The Gold Seekers (8 page)

“The boy Murphy is American. No doubt he will learn—he is willing enough, I am sure. But, master, he is too anxious to leave here. Did he tell you why?”

Claus shook his head. The boy, he was forced to concede, had given no reason for his anxiety to leave San Francisco, and Saleh was right in suggesting that he was overly anxious. He had said that he had worked a claim on the Sacramento River with his elder brother and two others—Australians— who had been killed in an accidental collapse of a mine shaft. But he had not enlarged on his story, had “given no details, and had apportioned no blame—and there was the sister. Few gold miners brought their wives with them to the field, fewer still their sisters, and Murphy was young—eighteen, he had said, his sister a year younger.

“I told the boy that he must bring his sister out to the ship this evening, Saleh,” he offered defensively, “before I could agree to give her passage. They are living on a hulk on the foreshore, it seems. I sent a boat for them—they will be here soon. You can question them if you wish.”

Saleh spread his hands in a negative gesture. “It is not for me to question them, master. But if you will permit me, I will be present when you speak with them.”

“What do you fear—that the boy is a criminal, a fugitive from justice?”

The old Javanese repeated his shrug. “It is possible. This is a lawless place. One hears tales of vigilantes, who dispense summary justice and are greatly feared. Those they call the Hounds are said to kill and rob. Their victims are said to be Mexicans and Spaniards, people with dark skins, such as ourselves, who have been shown no mercy. And daily there are drunken brawls in the streets and in the saloons. In the fields, if rumor is to be believed, the gold miners make their own laws. There are many bad people here, with no respect for religion or the church.”

“Luke Murphy told me he was brought up in the Mormon faith,” Claus argued. “Mormons are good, God-fearing folk, Saleh. Besides, I liked the boy, and I fell sorry for him.”

Saleh’s bearded lips twitched into an indulgent smile. “You have not changed since your boyhood. Always you permit your heart to rule your head! I would not have you otherwise, master, but sometimes it is wise to exercise caution.

In your desire to befriend this American boy, you are perhaps recalling your own youth and the cruelty you suffered at the hands of your father and Mevrouw Van Buren, the wife of your father.”

Perhaps he was, Claus reflected ruefully. Perhaps he had seen himself in the thin, wiry boy who had pleaded so earnestly to be given the chance to work his passage to Australia, for all his admitted lack of nautical skills … and who had then begged, even more earnestly, to be allowed to bring his sister with him.

His own initiation into seafaring had been harsh enough, the Dolphin’s master recalled. He had been barely eleven when his father, who had for so long refused to acknowledge their kinship, had taken him to the Dutch East Indies as a member of the old Dorcas’s crew and had expected him to work as a man. He had done so; he had always done whatever his father had asked or expected of him, anticipating neither praise nor reward and receiving none. But the big, arrogant Dutchman who had sired him had, in the end, made reparation. Dying, he had acknowledged him at last as his lawful son and heir and had bequeathed to him the Van Buren name and the three trading ships on which his present prosperity was built.

Claus met Saleh’s quizzical gaze and echoed the old man’s smile. He was a rich man now, the three ships grown to a sizable fleet, which did a profitable trade with the Indies and China. In the early days, Sydney’s elitist society had been reluctant to accept him because of his color and background and the fact that, during his father’s lifetime, he, like Saleh, had been a servant in the fine house that was now his own.

But with the education he had acquired at the church school in Windsor—a township on the Hawkesbury River— his increasing wealth and influence had wrought a change. The passing years had seen the end of convict transportation and, with it, an end to the sharp divisions in the colony’s society. Emancipated convicts and their Australian-born offspring owned land, often held commissions in the British armed forces, or, like himself, successfully engaged in trade, and the gulf that had once existed had been bridged. New South Wales was a state, with its own elected Legislative Council—largely thanks to the untiring efforts of William Charles Wentworth, who was now campaigning for a still greater measure of self-government. Its population had risen to more than 190,000, and its export trade, particularly in wool, had never been more prosperous.

Successive governors, with the curtailment of their autocratic powers, had been less rigid in their social attitudes, and indeed, Claus reflected, the divisions, where they existed, were between the large landowners and the middle-class traders and townsfolk, with the women they married chiefly responsible for the barriers erected between them.

He himself had never married, because at the time when he might have taken a wife, the social climate had not been right. He was in his thirty-eighth year, an age at which most men would have had sons working for them and. daughters ready for marriage or even already married, with grandchildren in imminent prospect. Looking back over the years, he sought for reasons for his solitary state and sighed. In his case, of course, the choice had been limited; but apart from that, he had never met a woman with whom he had wanted to share his life—save one.

His expression softened. He had been barely twelve, an unhappy, friendless boy, when Alice Fairweather had entered the Van Buren household—as lost and friendless as he —and he had solemnly declared it his intention to wed her when he should become a man. But Alice had been a woman grown already, and she had married long before he had been old enough to make good his promise. All he had been able to do was endow the school of which her husband, the Reverend Nathan Cox, was principal, and— Claus repeated his sigh. And become one of their pupils, forever in their debt for all that they had taught him of letters and the arts and of their own Christian beliefs.

For the rest … His smile returned as he again met old Saleh’s searching eyes. He cherished his freedom. With no ties to hold him, he could roam the oceans, and his ports of call held women in plenty, ready and willing to satisfy his need for their company and then to let him go, with no more regret than he felt himself.

If he loved, it was the sea and his ships that held his heart.

And now, in the Dolphin, he had a vessel to surpass all others —a magnificent topsail clipper schooner, built of the best oak, white pine, and hackmatack, and sheathed with Taunton copper. With her sharply raked bow, her great length, and her towering expanse of sail, she was truly a tribute to the genius of her builder, the man they called the blue nose, Donald McKay.

McKay was both an artist and a craftsman; he designed every vessel built in his yard and personally supervised every detail of her construction. When Claus had originally contracted for construction of the Dolphin, nearly three years ago, McKay had wanted to build a three-masted, square-rigged clipper ship instead of the schooner Claus had specified; but much as he had been tempted to concur with McKay’s initial plan, practical considerations had compelled him to reject it. He wanted speed, certainly, but not at the expense of his new vessel’s carrying capacity, and the Dolphin’s fore-and-aft rig ensured that she could be worked by a smaller crew than a square-rigger would require. Because of her hull design, she could not carry as much cargo as the old Lydia, but Donald McKay had used her length brilliantly and with much ingenuity, and his insistence on fitting her with three masts was, Claus now conceded, yet another example of the genius of the young man from Nova Scotia.

On the difficult and stormy passage around the Horn, she had occasioned him few qualms, and— He heard the splash of oars, wafted through the open stern window, and a faint shout from his first mate from the deck above.

“The boy you are so determined to befriend,” Saleh observed, with a hint of censure. “With his sister. Is it your wish that they should be offered refreshment, master?”

Claus shrugged in well-simulated indifference. “They probably will not expect it. Murphy has signed on as a deckhand, to work his passage. But the girl will be one of our passengers. Tea perhaps, or, if you are anxious to loosen their tongues, a glass of the excellent brandy in which we drank our toast.” He gestured to his empty glass, and Saleh, his dark face expressionless, set out a cut glass decanter and fresh glasses.

He had scarcely done so when there was a knock on the door of the cabin and the mate ushered in Luke Murphy and his sister. The boy, it was evident, was nervous and ill at ease, but his eyes lit up as he looked about him, taking in the luxurious fittings of the cabin and the gleaming mahogany of its woodwork. Then, quickly recovering himself, he faced Claus, cap in hand, and said quietly, “You wanted to talk with my sister, sir. Her name is Mercy. Captain Van Buren, Mercy.”

The girl had been standing in shadow, but in response to the boy’s introduction, she stepped forward, the light of the lantern suspended above her head falling full on her small, anxious face, and Claus drew a startled breath as he looked ť at her. She was so like Alice Cox had been, when she had first entered the Van Buren house in Bridge Street, that he was momentarily bereft of words. Slight and overthin, her fair hair tightly braided and her blue eyes innocent of guile, she might have been Alice standing there, fresh from the confines of a convict ship and uncertain of her welcome … frightened yet undefeated, and heartbreakingly vulnerable.

She dropped him an awkward curtsy, coloring under his unexpectedly lengthy scrutiny, and Claus, overcoming his surprise, pulled up a chair for her, conscious that Saleh, too, had noticed the resemblance, for his lined brown face no longer registered disapproval.

Both visitors refused the offer of brandy, and unbidden, Saleh brought tea from his pantry, serving it in the eggshell-thin china cups that normally were reserved for guests of importance. As they drank it, Claus endeavored to carry out his initial intention and question Luke Murphy concerning his reasons for wishing to leave San Francisco, but the boy politely evaded him. The most he admitted was that he had heard much about Australia from the two partners who had been killed in the mine accident on the Sacramento River and that he and Mercy had made up their minds to make a new life there.

“Tom Gardener had a wife and family in Sydney, sir, and their parents live there. I reckon—well, that I owe it to the two of them to go and see their folks. They won’t know what happened, and maybe they’ll be living in hope that Tom and

Frankie will be coming back. And there ain’t nothing to keep us here in ‘Frisco, sir, not anymore.”

“What about the diggings? Are you not throwing away your chances of making your fortune?”

Luke Murphy’s headshake was emphatic. “From what I’ve heard, there’s gold to be found in Australia, if you know where to look. That’s why a good few of the lads that came out here to seek for gold are going back home now.”

“Not the ones who struck it rich, surely?” Claus suggested. He saw Luke exchange a glance with his sister and then again shake his head.

“Even those, sir. They’ve no reason to stay. And if there is gold in Australia—as a man named Edward Hargraves claimed—they’ll go back as miners with experience, and that’ll give them an advantage. They’ll not lack work, sir, and I shan’t either. They say Mr. Hargraves has gone back to Sydney.”

Claus frowned, feeling strangely uneasy at the prospect of a gold rush to Australia. Would Sydney’s great Port Jackson Harbor become a graveyard for shipping, as that of San Francisco was? Would gold seekers from all over the world converge there, invading the rich sheep pastures, panning the rivers, bringing their gambling saloons and their lawlessness with them? He had never heard of Edward Hargraves or his theories, but there might well be truth in his claim, for there had been rumors in the past, tales of shepherds and explorers who had found alluvial gold in the country beyond the Blue Mountains. The rumors had been denied; no governor of a penal colony was willing to take the risks that were inseparable from the admission that gold existed in anything like substantial quantities. But for all that … He expelled his breath in a long-drawn sigh.

Australia was no longer a convict colony; the men and women who had been transported there in chains were now free, working their own land or paid for their labor, if they did not possess the means to buy a farm or a sheep run or a roof over their head in town.

Hearing his sigh, Mercy asked shyly, “You do not want to see Sydney used as this town has been, Captain Van Buren?”

“No, that I do not,” Claus confessed, with feeling. There was a difference, of course; Sydney, thanks to the farsightedness of the late Governor Macquarie, thirty years before, was already a city, well planned, permanent, and orderly. The more recently founded colonies now had their own fast-growing towns and harbors on the coastline, their pastoral settlements spreading out inland, whereas San Francisco— founded in 1776 as a mission station, Claus had heard—had long been a poor, thinly populated seaport, held in thrall by its Spanish-Mexican past until, two years ago, the discovery of gold had brought a vast influx of fortune hunters to waken it to startled life. The small seaport and the shantytown it fronted had been given no time, no breathing space in which to develop. Its original inhabitants had been overwhelmed by the flood of immigrants, arriving in their thousands to spread throughout the new and hitherto sparsely settled state of California, with no desire to remain there for longer than it took to make their strikes and recoup their costs.

Now, only a little over two years since the millwright at Sutler’s Mill had made his momentous discovery, the population had risen to close on two hundred thousand, Claus had heard. But it was not the sort of influx he wanted to see in Australia, and looking at the thoughtful face of the girl who had sought his opinion, he repeated emphatically, “No, indeed, I do not, Miss Murphy! It would be a disaster.”