The Cannibals (22 page)
Penny was cursing most foully. “It's all a tangle. A terrible quiz,” he said.
“Pull on the end, you stupid,” said Midgely. He elbowed
Weedle aside, found the tail end of the rope, and gave it a tug. The whole long knot unraveled. “You see? It's a chain knot. Now haul it in,” he said.
Midge and I climbed into the boat. I dug out the matches and the oil can, and squirted the wood in the firebox. But it was too wet to catch a flame, and my matches fizzled one by one. The rain came down in torrents.
“Midge, where's that caul?” I said.
“It only works for drowning, Tom,” he told me. “It don't save a man from pirates.”
“We'll see about that,” I said.
He fetched the box from its place and shoved it in my hands. I looked back and saw my father and Boggis staggering down the beach. The pirates seemed right at their heels.
“Hurry, Penny!” shouted Weedle.
I opened the wooden box. I sprayed oil inside it, all over the shriveled skin. I struck a match, then touched it to the oil, and flames leapt up in a greasy smoke. The old box—tinder dry—nearly exploded into fire. I shoved it on top of Weedle's wood, and slammed the door of the firebox.
There wasn't time to build pressure in the boiler. I pulled out the sculling oar and rammed it in its socket.
“Help me push!” cried Benjamin Penny. He had his bent shoulder pressed against the boat's bow.
“Wait!” I told him.
“Wal-ker!” said Weedle. “We ain't waiting for nothing.” He jumped out to help Penny.
My father came wading through the water. All the light of the fires glowed on the surface, so that he seemed to be
waist-deep in flames. He helped Boggis into the boat. He told Penny to get aboard, and even made a ladder of his hands to help him. The pirates were splashing through the sea, their swords and jewelry all aglow.
My father put his hands on the gunwale. But he made no effort to haul himself into the boat. He
pushed
instead. Though breathless and nearly done, he put all of his last strength into helping us escape.
“No!” I shouted. I tried to clutch his hands, but they moved away along the gunwale as the boat went sliding back.
“Do what's right by me, Tom,” he said. “Do the handsome thing, my boy.”
He pushed hard, and the effort unbalanced him. Facefirst, he fell in the water, and he was half drowned when he rose. But once more he lunged at the boat. His weight sent it moving faster.
“No!” I cried again. “Oh, Father, please, I need you!”
Everyone was shouting—the boys in the boat, and the pirates rushing. It was a mad babble of voices, but through it came my father's steady tones. He alone seemed sure and confident.
“You're all brandy, Tom,” he said. “You're square aloft and trim below.”
Benjamin Penny laughed. “Seasick at Chatham, that's your son. Seasick in a river, he was.” The firelight glowed on his horrid face, and he grinned at me while the pirates fell upon my father.
They grabbed his arms, his shoulders, and his hair. Four
of them held him, and the others waded out toward the boat. But my father somehow struggled free. He shook off the men; he pulled away. And in the moment before they were on him again, he gave the passing bow a mighty shove that drove us clear.
“Godspeed, Tom,” he said. “You've done me proud, my son.”
“Proud?” shrieked Penny. “Why, he said he hated his father, that's what he said. Couldn't wait for the day—”
“You shut up!” I knocked him down, and he cackled his wicked laugh even as he crumpled. I couldn't believe he'd say such a thing. There was no rhyme nor reason to it. And his words may have been the last my father ever heard, for I saw a sword lifted high, a fabulous sword that glinted with a hundred jewels. It made a streak of light across the sky, and it felled my father in the water.
It was the hardest thing I'd ever done to turn the boat and scull it from the beach. I could see my father being hauled from the sea with his heels dragging in the sand. I knew there wasn't a hope in the world I could save him. But as I pushed the boat into the rain, as he faded away behind, I felt as though I'd betrayed my father.
“There ain't no one as brave as Redman Tin,” said Midgely. “Ain't that true, Tom?”
“It is,” I said.
Midgely nodded. “At least you know he won't be killed. Them pirates would never kill a man like him. They'll sell him for a king's ransom, won't they, Tom?”
“He'd rather be a dead man,” I said. “He told us so himself.”
“But if anyone can get away, it's Redman Tin,” said Midge.
A whistle came from the steam engine as the pressure built up. I put away the oar and worked the wheel and levers. With a shudder, the paddle wheels turned. The pistons moved, the cranks went round, and I heard the sound that always made me think of a little girl, that
chuckatee-chickadee
of the engine working.
We moved faster. I steered to keep the burning village behind us, and we steamed through the rain. The black ship appeared ahead, a monstrous thing with many masts and great soaring cabins on the stern. It was the biggest ship I'd ever seen, so black and evil that I took one glance and turned away. I steered for the open sea.
Benjamin Penny was scuttling away toward Weedle, who had opened the firebox to put in more wood. The flames lit that horrid boy, glowing in the webs between his fingers. I despised him more than ever, and moved to hurry him on with a kick.
But there was a sudden flash, a roar and shriek, and the sea exploded into spray beside us. Weedle screamed. “What was that?”
“A cannon!” I shouted at him to close the firebox. “They're aiming for the light!”
He slammed the door. I hauled on the tiller. Another ball went shrieking past, and others followed. But the rest fell farther and farther astern, and soon the boat rose on the swells as we left the island behind us.
I sent Midgely to sit with Boggis. “How is he?” I asked.
It was Boggis himself who answered. “I'm better now, Tom,” he said. “I'll start tending the fire in a minute.”
“No, you rest,” I told him. “Weedle and Penny will do that.”
“Wal-ker!” said Weedle. “Why should we be the ones to work?”
“Because if you don't we'll strand you on the next island,” I said.
He cursed. “Here, look, I didn't know you were the cap-tain's boy. It's true, ain't it; you were never the Smasher?”
“No, he ain't old Smashy,” said Benjamin Penny.
Weedle ignored him. “Tom, listen. It weren't my idea to take the boat and leave you. Mr. Mullock, he thought of that. ‘Leave 'em behind,’ he said. Well, where is he now, the old grub?”
“We left him behind,” said Midgely.
Weedle grunted. “That's justice, ain't it?”
“No, it ain't, 'cause he ain't alone, is he?” said Midge. “We left him with Lucy Beans, but you don't know her, and more's the pity for you. She's a peach, ain't she, Tom? She's a plum, that Lucy Beans.”
“By now he's bleeding all over from henpecks,” said Weedle. “They'll be living the cat and dog life, him and the old bloss.”
“She ain't an old bloss,” said Midge. “Tell him, Tom. Tell him about Lucy Beans.”
I didn't answer. I sat at the tiller, steering east into darkness and rain. The others squabbled and fought. “I'll give you a grueller,” threatened Penny, and it seemed suddenly that little had changed since our first day together. We were fewer in number, and our boat was bigger and better, but we
were still half a world from home, and no closer than when we'd started.
I shifted on the seat and made myself comfortable. I steered by the feel of the waves, listening to the
chuckateechickadee
of the engine. I sat and thought of my father.
“Do the handsome thing,”
he had told me. But what had he meant by that?
“Do what's right by me, Tom.”
He had left me with a riddle. One that I wasn't sure I'd ever solve.
The rain stopped in the morning, and the sun beat down. Midgely wished for his parasol, as though it were the finest thing he had ever owned. His face was as red as a strawberry, and brown welts were forming on his lips. The tropics, I thought, were rotting him away, and I feared to look toward the shining boiler of the steam engine, lest I see the same tortured face reflected in the metal.
No one argued again over who would command the boat. I believed that Weedle thought I had a right to it, as the son of a captain. But Benjamin Penny seemed only to accept that he was powerless to change things. Or else he was waiting for just the right time to change them.
Not he, nor Weedle, nor even Boggis had any desire to go home to England. For now, they rode along on the same river
of fate. There were many miles, and many days before us for that river to twist and turn.
We made only one more stop in the cannibal islands. I chose a place so small and flat that we could see right across it, from one end to the other. We reached it through a ring of reefs, and the steamboat sat in a stillness while the sea burst and broke all around.
Over the course of four days, we felled every tree on the island. We collected every coconut, every mollusk and every turtle that crawled on the beach. We left that island nearly as barren as the lonely rock where we'd found Mr. Mullock.
Every scrap of food we stored in the boat, along with as much wood as we could fit. The rest of the fallen trees we manhandled down to the water. We lashed them together into an enormous raft, and towed them astern as we passed through the reefs. I judged that we had enough fuel to last for at least a week, perhaps two. But our boat was so heavy, so dragged by the logs, that our speed was slowed to a crawl.
South and west we went, with the engine going
chickadee-chuckatee.
I hoped to pass south of all the islands and steam west to the Cape of Good Hope. Surely, I thought, we would find a ship that would take us home.
Britain sent its first lot of convicts off to Australia in 1787. In one stroke, conditions were improved in overcrowded prisons, and labor was provided to build a new British colony in the land “beyond the seas.”
This wasn't a new idea. Britain had begun transporting convicts to North America more than a hundred and fifty years earlier. English criminals picked tobacco in Virginia, and grew sugarcanes in Jamaica. They helped establish colonies in Barbados and Canada and Singapore.
The “First Fleet” to Australia was made up of eleven ships. Provisioned by the government, and cared for by the navy, the convoy carried about 800 convicts, and everything that was needed to establish a new colony. It was an eight-month voyage to Australia, but every ship of the First
Fleet arrived safely, and fewer than thirty convicts died at sea.
Two years later, encouraged by the result, Britain prepared for the “Second Fleet,” increasing the number of convicts to 1,006. But this time the government went about it in a different way. Instead of chartering the ships, they let out a contract to a private company.
The company was in the business of carrying slaves. So it packed the thousand convicts into just three ships, and spent as little as possible on food and supplies. This time the sea voyage killed more than one convict out of every four. Another 150 perished soon after reaching Australia. The transport
Neptune
left Britain with 499 convicts, but only 72 arrived in good health.
The Second Fleet was a terrible beginning to a new system of transportation. But with its navy needed for wartime duties, the government continued contracting ships to transport its criminals. So it examined the failings of the Second Fleet and laid down guidelines that improved conditions for the convicts. But there were still cruel captains and pennypinching contractors. In 1796, six convicts were flogged to death with the cat-o'-nine-tails on the transport
Britannia.
In 1798, one third of the convicts aboard the
Hillsborough
died of starvation and typhus.
As the years went by, the system improved. By the time of Tom Tin, in the 1820s, a convict had a better chance of surviving his time at sea than did an ordinary seaman.
Altogether, until transportation ended in 1868, there was very nearly one shipload of convicts sent to Australia for every prisoner in the First Fleet. In those hundreds of ships
in that century of voyages, there was only one successful mutiny. Escape attempts began with the First Fleet, when a convict rowed away from his ship during a stop in the Canary Islands. There is a doubtful story about another convict who is said to have hidden in his ship at sea, intending to emerge secretly in Australia and pass himself off as a free settler. According to the tale, he was deemed to have drowned, and was only discovered when he began pilfering from the captain's supply of champagne.
But many convicts escaped from their penal colonies in Australia. Uneducated, and with little understanding of geography, some thought they could flee overland to China. Some, like Mr. Mullock, took to the sea. One of the most famous escapes involved a woman.
Mary Bryant, of Cornwall, was sentenced to seven years' transportation for the crime of “highway robbery” after she and two other women robbed a lady of a twelve-penny silk bonnet and other small things. Bryant was shipped out in the First Fleet, on the transport
Charlotte
. It was a long voyage; she arrived in Australia with a newborn baby—named Charlotte, in honor of the ship.
In the penal colony of Botany Bay, Bryant married a male convict. He had been a fisherman in England, and now tended the nets that caught fish for Botany Bay. With him, Mary had another baby—a boy. In 1791, the whole family, and seven other male convicts, escaped in a six-oared cutter belonging to the colony's governor. Bryant's husband had secretly fitted the boat with supplies from a Dutch trader, including a compass and chart, food, and firearms.
The crew of convicts and children voyaged north up the
coast of Australia, and on to Timor, where Captain Bligh had landed after the mutiny on his ship, the
Bounty
. It was a distance of more than 3,000 miles for Mary Bryant and the others, and their voyage stood in comparison to Captain Bligh's for its hazards and unlikely success. They butchered turtles and made jerky from the meat. They used turtle fat to plug the leaks in the cutter's planks. They were chased, for part of the way, by cannibals in canoes.
At Timor, the convicts claimed to be survivors of a shipwreck. But they were eventually found out, and were arrested by a British captain who was hunting for the mutineers of the
Bounty
. He put them in irons and shipped them to the Cape of Good Hope. Mary's husband and son died on the way. Her daughter died during the voyage from there to England.
Mary Bryant was returned to prison as an escaped convict. She would have been transported for a second time if public sympathy hadn't saved her. Among her champions was the writer James Boswell.
Bryant became famous as the Girl from Botany Bay. She was pardoned for her crimes, and set free in Cornwall again.