a large oval hut, surrounded by several trees. There was an opening in the wall that faced them; inside, everything appeared dark.
The men gestured to him, pointing the way into the hut. Cash had no choice so walked forward into the darkness.
Inside, the only light came from a fire flickering in the midst of the earth floor. The light shone on black skins, on faces, eyes, lips, on the outlines of patterns drawn on the walls.
The eyes watched Cash as he came stumbling into the firelight. He had no idea what was expected of him and stood until one of the party that had captured him shook him by the shoulder, not hard, and gestured at a place by the fire. Obediently, he sat. They were apparently not planning to kill him yet.
He did not understand why he was here. He did not understand what, if anything, they wanted of him. He understood nothing. Never had he wanted more to communicate with other people, if these naked creatures could be called people. The noises they uttered, twittering sounds, sounded to him more like the calling of birds, of animals in the forest. He could not relate to them at all. Yet, demonstrably, they were shaped like humans. The men were like men, the women, of whom there were several, like women. They talked, or chittered, and once or twice they laughed. The firelight leapt on heads shorn of all hair apart from a small ring on the upper part of the skull. An old woman in a far corner wore what looked like a skin cloak; the rest wore nothing but necklaces of shells about their necks.
His sense of unreality almost overpowered him. If he got to his feet and walked outside, would he be allowed to leave? Presumably not. In the meantime, he was alive, and no one showed him any hostility. Indeed, for the moment they seemed to have forgotten all about him.
He watched the group.
There were perhaps a dozen of them, although in the darkness it was impossible to be sure. Both men and women wore a pattern of scars over their bodies and were ornamented by streaks and circles of red clay. The only ones who had painted simulated bones on themselves were the members of the party that had captured him on the beach. The smell and smoke of the fire could not disguise a musky, feral stench compounded of sweat and what seemed to be animal fat.
He watched the faces of the group as they talked to each other in the high-pitched, twittering birdsong punctuated by grunts and the occasional laugh.
One of the faces was familiar to him. Impossible. He looked again. A woman’s face, red-ochred but unmistakable. It was the girl he had freed from Pelican.
She looked up and saw him. Her face changed. She must have seen him when he first entered the hut but perhaps, then, his face had been in darkness. Now he could feel the warmth of the flames upon him and in their light she recognised him.
She gave an exclamation. She turned and began to talk excitedly to the man seated beside her, clutching his arm, pointing at Cash across the fire.
The man looked also, then turned back to the girl and seemed to question her. He stared once more at Cash and uttered a rough, harsh sound in his throat, like a bark. The chatter died away. He spoke again and all eyes turned and looked in Cash’s direction.
He did not know what to do but thought he had better do something. Moving slowly so as not to alarm them, he stood, stepped around the fire and stopped in front of the girl and the man at her side.
He looked first at the man and bowed his head an inch or two towards him. ‘With your permission, sir …’ The man looked up at him, eyes wide, breathing quietly through his mouth.
Cash turned to the girl. He smiled as broadly as he knew how and bowed for the second time. ‘I …’ he touched his breast ‘… am pleased …’ he smiled ‘… you …’ indicating her with a gesture of his open hand ‘… got ashore safely.’ And, still smiling, he made a gesture that encompassed them all.
He did not know if they would understand him. He was not sure what significance the fact of her presence here might have on his own future. If she saw him as one of those who had kidnapped her, it probably meant his death. On the other hand, if she had understood what he had done for her, it must surely help him. One way or the other, he would find out in time.
One of the other men, an older man with big shoulders and a heavy, lined face, said something and there was a murmur of what seemed approval from the rest of the group. The woman he had rescued stood up, the firelight shining upon her body. She began to talk, accompanying the high-pitched trill with gestures that might have been inserted into the narrative for his benefit or in order to illustrate what she was saying. She portrayed the ship with vibrant slashes of her arms – the masts, the curve of the sails – eyes wild in her head, she struggled against the men who had captured her. Legs spread, an expression of terror and loathing on her face, she mimed the rape and imprisonment.
A branch shifted in the fire amid a shower of sparks. Cash watched the girl, fascinated. He did not understand a word but the story was so well acted as to be plain to him.
She came to the moment of her escape. She pointed to him, came around the fire, stepping swiftly and silently on her bare feet, and took his hand in hers. The group watched silently as she let his hand go, raised her arms over her head and lifted her body on her toes. She sprang into the air with a shrill cry and followed it by vigorous swimming motions of her arms.
The story was finished. She turned, lifted his hand again and sank before him, her face in the dust at his feet.
She stood. Without a smile, without another glance at him, she returned to her place. Cash was left with nothing but the cool touch of her hand, the memory of the pantomime she had enacted. He looked around cautiously, trying to assess the group’s reaction to the tale. They would have heard the story before. What their reaction was, what they thought of his role in it, why they had brought him here, he could not tell. Once again, they seemed to have forgotten about him.
Later, they brought food. He could not see what it was but he was famished and ate it anyway, suspiciously, wondering if it had been poisoned. It seemed a kind of meat, mixed with an unidentifiable substance that was probably some form of vegetable. It was not appetising but it went down and stayed down and helped to alleviate his hunger.
Later still, the group danced outside the hut, forming a circle around a fire they had built in the open, striking the ground with their hands and springing into the air, singing an ululating dirge that seemed to go on and on, while the light played on the underside of the contorted branches overhead and a sickle moon appeared momentarily between a confusion of racing cloud. Cash watched, uncomprehending, a spear-carrying warrior at his side.
No chance of escape, yet. He did not think Hank and the crew of the sealer would come looking for him, or succeed in finding him if they tried, but it was a possibility. How long would they wait for him? For a day or two, probably, but not forever.
When the dance was finished they went back into the hut and lay down on the bare ground. The fire had died down but the hut was warm and Cash lay on his back, watching the fading firelight shift rosily on the latticed branches of the roof overhead, the plaited grass, the walls lined with the feathers of birds. People turned and sighed around him in their sleep. He had only to stretch out his arm to touch one. He could not have felt more alone.
Surprisingly, he slept.
The touch of a hand on his shoulder wakened him. He looked up, startled. The fire had died away completely yet in the darkness he could just make out the face of the girl. He stirred and at once her fingers went to his lips. She took his hand and gestured with her head towards the exit from the hut.
He hesitated but she tugged at his hand and he went with her, stepping silently over the sleeping bodies. Outside, it was dry but cold and very dark with the branches of the trees looming overhead and the moon hidden once again behind the d
riving clouds. She led him to the edge of the clearing and murmured something to him very softly. He looked at her, not understanding.
He was not entirely helpless. They had taken his pistols and the cutlass but had not searched him. He still had his knife. He could cut her throat and make a run for it. Or just go, trusting her not to raise the alarm. Was that why she had brought him out of the hut?
He was scared to move, scared to stay, lost in a morass of ignorance and incomprehension. He looked at her. She came close, lifted his hands and placed them on her breasts. She was young and her breasts were firm, the nipples prominent against his palms. She rubbed herself against him. He had found difficulty in relating to her companions but in her case their previous encounter brought her closer to him. There were those back in Sydney who thought of the blacks as savages with no discernible history or culture. To Cash she was simply a woman whom he had once saved from death. He felt himself respond to her. It had nothing to do with his love for Virginia, nothing to do with Cuddy or Jane Somers or anyone else back in Sydney Cove. This whole episode was an experience outside his own life, unreal and isolated, and the savage woman was part of that isolation.
He put his arms around her, holding her close.
Afterwards, she took his hand and led him down the steeply sloping hillside, under the knotted and contorted trees, over the rocks and pools and fallen branches that lined their path. Cash could see nothing, yet the girl walked through the forest without hesitation, as though it were broad daylight. Eventually he heard again the sigh and susurration of the sea breaking on the sand, and they came out on the long beach where he had come ashore.
Two hundred yards away there glowed the coals of a fire with the dark shapes of men sitting around it. He could see the shadow of a boat drawn up above the waterline. He turned to the girl, held her briefly. She freed herself and returned to the trees as silently as she had come.
He took a deep breath, trying to cross back over the bridge between the two worlds. He had saved her life; she had quite possibly saved his; they had lain together under the open sky. He did not know her name or anything about her. They had never exchanged a word. He did not know why they had taken him prisoner, fed him and, finally, let him go. He did not believe the girl would have helped him in defiance of her tribe yet that was what he had done for her, and perhaps for less reason. He had touched and been touched by the unknown.
He walked along the beach towards the fire.
*
Nantucket sailed back to the unnamed estuary where Brown had his camp. The pelts were ready, piled beneath the rough shelter to keep out the rain. They loaded them into the hold, took back on board the equipment and the men, and set sail for home.
Hank had said little to Cash about his experience with the natives. ‘Tried to track you when we found you’d gone but couldn’t see no trace. Heavy country, that. You say you ran through it?’
That had been the sum total of their discussion but, now, as they started the return voyage, Cash found he wanted to talk about what had happened to him.
‘I don’t understand why they didn’t kill me in the first place.’
‘I heard something about that,’ Hank said. ‘They seem to think white men – people with white skins – are ghosts. Their own ancestors, come back from the dead. Something like that.’
‘Then why let me go?’ He had said nothing of the girl.
Hank spat. ‘Who knows what them monkeys are thinkin’?’
With that they dropped the subject. The return journey was stormy and Cash had little time to think about what had happened so that little by little the episode faded from his mind, becoming progressively more unreal until at times he almost wondered whether he had imagined it, knowing he had not.
As they drew closer to Sydney Cove the weather began to improve and his thoughts turned to Virginia once again. Nothing that had happened during the trip had lessened his feelings for her. If anything, they had grown stronger. He was more determined than ever to win her. There were obstacles, of course, but what were obstacles except to be overcome? If Carter objected to his courting his daughter then Cash would just have to persuade him to think differently.
He would bring Carter to the boat and show him the pelts, over ten thousand of them, and twenty tons of oil. There would be enough profit in that to satisfy the most miserly of businessmen. He might even sell the pelts to Carter, let him have them at a special price so that he, too, would obtain some profit from them. He would show him he was worthy. He would show him.
At last the Heads opened before them out of the west, the sun rising from the sea at their backs as it had on his first arrival in this new country. As Nantucket stood in through the entrance and he saw Thornton’s signalling station on the southern head flagging the news of their arrival, he thought of meeting with Virginia.
He would call and be admitted and wait in a room set aside for them. Virginia would come and her parents, approvingly, and after a while her parents would leave. He would take her hand and maybe kiss her and say to her I am here at last, my love, I am safe home, I am come for you.
And she would smile and kiss him back and he would hold her close and feel her heart beating, and his own.
*
Gough boarded Nantucket as soon as she was through the Heads.
Cash met him at the rail, his face beaming. The two men clasped each other briefly. Gough looked at his son. Cash had matured a lot since he had arrived in the colony almost a year ago. He was broader in the shoulders now and his expression was that of a man who had faced difficulties and dangers and overcome them. Blue eyes smiled out of a face as brown as his own.
‘Good to see you, Dad.’
‘Good trip?’
‘Had some excitement. Come below, I’ll tell you about it.’
In the cramped cabin Cash poured rum for them both and told his father about his adventures with the natives.
‘Same girl you met on the first trip?’ Gough said. ‘You were lucky, my son.’
Cash grinned. ‘I told you I was right to let her go.’
They discussed the cargo and its probable value, then Gough told him how Thornton had sent Orville Jones after him and how the plan had been thwarted through Elizabeth Hagwood’s intervention.
Cash’s mouth set ominously. ‘Reckon I’ve a few calls to make, soon as we arrive in port.’
‘No need for that,’ Gough told him. ‘Tes all sorted out, now.’
‘You surely don’t expect me to ignore it?’
‘I said tes all sorted!’ He smiled reminiscently. ‘We had a few fireworks, I can tell you.’
‘What happened?’
Gough told him of his discussion with Thornton and how the ex-convict had sent a cutter after Orion to recall her.
‘I went aboard her, soon as she was back,’ Gough said. ‘I had a pleasant chat with Jones and persuaded him he’d do well to ply his trade in some other part of the world.’
‘How did you do that?’
‘Told him I’d hang him if he didn’t,’ Gough said simply.
‘Did he believe you?’
‘He did, and rightly, too. I meant every word of it. He set sail two days later and we’ve seen nothing of him since. Good riddance.’
‘Didn’t Thornton object?’
‘Glad to see the back of him, I’d guess. Fewer witnesses that way.’
‘So you got rid of Jones. That still leaves Thornton and Hagwood for me to deal with.’
‘Leave them alone,’ Gough instructed. ‘I already spoke to the pair of them.’
‘But it was me they were after! I’m not sheltering behind your back!’
‘Nobody’s asking you to,’ Gough said, exasperated. ‘There’ll be time enough for the pair of them. Don’t you see? They’ve put themselves in our hands over this. We can play with them now and they won’t be able to do anything to stop us.’ Gough smiled contentedly. ‘Couldn’t have worked out better if I’d arranged it myself.’
Cash lo
oked admiringly at his father. ‘You’re a devil, you know that?’
Gough laughed. ‘Tes what keeps me young, I reckon.’
‘Why don’t you come back into the business?’ Cash asked. ‘The pair of us working together, we could take this whole country by storm.’
‘Officers aren’t allowed to trade.’
‘Then send in your papers. You’ll have a thousand times more fun and make ten thousand times more money if you do.’
Gough hesitated: he could foresee problems if the two of them tried to work in one harness. ‘I told you I’d give you a free hand.’
‘And I’m using it to ask you to join me,’ Cash urged him eagerly. ‘You’re bored with the army, anyway, and you’re too young to retire, for heaven’s sake! We’ll make a great team.’
‘Maybe you’re right.’ Gough’s delight showed in his smile. ‘Tremain and Son, eh? My dear life, we’ll give Hagwood a run for his money!’
‘At least let me go and say thank you to Mrs Hagwood,’ Cash said. ‘It sounds like I owe my life to her.’
‘Leave her alone,’ Gough told him. ‘Coming to see me must have been one of the hardest things she ever did in her life. She won’t want to be reminded of it.’
Cash looked doubtful. ‘I can’t just ignore it.’
‘Tes exactly what you must do. There’s no need to say anything: she knows already how we feel. Tes between herself and her husband. Besides, tes ancient history now. She won’t thank you for interfering.’
Once inside the harbour they dropped anchor and Gough left for shore. There were one or two ships Cash did not recognise, one or two others that were gone, Orion among them.
As soon as he was able Cash went ashore and up the hill to his house. As he reached the gate the door of the house opened. Cuddy stood there smiling at him, her face and body one big smile, and he felt a fierce pang of guilt because he had hardly thought of her all the time he had been away. The feeling of guilt made him hesitate, just a fraction. He hoped she had not seen it. He walked up the path to her and into the house and she, coming behind him, closed the door and put her arms around him from the back.
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