by Jack Dey
*~*~*~*
The Horn Island gossip line was working overtime. A strange white man had dared to enter into Lewis’ gambling room and had lost a large amount of money. The man spoke of a new venture that he would need ‘people to help with’ and there would be a lot more ‘play money’ with it.
*~*~*~*
CHAPTER 20 - TORRES STRAIT 1881
At Merinda’s request, Jundah accompanied Elizabeth and herself on the return journey from the village to the Jennings’ house. Merinda insisted Elizabeth be escorted home, especially since it was getting dark and Davis was probably lurking somewhere along her path. She could easily encounter him again. Elizabeth hugged her friends, said goodbye and watched them disappear from the entry hall of the Jennings’ house and into the night beyond. She reflected on her meeting with Merinda’s parents and Aunty Rosa. The thoughts made her feel warm and contented inside.
She stepped from the entry hall into the drawing room and was swept up by strong arms, turning her in circles and losing her feet into thin air.
“John...!” Elizabeth squealed, as she flew around in circles while her feet dangled.
He had arrived a few hours previously, exhilarated and sad at the same time, now that his contract as first mate aboard the merchant ship had elapsed and he was looking for a new challenge. His captain begrudged losing him and had offered him a job anytime. A lot had happened since their last encounter. John had met a woman and it was love at first sight. She had been taking passage from Brisbane to Cairns aboard the merchant ship; they had locked eyes and now... they were engaged to be married.
Elizabeth was stunned. “Don’t you think it is just a bit quick, John?”
John ran his hands through his strawberry blonde hair; the fire of passion burnt in his eyes. “That’s what Mum and Dad said,” John recalled. “But Elizabeth, I know she is the one!” John remarked absentmindedly, a look of far away emotion dancing in his eyes.
“What about me?” Elizabeth teased.
“You will always be my favourite sister and our first daughter will be named Elizabeth.”
Just then, Robert Jennings appeared in the drawing room doorway. “Hello sweetheart,” Jennings greeted Elizabeth with a tired voice.
“Hello, Father. You look, and sound, tired,” Elizabeth responded.
He just nodded his head. “Will you excuse us for a while? I have something to discuss with John.”
Elizabeth’s twinkling eyes met John’s. The look said, ‘You’re in trouble.’
“Yes, Father. Is Mother in her room?”
“Um, yes, I think so,” Jennings replied.
Elizabeth turned on her heels and headed for her mother’s room, leaving the two men to discuss their business.
Jennings asked John to sit and closed the drawing room doors, something that only rarely used to happen when Father had a matter of discipline to discuss, closely followed by Father’s belt around the offender’s tender parts.
The doors remained closed for two hours as the men discussed their business. John could see the burden lifting from his father’s shoulders as he outlined his plan, but John’s jaw dropped as he pondered the enormity of his father’s woes. After a long pause, Jennings finally asked John to comment.
“I know we are in a hard place, Father, but do you think going into business with this man is a good idea?”
“I don’t have a choice, John. If I don’t act, we will be bankrupt. If this plan does not work, the same thing will happen. This seems to be my best option,” Jennings claimed.
“What about financing the deal ourselves and cut Davis out?” John enquired.
“All of my financiers won’t touch the proposition. Davis has someone who will do the whole thing, as long as I mortgage all my assets. Davis will cover his half of the debt,” Jennings sighed nervously.
“When will you meet with Davis again?” John asked.
“Tomorrow morning. He will have the contract drawn up and I will say yes or no, then,” Jennings worried.
“I am coming with you tomorrow. I don’t like this whole arrangement, but I can see the predicament. I can be a witness to the deal,” John exclaimed.
Jennings sighed again, grateful for his son’s wisdom, relieved the burden had been shared. “Please don’t tell your Mother or Elizabeth. I don’t want them to worry.”
John looked surprised at his father’s request, but reluctantly agreed.
Jennings opened the drawing room doors and turned to his son. “Oh, congratulations on finding your lady, John. When do we meet her?”
John’s mind, heavy with concern, was glad to turn it back to something pleasant. “Thank you, Father. I will bring her home soon,” John replied.
*~*~*~*
Jennings opened the door to his office/storeroom. He and John went inside and waited for Davis.
Davis was right on time, clutching a large pouch containing the document. He pushed the door open to the office and hesitated at the sight of the new face.
“Who is this?” Davis asked, stone faced.
“My son, Mister Davis. John Jennings.”
The two men bowed their heads to each other.
Davis eyed John and then proceeded, “Shall we get on with the business then? If you are in agreement with the plan, let us get the contract signed and the partnership underway.”
“John will countersign my signature,” Jennings asserted.
“It is not necessary, but if you wish,” Davis explained.
In a matter of minutes, the contract was signed and countersigned. The three men shook hands on the deal, the thing gentlemen did when they signed contracts, declaring honourable intent by all involved.
Davis pondered the complication. He did not expect Jennings to turn up with a co-signer and wondered whether it was necessary to forge John’s signature too. After a long time thinking, he conceded John’s signature held no value and did not think it necessary to forge his signature, as neither man would see the originals again.
Davis’ eyes dilated.
The bear was in the trap.
*~*~*~*
Davis worked at his desk until early morning, sampling Jennings’ signature on paper, again and again, until he had it just right. He finally put the quill to the counterfeit contract and signed.
“Perfect!” he exclaimed. He sat the counterfeit on the table to let the ink dry, screwed up the original contract and threw it on the floor by the bin. “I will deal with that properly in the morning.”
Davis snuffed out the candle over his desk, yawned contentedly and readied himself for bed.
Davis woke early, excited as a kid on Christmas morning. He had to catch the mail ship before it left today. He quickly readied himself, grabbed up the counterfeit contract and headed out of his room.
“Are you out for the day?” the desk attendant asked as Davis disappeared out the doors of the Colonial Inn without answering.
*~*~*~*
Nirrimi and Tameka had grown up in the village and as young girls they had played together, sharing many life changing events, including the coming of the light to their home island. All their lives they had been friends and more recently, lived in huts next door to each other after the preacher had built them.
Tameka was also one of the native housemaids at the Colonial Inn and she had silently taken Davis’ abuse, day after day, and did not like the man. She saw Davis leave and wanted to get his room done before he returned and that way, she didn’t have to put up with his abusive tongue. He often complained about the housekeepers not doing a good enough job and on occasion, Tameka had fronted the manager ahead of one of Davis’ tirades. The manager did a thorough investigation of his complaints, but didn’t take action when he couldn’t find fault with her work.
Cautiously, she unlocked Davis’ door and peered around the quiet room, already feeling like she was doing something wrong. She entered his room, the smell of the man on everything and creating fear and the certainty of reprisals at the hand of so
me imagined misdemeanour. She wanted to do her job and get out of his room fast, so worked swiftly, cleaning and dusting; pushing the table and chair neatly back against the wall; then cleaned the basin and pitcher; straightened his shaving implements and then made the bed and replaced the hand towels. The last chore she did was empty the rubbish bin.
She bent down to the bin, pulled it from its spot between a cupboard and the wall. A large, screwed up ball of paper was lying on the floor in front of the bin. She squatted to her haunches and took the ball of paper and placed it into the bin. Standing straight again, she emptied the bin into her rubbish bag attached to her service trolley. As she upended the room bin into the service trolley bag, the ball of paper tumbled out again and landed on the floor by her feet. She bent again, somewhat miffed at the misbehaving paper, thinking somehow Davis had trained it, to make her already nervous job even more irksome. In a moment of disdain, she unscrewed the unruly clump and began to read.
A contract... Robert Jennings...
Unimpressed, she quickly screwed the paper back into a tight ball and dropped it into the rubbish bag again. Finally, she took one last look around Davis’ spotless room, breathed a relieved sigh and pulled the door closed.
She continued with her duties throughout the morning and her last chore before she finished for the day, was to burn the rubbish in the incinerator. She upended the rubbish bag into the fire and as she did, the crumpled contract appeared again. Curiosity got the better of her and she retrieved it, smoothing it down flat and tucking it inside her apron. Maybe this would be interesting reading later, to see what her nemesis was up to.
*~*~*~*
“I am sorry, Mister Davis, but if it was screwed up next to your bin, it would have been emptied into the incinerator and it would be burnt by now. There is nothing I can do,” the manager apologised.
“How can I be sure that it is burnt?!” Davis demanded.
“We do not go through our guests’ rubbish and read their private communications,” the manager replied sarcastically. “If it looked like rubbish and it was screwed up by the bin, it would have been burnt. Tameka was your maid this morning, but she is on a couple of days break now. I will ask her about it when she returns,” the manager explained.
Davis turned angrily, leaving the manager in no doubt of his sour mood. He scolded himself for being so careless. “I just hope it was burnt.”
*~*~*~*
CHAPTER 21 - THURSDAY ISLAND 1868
Warrammarra slowly walked the dirt path, passing the row of identical huts that made up the village. He and the preacher had been instrumental in building the huts to give his people a better lifestyle. The preacher had received a large gift of money from a wealthy patron in Britain, for the work, he had said. After the events of the last few months, he wondered if they would have been better off in their traditional dwellings and ways. As he strolled, he greeted some of the elderly folk sitting outside their huts while he passed by. They were contented and safe from the deluges and storms that often came at this time of year and he convinced himself that some progress was definitely worthy of adoption.
Aunty Rosa sat outside her hut on the porch, the front door wide open. He always lingered a long time with Aunty, listening to her Godly wisdom and encouragement. You didn’t leave Aunty’s place un-hugged. The warmth and love that flowed into a tender soul from this great storehouse energised his heart.
By the time he resumed his walk, he felt warm. Each time, it seemed God dropped a jewel of wisdom into his spirit through Aunty. The Holy Spirit, who dwelt within the large lady, was infectious and it made you want to pass on God’s love. He turned onto the dirt path leading into the small church at the end of the village.
The church building was surrounded by a low stone wall, marking out a large, green grassy area in the front. Through an open gateway in the stone wall, the path led straight up to the front doors of the building. Either side of the path were rows of headstones, neatly aligned. Warrammarra pondered the sight and his eyes rested on the preacher’s grave. The empty grave was a memorial to the man who had brought peace and hope to his people, even though his body perished in another place. The sight of the preacher dying in front of him, an arrow protruding from his heart and his admonition to always preach the gospel, had stayed with him. He often thought about the cost of being a servant of Jesus Christ and his own miraculous escape from death, out on the sea alone. He shook the memory from his mind, stood on the church porch and opened the front doors.
The doors to the church were never locked, allowing people to enter and sit with God anytime, day or night. As he entered the church, the wooden floor leading up to the pulpit creaked and reverberated with each step he took, echoing in the quiet. Wooden pews, lined in neat rows, faced towards the lectern, while small glass windows in the side of the church looked over onto the village on one side and the grassy slope leading towards the back of the island, on the other. He couldn’t shake his dour mood as the memories came flooding back. Remembering the day he took over as preacher, soon after returning from New Guinea. He couldn’t believe how the time had passed... nearly thirteen years. Warrammarra sat down in a pew, two rows from the front and stared out the window in the quiet.
The recollection of the tiny boat being tossed about and smashed to pieces flashed into his mind’s eye; those large, red glowing eyes of the demon above his boat; the crying eyes of Nirrimi as she walked up to him in the midst of the maelstrom and then vanishing; the wonderful meeting with Jesus; descending into the centre of the earth and seeing the souls in torment in the lake of fire; then the euphoric entry into the incredible peace and loveliness of Heaven; the memory of the children jumping all over Jesus that still warmed his heart; and then Jesus’ admonition, “You are now my shepherd.“
His mind still couldn’t understand how he had managed to experience all this and suddenly wake up in the tiny boat again, not a thing out of place, then to peer directly at the coastline of his home. Warrammarra wiped a small tear away from his eye, remembering the preacher dying in front of him. He had been faithful to Jesus’ admonition to lead his sheep home and in so doing, Jesus had rewarded his efforts, allowing him to see so many people accept Jesus’ message of hope and salvation, and filling the little church to overflowing. The tiny church had grown into a close knit community and many white folk had joined the family too.
Warrammarra’s focus shifted back to the reason he had come to the little church today. An uneasy feeling gnawed at his stomach, drawing his attention back to the present, shaking him out of his memories. The young men of the village traditionally based their lives on fishing the abundant waters surrounding their home. There had always been easy takings of fish and sometimes turtle, a delicacy everyone on the island enjoyed when one could be hunted.
Recently, more and more sailing boats had arrived at T.I. and more still were coming each week. The native young men and women gathered pearl shell from the reef at low tide and would trade it for things they had never seen before from the tourist boats. Some of the young had discovered a drink called rum and it really made a mess of them. Some of them had even abandoned their faith as a result and spent all their time searching and diving for pearl shell, instead. The wealthy pearlers conscripted the young to dive for them and collect the shell from the depths, free diving in treacherous conditions. Some of the young women also got into diving, a situation Warrammarra was not pleased about. The pearlers were not of the faith and easily led the young astray.
The worry in Warrammarra’s stomach was best laid into the right hands. He slid to his knees where he sat and lowered his head and began to pray.
*~*~*~*
Inkira felt a pain in her lungs, the sign it was time to ascend. The ascent from sixty feet would take a full minute. She would take hold of the rope attached to the shell collection net and ascend twenty feet and wait twenty seconds; another twenty feet and wait twenty seconds; then break the surface at one minute. This was her tenth dive and her
collection net, sitting on the bottom, was nearly full.
One more dive and she could rest.
She broke the surface of the water between the reef and the swimmer boat, exhaling and gasping in new air. She clung to the side of the swimmer boat, and called to her diving companion, “One more and the net will be full.”
The companion replied, “Well, don’t take too long. I am getting sick of sitting in this floating bucket, baking in the sun.”
Inkira took another three deep breaths and began to descend again. Halfway down, she felt lightheaded, a sudden pain in her head and she blacked out. Her body broke the surface again and she floated face down in the water.
Her diving companion rebuked, “Hey, what are you doing?!” before realising something was wrong. He hauled her body aboard the swimmer boat and hastily made his way back to land.
Inkira had survived, but her twenty year old body showed no signs of life, just sitting in a chair, vacant eyes staring into nothing. She had become a victim to nitrogen poisoning of her blood. Too many free dives, too quickly. A large part of her brain had died.
*~*~*~*
After the situation with Inkira, the people were getting upset at the way the young were being exploited. The elders argued bitterly as they struggled to come to terms with this new adventure the youth had become entangled in. This wasn’t the first time someone had died or become seriously incapacitated from free diving for pearl shell. One part of the eldership wanted to ban free diving altogether; another part argued for the new comforts that free diving had brought among them and how we must adopt the changing ways. Eventually, they agreed on banning the women from diving and the men could continue if they decided to. The news of the elders’ decision quickly spread among the village.
It was now law.