Cry of the Curlew: The Frontier Series 1

by Peter Watt

  Bridget rose from her chair by the bed and crossed the room.

  ‘Missus Duffy,’ Molly said as she reluctantly passed the bundle to Bridget, ‘I have brought you the son of Michael Duffy. I have given him his name but he is yet to be baptised in the True Church.’

  Bridget took the bundle and gazed down into the blanket where a baby with dark curly hair was asleep. She fought to stay on her feet. Michael now lived through his son. The shock of recognising the resemblance of the baby to his father was uncanny. ‘Dear Mother of God!’ She gazed down at the baby snuggled asleep in the warm rug and the little creature’s eyelids twitched at the annoying sound of brawling patrons in the bar below their feet.

  ‘What name have you given him, Miss O’Rourke?’ Bridget finally asked as tears of grief turned to tears of joy.

  ‘I have called him Patrick after the big man himself,’ she answered softly with tears welling in her own eyes. ‘I’m sure Michael would have wanted that name for his son. I knew Patrick Duffy in the old country a long time ago. Oh, I was but a mere slip of a girl then and I fell in love with Patrick himself like all the other colleens in the county. But he only had eyes for Elizabeth Fitzgerald, and not for the likes of a simple girl such as meself. Ah! but that was a long time ago,’ she sighed.

  Patrick Duffy was woken by a window shattering downstairs as the brawl spread. He opened his eyes to stare myopically at his new world. He balled his tiny fists and opened his little lungs to vent his anger for all to hear that he did not like being disturbed from his comfortable sleep. Patrick Duffy announced to the world that he had come to live with his father’s family.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Although the two men appeared to be relaxed astride their horses, they were particularly alert. Tom Duffy and Wallarie had good reason to be vigilant. They were approaching territory that was home to tribesmen prepared to spear intruders on their traditional lands.

  Wallarie’s dark eyes also scanned the country around them for signs indicating the intrusion of white men beyond their established frontiers. The advance of white settlers usually meant the presence of the dreaded Native Mounted Police.

  The two men rode in the style of the cavalryman, one hand swinging free while the other gripped the reins and led a packhorse burdened down with bags of flour and sugar, tins of tea and syrup, small boxes of ammunition for their weapons and a few precious tins of tobacco.

  As they rode side by side through the low scrub of the Gulf, Tom Duffy’s thoughts were on a place somewhere ahead of them on the banks of the river that flowed into the placid waters of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Wallarie assured him all the signs indicated that the Gulf tribe they had befriended months earlier were camped there. If all was well Mondo would be with them and by now she would have given birth to their first child.

  It was six months since he had last seen her and the signs of her pregnancy were obvious then. Six months away from their sanctuary to raid the homesteads south of the Gulf Country, relieving the wealthy squatters of their cash and valuables to redistribute among the storekeepers of Burketown. The money was used for replenishing badly needed supplies to sit out the coming wet season of the tropical monsoon of the north.

  ‘Blackfella by and by,’ Wallarie said softly as he strained to listen to the whispers in the still and oppressively hot air that wrapped round them like a stifling cloak.

  ‘How close?’

  ‘By and by close,’ he replied, shifting in his saddle to ease his discomfort. The hard ride from Burketown had been necessary to put a safe distance between themselves and the outpost of the white man’s civilisation where a Native Mounted Police contingent was camped. ‘Mebbe before billy time,’ he added. His estimations of time were always measured in meal breaks. Billy time meant a half hour from locating the wandering tribe, as it was already around midmorning.

  His estimation proved to be correct as they rode warily into the deserted Aboriginal camp. But the telltale signs of fires left smouldering and middens of unopened shellfish indicated that they were being watched from the surrounding silent scrub by wary eyes.

  Tom slid from his mount and gazed cautiously around him. ‘Mondo,’ he called loudly. ‘It’s us, Wallarie and me.’ But his call was answered with a continuing silence as the warriors crouched tensely in the shadows of the bush, fitting spears to slings.

  Wallarie remained astride his mount with his hand not far from the butt of the Colt tucked behind a broad leather belt. He did not trust the northern tribesmen.

  Tom frowned. He could feel the eyes watching them and sensed his friend’s tension as he sat astride his horse studying the silent scrub. Had their tentative truce with the Gulf tribe been forgotten already?

  Their acceptance by the Gulf tribesmen had been founded on Wallarie’s knowledge of the trade route language. He had established that he and the white man would bring precious supplies of tobacco and sweet thick cane syrup to them. In return they would allow Mondo to live with them. The tribesmen had agreed and the deal was sealed with gifts of tobacco and syrup.

  But six months was a long time and Tom felt a growing fear well inside him. Not a fear for himself, but for the woman he had left behind. Had they killed her?

  ‘Baal!’ Wallarie hissed, fingering the revolver tucked in his belt. ‘Blackfella watch us, Tom.’

  ‘So long as they keep watching,’ he said grimly as he strode across to the packhorse and loosened a wooden box containing the tins of syrup. The box crashed to the ground where it split open, spilling the tins in the fine red dust. Tom scooped up a tin to wave over his head.

  ‘Tucker,’ he called to the ominously silent scrub. ‘We have good tucker.’ Although the watching tribesmen did not understand the words, they did understand his gesture and recognition dawned in suspicious dark eyes. One by one, they emerged from the scrub trailing their spears and families behind them.

  With a wide grin, Tom quickly passed the tins to the squabbling women, frantic to get hold of the sweet gooey gifts, as precious to them as gold was to the Europeans. Eager hands pried lids off and fingers of all shapes and sizes were thrust into the golden sticky liquid. All signs of wariness had gone from the tribesmen as they accepted Tom and Wallarie back into their lands with laughter and delighted squeals for the gifts.

  Even so, Wallarie remained on his mount and kept the packhorse close by him, as he was aware that, given the opportunity, the tribesmen would have happily rifled all that was left of their precious supplies. But they respected his ownership of the stores he jealously guarded. The Darambal man was also a man greatly feared. He had come to them with an aura of powerful magic that only they understood. It was an aura that protected him in the lands of tribesmen who would normally kill such an intruder from another tribe.

  Tom searched the faces of the people who now milled around in the camp, fighting over the last of the tins of syrup he had distributed. Then he saw the face he most wanted to see and with long strides he closed the gap between himself and the woman standing at the edge of the squabbling crowd. She was holding a baby on her hip and smiling shyly at him.

  He stopped before Mondo to stare at the child at her hip, sucking his little thumb. The tough and feared Irishman was at a loss for words. She held his son!

  The months of being hunted, the weeks of lying under the stars of Burke’s Land, wondering and worrying about the shy and pretty Darambal girl, were all washed away in a moment.

  ‘We will call him Peter. That’s a good name. It means rock,’ he said as he reached out to touch his son’s face with a big callused hand. ‘And our son will need to be as strong as the rocks of your land if he is to survive.’ The little boy grabbed for his hand and held the big Irishman’s thumb in a firm grip with his chubby little fingers.

  Tom reached out to touch the face of his woman and he felt tears sting his eyes. ‘Mondo . . . my little black princess . . . that I could promise you and Peter a good life, I would give my own gladly,’ he choked in the white man’s language she did no
t understand. ‘Ahh, but that I could be free to raise our son without fear of the traps coming for us, and give him the future all free men are born to with a God-given right.’

  His words trailed away and he shook his head as he gazed into the dark eyes watching him with a love that needed no spoken words. She smiled sadly for his pain, which she did not understand. They were, after all, alive and free, albeit it in the territories of a foreign people. And she held at her breast the child that was of her man’s spirit totem.

  Wallarie watched the reunion and was glad that his kinswoman was well, as she was the only other survivor from his clan and a link to his Dreaming. It was strange, he mused, as he watched the son of his friend and his kinswoman united, that the child carried the spirit of both the Irishman and the Darambal people.

  Wallarie’s attention was drawn to the nearby shallows of the river estuary where a brown and white feathered sea-eagle swooped to scoop up an unlucky fish that had swum too close to the surface of the tropical waters. For a brief moment, a terrible image flashed in his mind and it was not the sea-eagle itself but the image of the sea-eagle’s shadow. An evil entity of absolute and boundless cruelty. He did not understand and he shuddered. How was it that the dead could return to destroy the living?

  But it would be so. The spirit of the sacred hill had spoken to him across the vastness of the timeless land.

  TO TOUCH

  THE FACE

  OF THE

  DREAMING

  1867

  TWENTY-NINE

  The Osprey tacked between the great jagged walls of coral whose stone-hard fingers promised to rip and shred any ship foolish enough to come within its reach.

  On either side of the Macintosh barque, the massive rolling waves of the Pacific Ocean crashed onto the jutting coral heads with loud booming smacks that carried to the tense black-skinned sailors. The ship’s timbers creaked ominously as she wallowed for a short gut-wrenching moment in an eddy in the fast-running waters of the channel leading from the deepwater seas surrounding the flat and tiny jungle-covered island.

  With an almost human sigh, the tough little ship was swept safely forward into the calmer waters of the island’s lagoon where, with a rattle of her anchors dropping over the bow and stern, she floated serenely in crystal-clear waters gently lapping at her teak hull, and drifted off a white sandy beach of finely ground coral particles. Her presence in the lagoon was as ominous as that of a predator sea-eagle.

  Captain Morrison Mort stood beside his first mate, Jack Horton, and watched with morose interest the born-to-the-ocean islanders scuttle nimbly in the rigging of his ship and scramble with the self-assuredness of their immortality to furl the sails. Mort fiddled with the hilt of his sword at his side, as was his habit whenever he contemplated a forthcoming action.

  Four years had passed since he had been given command of the converted barque and the four years had been good to the former officer of the Queensland Native Mounted Police. His long blond hair was swept back from his face and tied in a ponytail which reached down to the stiff collar of his serge blue frockcoat. Years of exposure to the tropical sun had tanned his face to an almost golden hue like his hair. Age did not seem to be a factor in his life as he had the youthful look of a man ten years younger than his mid-thirties. It was a handsome face, almost aristocratic, and it was a face set off by the pale blue eyes that burned with an intensity of their own . . . or that of the devil. A man of spartan diet, his slim body under the unsuitable frockcoat was whiplash taut with an abundance of nervous energy and his demeanour unmistakably that of a man used to command.

  The Macintosh shipping company had paid him generously for the cargoes he had delivered consistently to the markets in Brisbane Town and the former policeman had been able to accumulate a modest amount stashed in a bank account in Sydney. In another five years, he calculated that he would be able to shift his accumulated savings into an investment in a small property at the outer-Sydney village of Penrith. Maybe an innkeeper’s licence to sustain him into retirement when that day came. Maybe even more for a prosperous farm to provide him with a certain degree of respectability, in the snobbish social circles of colonial Sydney. Perhaps he could find a wealthy widow who would be smitten by his charm and maintain him in the genteel style that he aspired to. Women were such foolish creatures, easily swayed with a few choice words of flattery . . .

  ‘Launch the boats,’ he ordered quietly to Horton, who passed on his captain’s command in the pidgin English of the South Pacific. The nine dark-skinned crew from the Loyalty Islands, picked for the raiding party, responded with eagerness for what they knew was to come.

  The two longboats splashed into the placid waters, scattering tiny silver-scaled fish that had gathered in shoals around the Osprey’s stern, as the red ball of the sun was disappearing behind the watery horizon to the west. And, as the sun was swallowed by the ocean, the beach now marked a line between the ominous dark jungle and the lagoon. The rapidly approaching tropical night promised to be balmy. The ocean breezes would then waft onshore, through the lush verdant jungles, bringing relief from the shimmering glare of the day.

  ‘You can distribute the arms now, Mister Horton,’ Mort said, leaving to join the Loyalty Islanders who were gathering on the deck in their prearranged teams ready to board the boats. He could see that Horton had anticipated his routine by organising to have the sea chest hauled on deck. The excited Islanders were like children laughing and chattering among themselves as they bustled around the big wood plank chest bound with iron hoops and secured with a huge padlock.

  Horton took a key from the broad leather belt around his waist and with a flourish opened the lid of the big chest. Eager hands snatched an assigned weapon: a single-shot rifle that chambered a combustible cartridge or a short-handled steel axe.

  Under normal circumstances the weapons were kept secured in Mort’s cabin, as he did not trust his crew. Close to their home islands, the natives tended to grow restless and the idea of a sudden and violent mutiny was never far from their minds. The blackbirder carried items more valuable than gold to the Islanders: tobacco, cloth and, of course, the new Westley Richards carbines. The breech-loading rifles, with their capacity for rapid fire, were a vast improvement over the slower rate of the ancient muzzle-loaders previously carried by earlier island traders. The possession of such rapid-firing weapons could easily make their owner a master of the perennial inter-island warfare that had plagued the South Pacific for centuries.

  But the Osprey was not a trading ship in the strict sense. She was now one of the infamous blackbirders that scoured the South Pacific in search of strong black bodies to toil in the sugar and cotton plantations of Queensland.

  Since Captain Robert Towns had landed the first cargo of South Pacific labourers at Brisbane the trade for indentured labour had brought out the ruthless and tough South Sea adventurers – Americans from the Marianas and Australians from all ports on the east coast of the continent. Tough men of dubious reputation, with varied and colourful backgrounds, they shared the common bond of ruthlessness in pursuit of their trade in human bodies.

  Recruiting labour from the South Pacific islands varied from wooing aboard recruits with promises of riches in exchange for labour in far-off Queensland to actual kidnapping and, often enough, killing those refusing to leave their island homes. It was a means of terrorising others who might be reluctant to accept the blackbirders’ contracts.

  The night’s forthcoming action was in the latter category, as the cursed missionaries had warned the Islanders to stay away from the blackbirders.

  Mort had clashed with the resident Presbyterian missionary of the island chain on a previous occasion and the missionary, the Reverend John Macalister, had become a thorn in his side.

  Fearless and fiery, Macalister had influential contacts in Sydney who viewed blackbirding as a polite euphemism for slavery. Did not the overseers of the Queensland plantations ride on horses, and carry guns and whips, to ensure that the
last drop of sweat was exacted from the black men labouring under the hot sun in the fields? Did not this seem reminiscent of the Southern cotton plantations of America before their bloody Civil War?

  Tonight Captain Mort and his raiding party would be in and off the island before the missionary knew they had been there. Mort knew that the missionary was two islands away and news of the raid would reach him well after the Osprey was over the horizon.

  Tonight’s choice of tactics appealed to Mort, as they were little different from the tactics he had employed when dispersing the Aboriginal tribes of central Queensland years earlier. There would be killing to take native heads as a valuable commodity to use as barter with native tribes on other islands. But they would also take prisoners for sale in Brisbane’s kanaka markets. Raiding the village on the other side of the tiny island would be like throwing a net in the sea for fish. After the raid they would sort out their catch – those who lived and those who died.

  When the weapons had been distributed among the crew, Mort issued his final instructions to his hulking first mate, who was the only person the paranoid captain trusted. But it could not be said that either man liked the other as theirs was a mutual respect born out of a knowledge of each other’s inherent violence.

  Horton had personally witnessed Mort’s swift and violent temper with any infractions of his rules, which were enforced violently and brutally with the flat of his sword or, on occasions, with its point. Horton preferred to use his fists or a knotted rope knout to enforce discipline. And besides the disciplinary nature of their mutual respect, both men were bound in an unholy pact of torture and murder.

  The unholy pact had been made when the first native girl was taken aboard the barque in ’65. Horton had heard her screams coming from Mort’s cabin when they were out to sea. The crew had turned deaf to the young girl’s cries and had cowered on the deck under the fierce gaze of the first mate as none dared interfere in the ‘captain’s pleasure’.