Tommo and Hawk

by Bryce Courtenay

  ‘Ikey’s corner of the world was mostly rags, poverty and drunkenness,’ Hawk reckons. He tells of how often in winter it never grows light, the smog from the coal fires and factories closin’ out the sun. When the weather got warmer the stench were unbearable and attacked his delicate nostrils long before the train pulled into Waterloo station. The fumes made his nose drip and his lungs wheeze, so that after a few hours he longed to be back in the fresh countryside. In winter, walking the streets in the cold, wet and dark, the terrible stench were gone, swallowed by the frost and snow. But this were a time o’ despair for our big-hearted Hawk, when he’d see barefooted children wrapped in newspapers and rags, begging a penny and near to perishing. He’d take as many as he could to a pie shop and empty his pockets of all he possessed. It was common enough, he says, to find their little corpses under the bridges when they did not survive the cold of the night.

  Hawk made many a visit to Petticoat and Rosemary Lanes and found them not much changed from Ikey’s tales, though it were the same poverty witnessed everywhere. Sometimes he’d drink a pint of ale at the Pig ‘n’ Spit, the public house what was once owned by our true mother, Sperm Whale Sally, or as she were known then, Marybelle Firkin. Hawk tried to find Ikey’s old coves, Sparrer Fart and Bob Marley, but to no avail. Some knew of Bob Marley, what they claimed had taken the boat for New York. All had heard of Ikey Solomon, though only some knew what had happened to him. Only one person remembered Sparrer Fart, and it were thought he’d been transported to Van Diemen’s Land or New South Wales, not long after Ikey himself.

  Hawk visited Ikey’s Whitechapel home o’ course, and though boarded up at the doors and windows, it were most impressive, a veritable mansion when compared to the rows of miserable houses for the poor what surrounded it, all stuck together with common walls.

  Though Hawk talks often of the poverty he saw, he sometimes recalls London in spring, when the sky above Hyde Park were duck-egg blue, the sun warm to the back o’ the neck and the larks singing high in the sky. Daffodils, crocus and bluebells were poking up everywhere in great patches through the green grass of the park; the squares fronting the big houses were ablaze with peach, pear and plum blossom, and the rich folks’ window boxes filled with tulips.

  Then he tells of lovers sitting hand in hand, and old people clapping to the beat as they listen to the military bands play their stirring marches in the parkland rotundas. He recalls the wonders and delights of Vauxhall Gardens and the pretty girls everywhere. But always his conversation turns back to the never-ending traffic, full of carriages, hacks and conveyances of every conceivable kind, where the tooting and whistling and whirring of rattles continues twenty-four hours, day and night, like a great living machine driven by some unknown hand.

  ‘Tommo, London is every type of misery and despair though it is filled with delights beyond your imaginings,’ he declares. ‘But still, I missed the simplicity of Hobart Town, with folks stopping to greet you and pass the time of day.’

  Hawk also remembers his constant hunger while he were in Blighty for he never got enough to eat. He’s been near starvin’ on the Nankin Maiden too and so I’ve started to fish for him. In exchange for me kangaroo skin coat, the blacksmith has provided me with a long braided line, sinker lead and various sized hooks. The Maori aboard have showed me how to make lures from cloth and wire, and I’ve got an arrangement with the cook whereby he keeps half what I catches and the remainder be fed to Hawk and me.

  The bastard cheats us often, claiming more bone upon cleaning and filleting my catch than a fish could carry. But what we get adds greatly to our rations. Some days I catch even more than we can eat or the cook can cheat us of, and this is shared with the Maori and islander crew. Apart from them, the men aboard will not eat fish or shark freshly caught, much preferring salt beef.

  We’ve become friends of sorts with these kanakas, this being a word from Hawaii what means ‘man’. Our friendship with the Maori be especially strong and they welcome Hawk and me to be amongst them sometimes. Though their faces be every inch tattooed so that they appear to be primitive savages of great fierceness, they’s a jolly lot and often laughing. They cannot say Hawk’s name but call him Ork, what be good enough! Already I’ve some handy words of their language which Hawk also begins to understand. They show great delight when I make a word or string together a sentence in their tongue and are at great pains to correct me when I get it wrong.

  And so my time when not on watch is well taken up, and not only with new learning at reading and writing. Billy Lanney has taken to showing us some of the many knots and hitches to be found in the seaman’s trade. Splicing be the hardest, but I am learning to turn a neat splice, though Hawk with his big hands is making less progress. Sometimes I play cards in the fo’c’sle but it ain’t the same without grog. It’s fishing what is me most important daily task, almost more than gathering raisins. Fish ain’t always plentiful and days may pass without me catching anything. I frets for Hawk when this happens. But though I don’t never want to be parted from him again, I doubt that me love of Hawk is stronger than me love of grog!

  It’s near time for me to be called down from this bloody watch. Two hours spent standing on wooden rungs, me eyes peeled for whales, and the breeze stiffening and growing blustery in me face is most tiring work, and I’ll be glad to be back on deck. But just as I’m thinking this, I sees a whale blow. At first I ain’t sure, but then another whale breaks the surface and this time I sees the spouting clear.

  ‘Thar she blows!’ I yell at the top of my voice. ‘Thar she blows!’ I scream, pointing to starboard, my throat hoarse. Now I see them again, a pod of at least four, and big uns too. One begins to sound and I see its great fluke hit the water with an explosion like a small cannon fired against the wind.

  What I’ve seen I takes to be sperm whale, though of course I’m no expert. But then the two men on the other masts see the pod as well. ‘Sperm!’ one shouts. ‘Four of them! To starboard!’ shouts the other. But the call is mine, the first sighting belongs to yours truly, Tommo X Solomon!

  I am too excited to go down the mast straight away. Me heart is thumpin’ in me chest and ears. I am needed below for it’s every hand to the task when a pod be sighted, but me knees are gone to jelly and shaking beyond me control.

  Below me on deck, there is a frenzy of activity, men running everywhere in great confusion. Our ship turns slowly to starboard, men adjusting the sails so that we might close the distance between the pod and ourselves.

  The mates are shouting and waving their arms. The crew prepare to lower the whaleboats by means of the falls— a block-and-tackle arrangement which sets the boats to swaying in the breeze as they fall loose from their davits. Captain O’Hara on the bridge shouts, ‘Where away!’ for these be the words spoken when a hunt is on. From where I stand all is bedlam. I looks for Hawk but now the ship has turned, I cannot see the whaleboat on the starboard quarter which be his.

  A whaleman has climbed into each of the three other whaleboats on the port side, making the harpoon and rope barrel ready and checking that the oars and all else be ship-shape and in their rightful place. The ship is making good progress in the stiff breeze, sailing towards our prey, which seem not to notice us.

  Then the falls drop the whaleboats some two feet below the level of the main deck, and the remainder of the crews jump in. They takes their places at the thwarts with the oars and the steering oar shipped ready. At last the three boats are dropped into the ocean with a foamy splash.

  As soon as the boats hit the water the five oarsmen in each, including the harpooner, begin to row at a frantic pace, with the mate at the steering oar. The hunt is on! The stiff breeze makes my eyes water as I scan the waves, trying to see the fourth whaleboat and if Hawk be in it.

  But it’s all hands on deck when a whale chase is on and I got t’ get down where I’m needed. I scramble down the mast wishing I’d been chosen to man a whaleboat with me brother beside me. But at that same moment I has
a second wish, and I pray that Hawk has not been chosen and that he be safe on the deck below me. He’ll not be in the crew ‘less someone be indisposed, and I tell myself there is nothin’ to worry about. Then suddenly me heart is full of fear. I am back in the wilderness, caught in the tall timbers, and I can feel that they are near. Tommo has smelled the mongrels coming, but this time they be after my brother Hawk.

  Chapter Four

  HAWK

  The Pacific Ocean

  November 1856

  I am seated in a quiet corner of the poop deck, my watch completed and two hours to myself. I am here because I can’t bear being in the fo’c’sle, a hell-hole where those who are not on watch congregate for smoking, conversation and sleep.

  It’s worse than Brodie’s sly grog shop, a cabin about sixteen feet wide and as many again from the bulkhead to the foredeck and so low that a person of my stature must bend almost double to walk. Around the fo’c’sle ladder are sea chests, greasy pans, pieces of rancid meat and soap kegs belonging to the crew. Along the walls a dozen small berths are piled high with evil-smelling bed linen, consisting of old foul weather clothes. The one small consolation is that few fleas, lice and bed bugs are to be found. This is not because of the lack of dirt and human ordure but because of the prevalence of cockroaches. The cockroach is a hunter of these vermin and eats them with relish, being particularly partial to the flea, which it will chase with an insane ferocity.

  As you lie awake at night in the fo’c’sle with not a stitch of cover except a lather of perspiration, you can hear the cockroaches at work, their wings clicking away busily. All too often an army of them will climb up your arms and legs and scurry across your stomach in pursuit of some flea, or congregate to lick the sweat from your body. Though rats are more numerous on a whaleship than on any other vessel at sea, and it is common enough to see them gnawing at the calloused soles of some sleeping kanaka’s feet, they are but a nuisance compared to these vermin.

  The cockroaches are described in jest as being as big as rats and the rats as big as cats. If this is an exaggeration, it is not by so very much. There is a shanty I’ve heard the men sing:

  And the rats, oh the rats,

  be as big as dockside cats

  And the roaches in the fo’c’sle

  as big as Sally’s flats.

  Row, row, whaleman

  Pull now at your oars,

  We’re sailing off to hunt our prey

  wherever there be whaling

  from ‘round the Cape to Boston Bay

  and down to the Azores!

  Row, row, whaleman

  Pull now on your oars,

  The skipper’s docked your pay away

  with provisions from his stores

  with…pro-vis-ions…from…his…stooooores!

  In this weather the fo’c’sle is insufferably close. It is seldom cleaned and the dirt and stench are overpowering. But the men seem to prefer it to the clean breeze and sunshine on deck and there is always a game of cards going, the players’ pipe smoke fugging the atmosphere so that the cards can scarcely be seen in the dim light cast by a whale-oil lamp. It is a place of much joshing and cursing, and every hour of the day it seems a fight is about to start. The knives come out at the slightest provocation. Yet it is the nearest a whaleman has to a home, and the men seldom come to blows.

  It is mid-morning and a stiffening nor’easterly brings some relief from the heat. Tommo is on whale watch up the mainmast, a task which suits him well as there is still much of the solitary in him. He spoke once of how, in the wilderness, he would sometimes escape from his drunken master, Sam Slit, by climbing high up into the branches of a river gum. Slit, violent and angry, would fire a musket charged with birdshot to try to bring him down.

  Tommo laughs at this memory. ‘Them trees be too high for most of the shot to reach me and I be too well protected by the mighty branches.’ I sometimes think of Tommo as a small child who climbs into the branches of a grog tree to escape his own miseries. I wonder how he shall become a man while still he seeks this escape.

  But then I wonder, am I yet a man? How may I tell? How do we move from the state of childhood to manhood?

  There must be a moment when we pass over into manhood. We are now sixteen, but it cannot simply be a time set by others when we are said to come of age. It is, I should imagine, a moment of the heart and of intelligence, or even, if there is such a thing, of the soul. But perhaps we can also lose our childhood too soon on account of suffering.

  Tommo is an example of this. He has suffered too much and has been cheated out of his rightful share of childhood, its natural expectations and excitements. He has grown up too soon and thus is bitter and cynical.

  But what of the others like him, the street urchins who hunt in feral packs around Hobart Town? Those brats who look at you with snotted noses and old, tired eyes, their only ability calculating the gain which might be made from your presence amongst them. Are they still children? Unlike Tommo, they are neither bitter nor cynical, for they expect nothing of life, only their certain death at the hands of others like them, or at the end of the hangman’s rope. Perhaps the moment of manhood or womanhood is the moment when we give up hope for ourselves?

  The feral children of Hobart Town are the flotsam on the tide of humanity. If the clergyman, judge, teacher and merchant— those four wise corners which frame our noble society— are to be believed, there is no hope to be held for any of them.

  In the eyes of the clergyman, they are lost souls, doomed to a short life of no virtue and a pauper’s grave. The judge believes it is his bounden duty to punish such delinquent brats for the sins they commit against their fellow man. To the teacher, they are simply the dull-minded infants who pay no heed in lessons and are quickly left behind. To the merchant, they are an easy source of stolen pennies, to be set upon by dogs when they beg for charity.

  Yet if these pitiable slack-jawed children had been granted a childhood of love, decency and some useful learning, they might well have passed naturally into maturity and proved themselves as good as any other person. Even poor Tommo had the early benefit of love and teaching before we were kidnapped. Whilst I was fortunately returned to Mary quite soon thereafter, receiving her love and with it the opportunity to learn, Tommo spent his next seven years amongst some of the vilest of the human tribe. He has retained his intelligence, which was early formed, and is now only backward in its application. What he has lost is the ability to love and trust.

  I fret for those lost children of Hobart Town and every other town, and I fret for my brother. I feel saddened and somehow responsible that I was saved, while my twin suffered. It’s perhaps one reason why I am with him now, forsaking Mary. It is to care for Tommo and teach him what I know so that together we might turn back the clock and restore the love and trust he has lost.

  At times, though, I wonder whether I am rescuing Tommo or he is rescuing me. Have I run away from Mary? Since rescuing me from the wild man, she wishes to know my whereabouts at every moment and seeks to direct my efforts at every turn. Mary loves me with all her heart but thinks me disadvantaged in two ways: I am only a black man and I have no voice to speak for myself. She sees herself as my protector and as my voice, and it would be ever thus had I remained with her in Hobart Town.

  How then should I test myself? How then should I come to know my own character, whether I am good or bad, strong or weak? Do my dreams for the future exist only because I am a privileged creature and have no knowledge of the true nature of men? All these questions I think of on our voyage.

  In the end, I confess that I have longed for an adventure such as this. When I heard that the Nankin Maiden was in port I was already well aware of Tommo’s discontent. I believed that if only Tommo and I were on an American whaling ship which did not permit grog, then he would be safe, and we would both be embarked upon a grand adventure. When Mary bade us gone, I acted on this notion.

  Perhaps whaling is in our blood? This is a question I al
so hope to answer. Our fathers were whalemen— Tommo’s a giant Red Indian by the name of Tomahawk and mine an even bigger black man by the name of Black Boss Cape Town.

  Ikey had told us how we were conceived as a result of that legendary night when the two harpooners wrestled for the singular favours of the giant whore, Sperm Whale Sally. Our mother was said to be imbued with the spirit of the whale, and those who coupled with her won good fortune for their vessel on the hunt. Yet only two men had succeeded in bedding her and sailing under the ‘True Blue’ flag which bestowed her blessing. These men were Tommo’s father and mine. When the whaling season brought both their ships into port at the same time, each man was determined to claim her for his own. But in the end, neither man alone was strong enough for Sally and, to heal the rivalry between them, she gave herself to both. It is from this loving that twins were born, one white and the other black, one tiny and one huge, one Tommo and the other me.

  When we were born and Ikey adopted us, he wrote to the Royal Society in London, hoping to gain some fame from this remarkable birth. They replied that while the fertilising of the one female egg by seed from two different males is most unusual, it was not unknown to happen among whores where numerous and near simultaneous couplings took place, and that it was not a matter of sufficient interest for their record books. Ikey always said that if our mother had been a duchess instead of a whore they’d have taken more notice and we’d be famous.

  Knowing our birthright, it was only natural that I should choose a whaling ship for Tommo and me to sail on. All on board the Nankin Maiden have heard the legend of Sperm Whale Sally, and some old salts claim they know the two giant whalemen, though none has heard of, or seen, either for several years, and none knows we are their sons.